>> congratulations. >> thank you so much. >> thank you for the wonderful interview. ..

i'm going to do a brief introduction for both of them and then ask questions and i will leave time at the end so people can ask questions. separately about 3:30 we will stop and you can ask questions. in the introduction to the grace of silence a memoir, michelle norris writes should begin the project in 2009 because she became convinced an unprecedented robust conversation about race was taking place across the country in the week of barack obama's historic presidential campaign to office. from this project, secrets from her father's shooting by the birmingham police less than two weeks after his discharge from service in world war ii to her

grandmother's pancake mix as an itinerant michele. she traveled to explore things left unsaid by her family when she was growing up. she was chosen as a journalist of the year in 2009 by the national association of black journalists and is the co-owner of a dupont, the award for the project in the 2008 vote. she's the host of national public radio's all things considered and has appeared on meet the press, charlie rose and the chris matthews show. and has written for among other publications, "the washington post," "the chicago tribune" and "the los angeles times." the warmth of other sons is to the surprise when author isabel wilkerson's first book that chronicles the watershed event in american history, the migration of african-americans from the south to the north and west in 1950 to 1970 through the stories of three people and their families. strong on archival materials and

conducting more than 1,200 interviews "warmth of other sons" trees is the difficult beginnings in the south to the decision to leave for hope of a better life in chicago, harlem and los angeles. their stories parallel the experience of immigrants who came to america and chronicles the major shift in american life in all parts of the country. wilkerson won the pulitzer prize for writing in her book -- to work in the chicago bureau chief of "the new york times" in 1994 became her the first black woman in the history of american journalism to win a pulitzer prize and the first african-american to win for individual reporting. she's terrific professor of journalism and director of american nonfiction and boston university and i'm going to start by asking some questions. the first question i would ask is how each of you can to work on the project, how you discovered your project.

>> i've been working on the book as long as i've been alive because a girl of is the daughter who were guests great migration has been michele, and the majority of african-americans you might never meet in the north and midwest and the west and i grew up around people who had migrated from georgia, the carolinas, virginia, washington, d.c., a girl up with the music, the language, the food and no one ever talked about being a great migration. no one said i am someone who came up in the great migration was everywhere, and i leader as a journalist in interviewing people all over the country became more aware of huge it was because wherever you went with her in los angeles or in chicago were detroit they were always representative of the south anywhere you went and they all came together for me and i wondered why was there no raft for this huge migration which had gone on most of 20th

century and that is what i set out to do, not being a novelist i wrote of nonfiction so it is 15 years of interviewing, 1200 people. 15 years. [laughter] if this book were human being it would be in a high school and dating. [laughter] that's how long it took. and i had the chance to meet out of that 1200, three amazing protagonists whose stories tell the three major strings of migration. i am part of the east coast stream and aunt michele as partf the central dream from alabama to tennessee up to the midwest, and that is the reason why i

process because it is an accidental it's not the book i set out to right. i actually intended to write a book that looked at how americans talk and think about race in the wake of the erection of barack obama. i wanted to write a book of essays would principally about other people, however people talk and think, and i tried to listen to what the people on board at the national public radio the had done in pennsylvania with a group of diverse voters. the frequency to try to pick out the hidden conversation in lots of different places all across the country i started to pick up static on the dial in my own family and he started to hear things in my family that i never heard before. but i think happened is older people in the week of the e

election of barack obama source exhaled. this is all something they never see in their lifetime. you talk about the warmth of other sons to read to dream and of color be sent to the white house would be like reaching out and trying to touch the son, and when that happened the tried to exhale and these stories started to come out and i realize the people i thought i knew so well had lost parts of their history purposefully to make sure they could move forward to protect themselves fully realized it was mainly to protect me come to protect resistors, to protect my cousins. they stopped talking about very painful things and dignities, mistreatment and my father's case violence because they wanted our path forward to be clear. >> why did your own family leave

the south for the north? >> it's a very good question. that is one of the reasons i set out to do the book because my parents never talked about it as with michele. this generation was in some ways a misunderstood segment of a greater generation. the growth under incredible -- the work in many ways locked in a caste system and the defection from the caste system which was of the pebble and could not last and also ended violently for the civil rights movement but ultimately, these people were needed to be -- i felt their story is needed to be heard and told. one reason the story hadn't been told is the people were not talking. they weren't talking for many reasons one -- very selective. one is it was too painful. another, when they left, they left for good and did not look

back. some people changed their names. one of the characters in the book had never wanted to be known by the name he grew up with. some people melted into the new world, didn't look back, and the started anew to read the turned the page and acted as if what ever happened before had not happened. and their children were raised in a whole new environment without knowledge of what had gone before them or how they got there and one of the questions i wanted to know is hardly get here, how was it the majority of african-americans in the north, the midwest can strengthen their roots to a specific part of the south? it's no accident that michele's father was from alabama and in the the the midwest has direct -- i know he went to boston but he ended up there, and i find so inspiring this is not a haphazard. these people were making a decision, the decision of their lives to leave the only place they had ever known not knowing what the future held and many african-americans as is the case

for many americans wouldn't even exist because of what it existed and michele what notte -- my parents to answer your question, sorry, you get us started. mauney mother, from georgia to washington dc. my father migrated in a different decade from southern virginia to washington dc. they were from -- families where people had their parents had some education. they themselves had education but they couldn't use it in the caste system they were growing up and they decided to go to a place they thought they could. the happened to meet their, got married and had their be no migration and wouldn't be here. the same goes for you as well. so they were seeking that. the idea of the kind of political asylum people were seeking is the kind of thing that's a different way of looking at what happened with a

migration that occurred within the borders of the hour own country, the borders of our own country there is an immigrant experience that was not unlike that of people coming across the atlantic. and it is my goal to show how much we have in common. we have so much more in common than we have been led to believe. these people grew up under incredible odds just to make the decision to leave, and michael was to try to understand what were the up against, and how they made the decision to leave, and the reader would be able to put him or herself in the mind set of these individuals and people to say to themselves what would i have done if i were living in a caste system in which it was against the law for a black person in a white person to sit and play checkers together. that is the founding someone said that down over the lobby and that in courthouses across the country there was a black label and white bible.

that is astounding and this isn't that long ago. how much was lost on both sides? how many black people, how many white people were surprised that the opportunity to get to know people had so much in common with? so many wonderful experiences were deprived of all races because of the system we were under so that is the reason they left. >> in my family's case, i learned through the reporting of this book exactly why my father and his brothers left. i had a different experience in that they didn't look back in terms of telling some of their stories but they remained tethered to birmingham. i went back to birmingham every summer, and so in that sense i may have been slowly writing this book and collecting stories for this book and my father did me an enormous favor by making sure i knew his birmingham. i didn't know it was a place he was also shot by a white police officer but i scintilla of time in birmingham and that is what makes his journey so surprising to me in so many ways.

i knew that they moved to chicago. they settled in chicago. he had five brothers. they were incredibly handsome which will see if you read it yet to look this pictures inside and i knew they moved to chicago looking for better work and you will see how handsome they are in these pictures because the use to take pictures has with this the, experience even though they worked in blue-collar jobs, my father and his brothers were poster workers and teachers the would go to the portrait studio and dress up and look like the nicholson brothers and john barrymore and send the pictures back, and they would essentially say we are doing all right up here and they serve as magnets because people would get the picture and say they are doing okay i want to get of north. >> it was good work, hard work but could work and honorable and my father was very proud to do

that work. what i didn't know is they were not just run into something. they were very much running from something. in my father's case running for his life. he stood up to a police officer when he returned from war 1946, and he was part of a cohort of veterans who returned to this country has changed men. the good morning military uniform, they for dissipated in the site for democracy and when they came back they wanted a piece of that and this was before the power to the people march, this was a simple set of demands they wanted to they wanted a simple jobs, respect, and they wanted to vote, and they were not able to do so. they were met with a white wall of resistance, and my father, this mild mannered postal worker -- ek remember this is 1946, birmingham, alabama, so it for a black man to stand up to a white police officer was to inside a special kind of trouble, and he wound up being wounded and when

a police officer's gun discharged increased the side of his leg he had to get out of birmingham quickly after that, and the rest of the brothers had to get of birmingham, couldn't stay. it became a that is a risk. there are consequences so that i did not understand when they moved north the only interest in the riding of this book. a decree of opportunity when they moved north, they had jobs, they could use the g.i. bill in the north in ways they couldn't in the deep south, also when the suns moved north even though they can get visited from time to time, they left behind parents who continued to age, whose homes continued to age, whose health continued to deteriorate, and when i realized from the letters i discovered and the letters that i did that my grandparents who gave birth to these six, strong strapping sons were left alone in the early part of their life because their sons moved north and felt like they could no longer come

back, so the more you understand this migration you see the benefits that they were also great cost. >> michele, your mother is a fourth generation minnesota and. how did her experience and you're father's experience -- how did they meet and what did she teach you about life in the north which her experience would have been north since she was born and raised in minnesota. >> my mother's family was the limit like family in a small town in the central part of, central part of the state in alexandria. she and i father died when her brother worked at the post office and my father and jimmy became good friends and he went home to minnesota and met my mother and that was eight and loved minnesota and loved the tolerant community there and i grew up in an integrated community and had fought the just the way life was in minnesota, that there was a sort of level of tolerance that i didn't see or experience in

birmingham. what i realized when the stories started to sprout from my family was that this sort of ec integration i took for granted was not always present in the community. my family were blockbusters comes when my father left chicago and went to minneapolis that meant they were the first black family to purchase a home in the south side of minneapolis on that particular block and the people that on a new, parents of my -- foynes got up and left and i only learned this from my mother later on because again, she was protecting me but the story is that i share with people because i realized how strong a word but also how coming and how sometimes used humor to help them get by a situation that could have crushed them. when everybody moved out and they were trying to sell the house my mother just decided i

could sit by and cry or i could have a little fun with this, and what she would do is when the perspective by years would come to look at the holistically next door to hours she would send my sister out in the yard to play. the work of the year they were going to be moving next to a black family, and if that didn't work she would walk by herself and was very park met with me. so when she tells the story she talks about how they get inside the house and she waits to the right moment and would say to herself showtime. [laughter] >> so your father was very much into keeping the yard nice and clean and he was a gardener and so part of him knew about appearance and one of the things that struck me is you talk about appearance when you went on vacation and you're father wanted to make sure -- i can't

remember how you said it you were better it and the coca-cola american family, and isabel, you talk about how appearance is important. talk about some of that in your book about the appearance been important for african-americans of that generation. >> i think working on the book helped me dress better. [laughter] >> i have known as the 83 long time and she is always dressed [inaudible] >> as has michele because of the expectation which is one of the things so much to say about the assumptions made of the generations of people the assumption was the didn't sell you education, they didn't work hard, to get to the point about working hard and post office, good, strong, sturdy, reliable, honorable work, and my parents when the same thing. my mother had been a teacher, my father a civil engineer. this group, this migration

generation of people have been miscast and misunderstood as one of the things i wanted to come across the appearance was crucial, and one of them in the story of a man and dr. robert joseph foster in my book, the story of the surgeon who had been a surgeon in the army during the corrine and war he got out of the army as a sermon and found out he couldn't practice surgery in its own home town of monroe louisiana not terribly far, and he decided he was going to sit out on a course that ended up being more perilous than he had anticipated on the course from monroe, louisiana for the country of texas, which is a large country onto itself and on through the western states to get to california which was his vision of the american dream, but it was more perilous than he thought and it turned out he could not after getting past

texas and the eastern section of the mexico he could not find a place that would grant him a motel room. that meant he had to drive for three of the huge western states through the mountains, through the desert at night by himself and he wasn't a good driver. his friends say it wasn't a miracle he made it through the desert but he was a terrible driver and that is a whole nother story and he had to go alone and had the third point wonder whether he made the right decision but to get to the idea and how the generation felt was so important as that before he would go and to try to get a room he was very aware of what he was up against even if he thought he was in the free land of the west and so he made a big effort to comb his hair to make sure he was wearing a tie and brought out his sports coat and made sure he wasn't wrinkled from deride. he went through a great deal of effort before asking for a room,

and this is well past the borders of what were considered to be jim-crow at the time and he still couldn't get a room and he recounted the story to me and said i've got over 3,000, what i have done. and there was nothing he could have done and i attempted to recreate the journey with my own parents and i couldn't make it as far as he had. at a certain point we were driving through the desert. it was night. we were going through turns in the mountain and arizona. i was trying to follow it through the letter and even now the land is spread out for many dozens of miles without a single settlement. you have no light six of your headlights. i wanted to as a nonfiction be able to create for the reader what does it feel like to have your fingers swell from having cracked the wheel for so long. what does it feel like to have your eyes grow heavy that they began to ache.

what is it like for him to have to push through in spite of all of that for the darkness knowing that he had been rejected in this new land he had chosen for himself and brac to all people back in monroe and louisiana and so i wanted to recreate that. we needed as far as you arizona. was there that my parents said, as i began to fear of the road -- i had rented a buick by the way as he had driven -- and said if you had seen a road map you would have wanted to. [laughter] so i rented a buick and we got to the part where i was during off the road and i parents said we must stop the car. the hidden through jim crow and had to go through the experience must know in a letter to the people to stop or debtor up and pack all the food you might possibly need, all of the ice radiator went out and make sure you have a spare tire, so all the efforts the to go through for a simple drive.

so my parents had been through that and said to me as i was veering off the road stopped the car. we've been through this before ourselves, and if he will stop, let us out. [laughter] so we stopped in human arizona and i felt very disheartened because he hadn't had that choice but it was no longer 1953 and it is so inspiring because it shows how far we have come in the country that i couldn't even recreate the letter because we were passing places we couldn't say and my parents said look we've been there, done that, let's stop. >> i remember as i was reading it i read in the margins he did without a cell phone. >> without a cellphone contest. >> i want to leave my house down the street without my cellphone petraeus and he was driving through without a cell phone. >> you probably wouldn't get service there. >> well, probably not. [laughter]

>> you know, when you talk of the appearance the reason lies this much time on it in the book is because as i looked back with the wisdom i began to understand my parents a little bit more. i just always thought they were type a and the kept the garden beautiful. we had to shovel snow before anybody else in the neighborhood and i just thought that was a sort of work ethic and i realize everything the did was a statement. they were sending a statement. our yard is taking care of, okay? thank you very much. they were dressed in a certain way because they were asking for respect. labor activists in some ways in the way they dressed and the way they demand we dress. i didn't include this in the book but one of the things i discovered and i want to mention because you talk about the burdens on the other side when the women of color were dressed to go into town in birmingham for instance you didn't go on a

town without gloves you always had gloves on. you always were dressed. the men wore hats and i am not going to tell you how old i am but well into the period of time people weren't really doing that people of color still do that when they went to the business district in birmingham, and what i found in trying to find the police officer who shot my father i was able to talk to people of that generation who would have lived on the other side of the color line and one of the things they talk to me about is having to dress a certain way because all of the black folks were always stressed so fine. [laughter] they felt the whole point was to rise above the black folks so even if they wanted to go into town and we're for, they couldn't because they had to prove they were one step above, so there were burdens on both sides with him on the other side and enforcing that to determine if you could say hello to someone and if there would be a sanction for that could you call

that person mr. or mrs. because if you did you were often looked at on the other side of the color line. there was a price to be paid for that as well. >> that is why the caste system holds people fixed in a place and that means that no one can move even outside the line that is set for them. it said the mold for them and it's not official by definition and could not last forever because a cast when you have to cast on the phone you can't wait to get it off because it's not a natural way for human beings to live and that is the way i view the cast when you talk about that. >> to be honest it's what you see sometimes in kids today in a different way. also bling bling is sometimes an effort to say i have worse and i am expressing my words in a gigantic team that has a big

gold encrusted cross, but it is in some way saying i have a value i want you to see me this is why i am. >> michele, one of the interesting chapters for me was the chapter on aunt jamima so i wonder to katella out that -- if you could talk about that about your grandmother who played aunt jamima. if you use pancake mix and if you use aunt jamima pancake mix, aunt jamima today looks like a girlfriend. she looks like she shops at macy's, she's got pearls, she looks like she's on the church council. [laughter] what i discovered again in this period from one of my uncles by accident in a casual conversation is that my grandmother worked for a time as an itinerant aunt jamima. she traveled throughout the midwest, dressed up and head scarf and a hoopskirt selling pancake mix at a time when

convenient cooking was not the norm, add water and stir was new at the time, and my mother was so angry that my uncvle would say this, she didn't like this period of my grandmother's life and i couldn't let it go. what i discovered is that my grandmother had earned a good deal of money doing this and that there were aunt jemimas all across the country. texas is a big state says it once did and sometimes worked in oklahoma. what i discovered my grandmother's case i got lucky if and newspaper clippings of her work under the headline essentially aunt jemima is coming to mind to read a picture of my grandmother and her description of her work and what she said was that she would focus on children in these towns because she knew this was the first time they would ever see a person of color and she wanted them to be left with a good impression. she would talk in a certain way to let them know she was educated and this is true to me even though i had a hard time

imagining her as aunt jemima because i remember the story polished churchwomen in my life that was true because of the kids she was always telling us did you leave the g of the word, it's not on an goin' some where it is i'm going somewhere. that ring true to me. but she worked in her own way because by presenting this image of a hard-working woman who spoke the king's english and sing church songs was different than the aunt jemima unit of encounter if you picked up the newspaper were a magazine of that day because aunt jemima didn't look like aunt jemima mali and aunt jemima then spoke with a certain sleeve patau which was to let you know that she was not educated and fairly happy with her life. we want it doing in digging for that story was getting my family a gift in flag of the picture because my mom and her siblings and the older folks in the family paid that story so what i

was able to assure them through research is grant wanted this in her own way. she took a job that could have been the meaning and lifted herself with her earnings but lifted her people by serving as a kind of representative. i don't know what kind of a hard bargain she made with herself when she had to tashi a head scarf, a durag on her head i don't know the conversation was like but when she talked to a newspaper reporters about it there was not shame in the way she described her work and after hearing something that was very uncomfortable that gave me great comfort and a good deal of pride. >> you and that chapter with the judge aunt jemima and ourselves by what we see reflected in history. what did he mean by that? >> what i realized is there's a lot of psychology wrapped up and aunt jemima fy aunt jemima looks differently right now, just walk up to a black woman and call her

aunt jemima. [laughter] she might look benign. i dare you to do it. [laughter] and when i talk to people about it i did this will exercise my was working on the but no matter what i was researching i would ask at the end of the conversation what do you think about aunt jemima and the would be like what? i would say i'm going to tell you why i'm asking the question in a minute but tell me what you think. and what i realized is that many people had complicated views on this and many white americans had complicated the views put in a completely different way. i found a woman who runs a restaurant in mississippi if you have ever been there. a gigantic aunt jemima. she is so large the restaurant is in her hoopskirt and she has had a makeover. she is white person and now and has had a breast reduction -- [laughter] -- less boosmy to read the woman

who runs the restaurant says i don't know why people of color denigrate or why they don't embrace her and i was like i'm going to hear you out here and she says listen in my community so many of us were raised by women of color who worked in our family. and many of us had better relationships with our mammies and we did with our mamma. i don't know why people of honor that. on the other hand i talk to african-american man in birmingham who said aunt jemima looks like my grandmother and she's the smartest person i know and what bothers me is the company through thereafter tyson is trying to take the image and turn it into something ugly that is something that i love, so when someone controls your image you don't control utu art and so i realized she is so much more than just an icon. it's deeper than that. >> when i asked people a

question i love the story until the end of the chapter about the white kitten target. you want to tell them? >> i have young children and my son's favorite food is pancakes and he particularly likes aunt jemima pancakes. he likes the syrup model because she has her hand on her head and i was always arguing with him can we just by henry jack or something because right now we are making pancakes from scratch it's only about five ingredients any way. but i was at target and a little boy at heart, caucasian boy asked his mom who is aunt jemima? and she looked at me with the sort of expectant look on her face like -- [laughter] and i just was like uh-uh i'm not going there. after working on this book i would have a conversation with sit there in target and talk to her and say aunt jemima is my grandmother, let's talk about this a little bit.

>> steve, you interviewed 1200 people, more than 1200 people for your book. i'm curious how you settled on a i may, robert foster and george starling. as the minister to the book with urgency because this migration began in 1915, world war i and ended in 1971 essentially the conditions that led to the migration ended in the south, and it was no longer the need for the outpouring of people to leave. so that meant there were three generations of people who participated in this directly and i needed to get 6 million of them and i needed to get them as soon as i could. i felt this urgency because they were getting up and i wanted to be able to tell the story before it was too late. that meant i had to go all these places. i went to senior centers, aarp, catholic mass in los angeles where many of the people live from louisiana and the us catholic. i went to the baathist churches

in new york where everybody is from south carolina. i went to these clubs that exists in all the cities that represent the originating state where people came from. there is a lake charles louisiana and los angeles, there is a long road louisiana, there are hundreds as you can imagine a club in los angeles, and there are similar clubs in chicago and also in detroit and new york so i went to all those places. essentially a listing a kind of casting call in and i had this one case where i went up to a senior center in los angeles and i would go in and i would say i am working on a book about the great migration and had a story of letting them know what i was doing. one place i went in los angeles i was on schedule. you have to get on the schedule. there were certain days better to go than others.

if there was a stiff launch that was a good day so i had gone on a good day but i was on the schedule, and before me on the schedule was a representative from los angeles county department of aging and he passed out a brochure to the seniors who had been gathered and he said we are getting reports of our seniors being taken at vantage of. there are people running scams on our seniors. they will last you all kind of questions about yourself. [laughter] they will ask you where you are from, where you were born, when did you come to los angeles, how many children do you have, what do you do for a living, talk about everything i needed to know and more. [laughter] and he passed this out and then next isabel wilkerson will be here to talk with you. and fortunately she hasn't been listening because they were focusing on the dinner or they found me to be especially trustworthy or whatever. i don't know the reason was that

i was able to talk with them so that is what i did for many months to find a kind casting call like auditioning and then i narrowed it down to these three and the three were people like needed to have three protagonists, people you've never heard of so you could see these people and what they had gone through. three people each of whom would represent one of the three streams of the great migration. how one would represent the east coast stream, the other would represent the one in the middle, michele's stream and the other is obviously near and dear to people in texas because many people know in texas or los angeles because it is a constant back-and-forth and so i wanted to tell that stream. that was the stream less written about so i needed to find three people and i want each of them to have a sense of the direct and scope of this migration and also needed people in different glasses because there is great differences stratification even among people who had been in a

system there were casts within casts in the south and i wanted to be able to reflect that and also great characters who were who could read a page and you know you're reading about i may or another page and dr. foster became a gambler, he was a character of himself and so you would know who you were reading about by turning the page. people you see yourself and become engaged in. one of the questions i get up the book is sometimes a shot in the back of the room why are there no pictures in the book and i -- my editor and i decided simultaneously there should be non-because we wanted the reader to be able to see him or herself. the people photograph because the photographs are available on my web site and also focused on

the internet as more interviews have been done and the been wonderful so you can see them now the the are not in the book themselves because we didn't want people to be distracted by that. but three people who would to get her tell the story of the other until now anonymous beah missile amazing and courageous people who make the decision of their lives and attacked us in so many ways we are still trying to figure read out. so many famous people are thought of in the great migration. f thele is a product o great migration. tony morrison is a product of the great migration. her parents migrated from alabama to ohio where she got to the chance to do something in the budding writer would have to do but she wouldn't have been able to do and alabama is going to a public library and take out a book. her parents saw that and migrated to oeo where she had the opportunity to get exposed to that.

richard wright and some of the huge names in literature are products of great migration and in motown wouldn't even exist if there was no great migration and that is because very doherty his parents migrated from georgia to detroit where once he became a grown man he decided he wanted to go into the music industry and it didn't have the money to go out scouting for talent so he looked around him and there was diana ross a child of migration. her parents migrated from alabama a great source of talent. [laughter] and she was there and so was mary willson and florence, all were children of great migration. aretha franklin also came up from the south, so many people created an entire year art form it is hard to imagine what the culture would be like if there had been no motown and when it comes to jazz it wouldn't exist as we know it.

miles davis came from arkansas to illinois. he would never have had the opportunity to spend hours upon hours that would have been necessary to become a musician he was had his parents not migrated out of the country of arkansas. his parents migrated when he was 5-years-old and north carolina to harlem where he had the opportunity of luxury. will do it could spend hours upon hours for music lessons. there would have been no time to do that in the country out in the farm land or small-town north carolina, and john coltrane and migrated to 17 from north carolina to philadelphia where believe it or not he got his first alto sax. we're with jazz be if he hadn't gotten the opportunity to go to the school of music in

philadelphia, so practice so much that he actually -- people in his apartment building in philadelphia complain, the nerve of complaining because john coltrane, the man 12c is planning tall hours to leave, was of the night. i bet people what to do night to this day they complained about john plea in his alto sax. he had to play so much that he turned to the minister who gave him the key to the church to plea to his heart's content. one of the unknown things of the migration is each stream is a beautiful translation of the southern state and culture from which a deride. in other words, the migration from texas and louisiana, those people are different. the culture is different. i had to learn to eat all and if i wasn't accustomed to because the food and the music and

language and the references were totally different and the question you would get is where are your people from, and in los angeles my people were not from the streams that create the los angeles migration experience. my people were from georgia, it didn't translate. it wasn't easy to interview people and so the -- it turns out that miles davis used to fight over john coal train. i discovered that some of the research and eternal john coltrane always a special feeling why? because they could come from the same stream. they're people were the same people and this shows how different the african-american experience is even within our own country everyone comes from the south and thinks it will be different. one of the things i had to discover was food became a big issue. in chicago i was exposed to and on the bus heading to with some seniors to a riverboat casino, it's a big thing for seniors in

the world i was entering, and someone broke out a delicacy that everyone -- there was an uproar on the bus and i was wondering what is this thing? it had been dropped from mississippi derived from the source, it was the good stuff, it was hoghead sea. [laughter] >> pickled eggs? >> i had never heard of it before. never heard of it. the migration stream i was in we can't talk about grits but we were not exposed to that. people carried the culture with them. a transplanted the south where they went. they were ambassadors to the south and it's a beautiful thing they did so the culture, american culture and the western culture in some ways is a marriage of the north and south as it was altered by the arrival of people live and we are still living with the effect of the

world benefit and we are the primary beneficiaries because we have children that had the opportunity to grow up in a free place. at that time now everything is different because of the reverse migration but that is with the need to do and they did it for their children. >> we have about 15 minutes left. if people want to line up to ask questions please do that now. the question of what to ask you talked about, michele contador wilky emerged from the conversations about race and i am curious how you feel your because country to the conversations about race because you talk a lot about how the white people and black people had these conversations sometimes with each other often not with each other. how do you feel like your book will contribute to that conversation? >> i feel like it has come full circle. i set out to write a book about the conversation and wound up writing about the hidden conversation of my family and as i travel the country now on a

book tour i found myself swimming in the hidden conversation. people often come to hear about my story and wind it telling me there's. on my website i have a link called your story where people can leave their story. i wound up writing a book about race but in many ways it's not about race. i captured my ratio legacy because of these hidden conversations that started spilling out of period of historical in digestion in my family. things started coming up. but that is the thread. the broadcast history of the essential questions how well the people who raised you, how much do you know of their history? in my case there was a complicated ratio legacy i didn't know about but the depression or the holocaust and

the epidemic parents are often very careful look out what they tell their shoulder and if they want their children to soar they keep their stories to themselves. i call this the grace of silence but i hope it is part of the conversation into the starting to happen in some ways i have decided there is benefit in having those conversations to capture your history because it is your history. it's your birthright and even if it is a difficult history it is yours, it is an incredible gift to be able to take that and pass on to your children. he might not want to put rocks in their pockets that it's okay to put pebbles in there because they need to be grounded. the need to know where they came from. in the end, i hope it is contributed in a small way people might be interested in their own history, people might pick up the book and learn

something not just about my family about america, the big revelations, grant was aunt jemima from your hair stand on end when you hear that. they are smaller revelations i learned. a little things that can't it a bigger picture and i hope when people read the book they will put it down and want to talk to someone about it. a family member, co-worker. i hope -- that is my -- i shared with you my grandmother turned 95 and i am having a hard time now trying to go back and tell her these stories because she doesn't remember a lot. you have it fights hard to get the story out especially younger people who may not remember. >> isabel spent so much time talking to older people in sure she will have the device as well. if you want to talk to older people and they don't want to tell you certain stories particularly asked about the era he might not be able to go in

the front door but you can't go around the side door. i was going to say the yankees plan in the wrong state for that. [laughter] so i will stop but if you know they love baseball or football educate yourself about the 1950's for the 1960's to ask about that, ask what would you wear when you went out on a saturday night. you know, what kind of music were you listening to. bring them into the air get them comfortable and maybe the stories will start to come forward. keep it if you can. i have a hard time talking abut this because it makes me very sad that my father died in 1988. i worked in a radio and was an audio all day long and my children will never cure my father's voice because i never recorded at. if you can record the people you love, take the opportunity. you don't have to invest a lot of money to your phones usually

have recording devices you can record them in quality. take the time to do that. and the last thing i would suggest to you is do it over food. every time i learn something profound about my family it was always at the table. every time i needed to have a difficult conversation with someone that was not related to me, i was usually introduced food and the conversation. if you have a loved one who loves lemon meringue pie get them a big multi peace. if they liked the pineapple upside-down case, make sure they get that piece and will bring back memories and they don't call it a comfort food for nothing. >> i would say i shared a lot of experience is that michele has with her own parents. my mother in particular never talked about her experience in

the south and in the process of doing the research in the book i'm interviewing over 1200 people turns out my own mother was not talking. she was by far the toughest interview oliver had. she didn't want to talk. that's ancient history. she was not going to talk. there are few preferences in my book in my own family's experience in the migration. every single thing you might see in this book i learned in the course of research not growing up because my mother did not talk about it but i discovered things about how my on golf left -- uncvle left and decided he was leaving georgia for detroit s soon as possible and so i had no idea and the way i found out some of this was i read every word of this book my mother and father had passed away. he did not live to see the publication of this book and it

was the heart wrenching thing because he believed in that but i read every word of the book to her and at a certain point i could not read it to her because she kept interrupting saying all the things she started to talk about well when i was in georgia or what my mother used to do, and so i found that in some ways my hope was that by making it okay by validating these experiences and give him dignity because they are dignified and incredible things people have done it makes people more willing to talk about that that one of the places i went in los angeles doing a reading and a mother, if author and his daughter showed up and they went and signed the book and they told me we are getting ready to go right now to talk. we are going to sit down and talk now. maybe this will be an inspiration for doing that, and my goal would be that the people i've written about are not just african-americans who left one place for another.

they in some ways left for the same reason any of our forebears would have ever left any part of this world to be on the land that we are now wan. my goal would be to see that we have so much more in common but we've been led to believe. i love it when people come up to me and say my great grandparents came from romania. i love it and that is exactly the goal of all of this. my hope would be that would make everyone want to go back, find the oldest person in their family, take the lemon meringue pie. i find it was helpful to get them to describe the recipe, have them cook and then it starts to come out. there's actually a crisis in my book where ida mae from mississippi describes the are using salles pricing for mississippi and says we've never made like that before and a friend in italy and of italian

descent and says we go through the same thing with the process. here we are making it from scratch assuming we are doing the right thing and they are not doing that, and so i love the way of getting people to talk. often by going where you are not getting existence. where do they feel comfortable hoping they will lead to from >> two other quick things. if you are trying to talk to people to bring all story is the other thing you can do is use your children because mine were a big help to me. i have young children and my mother also did not want to talk about any of this and i couldn't afford it and she's incredible and i am so glad that she did. we have learned quite a bit because of that and one of the ways is the kids could ask the question. children are innocent and demanding a the same time and they can get away without asking questions you never can get away with and i found mom would talk to me throughout my kids and the

last thing i would leave with is if you really do want to capture history to have a wonderful opportunity to do that the day after thanksgiving. if you are in npr listener, it said it was pretty, he championed a national holiday, relatively new holiday. he might not even know about it. it's the day after thanksgiving when a lot of people go to the mall, a lot of us are already with family members, your eating leftovers, watching football while you are altogether take the opportunity on the national day of listening to listen to the people that you love, chronicle their stories and put them away. >> are there questions people want to ask? [applause] because i have others. [applause]

[inaudible conversations] [inaudible] -- that is worth documenting over largely and that is the phenomenon called casting a century ago estimated five to 10,000 black people were turning into whites, the case for "the new york times" critic written by henry gates jr., a white like me. the first white person to turn himself black and travel to the south which isn't griffin but in the land jim crow and he used the expression you can't figure behind the man for the economic exploitation of sharecroppers of the choice of isabel reported. can you explain you can't figure behind the man explores to? >> the question is about the

concept of passing african-americans for white mostly. >> i have discovered about a dozen stories are just in the last two weeks mainly coming over from this land on my website where people doherty e-mail in the stories they discovered have a path where people themselves have it passed and want to reach back and find their history. it is a phenomenon in this country that is probably greater than even the numbers you cited. it probably haven't quite often and it's something i would love to more about. in each of the cases it is a tortured decision to figure out how to reclaim family members that reached into the other side. i would applaud your question further and look around the room and african-americans with a look like in this country.

the fact is many of us are related to many of you and no one really wants to talk a lot about that, but that is part of the hidden conversation in america. >> so, my question is basically obviously your stories -- have you had any experience so far it telling the stories to younger people maybe not necessarily younger african-americans but, you know, the diji kit to can't stop textile and looking online because this is a lot of resonance with people in the community and migration looking for better pastors. have you had experience talking to people in that age group? >> i would respond in two ways. our book is fairly new so it takes awhile to get the book and read them and pass it on. but when it comes to the migration, there are many people

in touch quote on quote hip-hop generation that are in the great migration. snoop doggy dogg his family emigrated from los angeles. sean combs migrated to new york 2pac is one of the most laconic people of the generation that is a descendant of that migration also from north carolina to new york. so i think it takes time for people to recognize the connection. and that's the reason why we want to record history because maybe people are not ready for it now but when -- when they will be. a four or five-year-old ones to sign it she can't read it now will one day she will be able to and i think that is beautiful. ..

>> in other words, it showed that first of all, the lower cast of in cash system, the people who were being under paid or not paid at all because they were working for the right to live on the land they were farming had options and were willing to take them. that caused the powers that be in the south what are we going to do? editorials all over the place what are we going to do? work them harder? ease up on them? there would be a lot of african-americans on the

platform when there was large groups try to leave. people would board and arrest them in the seats. there was a great deal that attempted the -- the early attempts of people to leave. also, it led to the opening up to the sense of opportunity for people that wanted to stay. what was life like in a place that was freer? that helped to set in motion what would not have been possible in the great migration. there was a lynching somewhere in the south every three days in the decades before the migrations and the early decades of the migrations. this is a real threat that people were willing under. it would not be possible for people to march in the streets and protest like they would in the '60s. but the time, the '60s, by the time the african-americans were

here and white people with support, had more support for being able to move forward. that had an immense affect on the south. people knew there was a place else they could go. there were people coming back showing them how they were freer. even if some of it wasn't true. they would safe all year for the matching hat and coat. they put on a show when they came back. the final thing they did, they provided leverage for people who were here and might have needed a place to go once they put themes on the line. that's black and white. the people in the north as immigrants often do, were sending money back south to help move this process forward. because they loved the land that they left. they had not wanted to leave. one of the beautiful quotes from someone who was in the early stages, if i had had a choice, i would not have left. if i could do anything that i wanted, i would not have left the south. those who left ultimately said, i heard it over and over again

in one form or the other, based on how things were, i've made many mistakes in my life, leaveing the south was not one of them. they made the choices. the south is still living with the fact. the also feel the south can take great pride. they did not because they left, but because they left with southern culture. that southern culture was the music, the spirituals, the gospels, the rhythms that john coletrain took with him with the alto sax. i think there's a sharing between the two. and there's an interchange between the two. >> there was also the affect as well. i see that have when i two back to birmingham. what you had was blacks, but you also had a certain kind of white right. people who could lead left. mean who meant left.

people were the most ambitious left. when i go back to the birmingham that i used to know as the kid, which was the vibrant black business district, it's decimated now. you talk about the progress, moving forward, good things happening. under segregations, doctors and ditch diggers lived down the street. they sent their kids to the same schools. they lived in the community that might not have been rich, but it was rich in social capital. what happened is when people could move, you have the diaspora added. it took something from that community. black businesses suffers. institutions like harper high school. if you were black and lived in birmingham, you went to parker high. it was the only high school. it was so large if you went to birmingham, they so postcards with the picture on it.

parker is a shelf itself. when my father went to parker, all of the teachers, all of them, every single one of them had masters degrees. because they couldn't work anywhere else. they went into teaching. that's the bad thing they couldn't go to work anywhere else. imagine the kind of education that you would get in that kind of environment. so, you know, there was this sort of under side to integration that we don't always talk about that i had to face in very painful ways in writing this book. something that really makes me quite sad. >> thank you. >> thank you. we've run out of time. [applause] [applause] >> and i want -- [applause] [applause] >> i want to thank you for coming and sharing this hour with michelle -- michele norris and bell and me.

they will be signing on the other side of this. thank you. [inaudible conversations] [inaudible conversations] >> this event was part of the texas book festival. to find out more about the festival and the authors that appeared there, visit texasbookfestival.org. >> i'm holding the essential engineer why science alone will not solve our global problems. it's author joins me henry petroski. welcome, sir, what's the reasonabling behind the subtitle. why science alone will not solve our global problems? >> we hear a lot about the global problems, climate change and so forth. we also hear a lot about the science will do to help alleviate or solve them. the history of science and technology teaches us

differently. science and scientists generally do not solve problems. engineers are the problem solvers. engineers and prove solving are hand and glove. >> host: in your book, you define the difference between scientists and engineers and how they work together. tell us more about that. >> guest: well, scientists want to understand the world, the universe, the classic scientists studies the planets, stars, wants to know the origin of the universe. getting to the b. things. engineers on the other hand want to change the world. they want to produce new things, new devices, things that really contribute to our civilization and our comfort. scientists and engineers get together in what's called research and development, r&d. again, the scientist are on the research, engineers on the development end. there has to be a team work, passing the baton to

understanding the situation to changing the situation through engineering. >> host: what's the difference between how engineering and science got us to where we are now and how engineering and science will take us into the future? >> guest: that's an excellent question. as you know, a lot of people think those are the people that have a sense of trouble in the first place. well, we always have incomplete knowledge. science is always accumulating further knowledge. we are always working as engineers with incomplete knowledge of the world and the laws of nature. so we make the mistakes in that sense. we -- i have to call them innocent mistakes in the sense they were done generally speaking, you know, without full knowledge of the implications. that's not to excuse them. because we should look down the line to what the implications of whatever we do will be. however, if we try to study the problem to death, we never get to solving the problem. and that's a fine-edged to

really separate the issues. >> host: in one of your chapters, you talk about speed bumps. why did you use speed bumps in the relationship between scientists and engineers? >> guest: well, every problem that we try to solve or every part of nature that we try to understand, we invariably have to regroup part way along the path to the end. and i describe these as speed bumps. i think it's a good metaphor. it's not original with me, actually. speed bumps are sometimes helpful. i try to point that out in the book also. they make us think, recalibrate, they make us think about whether maybe we are not on the right road or street. we are being reminded of that. we are going too fast. which is back to what we were just talking about. if we were going too fast to a solution, we might miss some of the implications that we might regret later on. >> host: you are going to be presenting later on on the

national book festival. what are you going to tell the folks? >> guest: i've only got about 20 minutes in order to allow for questions and ans. -- and answers. i'm going to focus on the difference between science and engineers. think there's a general misunderstanding about that. a lot of times engineers are grouped with scientists. it's not that they resent that, it's inaccurate because of the distinctions that i try to draw. especially in these days when we are trying to deal with so many global problems and really important issues. we hear a lot out of washington really right where we are that, well, if we want to innovate, if we want to really change the way we do things to affect the economy and improve it, we have to throw more money at science. that leaves engineering out of the equation. maybe there's a confusion. maybe engineers are intended to be included in science.

but more often than not, it's clear they are not included. but not understanding that connection, i think we miss opportunities. all of the great innovations of the world basically and all of history are engineering innovations they are usually done if not always done with incomplete scientific knowledge. and i'll talk about some of those examples this afternoon. such as the steam engine. there was no science on which to base the steam engine. it was only after the steam engine was operating for a couple of centuries that scientists began to look at it as an object of study. the wright brothers are another excellent example. trying to develop an airplane that would give up powers flight. the wright brothers looked for scientific basis on which to design their wings and propellers. they even wrote to the smithsonian institution right on this mall and asked what do you have in your files that will help us? well, there's nothing directly related to what you want to do

is the answer they got back. what the wright brothers had to do, they to go and do their own science. they had to do tests to figure out what shape a propeller should have. something as simple and basic as that. the airplane was developed with very, very little science to back it up. and i want to emphasize things like that this afternoon. so that we understand that if we just wait for science to bring us the raw materials for innovation, we are either going to have to wait a very, very long time, or we are wasting time because we don't need complete information to move ahead. >> host: in addition to being an author, do you consider yourself a scientist or a engineer? >> guest: i consider myself both. in this regard, that i'm engineer in that i'm very interested in creating things. books i see as creations. but i'm a scientist because i do have to study and get to the heart of the matter. and in most of my studying and

engineer education includes a lot of science. you learn to think like an scientists, as well as an engineer. one of the things i'll talk about is albert einstein. he was both. it's not widely known he worked in the patent office, largely because he couldn't get a job as a scientist. in the 1920s, he began to do an inventor. he could have sat back. but there was a challenge. what he did was a very mundane thing morning others. refrigerators in the 1920s were very, very new. and they were subject to leaks and the refrigerant that they leaked was poisonous. so whole families were being killed when they were sleeping