The San Francisco chronicle at the bay area festival in downtown berkeley, california, in the first weekend in june. Live coverage of the 32nd annual printers row lit fest featuring see moore hirsh and sebastian younger. Then in hyde park, new york, its the 13th annual roosevelt reading festival held at the franklin d. Roosevelt president ial library and museum. And this years harlem book fair will be held on jewel 16th. July 16th. For more information about the festivals booktv will be covering and to watch previous coverage, click on the book fairs tab on our web site, booktv. Org. Welcome to hattiesburg, mississippi, on booktv. Located in the southern part of the state, it has a population of nearly 50,000 and is home to the university of southern mississippi. With the help of our Comcast Cable partners, other the next 90 over the next 90 minutes, well talk with local authors as we learn about the history of the area including a look at the civil war through the eyes of both well known and ordinary families. I really had always wanted to write this kind of sweeping, almost like a saga of the civil war. And for me as a military historian, over the years what ive noticed is that as much as were fascinated by what happens on the battlefield and, you know, this sweeping the sweeping changes that take place because of this campaign or that campaign, the soldiers are alwaysooking home. So ive really come to decide in all of my writing that you have to look at both. You have to look at the soldiers and the families, the battle front and the home front. If youre going to understand war. Later, well take you to the university of southern mississippis Mccain Library to see rare books and other unique items in their special collections. But first, we hear from author. David i haves about how david i haves about how mississippi reporters covered the Civil Rights Movement and what impact this had on Race Relations in the state. My book looks at the Mississippi Press pretty much from the time of brown going through the Voting Rights act of 1965. And what i tried to do was look at a range of mississippi newspapers and how they covered issues of race over this time period. Mississippi is interesting because it was the state that seemed to be the most segregated of any of the Southern States with opposition to integration being absolutely the most hard core of any of the Southern States. And so i think mississippi is interesting in terms of the vehemence of some secs of the Mississippi Press in sections of the Mississippi Press in defending the racial status quo. In jackson we had both the jackson clarion ledger and the jackson daily news which in these years were absolutely solidly opposed to any challenge to segregation. So i think what you find is a very solid wall and opposition to racial change in mississippi particularly from the leading papers in mississippi. The clarion ledger at one point was labeled by the columbia journalism review as quite possibly the worst metropolitan newspaper in the United States. And, in fact, the paper in those years lived up to that label, sadly. The paper would ignore racial news, it would have pretty much onesided accounts of any activity concerning civil rights. Its columnists and its editorial writers were absolutely vehement in their opposition to desegregation. They, in fact, used such Strong Language you just have to wonder be they played some role, if not in inciting violence, at least in failing to condemn it. And mississippi in those years was quite a violent place. So i expected the Mississippi Press to reflect the society from which it emerged. However, i was shocked at the vehement tone of the dominant newspapers and a lot of others in those years. I would emphasize the range of opinion from within the press in this period. There were, there were heroes who really stood out, there were journalists who, behind the scenes, worked closely with the state spy agency, the mississippi sovereignty commission, to undermine the Civil Rights Movement. I set out to explore how newspapers approached this absolutely cataclysmic event for the american south. I started with the idea that there were good guys and notsogood guys in terms of Editorial Coverage of thi very complex issue. And what i ended up finding is that, well, thats true. There were some true heroes in all of this. But there are also many, many shades of gray in terms of how journalists approach this topic. A really interesting case study of the civil rights years is Hazel Brennan smith. Hazel owned the lexington advertiser in these years, a small town north of jackson, mississippi. Her story is so, so compelling. In fact, at one point, i want to say in the mid 90s, she was the subject of a tv movie. And her life is truly the subject of a tv movie. She was a southern belle, graduate of the university of alabama, and like so many journalism graduates of that era, she wanted to own her own newspaper. And, by golly, she did. She went to tiny lexington, bought the local newspaper and made a success of it. She proceeded, as she liked to recall, to the date every eligible bachelor in town. She darn near succeeded. She ultimately met some fellow on a cruise, brought him back to lexington, they got married, and she ran a fine little newspaper and was making a good bit of money. Hazel was a segregationist. She very much was reflective of her time ask place. And place. But you know what . She believed in justice for all and that citizens should be treated equally. Now, she thought that white people wanted to live with white people and black folks wanted to live with black folks, and so she believed in segregation. But equal justice was a different thing. She seemed to go along pretty well until a time in the 1950s when she stood up in the local, against the local sheriff. Mississippi many these years in these years had sort of liquor was illegal, but yet Law Enforcement looked the other way for years and years. And remember, hazel cared about justice. And so she took on the local sheriff for overlooking local bootlegers. And, of course, that got her in some hot water. But what really amounted to her bravest stand against the establishment was when she took up for a black man who had been shot by the local sheriff. The man had been walking along the side of the road, was stopped by the sheriff. The sheriff told him to get going. The man wasnt moving fast enough, the sheriff shot him. It was a flesh wound, the man survived, but hazel took a stand on that. I mean, you shot an unarmed man. Well, in mississippi in these years defending a black person for anything was a breach of pretty much the racial code in mississippi. And mississippi took it out on hazel. The local Citizens Council which was, it was an organization across the south, but it began and was especially strong in mississippi, businessmen opposed to desegregation. The Citizens Council took a stand against her, started a rival newspaper, and she started a long slide that ended in her bankruptcy. And, again, her challenge to mississippi in these years was not a challenge to segregation, but a challenge to her readers to stand up for justice. Thats how ingrained racism was in mississippi in these years. For a time at least, the press helped to reinforce the racial status quo and was probably a little bit of an obstacle to racial change. At the same time, there were folks who were outliers. There were folks who were socalled not rates. Hazel Brandon Smith who some observers had said pretty much showed the first cracks in the racial status quo. Mr. Carter, in his day, had the prominence of dan rather today. Hiding carter of little greenville, mississippi, was known as sort of the southern journalist. And along with people like ralph mcgill and maybe a few others, mcgill being in atlanta, he was an explainer of the south to the north. And he wrote for the New York Times magazine talking about southern issues, he wrote a number of books working very, very closely with his wife betty who deserves about as much credit for what he did as he does. But he, he was a really special case. He and betty were very, very much a part of greenville society. And its interesting in that hying very, very much challenged mississippi. He had a running feud with the legislator. He was a racial moderate in that he thought mississippi should ultimately change. He thought that civil rights activists were pushing mississippi to change faster than mississippi was going to be able to. So, you know, in many ways he was a little more moderate than the civil a lot more moderate than the civil rights activists would have liked. But still he was pushing mississippi to change. Whats interesting, though, is because he was so ingrained in the community, i think that kind of protected him. I mean, he never lost his paper. Yes, the klan would burn a cross in his yard and that sort of thing, but he still survived. And i think its because he was very, very much a part of the fabric of the community. To give you a sense of how weird mississippi was in these years, at one point harding wrote something or other that hacked off the local klan or whoever. So so while he was away, these hoodlums spread trash all over his yard. But he was gone because a relative had died. So when the hoodlums realized he had been away for a funeral, they apologized. That was mississippi in these years, you know . You dont, you dont spread trash over someones yard if theyre going for a funeral. It was, it was quite a world that Harding Carter and that these people lived in. By contrast, you can look at somebody like ira hearky who was absolutely the most probably the only outspoken integrationist of any of these editors in this period. He took, he ran a great newspaper in little pass georgia goo la mississippi on the mississippi gulf coast, and his readers loved him. He put out a great paper. He won all the awards at the state newspaper contest was his newspaper was just so good. But ira was different. I mean, iras parents had raised him that everybody was as good as everybody else. He said that his wartime experience taught him that soldiers bled the same whether they were black or whether they were white. And so ira gradually integrated changes into his newspaper. He would cover black news whereas most newspapers just didnt cover black news or they labeled it as black news. Ira covered black news. He also gave black folks the same courtesy title that they gave white folks, mrs. Smith, mrs. Jones, that sort of thing. His readers didnt like that. And he got some pushback from his readers. But they forgave him because he ran a heck of a good paper. On the other hand, ira lost many of his readers when he came out in 1962 in defense of James Meredith. He vehemently defend James Meredith and his right to desegregate ole miss. He said its crazy that mississippi would oppose the federal government. How can a state oppose the federal government . Seems like common sense today, but that was an incredibly radical stance in these years. If you compare coverage then versus Coverage Today in terms of issues of race or almost anything else, whats most interesting to me now is that the press is so scattered. And its coming from so many Different Directions both in terms of its method of delivery and of the messages therein, the press was much, much more monolithic in mississippi in the Civil Rights Era in that for the most part the press represented the segregationist point of view, and it was so monolistic that the socalled outliers, they really stood out. I think its the leadership of papers like the clarion that really led the way in investigating cold cases and what not. So i think whats so different today is, first of all, the leadership of the clarion ledger and the good that its done over the 20 years that theyve devoted to uncovering forgotten civil rights cases and also just the vast range of approaches in the press now. Mississippi is a largely rural state, and its newspapers would, could pretty much be fairly easily termed Community Newspapers which spend a lot of time on local issues. And theres just some fine journalism out there. It was a surprise to very few of us that the Biloxi Sun Herald along with the new Orleans Timespicayune won a Pulitzer Prize for its coverage of katrina. Theres just fine, fine journalism going on today. And here, as in so many other places, journalism is going through quite the transition with the economic underpinnings of newspaper being challenged so, so severely by the internet. Our larger newspapers are still struggling with that readers just cant find elsewhere. So today the press is very much all over the map in terms of its Economic Health and in terms of its news coverage. Quite a different world from 1950s mississippi. Youre watching booktv on cspan2. This weekend were visiting hattiesburg, mississippi, to talk with local authors and tour the citys literary sites with the help of our local cable partner, comcast. Next, we hear from andrew wiest, history professor at the university of southern mississippi, about the u. S. Armys Charlie Company experiences during the vietnam war. As i began researching the war, it dawned on me that the real story of the vietnam veteran had not been told. The name of the book is the boys of 67 Charlie Companys war in vietnam, and the real reason i decided to write it is that Vietnam Veterans had been used as political footballs, as part of a morality play, theyve been used as many things, but hardly anybody had gotten to tell their story, who they were as young men before they went, the trauma of war that they went through both its great victories, its funny times, its horrible times and then what happened to them as a generation since theyve been home. The reason i chose the year 67, that was in many ways the high combat year of the war in vietnam. The years before that were ramping up. The year after that, tet 68, was a big year all of its own, and then we get the ramp down. So 67 in some ways appeared to be, at least to me, the kind of quintessential year of that war. And the book begins with who these young men were before they left, what their lives were, what their hopes were, what their dreams were x. As it turns out, this unit of young men is representative of the entire country. Theres City Slickers from cleveland, theres migrant farm workers from texas, theres young africanamerican sharecroppers from the south, theres a whole bunch of kids from los angeles. You name it, its a real hodgepodge of what it meant to be american at the time. The military unit these men are part of is the 9th infantry division, and theyre all drafted, essential hi, on the same day essentially, on the same day in march of 1966. And i wanted to get that feel. I wanted to figure out who these young men were. An infantry divisions 15,000 men. Thats too big. An infantry platoon is 40 men, thats too small. A company is 160 men. I interviewing 0 of them 80 of them, interviewed about 30 family members, especially the family members of soldiers who died in vietnam. So i interviewed their brothers, their mothers, their sisters, their wives. Is so Charlie Company was just about the right size to write about. A representative sample of what it was to be a soldier in vietnam in 1967. Units and individuals many units and individuals distinguished themselves by their cool and professional behavior, yet most of these soldiers had never been in battle before. [gunfire] they were trained in the middle of kansas, trained in the dead of winter. When they leave for vietnam, theres snow all over the ground. They all get on a train out to california and then got on a troop ship and ship over to vietnam and, of course, in vietnam its over a hundred degrees. So its a little bit after a jarring of a jarring circumstance. They go from being civilian, and then they go into guys who are practicing to be in the military, and suddenly theyre thrown right smack dab into the middle of a very difficult war in 1967. Originally, theyre stationed just north of saigon in a rather dry area of vietnam. And as it turns out, that was just for acclimation. That was to get these soldiers ready for how hot it was, what the jungle was like, what maybe a small enemy attack was like, what maybe a few viet cong booby traps were like. So a couple months of acclimation, and then they sent them down to the Mekong River Delta south of saigon. And the landscape down there is quite different. Of its rice paddies, endless rice paddies, village after village after village, very densely populated. So it was not an area in which the u. S. Could just indiscriminately use firepower. These guys had to be very controlled in when they fired and what they fired at. To what they got was a flat, very wet war, and what they got was a war in which the enemy, the viet cong, had lived there for 10, 20 years. They knew the terrain, they knew the battle sites. Theyd prepared the terrain and battle sites. Is so our men were fighting in a foreign country, about as foreign as you can get. The viet cong were fighting on their home turf. So these guys are in a watery, unforgiving environment, and the important thing to remember about it on top of that is since the enemy had been here five years, ten years, twenty years depending on the area that youre in, every rice paddy theyre like, rice paddies could be 50 feet on one side, 100 foot on the other, these are are pretty Small Agricultural fields, every rice paddy could have an enemy bunker system in it. The side of every river could have an enemy bunker syst