other things? >> first of all thanks for your kind words and for coming and enjoying the the lunch. i think the world is undeniably a much better place that saddam hussein no longer rules iraq. there can be no possible argument about that and certainly i couldn't have foretold the issues that we would run into not just an iraq that the region and that is sort of what the book is about and that is my consideration of the issues are in the region and again i think it was -- and don't believe in cosmic justice but i do believe there is a right and wrong and i do believe it was absolutely right to get rid of saddam hussein. i think the world is a better place, then at least as a better place, the iraqi people are a better place.

[applause] ..

leonard miller is an african-american and president of the nascar racing team. he reveals his obstacles and bouts of racism in the white dominated sport. a free library of philadelphia is the host of this event. it is about one hour. >> we don't have a script here so we just want to have a nice discussion about the book.

i also wanted to mention towards the beginning that "racing while black" has already been nominated as one of the top 12 books to read by auto week, so please be mindful of that. [applause] thank you. i am going to go ahead and direct the first question to you , lenny as i have been calling you for two and a half or three years now i think. let's just start with the ominous question, why did you do this book? >> several reasons. basically to document my father and i, our history that we had in this present effort that started in 1993, developing stock-car drivers for nascar and we found in the industry a lot of black history and efforts were either swept under the rug or forgotten because the few efforts that were out there, i

mean most folks don't take the time to either write a book, just trying to survive on the racetrack. nascar now is a diversity program which in my opinion is a ceremonial program for photo opportunities and give a look that african-americans are interested in this board and everything is okay, so i wrote the book along with you to voice my opinions and our experience, to give a real hard-core perspective what my dad and i went through in the carolinas at the grassroots level in nascar. also, the book, the purpose for the book is to destroy some of the myths that are out there. a lot of the press, national press and some of the grassroots press in auto racing, they claim that blacks don't pay their dues in the sport. they claim that blacks aren't

interested in auto racing as far as competing and that lack drivers do not start out early enough. you are supposed to start out at five years old and a lot of those press releases and articles and history are false. i have seen it from cnn to "usa today" to some of the grassroots magazines that say that blacks start out racing too late and that is why they are not in the sport and that is absolutely not true. >> now, mr. miller, as i like to call you-- you where the owner of a team that entered the black driver into the indianapolis 500. why was it important for you over the years to make a concerted effort to get a black driver into the higher echelons

of racing? >> one correction. we entered bennie scott in the long breach grand prix as one of the top 60 teams in the world. we had a white driver with a black team in the indy 500. in the indy 500 as owners was brig owens for the washington, paul jackson, the largest black contractor in the united states at that time. he was grossing $60 million a year, and richard deutsch, who was a friend of the kennedy family, was part of the effort, and that is how we got to the indy 500. but i have been around in the united states. we were big in the 1920s and 30s, and they always have a desire to go to the indy 500 or

any of the top echelon races in the world, and they kind of left it up to me and said len, we can't go any further. you have to move things along and that is what motivated me to stick with the developing black driver. >> lenny, can you talk a little bit about the importance of the sponsorship and what that means for getting an effort off the ground and for staining it? >> sponsorship, unlike most other sports that don't require sponsorship actually talent in the sport. if you are a baseball player, it is an athletic sport. you don't need money compared to auto racing. auto racing at any level whether it is go carts, drag racing, stock car racing, open wheel racing at the entry levels, it takes tens of thousands of dollars to start out per year

and in some cases hundreds of thousands of dollars. you don't know if you are starting out with a new driver or trying to develop a driver. you don't even know if that driver has any talent until you spend may be over $1 million, so that is the difference between auto racing and other stick and ball sports. so if you don't have a sponsor and you can't participate in the sport, at any level and usually starting out, you start out with your own disposable income and savings, which my father has done over the years and then together we did that, which is how i started in 1993. my father would buy the chassis, 15 or $20,000 then i would pitch in 15 or $20,000 for the engine. and than that is how you start. >> i would like to add something. most of the black drivers past

and present had to do impossible feats. in the audience tonight is the father of one of the most famous black drivers in the world today stand up. [applause] we have been friends for many years. his son is the last entry in this book, and his son has done 319 miles an hour in a quarter-mile, set the record. why do i bring that up? all of the black drivers, it including anton, had to do impossible feats. his son was 200 miles an hour with a motorcycle in a quarter-mile. just like that. your eyeballs go back in your

head. it is tough. he had to switch over, and he had to do 17 passes to go out on the track and he had to get 300 miles an hour. b. white's drivers take 10 years to do that. they develop along so-and-so and so. john griswold is inherent alex maynard and a few of the guys, and doc watson especially on the ovals. we have to do with half the amount of money to do, to get a lot out of the car. and you can't fail. because, because you never have enough money. i just wanted to add that. >> that is a good segue because across the board in the sport of nascar and auto racing in general i find in the process is getting money from corporate sponsors is not easy regardless of skin color.

money isn't necessarily just roaming around so if you would tell us and tell the audience, take us into a board room meeting that you have with a potential sponsor and what those meetings are like, the feedback that you get. >> the typical meeting, i have been to 60 fortune 500 companies in the last 15 years for sponsorship, and we would research, my father and dye it and every company is different. they sell different products to different people. they sell them in a different way so we would do research on a company, and then pitch the company, not a racing platform, to help them sell their products and services. included and that he would always include auto racing demographics, who comes to the racetrack, what age, racial makeup, gender, how many people in the stands, television coverage is any. is it national, international,

regional? and most marketing departments and companies, they are trying to separate their product to kind of cut through the clutter if you will, to stand out. so having african-american drivers in auto racing which is 99.9% white, you would have, you would achieve that goal by having some added value and having a driver that stands out from a marketing perspective. so we go into the meeting, all the corporate executives would agree wholeheartedly on that point that i just described. then they would hem and haw and say well, we really can't commit sometimes they would lie and say their budgets are expended, and then in most cases, 90% of the time they would say since you guys are african-american, this is a diversity project.

it is not marketing, it is not advertising. >> what is the dollar value in those? >> diversity is a handout. it is geared up for nonprofit. go to black functions for photo ops to make the company look good in the public. a white team will go in with the same proposal, without even the added value, just a traditional team and they are never escorted to a nonprofit wing of the company. that has been the dilemma for us , for the whole time since the beginning of the book in 93 and even back to the 70s. >> i want to add a couple of things to lenny's comments. when it comes to marketing in major corporations, black money is lumped into one pot.

so, if the corporation has $500,000 available, they pick what a black organization the money goes to sew up the naacp gets 100,000, the urban league gets 100,000, reverend jeffrey jackson make sure he gets 2000-- 200,000 then reverend sharpton gets 100,000, we get nothing. it is lumped in together. as far as the white community is concerned, auto racers go to the auto racing budget, which is another division. for example, miller here in auto racing used to put in $120 million a year. coca-cola puts and 80 million dollars a year. you have budweiser who puts in $100 million a year. pets boys-- pep boys many years

put in a lot of money. pep boys in philadelphia. the black community made pep boys in the 70s and the 80's. pep boys was kept in business by the black community. we went into pep boys. pep boys says, we have your business. we are trying to get white business and then money will go into another corporation and they say we have to reinforce our marketing with the white community of america so we don't have enough money to help the blacks. qc, you are caught in both ways. we also, even if we all love dr. martin luther king, we love him to death than to make a long story short we even get hit with that. we gave $1 million to the martin luther king statue, therefore we have no more money to put into

marketing with the black racing team. you hear the national publishers association talking about why cutting general motors. well, that is good and that is bad, but ford motor company for example has never given any decent money into the black racing community since the 60s not since the 60s, and they say okay if we give the urban league money, you don't get the money. then they say brown doesn't get any money. that is a different budget. these are big hidden budgets in america and right now, just like in nascar for example, you can have a chief mechanic, eighth grader 12th grade education and never hardly went to

vocational school but get $500,000 salary, they salary, 500,000. with bonuses it is 800,000 take-home pay a year. all these things are going on behind the scenes, and we are lumped. like tiger woods with buick for example. tiger woods was getting $26 million a year. you say that is that for the blacks. tiger woods gets 26 billion everybody else is out. that isn't the way it should work. >> speaking of behind-the-scenes, i wanted to ask you lenny to talk a little bit about the stereotype of nascar being, as you said, 99% white, not just white but southern in its fan base, working class and its fan base. there are some difficulties there. can you tell the audience and i, take us a little bit into what

the pit areas are like, what the grandstands are like at a track like concorde we had nascar. >> i mean nascar is primarily southern but it is very blue-collar, working class crowd most blacks, like my father and i, have invited plenty of people to the racetrack and they are very uncomfortable sitting in the stands and in the pits. there are still rebel flags out at some of these racetracks. it is very southern. it is almost like going back in time in some cases, which we describe in the book. until there is about five or 10, i don't know what that number is, but multiple black drivers in the circuit, not just one token or one woman but several black drivers before blacks would even consider coming to the racetrack. >> i would like to add something to that. when the daytona 500, the black

athlete has to stick together in breaking into any sport. we can go back to the harlem globetrotters or what they did against george mike in and the lakers and so on, but to win the daytona 500, this would read the scenario. one black driver like jackie robinson. you need another black driver on the grid like terrell owens. you need another black driver, the third one would be-- and the fourth one would be chief justice clarence thomas. [laughter] he will try to block or wreck the other four. [laughter] but that is what we are going to need. you need those four. you need that scenario, and a black driver in the daytona 500. >> on the clarence thomas notes, the nascar, since they are confused on how to go about

getting black drivers in the sport, they will invite prominent black figures to come to their racetrack to either drive the pace cars, sing the national anthem, just be seen on the camera so they will fly in clarence thomas has been to a nascar race maybe eight, 10 years ago. they will fly in colin powell. then they politicize the sport. they flew in a thing george bush and condoleezza rice at least once if not twice when they were in office and they were put on television. so if you are from a business standpoint, if you are trying to get black fans in 90% of the black votes are democrats, why would you fly in george bush and condoleezza rice? you are not going to get the fans. in 90% of blacks have no respect for clarence thomas. maybe even 98%, so why would you have clarence thomas come to the

race track? and then, most people, i mean blacks are sophisticated. if you see michael jordan bursting out of some kind of paper wall. i think the all-star race at the end of may, you know he is paid for his being invited because you never see him at the racetrack ever again. it is ceremonial and it is trying to pull the wool over potential black fans, but nascar, they think that is the right way to go about it. but today, they don't have a significant number of black fans. >> let's stay on that subject, because nascar over the years has launched different programs that have been presented to the public s. diversity programs. can you talk about the effectiveness of programs like drive for diversity?

>> like i stated earlier, it is photo opportunities. if you can put kids in pictures, it is hard to sit up here on the stage or in the press to attack kids. nascar, they know that. they are not going to say, we are trying. it is going to take 10, 20, 50 years to develop a driver. we have to get hundreds of kids out here and a certain percentage of them will be interested. that it is strictly for photo ops and that looks contrived too because you can't attack the kids. it is almost like world war ii, geneva convention told allied forces you can't bomb the churches and cathedrals that have been around for hundreds of years. but then, the allied forces are outside the cathedral and the germans are shooting through the windows but you can't shoot back because you can't destroy the cathedral. that is the kind of tactics that i see that that presents.

>> it is touched on in the book in pretty great detail. can you talk about the hostility that you have experienced again in the grandstands but also you talk about the hostility that a driver like chris woods, a black driver who is part of the program and carolina, talk about the hostility. >> there is a lot, especially specially when you show up for the first season, a black driver or a black team is looked at as a threat, that you are coming into the sport and this is the only sport that is left for white people and now we are going to lose this. so what happens is the crash damage, which gets in the sponsorship budgets, increases about 30% or 50% for a black driver because they are trying to go out of the way and put you into the wall and wreck your equipment. to get around that, you have to be a good racer but you need more budget to satisfy that and

maybe two cars so while you are trying to repair the wrecked car in five nights to get ready for the next weekend, you have another car to go out and raise. so, the black driver has a tough way to go. totally isolated on the racetrack and they are trying to wreck you. we described in the book with chris woods in the early '90s, even if the car is out of contention, a lap down, five laps down and they see the black driver coming around in their mirrors, they will try to knife him into the wall and just put him out of contention. >> could you talk a little bit lanny about the character in the book named david miller, no relation. talk about him and talk about how he plays into the stereotype of the fan base. >> david miller is a southerner from north carolina from the concorde area and he was loyal to us for about eight years.

from 1994 into 2001. he saw, when we arrived in town he saw that what we were trying to do, he believed in our effort. he actually stopped racing and helped us as a chief mechanic for that eight year period and what was good about that, he was part of the system so he would tell my father and i went people were saying behind our backs, anything from calling you names, threats. we have been threatened and tools taken out of our race shop and then david miller would tell us about that and we would repair for that to prevent all of those types of episodes. >> and we would get the tools backed. >> since my father and i, we are real racers. we talk to everyone to sort out who were the good people, who were the bad people and then we would get allies in racing, where in the past nascar would bring in a magic johnson or

dr. j. and they thought they could go out and just race almost like driving down the highway, i-95 and didn't realize how technical it is an detailed and all the hard work. they never talked to any of the real racers because they have barely came to the track. again, it was ceremonial. >> can you take us up to the present day, just a few weeks ago we addressed a group of motorsports journalist up the road in trevose, pennsylvania. can you talk about behind-the-scenes what happened there? >> on january 16 of this year, 2010, you, lenny and myself got hit with the 1950s racial tactics by executive of nascar. we were scheduled to speak at

the eastern motor press association at trevose, pennsylvania at the radisson hotel, which is up here at the end of the roosevelt boulevard. and the president got us at 8:00 in the morning as we came in, and he said that the nascar executive had called tuesday and told him that neither one of those miller's, that they are going to withdraw sponsorship to the association. and, that was like stunning. this was 2010, and this is going back to pre-civil rights era ways of doing things. that really, that really took me back to some things i could talk

all night about. but, the president led lenny speak and he was tired of being the president so he stepped down as the president of the eastern motor press association. he is a fine fellow, and he stood up and met the roll call. so, that was 2010. you don't have that in the nfl. you don't have that in tennis. you don't have that in the other sports. d. been in polo. even in polo you can go in with the real bluebloods of the world and still get some respect. but that is low in this day and time. >> so far tonight we have just scratched the surface on all of the challenges that both of you guys have faced over the years. what inspires you to keep going?

>> i am in a unique situation, as my father, the black american racers in the 70s with bennie scott is the driver, like my father said earlier, they competed in the top 60 teams in the world against al unser, mario andretti and jody schecter and formed the 5000 cars at the long beach grand prix and 75, watkins glen riverside and super bee racing all of the road courses in the u.s.. my father even sent a driver in the 70s over to england to be developed in formula for. road racing is 10 times more sophisticated at every level from the technical level cultural level and it is a global sport and it is much more difficult to drive a road racer than a stock-car. so if i see success as a kid at those levels, it is like going

into outer space. i didn't see an impossible to compete in nascar with a stock-car zen actually win at any level including the top level. so that inspiration keeps me going. i know it is down to the corporate sponsorship and the resources and just like my father mentioned, antron brown has the resources in drag racing so went and he is black and he dominates. >> yes, i could sit here and speak to you gentlemen for hours about all the experiences you have been through in the struggles and the triumphs too should add. i hope you all to get a chance to read the book because there are triumphs indeed in the book. right now i want to make sure our audience gets involved. please raise your hand if you have a question and if you have a question, just allow the microphone to reach you first before you ask. and don't be shy. this gentleman right here.

>> to the miller brothers, because i have known the father and the son and i love them to death. even one time went tubing and 10 vermont. it is really painful to hear them have to repeat these stories because the two of them and i have talked so many times. we watched -- back walter peyton he had no talented drivers that they wanted to use his name to make us feel good in our communities. they had teams that were talented, couldn't attract sponsors. we are still talking 2010. they are still not getting sponsors. what are we going to do about this? >> well, that is the dilemma. i mean, with auto racing you

have to go to a corporation to get the support. it is not like the nfl where you are dealing with the sanctioning body that can talk to a team owner or you come to the school system, where if you are a great college basketball player you probably have a chance at the nba if you were in that top 1%. auto racing is family oriented. i don't even think the best drivers are competing. the drivers that are competing are the ones that have the resources or a family name. if you go to mcdonald's, mcdonald's is mcdonald's. that is a separate corporation so you can't just throw them into the same pot as a budweiser. because they are all individual companies with individual products so you run into the same dilemma at all of these companies were they just want to escort you to diversity and you just can't get enough resources to compete. >> three ways for a black

athlete to progress in america now in the motorsports especially, there is only three ways. one is a white angel. number two is the boycott and number three is superhuman strength. they are the three. if you remember, jackie robinson had branch rickey. branch rickey's best friend deserted him and never spoke to him for the rest of his life. here, we don't have a white angel in nascar. nascar is trying to stop us from speaking. it is like pre-civil rights days. it is hard now to boycotts because the black community is split. but, in being split, we can't get enough momentum to go

after-- for example, when nextel sponsored nascar, it was like $70 million a year, 70 million. if you remember, nextel started the black community in the construction community where the two communities kept nextel going. then they merged into sprint. when they merged into this brand than a whole new culture comes up. really, in that area, in certain corporations should not, we should not buy the products. you don't need to be out demonstrating. just don't buy the products. just don't buy the products. superhuman strength in racing does not work. i remember neighbors of serena and venus williams, randy thomas which some people here,

neighbors who said that venus and serena at 11 years old, the court had glass on it and it cracked. when you hit the ball the ball would spin and they have to learn to keep that ball in play all the time. you need a 100,000-dollar race card to get started and you can't show your skills because no one will give you the money to do it. they are the three ways. >> this gentleman right here. >> very interesting listening to you all. i have a larger question and this is 2010. and, you know i look at the situation with racing funds in trying to do this, but there is a larger question here. this is 2010. african-americans in this country have an annual

disposable income of over 700 lien dollars annually. when are we going to step up to the plate and get it? because everybody knows the old saying, the old southern expression, money talks and you know what walks. okay, we have this in, and we have this thrust but we are fighting amongst one another. and, i don't care how prejudiced a person is or whatever, is one equalizer in this country because it is a capitalistic society and that is the green dollar. until we step up to the plate and fend for ourselves to a large degree, a lot of this is going to just continue. i would like your opinion on some of this. >> an interesting scenario, we

had in baltimore, there was a black owned oil company. he had contracts with fedex, csx railroad and a few other companies, so he sponsored at the time we had a female driver, a white female driver. he started out to sponsor us and started sending us checks, $25,000, 50,000. he was getting work contracts and he wanted to spend millions. on your point is to be self-contained and have an african-american sponsor a team and take care of herself. he was so proud that he could do that, that he showed photos to some of his contractors and said hey, i have a nascar team. we are going to have a marketing program and all of a sudden, within six months he lost all the contracts. they said, the guys-- these guys are going to come in,

self-contained, they are powerful. he is feeding money into a nascar team to help promote his oil company, which is a traditional way to present an oil company or market in oil company and then he went out of business. because he needed the contracts from these other fortune 500 companies and some of them were immunized cars and some were not that they were fans of nascar and understood it and took offense and were threatened that he sponsored our team, so that went away. >> another side of the issue, and this is a real pointed story and about four years old. a lot of the washington black players have these tuner cars, have these custom cars and these suvs that they put in at 80,000, $100,000.

in the washington d.c. area of the best speed shop is a black owned speed shop. it is the best. not the second-best. it is the best. why is it the best? he had all the machinery that you can build any kind of motor. so some of the folks like our type folks that said go over to his shop and see if he will do the motors for you. so he quoted the motors for these washington, i am talking about five players. i'm not talking about one player. he quoted a voter, $14,200. to go back to the, or the coach or who was involved, but they said don't go over there to the black guy. blacks don't know so-and-so. so he goes to the white speed shop, down the road that is a friend of the black owned, and

the white speed shop owner sold them the motor for $17,500. subcontracted the whole motor for 14,200. the five black players were running around pounding their chests in washington d.c.. i did not go to that man. and he was hurt. he was totally hurt. this is the type of thing that we can't get into black self patriot but we can get into a lot of those stories. we are almost alone out here. >> there is always a solution to the problem, so to try to get around what we just described, we are pushed out into international waters. i would say we had to get a company from china, india, england, south america and bring them into the u.s. because if

they do business in the u.s. or maybe they want to increase their business in the u.s. and offer auto racing as a platform for that and some of these other foreign countries, they don't have the same prejudices that the u.s. has because they are older countries and they have been through all of that. that is what i say. we have looked at drivers in south africa and even have pinpointed some companies outside the u.s.. >> this gentleman right here. [inaudible] >> he is in the book. both books. speak to things. one, what did it take to win championships in south carolina?

>> the track championship was in manassas, virginia. that was in 2005 with franklin butler. >> secondly, i would like to hear a few remarks about benny's god to raise driver who died last year and how viceroy cigarette sponsored the team and were able to compete on a national level? >> the track championship in 2005, we won the track championship with a white driver, franklin butler and franklin butler, and he had a brother, they were winning drivers at the late-model level and franklin butler even was very competitive and had wins at higher levels. that brings up the point where even some light drivers in nascar, they are pushed out of the sport because they don't have the money to compete because again it is not like

basketball or football. franklin brother and his brother brandon butler were one of those drivers. when you are trying to develop a black driver from scratch you have to do it in steps. you can't go out like a white team and just take the bus driver and put them in the car and get instant results were get results in the first or second season. franklin butler was an overqualified driver for that level of racing, and that is what some of the top teams, they just get the best driver, the best of everything in resources and go out there and probably will be in the top 10 or top three. then we bought the best mechanic for that level of racing, hermann gand, and a lot of crews at that level were volunteer crews so we started out paying, we offered some money and there were times we didn't have money and they went strictly volunteer. we offered winnings, and they have never even been treated

that way and a business manner at that level of racing because again, my father started out on the world stage and we are now down to grassroots level applying ibm and coca-cola principles in the grassroots level of racing, so we put all of those elements together and franklin butler, as a white driver, he didn't get crashed as much as a black driver. he was so good, he was always one, two or three in the race and he avoided most of the crashes. we actually lived in 2005 off of the raceways, we agreed to put most of the winnings back into the team. that is how we won the championships in 2005. we sent that information down to nascar as the first black owners to win a championship and then never heard from them. we are not in a diversity program and we can't be controlled. what if that was a diversity

driver and their diversity program that would have made the front page of the u.s. today but what has made the nascar publications and some of the grassroots publications. >> lenny scott was a driver that fit into the third category that i mentioned a while ago that his superhuman. benny's god was studying on a ph.d.. he could mold fiberglass panels. he could develop fiberglass. he could build motors. the new rear ends. he knew all about the dynamics, wind channels. he was like a genie in a bottle. and he could get in and drive the car. even bennie, we never could get enough practice.

we had to go 200 miles an hour, and he still didn't get the practice that the other drivers god because we never-- in other words we are running on $1 million we should be running on $2 million but we still competed with the top teams in the world, and we never even to this day, all the days of racing, some of the fellows like alex, kenny wright, ron that have been with us over the years, we have never put on the trailer for first-time. we have never been put on the trail. stock car racing we have never, we have always qualified for every race. i don't care who you are talking about. somehow, that looked like a threat. they like this running in the back and getting some watermelon or something on the pitstop. excuse me.

[laughter] >> sure, go ahead. >> i have a few questions. one is, how do you plan or are there plans to train young people in stock car racing, one question. second question, why this sport? why the pushback against people of color in race car driving, and also who regulates this sport? >> i know nascar is a privately owned company. again it is not like the nba, nfl or major league baseball where you have commissioners and boards and bylaws. they have those things but it is controlled by one family.

so there is not really any regulation. and, to train a black driver, you really have to come up with a father and son team or family oriented effort to get started and a lot of times we don't have that. it is rare. so again, you take antron brown and his dad, they are rare but that is what it takes to get to the top. so that is a problem. then you have to have disposable income to start out on their own whether it is go cards or andy level drag racing team or effort. you have to have that disposable income and that is where we are lacking. >> the other thing i would like to add, out of the 14 black drivers that we developed, it then have no father. 10 out of 14, and that and there

were other issues involved. >> one more.. you have mark davis out there on the circuit now who does not have any sponsors. he started out with joe gibbs, gibbs racing, the ex-former coach of the. i don't know what the details are. but the father who just passed, he put all of his disposable income into his son. went through his 401(k), depleted that, remortgage the home. there are things you have to do, but mark davis hit 18, 19 years old and then you have to make a decision if you are not moving up the ladder, most race car drivers don't have a college degree. it is a blue-collar sport. they are making a living on racing if they can get a break. as an african-american you are at a crossroads when you are a

driver in your son hits 18, do you want to be blue-collar or professional? if you are going to be blue-collar, you have to forgo college education and drive maybe another 10 years or until you are 28 or 12 years until you are almost 30 and not have a college education are you have to cope back off and go to college. that is happened to a lot of african-american drivers because you can't see the future. it is not guaranteed. i better go to college and get a professional degree so at least i can make a living because they may not be able to make a living in driving race cars full time. >> this gentleman here. >> hi everybody. glad to see everybody here. i am doc watson. [applause] i love you guys here. i don't need a microphone. i love you guys here but i've got to take care of something.

i am getting tired of people writing stuff saying i need to keep my word. here you go, len. i want to make sure everybody sees me give this to you. [laughter] i am going to explain it to you for a minute but i'm not going to ask questions. it is in the book. get the book. [laughter] >> i am a little different. different. i am seeing my closest friend, the professor i call him, is very diplomatic. i ain't going to pull no punches. how many people have read roots? raise your hand. how many people in this room voted for our president? somebody raised their hand. i have my shirt on. do you see what it says?

do you see what it says? obama. i have been on my deathbed for the past three years and i don't want to get too personal about personal life. why do you keep moving like this? mr. miller did not know-- i had a four-way bypass. i had stage iii renal failure, liver now and some other items and i prayed every morning when i woke up that might be touch the ground. i didn't have any dirt on my face and i'm not crying. when i do cry, because they never usually cry, i was a boxer chu. when i do cry i cry about the kids on drugs or we are killing each other. it really aggravates me. besides that, the only thing i

am angry about is nascar. proctor & gamble, post. it is a shame when you have a dream and you have a gift, and you are good at it and we have people who want to stop us. it is a shame how good this man is. i love him to death. i love him because he has been straightforward. i don't talk to everybody, do i? i am very proud that i stayed to myself. i say to myself and don't get offended when i say things. i said i would never work for a white man and guess what? i am 39 years old and i have never had a job in my life. never. i've built and created my own because of people like this.

so you have to understand racism number one and you have to understand what we are going through and why we went through it. who do we blame? the politics? to me, nascar is the organized al capone. to me, nascar-- nascar is the same way. they don't give a darn about us. one of our friends just lost his license. his son came in third over in africa. mr. davis. he spent every dime to get his child to a certain level. this kid is good. you put him in the same exact car with jeff gordon, he will what-- do i put up leap back in there? he will welcome their buts.

i have never seen nothing like this. i have never seen the stuff i have seen. you can't do racing by yourself. >> you have got one more minute. >> the worst thing is us, because we let it happen. we can only do so much. people, you have to get this book. the same way we read roots, you have to get this book. you must read this book and after you read this book, you must get on the internet, tell your cousins, your nephews and everybody. you need to start e-mailing the sponsors. you need to start e-mailing nascar. i came up with with-- i was a driver at first. this is ridiculous. >> for your own information, he can get, he used to get 180 miles an hour.

[applause] >> by the book, read it, get on the internet and send your e-mails. how much time have i got? 10 seconds? how many of those they got involved with the middleman march, raise your hands. how about the women, the middle women march? if we don't take that step, it is never going to happen. we just spend all the money we had. it will not happen. i did not expect to see-- in the white house. thank god. i am still here. we have to help and tried to get the sponsors to change, get nascar to change and stop buying off, like my third cousin, distant cousin, reverend jesse jackson. i hate to say it. our black leaders herds us the

most. do you know why? i will give you $25,000 to give me a sponsor and if i give 150 i get a half a million. these are the things that are hurting us, our own selves. where black readers. he is a cousin of mine. we have to get involved invoice, you know how we vote? we voted this time and we won. you have to get out there and send them e-mails. you must read the book so you understand what these two gentlemen went through because this is a legend right here. this man right here. i call him the professor. i called him last night and said if it wasn't for you i would not be coming but thank you guys very much. you have done a good job and i'm very proud of you. [applause] >> unfortunately we are just about out of time. that is not a problem because we are going to move this discussion into the lobby where we will be signing books and

those of you who haven't already purchased the book and would like to purchase the book will be able to do so. i would like to thank leonard miller, the author of "racing while black." [applause] and i want to thank leonard miller who among all of the other accolades we have mentioned tonight is also an author in his own right, who wrote the book silent under, which would you call that raising while black part one? [laughter] >> yes, yes. >> very good. thank you. [applause] >> a gentleman had a question. >> triple blowing, triple seven. [inaudible] >> i will talk to you in a few minutes. i want to thank philadelphia free library, our host and i want to thank you in the

audience. give yourselves a round of applause. [applause] and one more time, raising while black. how an african-americans dr. team made its mark on nascar. thanks again. [applause] >> leonard miller is president of miller racing group and a second generation auto racing team owner. he is also a commercial airline pilot. his father, leonard w. miller entered a team in the indianapolis 500 back in 1972 and is in the black athletes hall of fame for achievement in motor racing. pander simon is a writer and editor who is covered music sports and pop culture. to find out more, visit seven stories.com.