And growing community, that is where we are gathering around not only professional writers but folks who write for their own enjoyment and creative purposes and anyone who loves to read anything. We have ongoing collaboration in vanderbilt university, helping us program a special track every year. This year among a couple tracks we have going on we have one, all the kings men, the Pulitzer Prize is celebrating the 100th anniversary so the pulitzers at remember, the festival has some sources of funding, but mostly it depends on donations from people like you. You can donate on the festival web site, from the app, on facebooking, or you can do it the oldfashioned way, in person at the Festival Headquarters here. [laughter] we will be ending the session about ten minutes before the hour or so. First, well hear from dr. Daryl carter. He, hes written a book called brother bill president clinton and the politics of race and class. Hes an associate professor at east Tennessee State university, and and his areas of expertise are 20th and 21st century american political history. He particularly is interested in the new deal, in the fair deal, the great society, the clinton and obama presidencies and the intersection of race, class and gender. Hes been appointed to the world war i War Commission in tennessee and is a member of the board of directors of the tennessee humanities. Dr. Carter . Its yours. Thank you, judge. I wish to thank everyone for being here today. Its wonderful to be in nashville again. Id also like to thank humanities tennessee which puts on the southern festival of books every year. They do a wonderful job, and i am biased since i am a board member, but i just love the books here, dont you . Well, i want to talk about my book today, brother bill, with you, and i hope you will enjoy it. When it comes to president clinton and im talking about bill clinton [laughter] we have often overlooked him over the period of the last 15 years because of the issues of or war on terror, terrorism, the obama years, etc. But hes very important in what i call these inbetween years between 1989 at the end of cold war and the beginning of the war on terror in the fall of 2001. In 1998 toni morrison, the legendary writer, remarked that he was the first black president. She even said, and i quote after all, clinton displays almost every troop of blackness, singleparent household, born poor, working class, saxophone playing [laughter] mcdonalds and junk foodloving boy from arkansas. Unquote. And this helped to lead me to do this project about ten years ago when i was a ph. D. Student at the university of memphis. Because i wondered, is it true, was it true that he was the first black president . And we could say, obviously, that president obama fits that category. But in many ways, president clinton did as well. So that is what im talking about here today, this intersection between race and class and whether or not president clinton was that first black president. The support of africanamericans for bill clinton was and has been huge. It has been huge, no doubt about it. They support him more than 80 of the time, and while he was in office, supported him upwards of 90 of the time. But this africanamerican support for the former president often was, at odds with their own policy ideas, needs and concerns. It was more aesthetic, therefore, than policybased. And during the clinton years, he would have ample opportunity to disappoint africanamericans along with the rest of america. So why was he so important here . Well, number one, he ushered in this era that i call the inbetween years, but more importantly, he turned the Democratic Party from the far left as illustrated by tip to kneel, senator kennedy and others in congress tip to kneel, to a centrist party, a new democrat model, a model based in no small part on the issue of triangulating policy positions of both democrats and republicans. These included crime, welfare, affirmative action. These also included judicial decisions. In terms of appointments. Furthermore, he was the first president born in the postwar era. And consequently, he enveloped and embraced and oozed that mentality that embraced civil rights, embraced womens rights, that embraced the secular changes that came since the 1960s. This is part of the reason he was controversial. As John Hope Franklin said to me in an interview that i did several years ago before he passed away, he had never seen so many black people, latinos and others at the white house that werent gardeners, that werent landscapers, that werent cooks. They were just everywhere. Now, africanamericans had always been at the white house in some capacity, usually menial labor. But under the clinton years, he fulfilled, in many respects, his idea of a cabinet that looked like america. He embraced diversity as did the first lady. This is going to change as the 1994 Elections Come and republicans gain Investigatory Power and the ability to subpoena witnesses, hold hearings and hold the president accountable for both real and imagined scandals. Going a little bit further here, lets talk about the model the Democratic Leadership Council that he followed, that he was so much a part of. The Democratic Leadership Council was created in the mid 80s after the disastrous Reelection Campaign of Ronald Reagan in which he beat walter mondale, the former Vice President , with 525 electoral votes. This forced many southern democrats along with others, probusiness democrats, to reconsider the positions of the National Party if they were going to be competitive in the future. So deregulation, probusiness policies, pulling the back excuse me, pulling the weight of government off the back of businessmen. The partys leftward turn, often perceived as extremist by others around the nation, would have to be tackled by these socalled new democrats. So bill clinton along with al fromm decided to put out new policy positions. Now, while president carter had embraced certain things in terms of deregulation and balanced budget and fiscal conservativism, most of the party had not yet gotten onboard. So clinton and others helped to bring that about. The other part of this is Ronald Reagan and the reagan revolution. In 1980 when he defeated president carter and ushered in a new era of american politics, many of those people who followed him would want policy prescriptions vastly different from the old democratic model that existed since 1932. Clinton was one of those who said that the times were changing and that the party would have to change with it. It would have to keep its commitments to civil rights, to womens rights, etc. , but itd also have to be more friendly to business, lessen the tax burden on others as well as to help business help itself. The conservativism of the 1980s, which is still much alive today and what others have called the age of reagan, helps to underscore the problems that the Democratic Party faced in the 1980s. As those issues turned into the 1990s at the end of the cold war and at the end of the bush years, president clinton was governor clinton, excuse me, was primed and poised to seize upon not only the failures of conservativism under reagan and bush, but was also poised to offer a new direction that was going to embrace what he considered the best parts of liberalism, the Democratic Party and the Republican Party and conservativism. Some called this triangulation where you take an issue say, crime and you adopt the aspects of that crime policy into your own legislative package. Black politicians in the beginning werent always helpful on these particular issues. Often they represented inner cities, cities that were dependent be upon law enforcement, dependent upon public education, dependent upon union support, dependent on traditional means of uplifting those most vulnerable in society. But at the same time that you had black politicians who were skeptical be not outright hostile if not outright hostile to ideas such as welfare reform, there was new class dynamics that took place. And these class dynamics included an upwardly mobile africanamerican middle class. These were the people who had broken out of the confines of jim crow. These were the people who had benefited from the Civil Rights Movement of the 1960s. These or were the people who integrated colleges and universities across the nation. And this disintegration within the Africanamerican Community presented class in a very real way for the first time in the modern era for africanamericans as a major issue. So these upwardly mobile people were concerned about taxation. They were concerned about policies that may harm business. They were concerned about being lumped in with arguably onethird of the Africanamerican Community that was working class or poor. So the upwardly mobile Africanamerican Community was attracted to many of president clintons proposed policies. But this also left, as i just mentioned, many people behind. Many people who could not defend themselves. People who were dependent on public aid, people who were dependent upon student aid, people that were dependent on medicaid and other social programs. These programs that were so important in many of these areas would come under attack not just by reagan, but by clinton himself who was often at odds with those policy prescriptions. That being said, its important to note that africanamericans at the same time were enthusiastically supportive of the president due to the fact that he embraced them, not just he talked about it, but he embraced them. This was a man who could sing the black national anthem. This was a man who was more at home in black churches in arkansas than he was in white churches. This was a man who had gone to law school with africanamericans. This was a man who had proposed to be put africanamericans in the cabinet, the subcabinet and in the executive Office Building next to the white house. And to that end, lets talk just for a we could about those issues of for a second about those issues of appointments. And one of the early aspects of his administration, in those first few months, was the nomination of lonnie get near as assistant attorney general for civil rights. Since the 1800s white president s had used africanamericans as personal add advisers and formal advisers and finally in the 20th century formal advisers on a variety of issues, but usually those pertaining to africanamericans. Lonnie had gone to law school with the clintons and knew them well was now a lawyer, she had worked for president carter in his justice department. But in between that time as a professor more she began writing professor she began writing law review articles. And you know these things have more footnotes than they do text. [laughter] its incredible. But at the same point, these talked about issues of proportional representation. These talked about issues of fairness in voting. Well, regardless of race, so if you have 10 of the population that is jewish, that 10 should have representation. If the population had 52 female, they should have representation. So on and so forth. But in the hyperbolic politics of the early 1990s with a resurgent right wing, the moderate right, a lot of this stuff sounded kind of funny. Shes proposing that we get away from the decision in baker v. Carr of one man, one vote. But truth of the matter is, is that she was doing what many others before her had tried to do which was encourage voting as well as to support those groups who are traditionally left out. When clint bolick, a former reagan aide, the wall street journal editorial page and others began looking at her writingings, thats exactly what they said. Shes a quota queen. Now, that whole issue of queen, you might remember reagan mentioned in 1980 when he accused a woman of being a welfare queen and all the racially tense language and images that that conjures up. But when you think about lonnie, shes simply somebody who was fighting for civil rights. Voting rights. The, the the furor that ensues demonstrates not only the discomfort that many had towards the issue of racial progress in the early 1990s, now a quarter of a century ago, but the discomfort that they have with president and his own judgment. After being criticized throughout the media by people like Michael Isikoff of newsweek, now with yahoo news and others, he did pull the nomination, and he pulled it in what he called it if if we kept going, it would be a death by a thousand cuts type of situation. He abandoned his own appointment, claiming that he did not know whaterer writings what her writings were really all about. It was a signal to the naacp, urban league, other organizations that, wait a second, there is a serious problem with this president. Maybe it is, quote9unquote, amateur hour. But as bad as that nomination was, the crime bill that was to come was to be worse. In 1992 as he began his campaign for the presidency and was still governor of arkansas, a man by the name of Ricky Ray Rector stood on death row in arkansas preparing for execution. He had shot a Police Officer in his home and then went outside and shot himself in the head. After he was medevaced to little rock, they saved his life, but he was left with the capacity of a child. Clinton left the campaign trail in New Hampshire and went all the way back just so that he could personally oversee the execution of rector. In fact, in 2000 as he was preparing to leave office and he was interviewed by npr, they asked about this, and and his response was he wasnt mentally deficient when he committed the crime. Now, this has been in the media a lot lately as people have been exonerated because of dna evidence and discoveries that certain cases, almost certainly you have people who are being executed that may not have been mentally fit. Be but the coldness with which clinton puts that forward, that he could never be considered soft on crime, is problematic. And be it reflects the new democratic position of being compassionate towards victims and tough on criminals. About refocusing the Democratic Party and addressing crime levels, they had disturbed americans across the land. So anticrime efforts took center stage, and the result of that was the Violent Crime control and re excuse me, enforcement act of 1994. In promoting this, this idea of three strikes for any, for violent felons, the idea that in putting this bill into place not only could we have a violence against women act, but we could also ban assault weapons, but in doing this we can take crime itself off the table. What the act and what president clinton failed to acknowledge was that crime rates were already going down. Already going down from what they had been during the 1960s and 70s. It also allowed for africanamericans to once again be scapegoated. And helped in building this huge prison industrial come mention. Complex. Even Hillary Clinton got in on the deal by calling them superpredators. Superpredators. But ironically, while he had a lot of support from republicans on this issue, its important to note as well that he had a lot of support from africanamericans. So who were these africanamericans . They were the very middle class and upper class africanamericans who had fought and scratched so hard to get into those social classes. Those who were much more closer than the white middle class to the crime and dysfunction, okay, of crimefilled areas. Who were often telling him something needs to be done about this. From the drugs to the guns, etc. , that are ruining neighborhoods, ruining lives. So the africanamerican support was critical for this, and clinton campaigned hard on it in places like churches such as the churches in memphis, tennessee. And where he proposed to be dr. Martin luther king for a moment and said, well, i did not die for all of you to kill one another. This also contributed to [inaudible] kiss parities, disparities which are still present today and president obama is trying to handle through the department of justice. The next issue that he deals with also is racially fraught with danger, and that is the issue of crime. Excuse me, welfare. Welfare had started in the 1930s as a part of the Social Security act. And while it had been always controversial to a certain point, by the 1990s it was defined as a black issue. Despite the fact that africanamericans had not been the majority of recipients of welfare programs that white americans were. Despite the fact that most people who went on welfare stayed on three years or less. There was a perception that welfare was an trim issue and an africanamerican issue and had to be dealt with because, after all, certain people in this country that were not comfortable with racial progress to begin with were not happy about minorities receiving taxpayer dollars. I point this out to say when Prime Minister clinton put president clinton puts out there mend be it, dont end it, hes trying to take issue of welfare off the table. So whether on crime, welfare reform, etc. And i dont want to go over my time here president clinton demonstrates a toughnosed approach to all these issues but also one that is informed by not only race, but particularly class. Lastly, his embracement rhetorically of africanamericans and and other minorities not only helped his administration, but george w. Bush as well embraced it during his and, of course, president obama embraced it in the last seven and a half years. All right. I think ive gone over my time [laughter] but i want to thank all of you s and im very interested to hear my colleagues remarks. Thank you. [applause] thank you, dr. Carter. And well have an opportunity in a but minutes for you to in a few minutes more you to ask dr. Carter or ms. Padgett questions about their books or maybe anything else they want to talk about, i dont know. Next we have dorothy padgett. Shes written a really interesting book called jimmy carter elected president with pocket change and peanuts. [laughter] from the