[laughter] and it is an oh my. Moment and it must have been to maxwell because not only is electricity and magnetism things that can travel like waves but the wave is that the speed of light. And when you craft that you are overwhelmed with and a motion of amazement and how beautiful it all fits together because its not just symmetric. They are little bits of asymmetry that are necessary for the pieces to fit together that way. And its not just that maxwells equations are beautiful but you know what is the light that maxwells equations describe. Whoever said that the universe had to be so beautiful . Thats the part that i will never get enough of. Thank you everybody. [applause] thank you so much for joining us. Our next lecture is going to be on december 9 and its about earths orbit and earth orbit along with his sons around the galactic center. Its part of a we will be holding so we invite you december 9. Now im sure that you have further questions. Please hold those questions until we get through the lobby where Guy Consolmagno will be signing books. Thank you so much. [applause] [inaudible conversations] up next on booktv, after words with guest host Michael Meyers executive director of the new york civil rights coalition. This week jason sokol and his latest book, all eyes are upon us. And at the historian argues that while the northeast enjoys a reputation as a fast bastion for racial equality in reality blacks were relegated to living in ghettos and working menial jobs until Northern Leaders challenge citizens to practice what they were preaching. This program contains language that some may find offensive. Host jason its difficult to decide where to begin with your book. We are going to make a teaser to the audience. We are going to get to the conflict in the clash between ed brooke and joe biden but thats a teaser for the audience. Lets begin where you began and that is southern history. This is in the history books but the precedent to brown v. Board of education and the springfield locale. Guest well, the sense of history, i do have an argument they are about the way that northern history operates versus the way that southern history operates. Woodward famously wrote about the burden of southern history where southerners have all around them the trappings of slavery and segregation and history with something to unlo unload, a burden to unload for his people who grow up in the north i think particularly white northerners dont think of there on pastor at their own heritage in that way. In fact they think of it as something to live up to. Northern history is something to aspire to so thats what i mean about the sense of history at the beginning and the first story that i start out with as you say its about springfield massachusetts. That city, a small city in massachusetts, 150,000 in 1939 just as world war ii was starting, the leaders of that city and the School Superintendent pioneered a plan that they said would abolish prejudice and abolish racism. From a School System in from the city at large so they adopted this curriculum in these principles with this highminded goal of eradicating young peoples minds racism. Host did they come to that on their own or was there something to push them to that . Guest they drew upon curricula being developed by a bunch of professors at Columbia College which went along with these broader movements towards teaching pluralism basically in the world war i to world war ii period. Host why do they care . Guest why did they care . Part of why they care during world war ii was because the threat of racism from hitlers nazi germany seem so real and tangible on the one hand. This is the northern centers in massachusetts and new york so they saw overseas this threat of fascism and nazism and they also saw below the masondixon line the threat of what you might call southern segregation and northeasterners pictured themselves, and this is what my book is about, the northeast massachusetts new york connecticut, this area that featured itself as the rain land of racial progress in tolerance and political liberalism. I think what you are getting out by the to brown v. Board was the dull test. Kenneth clarke famously did you know, you know kevin clark. Kenneth clarke. Host your book is full of great names the names that have been forgotten. Guest Kenneth Clarke famous social psychologists africanamerican from harlem who pioneered this way of studying the effects of segregation upon schoolchildren and his most famous test was the dull test which he gained renown during the brown v. Board case where he was the star witness for the naacp and for thurgood marshall. So what clark did was he went into segregated Public Schools and he did a test on children where his two instruments were dolls, a white doll and a brown doll. Host Public Schools in the south and integrated schools in the north. Guest the interesting thing is that my book brings out is this precursor story in the north where clark began his test and springfield in 1939 and the idea was to pick springfield because it was supposed to be the model of the integrated School System. It was the home of the springfield plan which was the program i was describing. Clark chose springfield as his northern testing ground to contrast with the segregated south. He would later talk about on the brown versus board witness stand that these tests in the north and the results of the tests were that he would ask black children about the dolls and he would say give me the doll that looks like you. Give me the doll that looks pretty. Give me the doll that you want to be friends with or things along that line. Without a doubt the vast majority of them would associate the white doll with the positive associations and feelings and they would associate, they would pick the brown doll when the question asked them something negative and clark argued, he concluded from that should black children at a very young age have already internalized these feelings of inferiority and what he called the badge of inferiority which the Supreme Court agreed with. Host were there differences between the southern black child in the socalled segregated schools in the northern children in terms of their sense of empty already based on that test . Guest the fascinating thing is there was a difference but not the difference we might expect. The difference was the children and springfield in fact usually pick the white doll at a higher rate than the children in arkansas are in south carolina. That is the northern black children in the supposedly integrated schools seem to be associating the white doll even more readily with the positive characteristics. But clark argued that didnt mean that his conclusion was not necessarily that these northern children were thus more traumatized or more scarred by segregation. In fact clark said that you know he used all these quotes were the children work clearly in torment when they had to pick the white doll and they realized that they werent white. Host black child in the north would say well this was me and the fact that i went i got a tan at the beach. Guest right. What they were trying to explain away, explain away the fact of their race so clark said the southern marchella would accept the black doll and the sense that he accepted or she accepted the fact that she used the word. I met that was a southern black in the doll tests. Guest right so this was clarks argument that the southern black children accepted segregation with much less inner turmoil or outward torment and that the northern children were wrestling with their decisions of which doll to pick much more expressively and emotionally and so clark took that to mean that northern children had not accepted their condition in the segregated society to the same degree that southern children had. Host at the bottom line being that northern black children in the southern black children were all damaged by segregation. Guest they all were and you know this is what later psychologists would argue when Northern Schools came under the Court Decisions and when the undead naacp came to litigate southern psychologists would say look the effect on black children in quote unquote you know integrated schools or schools that just had de facto segregation was the term for the segregation in the north. Later psychologists would say it. Host what was the big deal about brown v. The board of education in 1954 . Guest that the deal was that the Supreme Court ruled that segregation was in itself unconstitutional you know, that separate but equal in Public Schools. Host but that was a big deal . Guest it was a big deal at the time in 1954 where you know southern leaders, political leaders and rose up in massive resistance. Host they believed in segregation. Guest of course. And a lot of Northern Leaders, that is white Northern Leaders when the brown v. Board of decision came down in 1954 they believed that main debt mandate did not apply to them great for instance new York City Schools certainly have a high incidence of racial segregation so did boston schools and so did most all the Public Schools in the big northern cities and white northerners thought the mandate for brown v. Board only apply to those School Systems where the system of segregation was on the books mandating separate but equal whereas in the north there was something not quite as explicit but where the results change. Host but there was also something odd about brown v. Education board of education in segregation in Public Schools declared unconstitutional. The Supreme Court did something. It did two things. Number one the basis for this decision, not law per se but we cite social science. Studies about the effects of segregation on black children and they used the famous footnote in kenneth v. Cook as a study for the basis for their decision for declaring Public Schools that were segregated unconstitutional. It was a big deal because a lot of people, social scientists and lawyers said what is the core doing . Guest right. It wasnt grounded in the precedent of legal history is so much as it was grounded and the findings. Host the second things the courts did or did not do is to wait a whole year and thats unusual for Supreme Court decision. Usually when you find a constitutional violation the Supreme Court says you have to do it right away but they didnt do that. Guest no in fact they waited until 1955 in which the court released the ruling known as brown two and that ruling said the segregation in the south had to occur with all deliberate speed and white southerners interpreted that as meaning they could occur in whatever time i may wish. Host as you alluded and i know Kenneth Clarke or new Kenneth Clarke who is now deceased that but he was one of my two mentors in my life. Kenneth clark had great hope for brown v. Board of education but he also thought the court had aired in the sense that it did not say that segregated Public Schools not only harmed the intellectual and Psychological Development of black people but also harmed white children. The court never said anything about that. And then he kept saying that its the right to anybody who asked him was you could not delay. Any sign of delay from the courts to implement their decision would really embolden and encourage the opposition. Guest right and the reality particular in a rural south Public Schools did not segregated until 1969 or 70 with the decision of alexander v. Holmes county. Many schools in the north north remain beyond the reach of brown up until the 1970s and we know what happened in boston at that point. Host did springfield feel that they were beyond the reach of brown or did they have a more enlightened disposition about bringing black and white children, and those days black and white Children Together in a unitary School System . They thought there were differences in the south and therefore there was no evidence to it. Guest the interesting thing is they felt they had a more enlightened position than they often did have a more enlightened position but dispositions did not add up to integration. They practiced segregation on the ground in the schools, in the neighborhoods just as the same time as the city leaders pioneered this plan to eradicate racism from white minds. What you found in the north, what i found in the north, one of the conundrums is that you could have all of these people and im talking about white northerners, who prided themselves on a racial progressivism, prided themselves on being colorblind and at the same time were deeply committed in our policies to segregation in the schools and in the neighborhoods. You found this in springfield for instance. Springfield had to fend off, the springfield leaders had to fend off a case from the naacp in 1964. The case was called barksdale versus springfield schools and the naacp under the leadership of Robert Carter and lewis steele filed a suit against the springfield schools and said your schools are segregated, just as segregated as many others and it doesnt matter that you have a plan to eradicate racism and it doesnt matter that you have forwardthinking people. Your schools are still segregated and youve got to do something about it. Host your book focuses on progressives and it talks about the differences in terms of attitudes of the liberals. There were growing tensions in the south. They believed segregation was a way of life and you quote very famous people. He talked about James Baldwin and we havent heard his names for many years but James Baldwin and he and other liberals said the north is no different from the south except that in attitude and rhetoric. I know lots of liberals used to say the north is up south for them. Your book talks about that and demonstrates it in many ways. Guest right. One of the things that i found really fascinating when i decided to tackle the subject of race in the northeast and my first book was on white southerners so i started this project back in 2006, and i tried to study race in the northeast and i read anything that had me written on it before. I found that most books on race in the north either called the up south, that is the boston busing might have been mississippi and studies. They were the same because racism was exhibited. On the other hand you had a lot of folks that actually portray the north is a land of liberty, as a place without jim crow laws and without a long history of lynching and with a lesser history of secession. But i found that something in the middle was much more truthful. If you had to write a book about the ambiguities of northern Race Relations you had to write a book that honored the northeast claims to progressivism and its realities of racial segregation at the same time. That war between those traditions, that conflict, that duality was at the heart of northern Race Relations. Host very well indicated that it also reminded me of malcolm x and malcolm x said there is no such thing as the south. The south is america. That reminded me of your from James Baldwin, reminded me of the falling earth quote. He said the sons of slave traders still deal and doubletalk where they swap the voting block for ghetto and gun. They have swapped the voting block for ghetto and done. How did it happen that blacks didnt come to new york as they say . Blacks came to harlem. They didnt go to chicago. How did that happen . Guest how did happen, exactly. These are great liberal cities. So this first happened during the first great migration of world war i but we had several million africanamericans coming in the second great migration during world war ii and the years afterwards paid for instance they would come to a place like new york city. They would go to harlem where they already had relatives and they would find there werent any places to live in harlem. Harlem had been packed in a way so a lot of them trickled down to brooklyn. That is where they met with the blockbusting realtor who was not quite like the blockbusting realtor was the north analogy to the southern billy club wielding sheriff. That is, the north didnt have the bull connor type who went out with fire hoses and attack dogs in the streets. With the north had was something harder to see and more insidious which was a system of real estate practices and housing covenants and stonewalling ban banks. The system of economics and sometimes politics that what corel africanamericans in the same neighborhoods and keep them there. In fact you could also see the lines of Bedford Stuyvesant itself change over the years to envelop whatever africanamericans had gone through so as the neighborhood expanded us black people expanded to the outskirts of that neighborhood, city leaders change the definition of the neighborhood. Host some people have a different view of the blockbuster and the violence in the north. For example there was a long period of time story of Police Brutality and misconduct which we will get to later on. Dont forget we have to get to the Kerner Commission. The blockbuster use scare tactics. They scare the whites off the blocks. The blacks are coming, the blacks are coming. Your Property Value will go down. They will go down and people who said they werent racist. Guest that was an article of faith. They thought they real estate values will plummet if africanamericans came onto their blog. One thing i try to do when i spelled tell the story of Bedford Stuyvesant how