Put your phones on silent or turn them off. Secondly, questions afterwards, please stand up so they can get the boom mic to you. This is a great book. I wondered why i didnt read this earlier. All about a family. My mother was from georgia, a Third Generation graduate of american high school, she graduated in 1950. After leaving Americas High School she went to sweet girl college, where she had a friend of hers, and Exchange Student and one day she said arent you from americas . Tell me what it is. My mother said i never heard of it. She learned about it from somebody from scotland. She was a little bit upset and ask my grandfather to take her out and my grandfather was an atlanta republican tight and actually his first cousin is quoted in the book as one of the leaders of the family bank account. He took her out and that person, that banker said she went to college in virginia but came home a pinko. So good for my mother. That is one of the many stories i have and it is a classic southern story and a great way to talk about what chuck reece is doing and were glad to partner with him personally and professionally in support of what they do and the storytelling they do, trying to get the south right, the way it really is, not the way people think it ought to be but the way it is today. You all know about that. He is building a media conglomerate we are proud of. This is another example of a partnership that we have so with that i will hand it over to check. Come on up here. Someone asked me earlier tonight if we were longterm friends and i said no, we werent. I am a longtime fan. We have all seen local newspapers ride the roller coasters calm all Media Properties do these days, no matter what happened, one of the things i had done for decades or did until a few years ago was look for jim auchmuteys by line because i knew if he wrote the story it was going to be a great story and probably going to be something that mattered and something that i cared about. So when i learned that jim was writing this book, i had never heard of quinnipiac either. One of the great things about doing this publication since we started a couple years ago was how much southern history i got to learn than i hadnt known, about. So turn it over to jim, talk about the experience of writing about. And i will ask a few questions. Take it away, jim auchmutey. Lets give him a hand. [applause goes bracket thank you for that kind introduction, thank you, sheffield and the history center. This is a very cool venue and i am very happy to be here. What i am going to do is set up a story a little bit and then we are going to do a little question and answer session and open the floor, it focuses on a teenager who grew up at a communal farm in southwest georgia that believe in racial equality at a time when that is an unthinkable idea. When he started high school he was bullied and persecuted and treated every bit as badly as a handful of black students who desegregated the school the year his senior year was treated. The school was an america high school. I love the name americas. It is so eve talkative and representatives. The name implies what we are talking about is a story particular to the south, to america, is an american story. Here is the twist. Many years later, some of those who stood by as he was tormented in high school tracked him down in West Virginia where he had lived and wrote him letters of apology asking for his forgiveness. They wanted him to return to georgia for their 40th class reunion. It was a remarkable gesture but i wanted to know how sincere it was, whether it was remorse and guilt of people going into their retirement years or something deeper. I didnt want to just write about bad things in the south half a century ago. A capacity for change and growth about the promise of redemption and reconciliation. Let me back up and tell you a little bit about the city you had never heard of until this book came out and there are a lot of people who had never heard of it. Is a communal farm of few miles south of america in southwest georgia near jimmy carters home town, nowadays it is known as the place where Habitat Humanity was born in the late 1960s but there was a time before that, it was one of the most controversial religious enclaves in america. It was founded in 1942 by a white Southern Baptist minister from middle joy joy was unlike other baptist ministers in the south, wanted to start a commune in the rural south where residents could live like early christians which is why they came up with that name which Means Community or fellowship. They believe in communal sharing and pacifism and a color blind and brotherhood, making them communist and raise mixers. The first cute years the locals generated tolerated and even if they didnt approve of its beliefs but that changed shortly after greg and his family moved to the farm in summer of 1953. The catalyst was the Supreme Court ruling against segregated public schools. Not long after that clarence was asked to endorse two black students who wanted to enter the Business College in atlanta. By the time clarence returned to america the local front page story about a Sumter County clergyman who wanted to desegregate the states beloved university system, evangelism started that very week. Unknown parties operating under cover of darkness chopped down fruit trees, dumped sugar and gas tanks, then things really escalated. Koinonias produce stand was bombed and destroyed twice presumably by the ku klux klan. Nightriders shot into the buildings. When i first visited koinonia as a reporter with the atlanta constitution in 1980 you could still see bullet holes in deciding. The children at the farm were not immune to the violence. Greg was in the third grady when it started, one of 18 children living in koinonia. I would like to read a short passage about one night some of the were playing volleyball in 1957. Great and some of the children were playing volleyball in a lighted courts when they saw two cars going down the highway leading to the farm. The vehicles for so close to was like the first was telling the second one. The children stop to watch. Maybe one of them was having mechanical trouble. Then they heard several shots in rapid succession and the sound of something pelting the branches like the blowing sleet storm. Greg caught a glimpse of the gun being discharged from car windows, the fire flicking from their muzzles like tongues from snakes. Hit the dirt, someone screamed as a kid dope and scattered. Inside the house was a road where the brown family of koinonia lived. Laura had coming from ali baba and her brothers to bed, removing johns shoes when a bullet pierced the walls inches above her head. The students they get the farm had been sitting with them, get down, the house is going to explode. Laura corral her brothers and a three of them crawled into the back room shower where she thought they might be safe from gunfire. Actors the volleyball shooting gregg said years later, we thought they were going to take us out and hang us on crosses. By the early 1960s koinonia moved into the public schools. The battleground was Americas High School. Three koinonia kids wanted to be enrolled but the school refused because the presence of any of those students would disrupt classes and so on rest. Koinonia had to make a federal case out of it to get the teenagers admitted on grounds of religious discrimination. The irony was the school board had been right. The kids from koinonia were treated horribly. They were harassed, tripped, spit on. When greg started at the high school in the fall of 1961 he chaired no better. Eventually he fed far worse. One by one the other students from koinonia left americas as families moved away or transferred to schools outside the south where they would not be subject to the same level of persecution. By the fall of 1964 greg was the only koinonia kid left in Americas High School. That is where our story gets even more interesting. I would like to talk with chuck about where the story goes from there. In the fall of 64, gregs senior year, the crux of the book and there is Something Else happening at southwest georgia that is very important to all of this which is the Civil Rights Movement, it explains the animosity they are facing in this high school. I guess i should shut up and let you ask the question. Go ahead and talk about it. One of the things that strikes me, the Bitter Southerner asked jim if he would write a piece for us, what the characters have gone through in the substance of the court, and it was the idea that kept hitting me in the face, here is the situation where we have very strange for the time triangle, we had this one kid who because of his deeply held religious beliefs believe he should stand with the four students at Americas High School. Those kids, you have the kids in school tormented, but what is interesting is a lot of people want to hear a story like that, they are satisfied with the single thing showing up on morning. Those africanamerican students first came to school. One thing that is interesting to me is how you talk about gregs activities going on through the Civil Rights Movement at the very same thing. I want you to talk a little bit about it if you would. At the beginning of the senior year in 1964, let me back a bit. The Civil Rights Movement mobilized in a big way in southwest georgia at the same time at high school and the animosity wasnt simply because of earlier things, in an enemy camp. The civil rights organizations shopping in albany in america, and protests against segregation in mass arrests, koinonia was known as an ally to the mass meetings in albany, activists, Civil Rights Activists would come to the farm for rest and relaxation, they held orientation sessions about how to be arrested in a nonviolent way. Classmates at Americas High School, aiding and abetting, their animosity, at the beginning of that school year, school board in america had decided they were going to try to defuse racial tension by allowing a token level of desegregation at the school. Right before the School Year Began they invited a handful of students to come to a former of the all white school. Gregg knew them all because he had been involved in what was going on in america and with the most natural thing in the world for him to offer the important solidarity, at the beginning of that year, the biggest funeral home down there, to ride to school. To keep some away from the mob and everything and greg volunteered to ride with them as a show of support. That day of classes, a funeral home showed up in americas high and another saying there. Saying ugly words and doing all the things we know so well, the funeral limousine shows up and it jerks up in the door, one of the black students, white kid from koinonia, in that senior year. There is an episode in the book, the chapter of the book. Keep going . Of day. We are on tv. We seem to be having a remodeling project year. I knew the manuscript could use some work but i didnt know it would be this bad. Thank you. You could walk around. I am sure it would be cspans environment to hear us. The sad thing is that is that tennis office. I was thinking night riders and jackhammers. Silence. May we willroll . It wasnt that one action of this guy was rooted in his beliefs, it was in a friendship already formed with these people. Would you read that passage on page 144 . I would rather you just read that. The one down about the concrete incident. That is not about greg but one of the classmate to reach out to greg. I need to do a quick bit of setting up. In summer of 1965 after greg and the class of 65 graduated the town of america, there was the woman, black woman running for justice of the peace in a special election in july and she showed up to vote and this was a year after the Civil Rights Act in 1964 had passed and supposedly outlawed public segregation, she was directed to the black voting lane which should have been illegal. She protested and end ed up getting arrested and it kicked off three weeks of demonstrations, mass demonstrations in america and in many ways it was the closing chapter of the Voting Rights struggle because it was the Voting Rights act, all the civil rights organizations and atlanta and elsewhere, to organize protests because they needed one more example of white people in the south behaving badly to clinch the deal and america provided. It was a killing, a young white man was shot to death, the sequence, two of the people on opposite sides, greg who just graduated was going to the demonstration marching with the black protesters, a close friend of his who lived at koinonia and was an activist, civil rights organizer. A fellow named joseph logan was cocaptain of the Football Team and probably was one of the people was most opposed to the changing racial order in america. It was a real traditionalists, part of the football vanguard trying to stand up for the traditional southern way of life. Here was part of the demonstration. And said things. Basically was a hostile presence protesters were going on. This section check was talking about was joseph goes to america one night during the demonstrations, on several occasions drove to america to watch protest marches, the white man who stood on the sidewalks heckling. One afternoon, demonstrators passed by, some of the onlookers peppered them with rocks and bottles. Joseph didnt like the protests any more than the hecklers did but he didnt throw things and when he saw who was doing it he found himself wondering whether anyone was getting hurt. He hung around after this march. As twilight fell, he did something he would regret for the rest of his life. A black man was walking up the street by himself. Here comes one, shouted a white fellow in a shirt tied like a comic strip character. Lets get him. And young men form, picking up whatever bottles they could find. Joseph didnt recognize any of them had no reason to join the group but in the tangle of the moment, in the ambiguity of dying light he grabbed a jagged chunk of concrete and followed their beat as they confronted the black man. She looked to be about 40, weary and frightened. Look, i dont have anything to do with these protests, i just got off work and am walking home. Before the man could say anything someone threw a rock and struck him under the eye. He covered his face with his hand and let out a mournful moan,. Wasnt his cheek. As the pact scattered joseph dropped his joy of concrete and backed away in revulsion. He ran several blocks to the court house to his car as if he could reverse the last few minutes and drove straight home. Joseph didnt tell anyone, not even his mother about what had happened but he couldnt forget that moan, the pain, that patch of blood. Even though he had not struck the man himself he had watched it happen and felt like the driver of a getaway car at a robbery. He was ashamed to. Joseph later came to realize his attitudes about black people started to change the moment he almost as osaulted one. I want to one of these is related to this story is the fact that as a Washington Post critic put it, what does one do with a civil rights story in which the hero is white . One of the things i really love about the story jim roach for us, i dont know if you had a chance to read that along with the book but we would appreciate it if you did and jim would too. Jim and greg went back down to americas for a reading and the students who segregated desegregated, came out for the meeting, and it is important to give their names, josh wiggins, roberttina fletcher, david bell, joel wise and i cant imagine what it would be like for people who have been in that kind of thing in the home town they had stayed for most of their lives to come back around to something that does feel like reconciliation. The fact is a lot of the black students who went to americas high have not had the same problems with reconciliation and forgiveness that greg did. That is very sad. All four of those students who desegregated the high school ran at our signing, only one of the stuck it out through graduation and was roberttina who is a very accomplished woman who ran the pharmacy in warner, and recently retired. She went through so much she says she is going to write a book and i hope she does. One of my problems writing my book is wanting to write more about roberttina and the editor kept saying focus the story understand why you keep wanting to go to her. I met a gentleman earlier tonight who went to Americas High School later in the 60s and went through harassment. It went on for all lots of years. These high school had formerly been all white. A lot of people went through the sort of thing greg went through, what is different was the motivation for his being mistreated came from this unique religious community. These classmate had reached out so many years later and gave me a vehicle to write about how much we changed and how much things havent changed. It is interesting, we go through periods and recently it feels mike theyre provoked by acts of violence that we go through periods where the south is forced to look harder at its past and, but sometimes down at that local level, that Community Level all those changes happen so slowly and incrementally. When i read the section about joseph almost hitting the guy with a chunk of concrete have to tell you when i first heard about the shootings in charleston it made me think about joseph because even though there was a great difference between the two, a man who almost assaults fellows and one who coldblooded the murders nine people, theres a great deal of difference but the underlying dynamic is the same. That violence shocked so many people recently that it made people think about these things in a different light. Joseph almost hitting that man made him see things in a different light. It took him many years to come to grips with it all but he thought that was where it started to change and where he looked to be amiss and call back. He later became a professor at a Community College in enterprise alabama.