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the latest in nonfiction books and authors. funding for c-span2 comes from these television companies and more, including charter communications. charter is proud to be recognized as one is the best internet providers. we are just getting started. building 100,000 miles of new infrastructure to reach those who need it most. charter communications along with these television companies support c-span2 as a public service. good evening, everyone. and welcome to politics and prose. i am brad graham, co-owner of the bookstore. i am very pleased to be hosting professor, author and former journalist, samuel freedman. he is here to discuss his new book into the bright sunshine. young hubert humphrey and the fight for civil rights. and formally reported at the

columns for the new york times. as reported in the 1980s he worked in the culture section of the times. and then in the mid-2000 wrote papers on education column. and then for 10 years he was responsible for the on religion column. he is also written nine previous books on a wide range of topics from high school teaching to american jury to college football to his mother's own story. in his new book, sam delves into the early life of hubert humphrey, who spent 23 years in the u.s. senate representing minnesota and four years as lyndon johnson's vice president. he is largely remembered mifor losing to richard nixon in the 1968 presidential campaign. and again to george mcgovern for the democratic presidential nomination in 1972.

humphrey was disparaged from having dutifully supported johnson's conduct of the vietnam war. and though once the nation's preeminent liberal politician, humphrey came to be regarded but sam tells another story arguing that humphrey actually left quite a consequence a legacy earlier in his political career as something of a beacon for genuine democracy. as mayor of minneapolis, humphrey pushed through reforms to end anti- black and other mechanisms of discrimination and he made some progress in dismantling present just in the city's police department. and then at the 1948 democratic national convention, 75 years ago, this month, humphrey

bolted into national prominences when he delivered a powerful speech advocating a robust civil rights plan for the democratic party's platform. this was a time of they dominated the party but humphrey's arguments with enough delegates to win a majority. and in so doing, humphrey stands as a singular figure in the democratic party move away from its white supremacist southern roots towards the cause of equality and racial equality. sam has said his intention in writing that humphrey was to place them in the context of his times. a good part does detail the shocking extent of racial prejudice and anti- semitism in 1940s in minneapolis and within the

democratic party. such history, of course, has particular residence today a meg all the attention being paid to ongoing racial injustice and violence in this country. with minneapolis itself, once again, a focus and in the wake of the murder of george floyd and federal and state investigations that have faulted the city police pours racial bias. reviews of sam's book have been positive. the wall street journal called a powerful and captivating read . the new york times said the book is superbly written tale of moral and political courage and present-day readers who pride themselves in similarly dark times. in conversation with sam will be julia swag. a couple years ago came out with a best- selling biography of another prominent political figure, lady bird johnson. there is a documentary coming

out this fall based on the book. juliet's other books have dealt with american foreign-policy. she is a crater host and executive producer of the podcast in plain sight. please join me in welcoming sam freeman and julia. >> [ applause ] >> hello, everyone. i am pleased to be here with you tonight protonic, braddock, for stealing the father of all of my notes here in your introduction. i think that sam's book is so rich that we have lots to talk about especially with your participation. i know that many of you were sam's students. i am sure that i will try to call on you if you stick the hand up really high. we will talk about 25 or 30 minutes before we open it up to questions from the audience. let me say that brad skipped over something.

he mentioned sam's nine other books. that is nine other books. this is a very prolific writer and reporter, who has written about contemporary american life in so many different facets. i am really honored to have spent the last three weeks, in the mornings, reading your books, sam. congratulations for bringing the story to life a story that is full of surprises. i usually or we often ask an offer what was the biggest surprise to you. i want to flip that before i handth the mic over to you and o tell you it was the most surprising to me. that is something we just heard at the very end of the introduction, which is the portrait of minneapolis. the minneapolis story that sam brings out is one that i think, for those that do not know the city and i certainly don't

really kind of ruptures i'll but of mythologies about the place. and the extent of the racism and anti-semitism in midcentury minneapolis, really just, i found, shocking, given that it is a northern city. northern cities are not aloof to this kind of phenomenon. that was perhaps my biggest surprise about this book. the book features fascist, liberals, moderates and conservatives. and many biographies about a dozen other individuals who make hubert humphrey, hubert humphrey. let me say congratulations, sam. i will ask you the basic question, how do you come to write the story? >> i would be happy to answer that question. first, i want to indulge in two pleasures and one sacred obligation. one, be in a store like this. i've been in politics and prose

for three of my other books over the years. one thing i know independent stores like this are lifeblood for writers like me. even if you do not buy my book, bite julia's or someone else's. all authors need this sort of forage. i was given a wish list by politics and prose by brad and his team of whom i would like to have a conversation partner. without a doubt, i wanted it to be julia. amazing work about lady bird johnson. respect lee titled, in plain sight and hiding in plain sight. the book is extraordinary. re the podcast, i have listened to twice. they have completely blow me away and make you revisit this figure. if you thought lady bird johnson was about planting bluebells on the exit ramp, you are in for discovery. it is a great honor.

>> thank you. >> and then the sacred obligation. one of my friends in writing, who i met by being -- one of the books was a longtime washingtonian name nick cott. great author, and superb writer on the subject of civil rights. to his book, judgment days, about the alliance -- rough as it sometimes will was between lbj and martin luther king in talking tonight, i would like to think of nick and what an extra in a writer and friend he was. now onto the book. part of it was that i had been looking for a number years for some book to do in the period right after the end of world war ii. i thought there was this complacent view that we go from the day to everyone is in town going there on there is two problems with that conventional wisdom.

one is that the '50s had a lot of turbulence with the productive and the unproductive kind where there is the red scare or the civil rights movement, as a lot of us remember with the montgomery bus boycott and brown versus the board of education. and even if you had a more fo clear view of the '50s, you took account of all the missing years. had we get from bj date to january 1st of 1950? i never found the subject for that time period. a lot of my books have come back to race and civil rights as their narrative center and their topical center. those thoughts have been resting in and agitating the back of my brain for a long time. and then i heard a good friend of my wife's and mine do a book top about one of his books about lbj putting into the great society legislation. my wife, chris, who lived in minnesota for many years, asked about humphrey.

in answering that question, julia mentioned the unappreciated landmark of the civil right speech at the 1948 democratic convention. the proverbial light bulb went on for me. i knew that speech but there is some julia mentioning it that made me think afterwards, that is the book. prying to be an ethical guy, the next morning i emailed and said the lightbulb went off but if you will do this book, i would not touch it. he said i am busy writing about newt gingrich, go ahead. i went ahead. >> the result is a tremendous and very prestigious act of research and writing. those of you who know his writing know that he has an incredible turn of phrase on every page. it is a beautiful piece of writing as well. do how long did you spend on the research side of this book? >> i have spent a total of eight and half years on the

book. because of the pandemic, i would have wanted to be done about 90% of my research before spending roughly a year or year and a half of writing. the major archive with the humphrey papers were shut down for several years. i had to work around that. actually, when i started writing, which was in july of 2021, at that point, i was six years into my research. i wrote the first few chapters straight through because i tend to research chronologically. as i got past the midway point, i would have to stop with each chapter and go back and fill the holes that i never been able to feel -- fell while the main archive and sources were inaccessible to me. the last eight or nine months of producing the book were a mixture of research and writing. >> i will press this point and little more having spent about

eight years on the lady bird book too. are you saying that you generally, i hear that you said you had to backfill with research once you have more access to the material. otherwise, you are able to research straight through and stop and then right to the end. >> that is the way i try to do it every author has their own approach and i never get between anybody on their own methodology. the way i like to work is i need to fill that i have a critical mass of material before i can be even get into conflict writing about. i am worried about making ill- informed choices if i'm writing before have the critical mass. everyone has their own approach. i tend to be some new maps out a book in detail. i cannot do that if i do not have most of my material at hand. in this case, it was going chapter by chapter. i am a person that will make a 20,000 outline for 50,000 per

chapter. >> as my english teacher mother would say, it rises up after that. it is not right itself but it gives you the freedom of composing. that is the difference. where is the antidote". i forgot to make the footnote. i find that it liberates me to have the blueprint laid out ahead of me. i compared -- i'm not comparing myself to john coltrane but when coltrane would place almost people would think that he would came up with them on the spur of the moment. i read reading accounts of how much he practiced all of the time secondly, the great t engineer tom dowd talk about how coltrane would get to the studio early on in the session. he would be trying out versions of his solo in the studio before the recording started. a

there was still the brilliance of his improvisation. he had the sense of where he wanted to go. david mariner is a great washingtonian. in his book about vince lombardi talks about this idea about freedom with indiscipline. i subscribe to that as a way of writing. >> maybe we will get to come back to the writing. a busy, i am a writer and this is what i am very interested in. you teach a leisure class on book writing. let us get into the substance i hope we can come back. i mentioned that there are many characters other than it hubert humphrey who fleshed out young hubert for us. which character do you want talk about burst? i have five or six renown. >> your choice. >> let's talk about -- some of you will note each of these, maybe not all human know all of them. let us talk about cecil newman. >> cecil newman was humphrey's

tutor on racism in america. let me back up by saying that what i started this book, i made three promises to myself. this will not be a cradle to grave door stopper. this will not be a great man or woman in history book. this will be an -- not be a white savior narrative. we were developing the people around humphrey. cecil newman is first but he was a former pullman porter who started work as a black journalist in minneapolis while also working the trains. he would bring his typewriter on the train. when they get to the end of the line, sometimes it was fargo and seattle. he would then go to y the local carnegie library and type up his column for the week and send it back by airmail to the newspaper he was working for. cecil newman had this lonely role. he was not the only civil rights activist but there are very few.

you can watch the rest on the website c-span.org. we leave it to take you bye to capitol hill for a hearing on traumatic brain injuries in the u.s. military. you're watching live coverage of the senate armed services company hearing on c-span3 .