From the white house because this is kind of our capital a protest. This is where we had as a people go to yell at our present i mean, i was kidding about lafayette being an only child, but one of the most only at child things he said was, he said i did not hesitate to be disagreeable to preserve my independence. And so i think Lafayette Park or Lafayette Square as its also called embodies that spirits and even though we beat ourselves up in this country for how much bickering there it this is and how we cannot get along, i think that is annoying and timeconsuming, but also the source of our greatness and at the fact that we have this place across the street from our head of governments house where people as George Hw Bush said, they would beat those damn drums when i was trying to have dinner , i think this is something that we as a people and you and your city should be enormously proud of and i think the fact that it is named after lafayette, i think, that would probably be to him his greatest honor. I think it is, also. Good night. [applause]. Good morning. Im alice cary. As a reviewer for book page i read a lot of books and one of my favorites this year is truevine. Took beth macy to unearth the saga requiring painstaking research on multiple fronts to unearth the she writes to untangle a century of whispers from truth. The result is deeply moving and endlessly compelling and such intricate tale thats worthy of not one but two subtitles. Two brothers, a kidnapping and a mothers quest a true story of the jim crow south. Truevine has been shortlisted for the kirkus price and long listed for the Andrew Carnegie medal for excellence producer porter for the ron at times in virginia thats one more than dozen awards and earned a fellowship at harvard university. Her first book New York Times bestseller factory man was on numerous best of 2014 was and is currently in development to become an hbo miniseries executive produced by tom hanks and gary goetzman. Please join me in welcoming beth macy to the southern festival of looks. A pasta of. Thank you alice. Truevine has all the elements of the southern gothic novel but its its true so could you read a section that explains how you first heard about the story . I would love to. As a Young Journalist who arrived in roanoke in 1989 to write feature stories for the roenicke times i took two years to muster the nerve write. A newspaper photographer had told me the story based on rumors he had heard growing up in roanoke. Quote is the best story in town but no one has been able to get it he he says that by the time i poked my head into the soul Food Restaurant with the idea of writing a story about her famous great uncles it was clear that all personal details were going to be closely held, trickling out in drips and droughts and very much on nancys timeline. The first time i asked if i could interview willie muse he was then in his 90s, she pointed to a homemade sign on the goodie shop wall, customer had stenciled the words in black block letters on a white painted board and given it to her as a gift. The sign said sit down and shut up. Willie was not now nor would he ever be available for comment so hoping to generate some goodwill for a future story on her uncles i wrote a feature about her restaurant a place where the menu never changes and its not even written down. You are just supposed to know. Regents of people could recite the daily specials i would eventually commit to memory. Tuesday spaghetti or lasagna except every other tuesday which is pork chops. Wednesdays fish on thursday country fried steak page friday his ribs that you had better come early because the rim sell out quick way. The line out front starts forming at noon and the lunch doesnt officially begin until 12 15 and not a moment before and later if nancy has to run home to check on uncle willie uncle willies favorite special was tuesday spaghetti. Nancy also to painted rock on top of the cash register. Was a gift from her preschooler nephew jason whom she helped raise. She was not above picking it up presumably and just showed a customer offend her. When i returned from lunch two days after my story ran because red fridays are my favorite nancy shook her finger man was clear i was not getting anything close to a pat on the back. Her mother sat nearby peeling potatoes watching the young and the restless and cringing about what her daughter was about to say. Nancy had been ready to send me packing the first time i walked in the restaurant inquiring about her uncles but persuaded her to let me stay. A fan in my youth i saw the first episode. I had wanted quickly with dots over the characters who would help peel potatoes and your kitchen much to nancys chagrin. You know what your story is nancy said . At trot out a bunch of crazy white people, thats all. Paying customers some might have added she was in no mood for backtalk. She walked past without further comment. She is going out to leave the goodie shop as many as five or six times a it should. If Nancy Sanders got or way are for great uncles story would stay buried. The first time she heard she was just a child and she found the whole tale embarrassing and painfully wrong. The year was 1961 and black blackandwhite people alike wanted to know worth a whiteskinned brothers black or white . Had they really been trapped in a cage and forced to eat crow me . These men deserve respect. They did not deserve the gawkers who came by their house at all hours standing on the front door. Those were some of her first memories, people banging on their door and mildon i peer by the time and mildon i peer by the time it came as he no one talked about savages or circus freaks and that in front of nancy frank at the temples whose skin was white as the chef kozier would work. She bakes bread every good as her mothers ash cakes. He had never contemplated bringing the subject up with them. That is one exceptionally guarded family he told me. Youve got to take a few steps. You have to think of them as a tribe. They fallout with each other sometimes but if you fallout with one of them they will come roaring back in like an army. It was 10 more years before nancy warmed up enough to let me in the call writer author and newspaper series about her uncles and only after her death in 2001, he was 108. She didnt reveal much though. She invited my fellow reporter Jan Mccaffery photographer josh meltzer and me inside the house exactly one time. She made reference to a family bible that we were not permitted to view and for years after the series ran whenever i visited the restaurant she hinted that there was so much more to this story than we had found. She actually when she would say things like that she would call me scoop. Our newspaper was the same one of her familys version of the kidnapping story early. Look the other way when city officials decimated to historic lack neighborhoods in the name of midcentury progress via urban nor or as they black Community Calls it may grow removal. They cheered when the city knocked down homes and buildings including a church. Refused print black wedding announcements until the 70s because the wealthy white publisher roanoke had no black middle last. I myself to use a illustrate a story about roanokes hide teen pregnancy rate in 1993 the story that went viral before the internet term existed and made the girls the object of ridicule even Rush Limbaugh joined in with a rant. When the girls dropped out of school shortly after my story ran it was devastating. Words linger in words matter and turned and its not possible to predict the fallout it can have on the subjects like it would take me 25 years finally to earn something nearing nancys trust to convince her wasnt one more candy peddler intent on exploiting her relatives for the color of their skin are purely for my own financial benefit. In 2013 when i hit a. Updating wrote a story, updated story on the pregnant teen more than 20 years after the original explosive first story it seems safe that one of them a 37yearold mother four was just around the corner from nancys northwest roanoke franchise but after angry relatives tried to bully me into not writing the story physically threatening me and demanding a meeting with my newspaper bosses nancy reassured me you dont need their permission to do the story just like you dont need mine to write your book, not really you dont. And yet month earlier nancys permission is exactly what i sohtz. On the eve of publishing my first book about a Third Generation factory on or who battled chinese imports to save his company i had given an advance reading copy a factory man dog airing at chapter on Race Relations i found hard to navigate. It detailed decades of mistreatment up black furniture workers in the Sexual Harassment of black domestic. Workers who wore two girdles at one time he in defense of their bosses a friend of my moms she would be vacuuming down the steps in the husband would be feeling her up from behind. My mom had to fill in for her one day so she told the man first thing, dont take me open up your chest by which. Broun with the tip of my neck. Nancy and i had come a long way from the days of sit down and shut up. It was by no means a get me when i called her november asking for her blessing to pursue her uncles during the book. She was in the mid60s and recently retired after closing the goodie shop. I wanted her help delving into the family story as well as connecting with the relatives including one albino still living in true vine. More than six weeks later, oh she enjoyed making the way, she finally called to she said i waited so i could give it to us a christmas present. It was Christmas Morning and nancy decided to let me write her uncles story with her help and blessing but on one condition to she said no matter what you find out or what your research turns up you have to remember in the end they came out on top. I knew this storys ending already i assured her. I had art interviewed several people nurses and doctors neighbors employers all of whom described the i was less certain about who force them into servitude about the struggle to have their humanity knowledge and they were compensated. How exactly during the harsh years of jim crow had Georgian Willie managed to escape . How frustrating was that all those years knowing this remarkable story was so close and yet so far away and did you ever feel like giving up . Well willing to give up because she said no. She actually said, i asked her i you didnt even let the interview them and say i would hold the interview and tell after he passed away. She didnt want anything written about him until he passed away. She said you are too curious. She didnt think i could hold the interview. I said if i would hold the interview a i would but she didnt believe me. Now she says when you walked into that shop the first time and you just thought i would give you a story i said to myself, scratch has met her match. I was scratch and she was the match. You call yourself a unicorn. In this globetrotting world he stayed in roanoke for deck eggs. How has your staying staying power allowed you to read both of your books both of which require deep reporting . Not a lot of books get written from rural america. I live in the city of valley of the quarter million and most reporters move on after few years. Some of our best reporters at the New York Times and they have been great stuff. Ive decided to stay. I stayed at the Roanoke Times. Im no longer there but you see im still writing stories. Im able to write these stories because i have time on my site or improper care of said timing is true. Maybe she didnt want to talk to me in 1991. She begrudgingly let me do a restaurant feature and then i started spending time there. Sometimes i would say maybe she will let me do the story but it just became, these people in town that call my story can lead me to other people in the community. At the time in the early 90s newspapers across the country, diversity was a big push. Newspapers were better staff then and i had a fantastic editor. She was as tough as nails and the paper was sending a lot of emphasis on having more black editors, more black reporters and doing stories that more at early reflect the diversity in our community. So if i was writing a general story about something and roanoke has a 23 black population if one of my sources was an africanamerican she was done at that. That was great training for a Young Journalist. Im not sure papers have the resources to do that now. That was wonderful training and thats what led me to a neat but really what i did was i had been trained to work outside of my zip code and getting stories that nobody else had the entree into because i had spent time with immigrants, refugees and caregivers for the elderly and i have really made that might be. One of my favorite in the book come he passed away recently but its al holland. He was an assistant is relative. He was a civil rights leader and roanoke and he would with an 11yearold boy in 1927 when. Muse got hurt in his job after school was he would help a blind man cell on the city market. He had this wonderful insider view to the story. He was there when they came home that night so he is 98 when i interviewed him for this book. I knew him because i had done numerous articles on him before. I just think because i had made those connections in the community i was able to get people. It was really the time and the fact that im still there, these are my people. I know them and they trust me. Maybe if she had said yes go ahead 25 years ago you would have been ready to write this book like joanne poindexter. Joanne was a newspapers first black reporters of the neighborhood in roanoke the microvillage only the very old people still refer to it as jordans alley. Joanne was able to, she doesnt live in the neighborhood anymore but she goes to church there and she was able to put me in touch with 80 and 90 and 100yearold people who could help me bring back neighbor to life. One of the questions is the story is what happened, also were they better in the circus than it would have been a home which begs the question how was life of jim crow in roanoke virginia and what was that like . I was able to drive around with these older people. I didnt always drive around but i did my best stuff when i drove around. It reminds the ones your kids are teenagers and they dont want to talk to you. Because people not only what they were saying with jobs and memory that they were more comfortable with the book facing forward. It was a technique i used. Its nothing special but i would drive different people around the same places and searching here some the same stories. The next time i could say soandso said this and then the news would come out. C you also say that kitchens are great place to do interviews. You all know kitchens. Thats where their buddy lance at a party. Everybody is in the kitchen even though the host doesnt want you there because people are just more comfortable in the kitchen. I always ask if we can do the interview in the kitchen. They usually have some questions written out and my recorder and its easier and i take notes because i dont trust the recorder. Its easier if i have missed up on the table. I want people to be in her kitchen because thats where they live. I staying in one place you havent limited yourself in terms of material because a few blocks away from this another person wrote another bestseller. Henrietta lacks was about a block away in Jordan Valley a block away so just remarkable. I think probably every place had these remarkable stories that these two stories came from one tiny place. And they are very different stories. Very similar but different. The facts in the story that you wrote are so few and far between that photographic evidence of the research played an important role. At what point of the you realize this would be so vital . Actually there was a circus historian i was intervening flynn and he reminded me the circus managers would often change their names. The brothers were called darwins missing link, the ambassadors from mars, the headed men, the ecuadorian savages. They were never called protected type in ecoand aye but that wouldnt necessarily bring up those other names. So i had to be cognizant of that and also the photographs themselves became the great reporting tool. The news clippings were so skewed. They never recorded and the stories about the reunion they never reported what the families point of again they went to the trouble of recording the dialect but it was clear from the wrong person that they didnt actually talk to her. The photograph i find his and controvert up all evidence so this earliest photograph of them as child exhibits and when i saw it to me they looked like scared Young Brothers had been taken from their mother. They were told she was dead and they should quit crying. I studied it and then somebody said there is a person in charleston named joshua bonn professor who studies historical costuming. I emailed him the picture and it up. He saw so much more in the picture that my eyes could see. He said the seams were stretching. He said these suits are two sizes too small. They are nice suits so there were some his tie is askew and the suits are too short. During this time, so youve got that evidence and you can really try to figure whats going on the picture and then you have family stories of willing telling everyone when he was little georgie would look after him and there was a popular song in 1914 called its a long way to tipperary. You can sort of player the facts with interviews and stories and memories, pictures and the documentation as it exists in this very racialized lens. Thats what i tried to do, to bring it into its fullness. The pictures were just great. I found this picture from around 1917. There was lg barnes circus by then. Mr. Barnes writes his memoir and the 1930s in which he brags about buying them and making them a paying proposition so thats more proof. He was proud of it because why wouldnt he be . Everybody thought africanamericans were subhuman and they were getting something over on them. So this picture i showed to nancy when i found it and its the first picture of them with instruments. We were driving around at that picture prompted a memory. Sure he remembers willy it was supposed to be if photo prop. They would have pictures of their act and then they would sell them and keep the money. They were called pitch cards. That was supposed to be a photo prop. They thought cert we they can play instruments. Turns out they were kind of geniuses. They could hear a song and play