From any access to african history. Which was not what woodson intended. And so we obviously owe the value of our hire to those people who suffered so much and their families who dissented from those people who worked for 246 years for nothing. We owe them something for that. We owe them the story. We have been asked to expect that people can survive in good sound, psychology health. Ashes and obliterated history. When i was a dmield richmond, virginia, we used to have a phrase that we used all the time from here to tim. But nobody knew what it was. Nobody knew the providence of the world. Didnt know where it was. Didnt know it was a place. Tim buck, which was a cross roads. It was also a site of one the worlds first university. And so still you have all of these man manuscript written between 5 ad and 15 ad. Manuscript of the highest quality written by african and arab scholars. We knew nothing about this. We didnt know anything about one of the we didnt know anything about the queen of shea baa who was described in the bible. She lived all of her live there. Approximately what ethiopia was today. Shiba is now yemen. But it was short to the queen of shib ash. Want bible describes her as a woman of black skin. But in the movie it wasnt. All of our story was taken, and the point of all of this is that people have a history because they need it. People develop cultures and morals and traditions because they need them to stay in good health. Thats how we make social progress and great jamaican who once said that living without your story without memory is like driving without a rear view mirror. Except its more dangerous. To live without your story. The point is that we were cut off from all of that, then renamed when i was a child. We were called know negro. Nobody knew where it came from. What it was supposed to mean. It was parking lot of the world that was built to separate those stolen and used and exploited. From their african story. And so if everyone in the world needs a story, so did we. The same thing is happened to native americans, for example. They have the highest crime rate in the country by the crime rate on indian reservations. The question is why . What awful thing happened . That would cause this situation for them . And the same is true in the case of africanamericans. When it was all over, this awful chapter from the beginning of slavery 246 years followed by virtually century of which people were forced to work for no income in the south and legal segregation. One cant say before the end of the Voting Rights act that the nightmare ended. During that nightmare, untold sums of loves had been wrecked and the social damage is still with us. And so we owe an acknowledgment of that. This is not peculiar to the united you dont acknowledge. The people of turkey dont want to acknowledge the genocide against dominion in 1950 and 9. 5 Million People were killed. China doesnt want to acknowledge the discriminations in western china against the weaker people. Many nations hide from the past. But we owe people the truths truths and the history and the value. We owe them repair. Were not doing that. Not only that we dont even want to talk about it as a society. Host you say the loss of heritage is comparable to the holocaust to some of the other jen sides. Guest holocaust was twelve years. This is 246 years plus a century. People lost their names, they lost their languages, they lost their culture. They lost everything. Many people had their jen genitals severed. Thomas jefferson, when he was 42 years old had a relationship with a 14yearold girl, sally, that he owned. And it wasnt frowned upon. We know what it would be called today. That was routine. We lost any idea of who we were. It was our past, our memory vanished. And we worked ourselves to early deaths. And built the capitol, built the white house, Harvard Law School which was endowed by isaac royal from the proceed of sale of slaves he owned. He and the west indies. These were routine. Many american institutions transferred that they got from the work of people who werent paid. To their friends and making their line rich and impouferring those who were stolen. Host how far back can you trace your familys history . Guest im very fortunate that we have pictures and i can go back to my great, great grandparents with pictures. With my great, great, great grandparents with a story of their lives in the United States. But that is extremely, extremely rare. Host in the book you write what White Society must be con deuced to do own up to slavery and acknowledge itself debt to slaverys contemporary victim. Pay the debt in mastive restitution, rebuild the blackest steam dry destroyed by democktizing access to a trove of history to which blacks contributed prominently. When you talk about slaverys contemporary victims. What do you mean . Guest when segregation ended, there were those of us and i was among i was very fortunate. I had strong parents and intact family. Both of my parents finished college. My father taught history in high school. My mother taught until she stopped to rear her four children. That meant everything to us. While we were humiliated by segregation. We had a home. We a family that was in tact that was sound, that was strong. So many people didnt have that, and so they were exposed to the brut sharp edge of what was happening to them. And i think there were some of us who were in a position to move out and up when segregation ended. I was among that group. Until that time, we and those who were bottom stuck were all in the same boat. We virtually lived on the same blocks together. We were closed in to each other. Some of us were able to go up and out. Others could not. And so we in to two part. Even then. Im not sure that those institutions that fought so hard for us all at one time have fought the same tenth tenth annual battles. So we have the largest prison population in the world. Over 2 Million People. The largest in the world. And two and three quarters of those who face the Death Penalty are black and has panic. Half of the prison population is black. Because of the way peoples lives have been because of unfairness in the criminal justice system. We see that for nonviolent drug crimes. We substitute 14 of those who commit the crime. Roughly if i have a figure to write Something Like 56 percent of those prosecuted and close to 75 of those incarcerated. One someone for powdered cocaine. Another someone for crack cocaine. The powdered is certainly what white people use. The sentence is lower than the crack cocaine which is what black people use. History has been cruel, the system is unfair. In many cases very little has changed for those people. Host in quitting america you write for all of my life i had wished only to live in an america that would but reciprocate my locality. A country that would exsort from the several and diverse mount of the Decisionmaking Authority and ideal of public can do for and unconditional compassion, a country that would say without reserve to its disadvantaged, to its involuntary victims, to native americans, to africanamericans, to the wredgedlypoor of all colors, stripes, tongue and religion that your country wronged you wronged you in separate and discreet ways. Wronged you with horrific and lingering consequences, wronged in in some cases from long ago, and for a long time wronged you to a degree that would morally compel any civilized nations serious and sustained attempt. Guest we dont want to talk about it. We still dont want to talk about it. We run from it. We now call it victimization. So its not to be raised. And its made for someone like me who doesnt like and kind of smallness that allows kind of intimacy and seldom go downtown and not see someone you know. But the biggest priest piece that the woman i loved and married is from there. We decided many years ago that we were going to build there a home there. We if eleven years ago. So hazel and i have been there all that time, and our daughter went to high school there. And finished high school and came back up here to college. So that was one reason. The retired of struggle that defleeted depletedded me. America had drk simply because of things that cant be talked about. It has no tolerance for that kind of it says and i heard if says we have stopped the active crime. So if theres damage, then we are walking away from that. Its as if to say at the end of slavery you could sort of liken this to runners in the race at the starting line. You take a gun, shoot one runner in both legs, and sound the gun you say now run. You cant catch him. People who have had everything taken from them. But in the things that are not material even more important its your software and your entire your plumbing. Its how you see yourself. The confidence or lack thereof which youre trying to run in a race. Was drained from many people. Over that long period. Were talking about the longest running massive crime against humanitarian. The last 1,000 years in the world. Its not like we bomb knack nothing japan and literally minutes. Because if the japanese who survived can remember their literature, their culture and traditions and put it back up again. If the people who lost it all, mothers, fathers, children, traditions, cultures, ways of living. I have jewish friends hazel and i some years ago when we were living went to a bar celebration to see the son launch in to adulthood. When praise give there are things like that that are still practiced in africa. We lost all of them. So your cost to reinvent cultures almost every generation. Its a lot of its a lot of damage. It has to be acknowledged. If has to be reckoned with. Were not prepared to talk about it. Host how much time do you spend in the states now . I come up maybe three time. I got a call to see if i wanted to teach human rights course. I spent all of my life in human rights. I said i would be happy to. I teach human rights course at the penn state. I come up three times a semester. The rest i do by video. Host have you kept your u. S. Citizenship . Guest yes . Host why . Guest my mother and father, my grandparents survived that. Its my due. Host in quitting america the departure of the black men from the native land written in 2004. Have you chase changed any views since barack obama . Guest i remember my mother, when he was nominated, we were in montreal hazel and i were. She called me at the hotel 93. She said, she was crying, she said its the greatest day of my life. America is many places. Its tolerant, accepting within and place where views can be moderated and differences can be reconciled. The candidacy of president obama its not only important to the black community. Its important to other segments of america as well. But he still faces a vicious kind of. Its not the same richmond, virginia, i saw when i was young. I think there were several americas. I had grown tired of at least one of them. Host in the book you write america never helps anyone. Even the starving unless its proposed assistance can be tied to an American Interest either strategic or economic and one cannot always distinguish one from the other. Its guest its largely true in foreign tan. It has to be associated with a strategic purpose. When we look at what we did as a country to haiti. Thomas jefferson did everything he could to defeat the haitian revolution. The only successful slavely vote in the history of the hemisphere. These people turned by an army from spain, armies of 60,000 apiece from england and france twice. And one of freedom opened their door to freeing slaves from all over the world the weapons and they did everything they could to quash the haitian quest for freedom for people who have been enslaved. When they won their revolution, they took with it twothirds of frances foreign income because it was the most valuable colony in the world to france. Now, that survives even until now. Frederick douglass spoke at the chicago world fair in 1893, 94. Mystified about how hostile the United States has always been toward haiti. Hostile toward them because they won their freedom. Of the president. We george bush blocked loans from the Interamerican Development of foundation of 146 million. Loans for water, education, things like that. The International Republican institute arranged and organized the opposition to it. We as a country trained soldier in the Dominican Republic. Trained and armed those rebels didnt figure in to it. The bush when the american soldiers arrived at the home of the president and took him off at 3 00 in the morning to the Central African republican. We had to go there. Maxine waters, a Jamaican Parliament tear, sharon hay webster, the president s lawyer flew off with a plane to rescue him and bring him back to jamaica and Condoleezza Rice threatened the jamie can government to make it very difficult for them. If jamaican accepted it. All because he said the minimum income ought to be raised from 1 a day to 2 a day. That the sweat shop owners essentially white in haiti combined with american authorities to get him thrown out of office. If you look at the history of American Foreign aid. What we do and why we do it. Its not pretty picture. Host in your most recent book unbrokenning aing a you write one is hard put to identify a single episode of organized human suffering in which the u. S. Did not play a direct collateral or instigative role. Guest we didnt recognize haiti until after the emancipation in the United States. From 1804 to the end of the civil war we combined them to smother haiti and destroy haiti. In 1825 france imposed sanctions on haiti saying they had to be paid 21 billion for having a loss of a right to use haitian slaves. Its the first anytime history ever that the winner of a war had to pay reparation to the loser. Wilson invades haiti and kills thousand of people with American Marines and takes the present leader of the revolt in haiti. Nails him up on a board for public display and demonstrate people what the commons consequenceses could be. Then a chain of black president s working at the direction of the United States killed up to 50,000 people. That was fine. The first democratically elected president of haiti, we are responsible for the coup that took him out of office. The Bush Administration did it directly. Covered in the American Press. The American Press said he fled to south africa when he was taken to Central Africa republican. We had to go there to rescue and jamaica brayed american storm to keep him there until he could go south africa. We are responsible for the overthrow in haiti. And the haitians we owe so much because the haitian revolution, first of all, made possible in Louisiana Purchase because napoleon was done with it as a result of that humiliating defeat. Secondedly, after haiti, after that revolution the north atlantic slave trade was ended by britain and the United States. And the last sort of breadth of that was the end of the civil war. Americans know nothing about the story. We owe so much to those haitians, exslaves who defeated four of the most powerful army of the government in well twelve and a half year war. One of the great story in history. Host this month on booktvs indepth program, author and activist Randall Robinson. He is the author of five Nonfiction Books. Here they are. Beginning in 1998. Mr. Robinson wrote defending the spirit. Finally an unbrokenning a any haiti from revolution to the kidnapping of a president. 202 is the area code if you like to dial in and participate in the conversation. You can contact us via email booktv cspan. Org. Or social media. You can make a comment on facebook. Com booktv. Or send us a tweet booktv is the twitter han dahl. What is transafrica . Guest transafrica was the or is the organization that i began in 1976 to galvanize africanamerican opinion on Foreign Policy issues. Particularly issues that concern the black world. U. S. Policy toward africa, the caribbean, and lot latin america. Tran africa, of course, was the organization that used apartheid and the embarrass embassy arrest we were able to organize the arrest of 5,000 people in the 1980 and 1984 and the next year. With working with member of congress we won a support for the set of sanctions that president reagan vetoed veto was overridden by republicancontrolled senate. Because of the work we did and the million we organized to make a difference. That coupled with the great work that was being done in south africa. Lead to a new south africa that we see today. We have been doing that work with a period of time. I have been there for twenty five years when i stepped down. Host whoa are Maxine Robinson . Guest my father and my mother. Already introduced you to them. They had strong opinions, and they were extraordinary and extremely principled people. I remember when my brother max was with abc news as the chicago an corp. He had gone to Smith College to make a schmidt and said things critical of abc. I was so proud of him because i saw my father and the kind of thing he stood for when we were children. Host did that hurt max robinsons career at abc . Guest it sure did. He thought as much as he loved his work, he thought were there a few things more important. Host in you book you write about being raised in richmond. When were you born . Guest july 6, 1940. Host what was your first twenty years like . First 18 years like . Guest two realities. I was happy at home and in our family. We had a big family. It was all i had. Lot of sisters. Everybody was nearby as we saw everybody and a lot of family all the time. And so all of that was wonderful and joyous, but the conditions under which we were living. We could go for weeks without seeing a white person. The experience is when you have them were painful. Every lesson told was designed to teach you you were infour your. And i remember being caddy on the golf course with my father, and encouraged me not to do. Host not to do . Guest no. Dont carry bags for people. And i carry the bag on th