Any other gadget that might vibrate or distract us. I would like to thank the sponsors who make this possible and in particular the friends of the book fair. Any friends in the room . Wonderful. Thank you. We are thrilled to partner with you. It is a pleasure to welcome reverend willis. Please welcome him. [applause] good morning. I am pastor willis and happy to introduce two friends and intelligent people. Joyann reid is our first guest. She is on regular prime time programs including hard ball with Chris Matthews and the last word with lawrence odonal. She has written columns for the new york times, miami herald, south florida times, and in her book, fracture barack obama, the clintons, and the racial divide, published by monroe, she shows that despite progress made we are still a nation divided as seen in headlines with the killings of tragedies like Treyvon Martin and the uprising in baltimore. America expected an open dilying about race but discovereded the irony of an africanamerican who is ham strung and held back be addressing racial matters giving many supporters disillusion and opponents sharpened their knives. Joyann reid examines the relationship between barack obama and bill clinton and how they bring challenges to the democratic part y itself. I am happy to introduce joyann reid. Our second author is none other than leonardo pitts. He is winner of the 2014 Pulitzer Prize award. He is the author of novels such as freeman, and before i forgot, selected columns from his, daily triumphs, tragedies and curiosity. And the author of the coming dad; black men and the journal to fatherhood. The involve grant park begins in 1968 with Martin Luther king juniors final days in memphis. It moves to the 2008 elections then and cuts between the two r eras. His son appears and his long time editor bob carson is primarily fired within hours of the publication. A furious carson tries to find him and his son is abducted by two White Supremecist plotting to explode a bomb at the inauguration in grant park. Both of their lives change by the work and Civil Rights Movement that has begun. Ladies and gentlemen, i introduce to you leonard pitts, jr. I came prepared to just introduce them but hai have bee informed i am going to be a moderator. They have been informed that because of their great works they will first share a few comments about their own perspective work and then engage in a dialogue, they will have a dialogue, and i will serve as moderator only if things get unru unruly. I am going to sit back and trust these two will be civil to each other. I am honored to say i served as leonardos pastor. I was his pastor when he wrote his first book. Joyann and us worked together before as well. They are sharp people. This might be the last time you hear from me. Hello. Good afternoon, everyone. Good afternoon, miami. I would like to thank reverend willis. Thank you to the Miami Book Fair and all who organized this event. It is a privilege to be in the same space with leonard pitts, jr. I am prepared to fight you if need me. I think it is interesting we both have a span in your books. 682008 and mine from 19642014. I think the plans between the eras is fascinating because you have this incredible art that the country, and in my book the Democratic Party, but really the whole country takes over the course of the 15 year period. When i started out thinking about fracture i did so in 2013 and did so knowing we were looking at some of it most important years in history. I start would the march on washington that was designed to get congress to pass the Civil Rights Act of 1963 and introduce in congress after the scandal of the full house door. Then 1964 the act is passed and then of course you had 1965 when the Voting Rights act was passed. S attempting to answer in my book is what does that mean for us . Is it possible to be racial . Do the victories in the 1960s mean we closed the chapter on the race wars in america . I think our answer is absolutely not. We didnt close the chapter, we opened what you might call a third reconstruction. You have see the first reconstruction and know what happened was a vicious, violence backlash which was led by members of what would be the Democratic Party in the south who were leading a backlash attempting to undo any of this Reconstruction Movement to take former enslaved people and allow them into civic society. If you see the period of the middle 1960s as the second reconstruction there was also a backlash and it would change the Democratic Party. I liken the africanamerican breakin almost to the Democratic Party particularly in the south where that was the only way you could exercise any power. It was akin to the acquisitions of block busting when black residents moved on to a neighborhood block and white people protested and moved out. These two parties were transformed by the Civil Rights Movement and the second reconstruction and if you look at the election of barack obama as a third reconstruction that too was attended by a vicious backlash. Certainly not as violence as the first or second reconstruction but just as deep seated and longstanding. We are in the midst of most of it. And some of the ongoing frustrations of africanamerican who are waiting if the payoff of 50 years of striving and fighting. I think we have many fractures in the book still. I could have called it fractures with an s because there are many. Those between black american and White Americans, black americans and the police, and White Americans and the Democratic Party which played a game of pulling in africanamericans and pushing them away often in the body of same person; bill clinton. I tried to get at these different pictures and what they mean not just for the Democratic Party but the country. Okay. [applause] good evening, Miami Book Fair. It is my great honor to be Miami Book Fair which has no comparison to book fairs around the country. I am honored to be sharing the stage with my former pastor. He doesnt like to be called reverend dr. Willis, but that is what he is. And with joyann reid from msnbc. We did a show about the same topics and far from fighting like we are here i was sitting there in my hotel room and she is on a plane and im saying preach, sister because so much of what she said has been rattling around my head. My novel, grant park, covers some of the same territory but from a fictional point of view. It is a novel about race and frustration and race and disillusionalment. It takes course over the fall of 67 and spring of 1968 and then the mordern day section is all on one day which is the election day of 2008. There is two main characters and they are both experiencing the disillusionment colored by their own race and experience. You have malcolm who is an africanamerican College Student in the 1960s who has this black power militant who has this life altering encounter with Martin Luther king out back at the holiday inn after the riot that turned out to be his last march. And this encounter reorients him and changes his life view on how we need to go about securing the freedoms we should have. He decides to devote his life to dr. Kings philosophy of nonviolent direction action and engagement. And 40 years later when we need him he is a frustrated man. He has spent most of those years as an Award Winning columnist and here i have to stop. He is not this awardwinning columnist for a number of reasons. He has two pulitzer, i have one. He drives a new corvette and i drive a ten year old toyota. But we share the frustration in the sense of trying to explain what should be glaring obvious to anyone trying to understand race in this country and you feel like you are banging your head against a brick wall and this is the feeling malcolm has as he is coming up 60 years on election day 2008. And he writes this White America go to hell column after the death of an another unarmed black man at the hands of a Police Officer. And this is blowing up this entire career out of the sense of what good is it anyway . What does it mean . I have fought for civil rights, tried to engage people for 40 years, and the power of people not to understand what they chose not to understand has proven far greater than my ability to get them to understand or make them understand. And i have no intention of blowing up my career, i am less wealthy than malcolm, but i do understand the frustration. Bob is malcolms editor. A white guy who was fighting were civil rights in the 60s and engaged in nonviolent direction action and marched and held signs because he felt that, you know, there is a fundamental injustice here and as a Christian Young man he wants to know he has the courage to put himself and his life on the line for justice as he has seen so many other young people in the 1960s do. By 2008, he is a 59 year old man and has compassion fatigue. He is a white guy who says okay, i can understand where the discussion is going and i can understand why we were marching and demonstrating when there was a sign saying whites only or when there was a policy that said africanamericans could not vote. But now you are asking me to care about something called Structural Racism and mass incarceration. What are these things . He is a man who is inflicted with this sense of compassion fatigue. This loss of empathy with the africanamerican struggle and the book is essentially about both of them sort of talking about the journey that has led them from that point to this. It takes up as they are also swept up in a thankfully fictional plot to assassinate the incoming president at grant park. But i think the thing that ties us both together systemmatically is the sense that africanamerican since the civil war have progressed at a rate of two steps forward and two steps back. And i think what she is writing about in fracture and certainly my characters is we are in one giant step back. What is worst for me as an observer or character a lot of people dont know or give a damn. As an africanamerican male i find that horrifying and frustrating. My friend in the first row and i were talking before i came over here about the fact that, you know, everybody looks back on the Civil Rights Movement and you know, there is such normal clarity about the Civil Rights Movement. Everyone fancies they would be an active protesters in that movement and then they turn around and say what is wrong with these black lives matter people . There is a great frustration we are taking one step back and instead of being active and caring and joining forces a lot of people are choosing to stand beside and pretend what is happening isnt happening and africanamerican americans are complaining only to hear their voice. I dont have a lot of in common with malcolm but i will repeat frustration is common to me, him, and i would imagine a great many others. I love the fact you all are doing this. I am going to throw out a Monkey Wrench here. We were addressing the issue of post Traumatic Stress and that is how post Traumatic Stress differs from posttraumatic slave syndrome and the reactions i got were mind blowing. Post Traumatic Stress is one single event shakes you up and you try to get through it. But postslave syndrome is different from ptsd. Ptsd is the result of single trauma. Post traumatic slave syndrome is a continual problem in the community. As soon as we heal from one issue, take for instance the shooting of Treyvon Martin and we turn around and see the choking of another black man in new york, and then turn and see sign people shot in a church. As soon as we can hurt from one hurt another one is coming. What she is saying is this has created a serious backlash especially after the election of a black president as you are addressing now. We thought things might get better but the black community got disillusioned while the White Community got aggravated because this president needed to be accountable to all people and couldnt make the changes that needed to be made. Joy if you comment on that first and then leonardo if you would like to address this posttraumatic slave syndrome. I will start by acknowledging today is one year on since the shooting death of tamir rice, the 12 year old boy who was playing with a toy gun across the street from his home in a community center, who was shot by a Police Officer who pulled up and within two seconds shot him. That was a year ago. The prosecutor in the case turned the case over to a grand jury. Neither of the officers have given a statement. They were not asked to give a statement. There is a judge who ruled there was significant evidence to charge both officers, one did the shooting and one was the senior officer on the scene, with multiple crimes including manslaughter. And despite that ruling you had the prosecutor, who i would like to point out is a democrat, as was the prosecutor in ferguson, this isnt an issue of partisanship. They are fellow political tr travelers. Contrast that with the case in South Carolina where there was resolution in the case of walter scott but only after there was Video Evidence the officers story was false. A 52 year old man got of his car and ran away from an officer who was pulling him over for a minor violation because he was afraid he was going to be arrested for paying child support. There is an africanamerican who is being investigated watches him drop whatever he does near the body and does nothing about it and doesnt try to attempt to recesuscitate scott. Neither did they in the case of rice. In fact they tried to tackle the sister to the ground who tried to run to her father. So those incidents compounded with the Treyvon Martin case. Africanamericans were told our lives are worth nothing. If you can follow a young teenager who has head phones on and walking with a soda. If you can follow him and say he is the aggressor and shoot and kill him and not face any legal consequences then what that means is black lives have no matter. That started the black lives matter. It started with a man who acted like the police and had the ultimate power to take a life. I think what that told a lot of africanamericans is wow, even a civilian can kill us or our children, and nothing is going to happen to them. And it happens again and again and each time it happens the result is no arrest, no prosecution, and then you turn on your phone and you look on twitter and hour after hour you see Michael Browns body lying in the street like a dog hit in the street. Lying there hour after hour, uncovered, uncared for, his family cant go to their boy. You see these things over and over and it produces trauma. It produces trauma in me and i am just covering the cases. You see tamir and your own child. You see the teenagers with their mistakes like when they released the Text Messages from martin. You see a boy and you understand the world sees a ministering menacing monster. Your kids cant do any of the things that boyhood used to involve without fear of death. Your husband cant pull over to the side of the road because his car broke down without an unmarked van pulling up and he ends up shot and killed as in the corey jones case. I think this constant unsafety is where this comes from. When i walk to people who are seniors, adults that are africanamerican or black you hear it is futile. The rodney king case ended exactly the way the case ended in the mcduffy case in miami and that ended the came case as the michael brown. It doesnt matter the individual facts. They all end the same way. Black lives matter isnt a negotiation of nonblack lives it is saying why dont black lives matter . It is a question and then a plea cant black lives matter . Or black lives matter, too. So you see a rolling sense of trauma. I will end it by saying then you have africanamericans looking at this africanamerican president and feel disrespected and how he is treated like he is not a proper man or worthy of the bear minimum. You dont have to call him president obama you can just call him obama. You dont have to listen to him you can call him a liar. There is no consequence to it. I think there is a sense of trauma in the in the black community. And outside of the black community it is probably not recognized or understood but i think it is there. [applause] it is interesting. People often want to cite the poverty rate or the alleged crime larate of the africanamerican or the educati educational gap in the Africanamerican Community. They also ask me whether explicitly or implicitly the same why are black people doing so bad . One guy on twitter, you people have been free since 1865 why are you doing so bad . And the thing i dont think people understand is when you come to understand when you experience the level of benevolence that the Africanamerican Community experienced and the examples joyann gave were from the last five years. When you take that and combine it with the fact we live under an injustice criminal system and when you add that to a media structure, news and entertainment, which as chris rock joked paid us borne suspects made when you look at all of things like the banking discrimination, the housing discrimination, when you look at health care discrimination, when you look at the labor of the Agricultural Department discriminating against africanamerican far