Are you interested in being a part of booktvs Online Book Club . Every month well feature a different book and author, and youre invited to join. Interested . Send an email to book tv cspan. Org, post a comment on facebook. Com booktv or send us a tweet booktv. Michelle alexander, the author of booktvs first Online Book Club selection, the new jim crow, recently spoke about her book at the university of tennessee. Heres a look at that event. [applause] well, thank you. Thank you so much for this warm welcome. It feels wonderful to be here. I am thrilled to see so many people eager to join if dialogue dialogue [audio difficulty] and it seems fitting that we would have this conversation the day after our nations first black president was sworn in for his second term. Now, i know much of the nation has already moved on, and president obamas soaring rhetoric about the promise of america life, liberty, justice, equality for all has already been forgotten by many, and i know that many, many people in america will not think of dr. King again until his holiday rolls around again next year. But id like for us to pause tonight and think more deeply about the meaning of dr. Kings life and his legacy and what it has to teach us about our nations present. Seems marley important for us seems particularly important fur us to do that given this year marks the 50th anniversary of the march on washington. My fifty years have passed. Fifty years have passed suns kings voice since kings voice soared over the washington monuments declaring his dream. I have a dream, it is a dream deeply rooted in the american dream. And yesterday while i was watching president obamas inaugural address, i heard echoes of kings speech. , i have a dream. And when i turned off my television set, i spent a few minutes reflecting on the question, are all of us, all of us truly welcome to share in this dream . The same dream that dr. King dreamed . Most americans, im sure, can recite portions of dr. Kings i have a dream speech by heart. Its an extraordinary and very familiar speech. Ive grown accustomed to hearing clips of his speech played over and over, recycled over and over on the radio every january. They are the favorite quotes, the favorite lines. And now that i have schoolage children, i see how king is explained to them in classrooms. When i was many elementary school, there was no Martin Luther king day, no discussion of his heroism in classrooms. But when my children came home from school the other day, they told me all they had learned in school about kings courage. He was the man who stood up to the bullies, the man who believed all children and walks of life ought to be able to hold hands and be judged by their content and character and not the color of their skins. He was willing to die so that all of us could now live his dream. And i find myself conflicted as i listened to my children parrot back to me what theyve heard in school about this man who believed in kindness and forgiveness and justice and compassion for all. And i say, yes, yes, all of that is untrue all of that is true. But i feel uneasy. I know that something has been lost in the translation. And that sense of disorientation was crystallized for me recently when i read vincent hardings insightful book Martin Luther king the inconvenient hero. Dr. Harding was one of kings closest friends and advisers marching with him countless times and living around the corner from kings family in atlanta. Harding writes with some real sorrow, quote it appears as if the price for the First National holiday honoring a black man is the development of a massive case of National Amnesia concerning who that black man really was. I would suggest that we americans have chosen amnesia rather than continue kings painful, uncharted and often disruptive struggle toward a more perfect union, end quote. It appears, he says, as if we are determined to hold our new hero captive to the powerful period of his life that culminated in the magnificent march on washington in 1963, refusing to allow him to break out beyond the stunning eloquence of his i have a dream speech. Dr. Harding writes, quote we would like to forget that it was not the weaver of gentle, sun dreams of freedom who was shot down on a balcony in memphis, tennessee, end quote. He was, by 1968, a different, even more courageous man, a man ahead of his time. And i can see clearly now that on days like yesterday we rarely honor the man who died. No, we honor that sunny, cheery version of him. We honor the man who gave the soaring speech about black and white school children, a man who dreamed an integrationist dream. But who was king five years later . In 1968 . Who was that man killed on a motel balcony, the man who was marching with sanitation workers and demanding economic justice, not mere civil rights . The man who had come to believe after the civil rights bills had already been passed, after the civil rights victories had already been won that our biggest battles, the most important battles still lie ahead and that nothing, nothing short of a radical restructuring of our society held any hope for making the dream and promise of america a reality for all of its citizens. Of king explained to a reporter in 1967, quote for years i labored with the idea of reforming the existing institutions of the society. A little change here, a little change there. Now i feel quite differently. Think youve got i think youve got to have a reconstruction of the entire society, a revolution of values. Frustrated by white resistance to addressing in any meaningful way decaying ghettos, failing schools, structural joblessness and crippling poverty, king told his staff at the southern christian leadership conference, quote the dispossessed of this nation, the poor both white and negro live in a cruelly unjust society. They must organize a revolution against that injustice. Not against the lives of their fellow citizens, but against the structures through which the society is refusing to lift the load of poverty. Finish so what would king think of us today, of the world we have created in his absence . Would he believe that the nonviolent revolution had already been won . Had even begun . The revolution of values that he prayed for . Would he, if he could see us today, believe that we now share his dream, that we are now traveling the road he was marching . Fifty years later have we caught up with king yet . Are we finally on the path that he was traveling in 1963, 1968 . Back in 1969 while blood still stained the motel balcony where dr. King was murdered, a poem was written honoring his life and reflecting on his death. The poem was written back when king had only just begun the process of being transformed in our collective consciousness from a troublesome, dangerous black figure to a national hero. It was written way back when the memory of kings assassination was still fresh, tears still spilling among those who loved him. Back then in 1969 the parol carl wendell hiems jr. Penned this poem reflect on kings death. He wrote now that he is safely dead, let us praise him, build monuments to his glory, sing hosannas to his name. Dead men make such convenient heroes. They cannot rise to challenge the images we would fashion from their lives. And besides, it is easier to build monuments than to build a better world, so now that he is safely dead, we with eased consciouses will teach our children that he was a great man knowing that the cause for which he lived is still a cause, and the dream for which he died is still a dream, a dead mans dream. Now that he is safely dead, Martin Luther king jr. Safely dead. Is it true . Is he safely dead today . Is his dream safely dead . Now, i know that many people in this room would say, no, no, no. Dr. Kings dream, his spirit is still so much alive amongst all of us. Its thriving right here in this room. And what better evidence could there be of this fact than that we, as a nation, all pause to pay tribute to his dream just yesterday, a National Federal holiday. Think about that. A National Federal holiday for Martin Luther king jr. , the man who was once deemed a threat to National Security by the fbi, a radical troublemaker. Is it not obvious that we as a nation have finally caught up with king . We may not be living his dream, but dont we at least share his dream . What percent evidence of this what better evidence of this could there be than we just reelected our nations first black president . Something that was unimaginable in 1963 or 1968. What better evidence could there be than that beautiful multiracial, multiethnic gathering on the mall in washington, d. C. That we witnessed just yesterday and that was broadcast around the world . Clearly, we must be living the dream or sharing the dream, right . It has been said by numerous philosophers and theologians that any society, any civilization must be judged by how it treats its most vulnerable members and its prisoners. King would no doubt agree with that assessment. And in considering how we fare in that regard, i find myself thinking of people like susan burton, people who have cycled in and out of our nations prison system in era of mass incarceration. In this postking, postcivil rights era, a time when our prison population that is more than quintupled, and millions of people overwhelmingly poor people of color have been permanently locked up or locked out, stripped of the very civil and human rights dr. King and so many others risked their lives for and some even died for. I think of susan whose son was killed by the police, a Police Cruiser barreling down her street in los angeles ran over her 5yearold boy. She received no apology, no real acknowledgment of her loss, and she fell into a deep, deep depression, wracked with grief. And she ultimately became addicted to crack cocaine. Now, if susan had been wealthy, if she had even been solidly middle class with a good job and a Good Health Care plan, she undoubtedly would have qualified for many, many hours of therapy and counseling. She likely would have qualified for very good legal prescription drugs that would help her cope with her severe depression and grief. But, no, things were different for susan. Impoverished, living in l. A. , she became addicted to crack cocaine and thus began her odyssey of cycling in and out of prison for 15 years, 15 years. Every time, prosecutors said, just take the deal. Well give you three years rather than eight. Time well give you five years rather than 12. This time, this time well cut you a break. Just take the deal. Well give you two years rather than six. One plea deal after another, never offered drug treatment, only shown to a prison cell. Every time she was released, pushed out onto the streets unable to find work, no housing, often sleeping on the streets, cycling in and out of our prison system for 15 years until by no small miracle she was granted access to a private drug treatment facility. She got clean and was given a job. And she decided that she was going to dedicate the rest of her life to insuring that no other woman would have to go through what she went through. And she began by going down to skid row in los angeles and meeting women prisoners as they would get off the prison bus on skid row. Get off the bus carrying nothing but a cardboard boxcar riing their belongings, little or no money, turned out on the street. And she would say to these women who were strangers to her, just come home with me. You can sleep on my couch, you dont have to turn to the streets. Ill take care of you. Ill give you to food, ill give you a safe place. Just come home with me. Susan burton now i runs now runs five safe homes for women in los angeles, women released from prison. Her organization is called a new way of life. She prides help finding jobs, housing, helps to reunite women with their families, and beyond that she is organizing formerlyincarcerated people to demand the restoration of their basic civil and human rights. Clearly, clearly susan has caught up to king. But what about the rest of us . Now, what i have to say on this point will not be popular. It is not the sunny, cheerful message that is expected on the day after we inaugurated for the second time our nations first black president. But i believe it to be the truth, and it implicates me, and it implicates everyone in this room. And the truth is this we have allowed a human rights nightmare to occur on our watch. In the years since dr. Kings death, a vast new system of racial and social control has emerged from the ashes of slavery and jim crow. A system of mass incarceration that no doubt has dr. King turn anything his grave turning in his grave today. The mass incarceration of poor people of color in the United States is tantamount to a new castelike system, one that shuttles our young people from decrepit, underfunded schools to brand new hightech prisons. It is a system that locks poor people, overwhelmingly poor people of color, into a permanent secondclass status nearly as effectively as earlier systems of racial and social control once did. It is, in my view, the moral equivalent of jim crow. Now, i am always eager to admit that there was a time when i rejected this kind of talk out of hand. There was a time when i rejected comparisons between mass incarceration and slavery and mass incarceration and jim crow believing that those kinds of claims and comparisons were exaggerations, were distortions, were hyperbole. In fact, there was a time when i thought that people who made those kinds of claims and those kinds of comparisons were actually doing more harm than good to efforts to reform our criminal Justice System and achieve greater racial equality in the United States. But what a difference a decade makes. For after years of working as a civil rights lawyer and advocate representing victims of racial profiling and Police Brutality and investigating patterns of Drug Law Enforcement in poor communities of color and attempting to assist people who have been released from prison enter into a society which had never shown much use for them in the first place, i had a series of experiences that began what i now call my awakening. I began to awaken to a racial reality that is just so obvious to me now that what seems odd in retrospect is that i could have been blind to it for so long. As i write in the introduction to my book, the new jim crow, what has changed since the collapse of jim crow has less to do with the basic structure of of our society than the language we use to justify it. In the era of color blindness, it is no longer socially permissible to use race explicitly as a justification for discrimination, exclusion and southerly contempt. Social contempt. So we dont. Rather than rely on race, we use our criminal Justice System to label people of color criminals and then engage in all the practices that we supposedly left behind. Today it is perfectly legal to discriminate against criminals in nearly all the ways in which it was once legal to discriminate against africanamericans. Once youre labeled a felon, the old forms of discrimination employment discrimination, housing discrimination, denial of the right to vote, exclusion from jury service suddenly legal. As a criminal, you have scarcely more rights and arguably less respect than a black man living in alabama at the height of jim crow. We have not ended racial caste in america, we have merely redesigned it. Now, for those who might think thats overstating the case, consider this there are more africanamerican adults under correctional control today in prison or jail, on probation or parole than were enslaved in 1850, a decade before the civil war began. As of 2004, more black men were disenfranchised than in 1870, the year the 15th amendment was ratified, police sitly denying the right to vote implicitly denying the right to vote. The 15th amendment prohibited all laws, explicitly denied the right to vote. But during the jim crow era, poll taxes and literacy tests circumvented the 15th amendment and operated to deny africanamericans a chance to vote. Well, today in many states felon disenfranchisement laws accomplish what poll taxes and literacy tests ultimately could not. Now, this doesnt affect just some small segment of the africanamerican community. To the contrary, in many large urban areas today more than half of workingage africanamerican men now have criminal records and are, thus, subject to legalized discrimination for the rest of their lives. In fact, in some cities like chicago, baltimore, philadelphia, d. C. , the list could go on, in some cities the statistics are far worse. In fact, it was reported in chicago that if you take into account prisoners, if you actually count prisoners as people and keep in mind that prisoners are excluded from poverty statistics and unemployment data, thus masking the severity of racial inequality in the United States. But if you actually count prisoners as people in the chicago area, nearly 80 of workingage africanamerican men, criminal records, thus subject to legalized discrimination for the rest of their lives. These men are part of a growing undercaste. Not class, caste. A group of people defined largely by race relegated to a permanent secondclass us the by law. Status by law. Now, i find today that when i tell people that i now find mass incarceration like jim crow, people act with complete disbelief. They say how can you say that . How can you say that . Our criminal Justice System isnt a system of racial control, its a system of crime control, and if black folks would just stop running around committing so many crimes, we wouldnt have to corps ri about worry about being locked up and then stripped of their civil rights. Well, therein lies the greatest myth about mass incarceration, namely that its been driven by crime and crime rates. The its not true. Its just not true. Our prison population quintupled in the space of 30 years, quintupled. We have gone from a prison population of about 300,000 to an incarcerated population now of over two million. We have the highest rate of incarceration in the world dwarfing the rates of even highly repressive regimes like russia or china or iran. But again, this cant be explained simply by crime or crime rates. No. No. During that same period of time that our incarceration rates increased exponentially, crime rates fluctuated; went up, went down, went back up again, went down again. And today as bad as crime rates are in many parts of the country, nationally crime rates are at historical lows. But incarceration rates have consistently soared. Mostnologists and sociologists today will acknowle