That is a look at what we will be covering this upcoming week. For more go to booktv. Org and visit upcoming program. Nathan mccall talked about his book, makes me wanna holler a young black man in America Great he talked about his time and childhood in virginia and his time in rehab. This is about one hour. Allmak cspan author that his joining us today, nathan mccall, thean title is makes me wanna holler a young black man in america. Y where did you get the title . Guest i got the title fromlbum c an old gates alvin they came out in 1971. It is a classic and there was ainne song called inner city blues. Oll a and it says in the song that it makes me want to holler andne in a brought throw up my hands. And so i use that line in a piece i wrote for thepost Washington Post. T on. So it sort of caught on. Li . Cspan what was the purpose of the line . Guest the line was talkinged about the span itself. It talked about the time and thetrife,an d social strife and some of the to same issues that we are dealing with today. Crime and depression, the struggle of black people and g that was the theme of the song. So in singing the song he was kind of expressing his to frustration saying that it allhere makes me want to holler. Cspan where were you born . D a haf guest portsmouth virginia, which is about 3. 5 hours southere . Of here. Cspan how long have you lived there . H e guest welcome i lived there for a couple of years. In th and my stepfather was in the navy. And we were there for a couple ey of years and then we lived instepfat toronto and key westhe florida. When my stepfather got ready to retire from the navy we moved old en. Back and i guess i was aboute nine years old. And so we lived there from thee t time i was nine years old and my parents still live there. N . Cspan what are you doing right now im at. Guest i am a reporter for the Washington Post. N leve i was allowed to write that book. Ook so right now im on the book to le, her. And cspan lets talk about a ho couple things in your life and then we will go to them in great depth. How many different jobs have you had . The i guess i would have to count the jobs in my career as a journalist. My first job was the hometown newspaper. I got that job right out ofe. College and my second job was at the Atlanta Journal anjodtsi constitution. And i was there for about six and a half years. The then i went from that paper to the washingtown post. To prior to then, i held some odd. Jobs and some really odd jobs. Cspan how many times have you been in prison reign. Guest i have been in prison once. Once. I i was locked up more than once. I was locked up once force shooting a guy at it was about four weekends. Be but that was not considered present. That was time in the local jail. L mont several months later, itted a a r committed an Armed Robbery and shortly thereafter words was sentenced to serve 12 years ineeear prison. And i served three years and i got out on parole. Cspan how many times have you been married . And are you married now . Iivo guest twice and i am not three. Married now. He cspan how many children you have . Guest three children. W cspan why did you write this from a book . Guest the book stems from a p perspective piece that i wroteeton in the Washington Post. From i had moved here from atlantalize i and as soon as i moved here i i n could feel it, i realized and i i could feel it that there was anime n difference in the intensity of the crimes in this area and thece th crime and violence than in still atlanta. Atlanta still has problems with cre crime and violence and the level of ndc was different. And so i noticed that. Wa and the other thing was that itmy h brought me closer to my abo hometown. 1 when i lived in atlanta, it wasnt about an 11. 5 drive fromnly atlanta to portsmouth. Ce and so i usually got home about once or twice a year. E after i moved here, i was able to go home much more frequently. And so i would go home and visit my parents and hear about all h that was going on with some ofr a the guys that i was growing up on a street. To ail and some of the same things thathere i was reading about here in diffnce was washingtont and when i read these stories and there were story abou about faithless people and the bu when i story doesnt humanize people i and i often knew the people thate were involved or who were victims were the perpetratorsd and so i knew the stories behindk the stories. Abu i decided that i would writee fel about it and the feeling of going home and reading about all of these tragedies and how it compared to being here and reading about the tragedies and,bout you know, my ambivalence aboutst how it alli and how i was grappling with it in my own personal life and what my journey has beenote like. Iece i wrote this piece and itsecion appeared in the outlook sectionand of the Washington Post. And i was scared to death. I had never written about my own a life area i had always written about other people. And i wrote about my life and it was fun. It was overwhelming. I got a lot of letters. I got a lot of phone calls and i go gott some calls from book agentsnow as well and they called andnk said, i think the you have are book here. So things started happening and we got the book contract. And that is how it happened. En cspan where was this picture taken and what are you wearing . Heywa n guest the picture is taken and some street in washington dc. They wanted ant urban setting and theybu found eight building that had some graffiti on the wall. Drs and sos they told me to come oi dressed like i might be dressed ordinarily. Ar and that is generally what i would wear in the summer. A tshirt and just lightly. Cspan what do you call thep. Cat . Guest i call it tap. Some people call it anotherits sil name. Ha it is similar tto a hat thatt i muslims wear, but its not as muslim cap. It is more optimistic. Cspan what is your anger levelr at this like in your life . Ws w guest my anger lover angerit level is about the same as it is when i was a teenager but the difference is that i know how to direct it and what to do with it. When i was a teenager, i had to s understand this blind rage in me. I knew that i was angry. I knew that i was angry at someone. Me but if you asked me to definebeen able it, i would not have been able to do it. Un and now ide understand it and i understand the source of thatdo th anger and i know what to do with it it. And rn i you know i know how to take itthin g and turn it into something constructive rather thanctive. Selfdestructive. A cspan youll understand whye book im asking this question based on what is in the book. Ha but how would you feel and what is the difdiferffence in the way the you would feel with a white person interviewing you versus a black man interviewing you. Sew guest what is thewere difference . Cspan yes what is the he difference between my faith in someone who would bead black. Sm e guest i would think thatwho someone who is black that is interviewing me would understandot a lot more than you would aboutof y the nature of my journey and the source of my anger. Ou and i think that for you it would probably be more difficult to understand. Rence the difference being that i would assume that ab black persono interviewing me would have also ngs th experienced some of the same things that i have experienced. You know, working in theof the sa mainstream and some of them main frustrations. Even out ond the street. So they would be able to i identify more, i would thinkd lk that some of the things that i would talk about. Eral ti cspan its not once but several times that you say youhits, hate whites and if you do oryou do dont, can you tell us where youh are in your evolution two. H. Guest you know, for a long time i hated whites and that was part of a blind rage because i l felt that my life has been large shaped by forces that are muchno larger than me institutions that are larger than me andces very little access to. Re and all i knew is that those forces and institutions were controlled by white people inludmy the lives of most of the people around me, including my parents they were shaped by those forces. To and so it was easy to say hey then if, you know that whiteu people are evil. You know i hate white people. And that is how i felt for a long time. And i carry that kind of anger right up until the time that iwh went into the white mainstream to work as a journalist. St whit e when i face the mainstream i did not trust white people. And then that white people that were very friendly and those that were very anxious to help an me in whatever ways that theylly xp could. Th and i wasnt really expectinghot matt ando i didnt quite know how to it to respond to that. Dst a and i still kept my distance you know. Hee and so does the demeanor of some of the whites made me wonder. It made it a little bit more sa difficult for me toy say that all to white people are bad. Oul when i went to my second job atame the atlantappen journalconstitution, the samei thing happened and i met a guyshi and there was this guy that came white gu to work for the paper and theear guy was very friendly. Ri cspan what was his name . Hi guest his name is danny bonds. There is a chapter in the bookthe and this guy was the kind of guy that was a stranger to no one. Up to and he says hey, how are you his doing. And i didnt feel the same kind o of bondage or reluctance that ies. Often felt and he was able to you know encourage me to lower o the barrpiers and to open up alitt little bitl more. Begn we begin talking and spending time together and we bothet on ou bic enjoyed writing bicycles. We would ride bicycles on the we weekend and ride and talk and wend would talk very candidly and ask each other questions. Iff the kinds of difficult questions that whites and blacks dont often ask each other and we havedont open dialogue, the kind ofgh of o dialogue that we dont have enough of it oute here. Uld and so he would ask questionswo sometimes that would anger me. Ques and i would ask questions, you know, i would ask him questionsao about white people. As well as his response. Unde and it heightens our understanding of each other turn se it over time i began to see thatt df this guy is really not different from me. G. And i think that he saw the same thing. So my relationship with danny anher l inspired me to take another lookund at other people and other whitewe people around me who were similar. And these are people in the cscious newsroom. Wo i decided and i made au conscious decision that i would open upth and that if anybody extended their hand in friendship to me re that i would be receptive to it. Ws and i was surprised. I mean i discovered that there are a lot of good white people. And i have to rethink my wholeand value system so that ie poi eventually reach the point where i am now which is that i god understand that there are good white people and there are bad white people just as there are good black people and there are bad black people. Ans and so no i do not hate white dont hat people. A lot th ie dislike a lot of the things that i see coming from the white establishment. But thats not the same thing as hating white people. Cspan who is scooby dee . H yes we call him scooby d. Agu guest he was an older guylder than and he had a reputation in thee of the guy was bad in every sense ofuy the word and the young guys in ne the neighborhood, because it was a big thing in our neighborhoodle to to be able to be tough and also to fight. Do and that had to do with some kind of perverted ideas that we had about masculinity. And so this represented the embodiment of that. And so i looked up to the sky admi and i admire this guy and iery decided at a very early age thatwa he was someone that i wanted to hi know. He shot his wife and then turned the gun on himself and killed himself. How long ago . Guest i think that that was in maybe 1979 or 1980. Buddy. Cspan who is shellshocked . Guest i called him my why training partner. Cspan what does he do now . Hip guest he lives in my hometown and he has a job at theing a r shipyard. He is just living fea regular life span. Cspan what kind of pain did you do it him . St cspan what kind of hanging out did you do . Guest we stolen we burglarized houses. Ars everything. Cspan what years to. Guest i met him when i wase in the fifth grade and then wewe began hanging tough leader. N li so itk wouldve been early 70sriso until the time i went to prison. Cspan how old are you now . Stat guest i am 39 years old. Cspan did you graduate . T guest yes, from journalisme . Was not how old are your ir parents . And do they still live in your hometown . W guest yes, they do live in the same hometown and they are both surprised and amazed and they have been surprised and amazed for a long time now. T i made in m they were surprised by the changes that i made in my life. Very surprised. E cspan did you ever come close yo to dying or killing someone . And why are you in thatuille a situation . Guest vote. I came close to getting killed a w couple of times herriot i belong to a group a gang. S and we used to fight on the streets and one day we wereome involved and again more with some other guys and they caught me and my buddy and another guythey ju and theym jumped us. Th and they eat us with lead pipestomp and they stoppedst us. I hin cspan why is that . Thig. Guest well, we were at war. Op it started at a bus stop in the mpete morning and we would compete for girls attention. E we did like them coming to ourtaing corner talking to girls whor ct lived in ourio neighborhood and so the we jumped in one day and theyto one ofhe retaliated. We jumped in and i put a gun to one of the guys had and theye retaliated and so then they caught me and they eat me prettyund bad and i had a brace around myhey at neck. The and they beat me with these there pipes. Went and so there was a moment therebeca where i actually felt like i was going to die because i kept st waiting for them to stop beating me up. Goto and i remember thinking they have to stop they have to stopally. Eventually and they just continued on. Mysel and so i felt myself losing and sehow consciousness and somehow ite stopped and someone helped me i as home and i was all busted up andad bleeding. Retty but i felt that i had come pretty close to death. Ddi another time we went across towna and we were involved in a game more across town and we went to see some girls who lived acrossnd ey town and these guys caught us inwe there neighborhood and we were unarmed and they pulled out the gun and started shooting us. Ed runi so we started running. I and i was running at the sameget me. Time, fearing that one of the bullets was going to get me. Ort and i was fortunate enough too get away. I i had so many close scrapes liketims. That. I came close to killing peopleclses several times. The closest time was when i shot gu a guy. Ean . He and i had plaz. Cspan what does that mean . Guest i dont know. Hing but he and i had had are running throughout the years. Last and it was the last straw. Nd and i my girlfriend and i were at ad carnival one day and plaz and some of his buddies were there and he put his finger and my girlfriends face and and he threatened her and he looked atk c me and according to the street code, that was something i could not let him get away withspecte me because he disrespected me. They say that he dissed me. Onat t and so i had a gun at the time ab and i decided that i had tooclose to shoot him. Ser and he was about as close to me as you are. He was a little bit closerd because he was running and pointing his finger at me. G and so ive pulled the gun out was of his pouch that i was carrying and i pulled the gun out and i shot him. It at and i aimed it at his heart. I and after i shot him i went and th toward him and i was going to shoot him again and there was a friend of mine who is out there who saw this and he called my called name and he said no you dont want to do that. A and he ran up behind me and said you dont want to do that. D so t and so that gave him just enough time to get up. E was he got up and he ran off into the parking lot and i saw him h collapse and so i went home my afterwards and told my stepfather that i have shotwe ne t somebody. O and he said that we needed to gool to the Police Station and ielf in. Needed to turn myself in. So we went down to the Police Station and we were sitting outside this office and we had been sitting up there for a longive cm time. A detective came out and hery its spoke to my stepfather and said i am sorry that it has taken so he aid long here but the guy has been taken to the hospital that your son shot anything hes going topens die. Se if so we are going to wait and seee what happens. Because ifg he dies we have to charge her son was murdered. Hough k well i knew that i have shot this guy. But ita had an occur that thishisg guy might die. And i think a lot of teenagers dont think about theyou know, yoook consequences and you look at tvhot and you see some guy gets shots he holds his arm and you know, he may go off somewhere and dor several other things before hes s sees a doctor. Noti t and that is sort of them notionot a that i had. When is you shoot a guy, but hes not sa going to die. So when this detective said that he might die it dawned on me that i m that ii might be charged witht was the murder. And that was the first time that the whole notion of consequences registered in my mind. Hours later the detective came back. You k and he said i talk to the people at the hospital and they think that hes going to pull through. Is and they said that barely missed and if his heart and it had been if i me it wouldve been a little bitan b closer he would have died are in and i had been praying to thedi sky to live because i had not intended to kill anybody. This and so i was glad that this guy rough. Pulled through. Get cspan what did you get . N guest i was sentenced to0 serve 30 days in jail and givenn a 300dollar fine. And i ended up serving four weekends in jail. And that happens about a month i wa after the shooting and i was on i probation. Some buddies and i were going to h go rob a hotel and we went to the hotel the Sheraton Hotel at the shopping mall. And so we went to this hotel and things were not set up the waypeople that we thought they were going to be. Knowo and there were people there. Bu one of my buddies was actually his there, he was actually very street smart. And he would go and check these i places out in advance and helay out th would lay oute the plan and then we would go and execute thechecked plan. Is so he had checked out this hotel and according to the plan as he em laid it oupt we go in and wehe would hit them at the Registration Desk and we got there and they were having some kind of formal event. In additio in addition to that, they had securityse guards. Tryinto t and so we were riding aroundels trying to think of something to make some money. Do and they said, okay lets do that. So initially we were going with tim the guy who went to the mcdonalds atn a second time tocash pick up cash and then deposited somewhere else. And so we got there and this guy was just leaving. And i had the gun. Fe i was feeling nervous that night. I have always had a