Laughter irca thank you. Im delighted to be here, and particularly to year that flattering introduction, one of your own. I think i am safe here in chicago especially since ive got my position here of 16 years , my lawyer is. And one of my staff people is your. [laughter] clint young [inaudible] and i have other students here and at other friends and colleagues. I find it extremely gratifying to be with you and pretty you particularly flattering that you would come out this morning to talk with me, before im going to leave some time for discussion with questions you may want to raise. We referred to one book that was perhaps not my favorite by any means, but the best known. When people tell me i read your book i dont have to ask them because i know. And i tried to some would say ive read several of your books. Or i read some of your books or i read another book. But i want to talk about that book because it has a life of its own. Its become Senior Citizen in the best sense of the term in my late 20s and early 30s and it stood the test of time, at least thats what i hope it has done. It was in 1945 after i got a letter from one of the editors. He had received his own ph. D. From Princeton University and published book called the origins of struggle in louisiana and as he went as low war was winding down, it was he who concluded that as it came to an end there had been so much discussion already have the role of africanamericans in world war ii it would be so good if they had a history of africanamericans as the curiosity about this Book Increased as the years would go by. I didnt learn what im going to say now from the editor. I learned it from reading about the origins from slavery to freedom. It seems that he took this up with his chief, the founder of one of the great publishing houses of the country and he said to alfred that he would like students. Alfred wasnt very enthusiastic about that, but she had an eye for both quality and significance in terms of timeliness and he told roger if you want to go ahead with this, go on. See where you get with it. He then began to canvass the country and he read articles and books that he could and the people of the various universities would begin to recommend to somebody if the history of africanamericans. It seems that several of the professors at the various other institutions recommended me. So he came to me he wrote to me asking if i would write the history of africanamericans and i said no i wont because im busy. I was doing research that very summer on a book that cant be known sometimes later. I felt i was perhaps more important for the history of this country than the history of africanamericans. So i said no, thank you. Get someone else to do it. He had become persuaded that i was the person to do it and he wouldnt take no for an answer. He wrote to me again and i replied again thank you but no thank you. He came to durham North Carolina 19 was teaching at the college for negros as it was called then. They have now tidied the title. Its an institution open to all americans as well as africanamericans. He came down when i was teaching and said to me we believe you are the person to do this book and i said i dont think i am the person to do it, and we are due backandforth and then he decided it was the strategic moment to sweeten the cup a little bit and he said i will give you an advance. And i said to go on. [laughter] he said i will give you an advance of 500 i said that is ideal. That represented more than a fourth of what i was making for the entire year so i was very delighted not only to get the money but to be regarded so highly that there was an expression of trust and confidence me coming and i was flattered and pleased to accept the opportunity so i said that i would do it and i therefore dropped for the moment the word that i was doing and i proceeded to work on from slavery to freedom the book that was not yet to be named and unfortunately was not named by me at all. It was named by the publisher. And i began to work where do you start . I never had a course in africanamerican history. The people look read the book say thats pretty obvious. But i think i did a fairly good job of teaching myself under the circumstances. So i began to ask where to start and i began to read just going back to read titles to see what has been done, what has been written. And i was struck by someone that came to my own eyes as i was going down, it was the history of the negro race in america from 1619 to 1980 by George Washington williams and that almost threw me off my course. This was a work that looked very good and respectable in every way. I couldnt believe this. I pulled off the shelf. It had footnotes and bibliography and an appendix and all the things you could have in a book. I said who is he, where does he come from . And i read a lot about him through the office of the associated to believe that history shortly after that and i asked dr. Conyers what is with this man George Washington williams, who is he . He said i didnt know him personally but he rode a very wonderful book and he said why dont you write a paper on him and if you do we will help you read it and the association of october and that threw me off once more because i was anxious it almost took me off the track of writing about africanamericans in general because i became so curious about this man. I couldnt have written about him in one year or two years. It took me 40 years to do the research of the riding on this man but in 1985 by published a life of George Washington williams which if i may let you in on a secret is my favorite book. Of all of the books that is my favorite. But would take more than a morning to talk about him. It would take several mornings. But as i turn once more to the problem at hand meanly the riding of the history of africanamericans i begin to do a Systematic Research in the library is where i was looking at the time of the college for negros and of deutsch university and at chapel hill and the north Atlantic State University archives. I didnt have a theme or an underlying position of philosophy but i was really floundering and my wife said to me one day you are not making the progress that you want to make or then you should be making. And she began to tell me for various reasons one is that i didnt know yet enough about the subject to write about it. They said there isnt enough material here in North Carolina. More than that you dont have anywhere to work. I was teaching at a place that there was no office for any teacher at all and i was working in the classroom between the clauses. Maybe i would work during that period and in the little place we lived which was just one big room and a kitchen and a small living room i had no place to even set up a table. She said why dont you leave . [laughter] but my wife who had already been my girlfriend and now we had been married for some five years and they said why dont you leave . What should i do . Why dont you go to washington . I said you have this 500 but that wont matter in washington for very long and its a i would support you in washington and the library of law school left the college she was making a salary that made it possible to send an allowance once a week. So i stayed in washington for six months and thats where i rode the back of this book 15, 16, 17 hours a day all the time the library of congress was open i had a study room at the library and when it was closed i came home and i worked at home in the evening and in the morning before the library opened and of the weekend when the library wasnt fully open when i couldnt get to my study through my work in my room and in that way i was able to rate the back of the book. When i came back at the end of the six month having worked several months before i left now six months in washington and now several months there i completed the writing in 13 months. It takes us now to years to the revision and the writing as you may call it. In the spring in 1947 they told me if they havent been sitting down he would have fallen down and didnt expect me to deliver the book on time. It was due in april, 1947 and i took it up there in march of 1947. And i didnt know any better. I thought if you have a contract you were supposed to deliver. [laughter] i learned from that and in the runaway slave book that had been published, i had a contract from some eight or ten years before i delivered so you can see that one goes along so one of the great experiences of my life and perhaps the most important intellectual experiences i ever had and the history of the people from the middle ages down to the 20th century the ups and downs, the difficulties in the triumphs, the enormous power of the historical movements and the missed opportunities, the degradation and the lynching and the rioting and arriving in our own country. I saw it all. And when people now get upset about dragging in the man of texas or the assault of this or that group in new york city or in chicago or some other parts of the country and they get upset ive been there. Ive done that. And ive had it and i can therefore look at it with some people and some sense of hitting a cross that bridge and having been able to move on. They were not certain about the publication of this book. And he began to send it around is what i did not know. He began to send it around to various friends of his. Among those he sent it to was his authority on black america who had written this book called niger heaven and did a little slumming in harlem and other parts of black america. And i didnt know about it. I didnt know exactly what was going on but i got a long letter complimenting me on the look and telling me how wonderful he thought it was. I didnt know until many years later that he sent them the book and said what do you think it is . And he had told alfred he had written to me and talked to me and told me how pleased he was that i had done less. So it was that blessing so to speak ones a Great Authority on black america he gave the go ahead and the book was published. It received support and review and the review in the New York Times, if any of you want to know how badly i do, read the review of runaway slaves which has been in the back since august 13, 1994. Then you have some notions of the review and i have no understanding or somebody with the planner said. I was talking about the runaway slaves that had built so much inconvenience to the owners as they ran away with no consideration of the owners and then the rights and responsibilities, whenever. He gave a review and i would be happy here because he passed away not too long after that time. I think they shared that the book wasnt really very good and that he was disappointed in it, disappointed in some way but his disappointment came because he was writing a history of africanamericans himself and he havent quite finished his hand would come out later in the next year some of you that credit knew it was coming. But it enjoyed mixed reviews and some reviews were very good, very enthusiastic. He was extraordinarily high in his praise and some other generals. The generals, the reviews written by the scholars who were on hold on the favorable. It was much too focused on blacks and not much focus on the general history. But there is one thing that they could not say that it wouldnt have woken up the contributions and even in good conscience even if they wanted they couldnt say that because it isnt that kind of book. Its a book that undertakes to please in the context of the industry in the history of the United States and ive gotten a number of letters from black pride and know where did you say thats the first person in the 19th century i didnt say that and i apologize for not saying it, but that isnt what the book was about and know where did i say that the first person to stand on his head was of black men. Maybe it was. But i didnt say there were blacks that mocked at the door and begged for the admission to the army when it was forming in 75 and 76 and they were turned away. But i did say that when his back was to double in 1777 and needed help and finally said that we will take you and even give you your freedom if you help us meet these british. And the same thing about bill war in 1861 when they were sent home once more and the same thing about their involvement in 1864 and 65 win that they were a critical factor in the training of the tide and the winning of the war. And i did see the same thing about those that were worked in world war i and world war ii. Not one was given the medal of honor, not one in world war i, not one in world war ii. It was sent until the president s began to have a reexamination of the rule of African American civil war one and world war ii when they brought up some of them had to be excused to be given a medal of honor that they won in 1970 and 1980, 1941, 1945. They should understand, not only blacks should understand but whites should understand that the role they played was sent a role of clowns, not even of some special kind of contribution, but the rule of involvement, complete involvement with the ongoing history of the United States and in that way they could stand up and say we affirm our place in history. And i hope that in so doing, and i wrote this when i had a personal experience, i rode this was hopeful in so doing that no american recruiter of soldiers with told me or anyone what they told me 1942 in the United States army when they were begging and coming into the needy and i went down and volunteered and they said what can you do . I said well they want people to run the office. I said i have three gold medals. I can take shorthand. I run an office. I ran the office at the university in my undergraduate years. And i have a ph. D. From my history at harvard and with a straight face the man told me im sorry you have everything that color. And i said im sorry, too plight to get your time and i did you a good day. But that background i began to try to tell what americans did not in some special way but it was a part of that whole being and thus i was able to pleased to write and fight it and despite it disappointed some a bit it displeased some others, but i wrote that as fairly and as honestly as i could. And i am therefore pleased that the book came out when it did in the timber of 1947. It no author that i know of, no author that i know of is pleased with the publishers deutsch to promote their book. I had just written for the simple the office of University President s that said after we won the lincoln pride which we thought was really something in april 20,000 all the rest i thought he would put an ad in the New York Times congratulating us for this. I thought it always happens. If you read the pulitzer prize, the lincoln prize, the other prize you get an ad in the paper and say thats good. Im with a great authors. They didnt congratulate me. Give some congratulations. Its what they do and i wrote to my editor and i said there are no ads in the chicago tribune. They said the news about the book are getting around. One thing we take pride is in print but how much print jset hold your fire it will be all right. Finally they said we want you to the book is going into another printing. I told that to some of my creditors and i said how steady. Finally they said we want a new edition. They said we told you its coming along. We brought out a new edition, not another printing but an entirely new edition. And i worked my fingers to the bone. I worked hard to do this. I was living in washington, d. C. In terms of office space and the secretarial space and all the best. We had agreed there would be a paperback edition. All of these are hard cover and they are selling 4 to 5. 50 and so forth. Now we have a new edition in 56 and in the new course they said we would have a new edition of 1967. What about this tradition . I said isnt it time that you should bring it out in paperback . And de groot backend said we cannot bring it out in paperback deutsch to the fact that we think it is a corner on the market now. People looking to us for the history of africanamericans and therefore, you make more money all of a hardcover than you do the people back and we decided that we are not going to put it out in paperback. We would be happy to consider if you want to write one. And i told them i wasnt going to write another history of africanamericans. I wasnt even going to revise the one that they had on must be brought out in paperback. I said i will never realize it unless you bring it out in paperback. And so in a few weeks i have a letter from my editor saying on Second Thought and after eight due consideration, we have decided to bring it out in paperback. They didnt know that there was enormous pressure on the book about them to provide copies and they didnt know what was happening. The Civil Rights Movement was reaching its peak. And there was a part of the platform of the Civil Rights Movement was to get the course is into the colleges and universities and even in the communities with a history of africanamericans and where do they look . We look from slavery to freedom and they focused a training of the burr 5,000 copies and they disappeared. They didnt know what was going on. They said what in the world where is this going . There is such a thing in the Civil Rights Movement. And the movement the book has become a part of the movement and you need to understand that and publish more and more copies and that is when the book took off. This was 1967, 1989 and some dozen years after the book was first published. Then they began to say we need another edition. So they provided them with another addition, the full possession in 1975 and that sold very well. Then they kicked it in paperback. So you have people back of hard cover selling simultaneously. And people turning more and more to the softcover for use in the classroom and a turning to the hard cover in the libraries. Now another thing that moves in which it was involved besides the Civil Rights Movement was the informational movements that was the movement on the part of the african state to become free i went to nigeria for the business of the breach of 1960. The administration with David Eisenhower appointed and the designation of americans to go to the independent ceremonies of the largest black nation in the world and there wasnt one black delegation brought by the president as a member of that group. They