Occupied territory and a number of battles took place. I imagined that it in some way affected her. Or their family members that had your version of the conversation . I found a lot of conversations in the details but knew nothing about the murder story. The descendents of the victims want to mention how her great aunt was murdered. It was different than that which happened so there were a lot of gaps and missing records. Would they have an observation or opinion of the new podcast journalism like this serial is that a flash in the pan would you think that type of reporting will stand up to the bricks and mortar for those like yourselves a. The way the first season grabbed hold of it they will constantly be trying another one of. That brings us to a conversation. Its in the social status class and while and grace. Look at the tremendous disagreement in the country becausitwas by the policemen ofk people. It was the divisive conversation that we are having over culpability and what needs to be done. Arent we just as divided over whether or not justice is something shared equally by their race is notherace is now . One of the things that was the tragedy for me at the case as a historian it was hard to see how much of what i was studying and looking at for the way the black community and the policing communities wouldve interacted was made with the same sort of crisis moment that we are at today. So once they decided this is a black suspect in the Violent Crime then as now is interracial meaning black people for mostly black an people and white peoplo mostly white people. Right, so they go into the community and are charged with the task on hunting of negroes so they basically scooped up the block and intimidate and interrogate folks but it also wasnt uncommon to be stopped or detained by police for walking down the street in neighborhoods they believed they didnt belong. There is an example in the book of a man that was stopped and detained because he was big, black and had a record. So theres all these ways that racial profiling and getting these confessions held true but even in certain respects i think in particular the way wilson was taken advantage of by the authorities, folks have described him as slow. He was barely 18yearsold an ad one point they gavione point thl during his interrogation and his confession is what sort of stands up and holds against him. The recent documentary that got a big splash on netflix he ends up getting embroiled in this case that has him still incarcerated so they are shocked at the amount related to race and class that had not changed. We have time for one more question in the audience. Lets get the microphone over. The research determined the insane asylum legislature merged . You cant write a book about texas without someone doing a political joke. I completely lost my train of thought. Is there anything that you go back to read. Both or what are we reading now . Im looking forward to summer because theres a couple of books that are exciting. One is by harris and its called Something Like sex workers and psychic runners thats looking at a black women in crime in new york i want to get my hands on that. It was wholly without black women on chain gangs so theres a couple of neat books coming out that i cant wait to read. Shes just a little bit obsessed. [laughter] ive completely forgotten the name of the book. The arab journalists doing significant social changing things. They will pile up on my bedside table and i wont read them. The trashy true crime histories and throw us all and i want to thank both skip and calling for joining us and wish you well on your books i have in hardcover and tablet. Youre supposed to be off signing books and im supposed to be out telling everyone to buy a book and get it signed. Thank you very much. Plus the saturday night at ten eastern after words. The senior fellow rosa brooks looks at the changes in the approach to fighting the war as well as the berlin ongoing conflict in her book how everything became war and the military became everything, tales from the pentagon. Shes interviewed by kathleen hicks, former secretary defense for policy and Senior Vice President and director of the International Security program at the center for strategic and international studies. The congress isnt going to wake up one morning and say lets triple the budget. Its going to continue to be apt to take on this wide range of tasks but make sure the military is good at it. Sunday at noon eastern, live from Hillsdale College in michigan with author and radio host Dennis Prager the author of the nine questions people ask about judaism, happiness is a serious problem, still the best hope and the ten commandments. Join in the conversation with your phone calls from noon to three eastern. Former White House CorrespondentKate Anderson broward profiles the first ten ladies in her book first wifirst when integrating r of america is modern first ladies. She speaks of politics and prose bookstore in washington, d. C. Mary roach on the science used to improve the effectiveness and safety of the military and by the public lost faith in the political leaders and Jean Edward Smith on the president ial tenure of church w. Bush and biographer jon meacham do with president ial politics. Now i discuss in a prominent figure in the harlem renaissan renaissance. At the harlem book festival we examine the writing and influence on literature. This is just over an hour. Welcome once again to the next panel discussion. May wmay we have you listening please. Thank you. I love myself when im laughing a century or more, a century and more. I have the pleasure of introducing the moderator for todays discussion. Shes an author of five books and focus of her study is cultural history. Shes a professor at the Columbia University of english and African American studies. Her current book is towards an intellectual history of black women. Ladies and gentlemen, brooke i l keep talking until you can hear me. Is it Getting Better . Okay. Good. I know you are here because you love her hurston. Its a place that she called home and that inspired her work and started to catalyze her career. This year will mark the 100th anniversary of her birth and she continues to be a writer and figure that mesmerized us. We are fortunate to be joined by a group of scholars and thinkers and writers who have spent quite a bit of time thinking about hurston and the context she lived and worked. Then we will open up and have a discussion and open up to you. The first speaker is Yvette Christianse was a beloved friend and colleague and like herself, she writes in multiple forms from an accomplished poet, the author of the beautiful novel of that which i recommend you read if you have time and you dont havif youdont have time. And shes also a scholar, a literary scholar having written one of the most books on Toni Morrison and she teaches at barnard college. Cheryl wall is a leading scholar and i dont know anyone that knows more than the cheryl wall who is also a very significant and important critic and leader in our field. Shes the author of were either lying black women writers, lineage and literary tradition and women and the renaissance and shes a beloved professor at Rutgers University department of english. And our final speaker is rich blint. Many of you may know rich. Hes profiled as a curator and important political figure, writer, scholar and if cheryl is the leading scholar, bridge is one of the leading causes of James Baldwin county is the coeditor of a special issue of the african america africanamet came out in winter 2013 that you can still get it as well as a contributing editor of the James Baldwin reviews the please join me in welcoming these extraordinary thinkers and writers. [applause] theres never enough time to talk about Zora Neale Hurston. I thought i would open with a leading question that would allow the panelists to say, give Opening Statements about their thoughts on Zora Neale Hurston if they would share their opening thoughts and if you are able to consider this question in the context so whatever you u say will address this question. Thats why should we still read a Zora Neale Hurston 100 years after her birth. I want to say how wonderful it is to be on a panel particularly because it is sponsored by the press. [inaudible] i am just going to join this style. I think that its important to us particularly because there are two things that existed in her life but also says something about the way that we agreed between her and her writing and those are marked by her parents. Her mother encouraged her and her father who said i dont get too uppity because you will make white folks nervous and they wont like it. One is about jumping in all of the forms of writing that went from reporting and inventing, the anthropologist, the picture greater, the essayist, the singer and the other had to negotiate those hurdles, the interest and containment that her father warned her about. I think when we read it now particularly for those of us there werthat were teachers we n complete her with her writing. I think it is an ethical issue to greet her as the inventor and writer. We may see some wonderful things as we are doing that. One of the earlier panels was about trying to get children to read. Reading is a form of listening and she understood this so powerfully. If we are nervous about president obama and hes nervous about being too black in the eyes of congress we cant be nervous about what seems to be impossible, improbable route of speech. I dont think that he would yell as she did when she won second prize for her play. She wasnt demure. Maybe this was a different time. I think what she did was found a way to negotiate a in the way that her father said she needed to observe the. Those of us now it remains a critical issue in the writings showing us again and again and again. Good afternoon. Im happy to be with all of you. We are all people that loved Zora Neale Hurston. I think that its a wonderful starting point because we take it for granted in this era of children being raised to have selfesteem. Most black people didnt love what people and the stuff she did and without hesitation that set her apart and thats the first thing we can learn. I laugh out loud every time i read it. There are lines i hear and i do try to read that out. Every time i teach the novel a couple students will raise hands and say i cant understand this dialect. I cant read this and i told them go home, read it aloud just as it is written. If you do that you will hear the duty and the humor in that language. If that didnt just happen in the comment as she listened to the way ordinary black people spoke. She wasnt ashamed of how they speak. She loves how we speak. They passed nations through their mouth. There was nothing they could talk about and didnt have an opinion about. They took it seriously at the time that wasnt the norm. She took the opinion seriously and i believe that is something that we can and should continue to emulate. So two things, it gives us pleasure and brings us joy because she has much to teach us about loving ourselves. [applause] after her birth. Ive just been in the country for four years and was leading the classes so she became at the moment in my life which in some ways i went to the wider antiexcavated things and what i found was an example because she was incredibly productive and her outfit but she was also contradictory. Shes going to go the way of her own mind, so independent, and what was stunning to me in this early simulation and something to get me through a different kind of education was a [inaudible] basically they contemplate the history of what shes made of, what shes done, and for me she serves as a model now in that way which is kind of tragic that she is someone who says she was for social justice and at the same time its kind of anachronistic around. So thats why its important today and shes also one of the most Brilliant Minds and hilarious figures in the mid20th century. And again, she reminds me that black women remain in my mind you are at this last week which is kind of stunning and i will say this, ive heard about it where kimberly asked people to stand up for the men who were killed and everyone stood up and when they named the black women who were killed, no one knew the names. So i think Zora Neale Hurston with her voice around her and the feminist impulse in literature people Pay Attention to and it reminds us of the work, so thats my opening sound off. There are so many ways that we can go. Two things im hearing that i would like to follow up on, one, if you can talk about the use of language and what she does that is so unique and rare and also we can think about that contradiction that so fascinating and also sustained our inquiry so lets start with the language and contradictions. Could i just take a few minutes [inaudible] i just was thinking in this wonderful new book that was put out, i love myself and im laughing t from the introductory essay is by alice walker and she opens it with an account that still makes many of us nervous and uncomfortable and she talks about this and this i dont sayt think i would have liked her. The reason they wouldnt have liked her is because of her behavior at an event when she had received the second prize. He walked into the event and yelled the name of the prize and this was just a sign they wouldnt like her but i think that is what is important. She does not than your and what someone else had done in the american letters and for which she has been elevated to the highest status speaking of course of walt whitman who had the self proclaimed. He cleared the air and i think that kirsten was always clearing the air there was a certain kind of masculine bravado and she did it in that way that in the eyes of what the grandmother teaches and beautiful language. So i just want to read this. Theres this moment where you see her achieving so many but just one, shes moving between the poles that are still parallel to those that her parents laid out and that is what was proper for a College Educated at god for, the propriety of expression got the grammar, the syntax, they are all there. She says i can do it and then she sits at the legitimacy and the other way of knowing she carried the normality and then also there are instances she finds her own in other ways. She writes my search for things to me to many strange places and adventures and this is a straightforward sentence of establishing and foreshadowing and it is a test that is past tense that contains and stabilizes and then she says several times it continues a rather ordinary process. Then in the way of storytelling and theres a shifthat there ise personal to the general. It was like sticking a knife between your ribs. Somebody was suddenly close by looking right there. And you feel as you perhaps move toward her too. In the past is now, it is here, it is saying im going to make me a graveyard of my own. It is prison and it is staking out the future. Im, i am, i am, and im going to make. The person with such knowledge is with water that tasted like cherry wine where they break trees. Here you see the past that is beginning to lose the proper boundaries. And were in one of those wayward job places where they lack. And then they set the song as i should be, narrow margins and she sucks them in from the margin opposed pros and what id like to say the left margins of obedience in the right margin of adventure. She makes the language of visible and audible. She put exclamation marks and all in the it is a word that is saying something that is holding the place for the word that is yet to come. And i like to think that that is where you see the writer inventing, making another place. Now we may breathe with her, we may feel the breath, we may assume that it is nursed and singing that song and it may not be. Even if it is, it may not be the hurston we need to make stable, because she is sure as hell does not want to be stable. But but i just wanted to bring that language to us [applause]. She brings everything she has to bear for reading hurston. Just to bounce off of that, couple of things stand out. First of all heres hurston in polk county florida, a woman traveling by herself, a woman who is a black student who is a student at barnyard and at a Migrant Worker camp that she doesnt just show up and say im here to teach you she does not show up to say i am here for an hour, and afternoon, she stays overnight and for days and she with this group of people working with them as they work. She joins the community and i am always humbled by hurstons example of a scholar. Where in the academy we stick and we do work hard, and we do take our work seriously. But this level of commitment is beyond anything that any of us is asked. So here she is going then i could talk about how she has won the language of her education and then the language to which she grew up in the language of the people that she is working with come i want to introduce one of her classmates from howard university. And and this woman lived in Jacksonville Florida where the one of the brothers ran a Grocery Store for many years. This woman remembered dora but she did just want me to know that after howard, she really went backwards with. [inaudible] i knew what she meant was that hurston had started or rather, resume speaking in a way that she had spoken before she got to howard. And for this woman, that that was a sign of her going backwards, for hurston it was a sign of her coming more fully into herself. She reviews this idea that black people spoke the way they did. And by that i mean to be specific, rural southern black people spoke the way they did because they did not know any better, they had not had enough education, you know they spoke the way they did because they thought through their words and their words were in fact beautiful. And this idea of how to i get that on the page, that was not an easy thing. I love the way that event has taken that passage to say that hurston uses that word and she does it in multiple places in her writing, sometimes to help us h