for years to follow. for more information visit the killing of crazy horse.com. >> host: capitol hill cooks is the name of the book, the author is linda bauer. booktv usually doesn't talk about cookbooks, but why would we want to talk to you? >> guest: this is cooking for a cause. 50% of the royalties in advance is for veterans who lose their limbs in the war, they give them a wheelchair-accessible home, and who wouldn't want to know the favorite recipes of george washington to president obama with notes about why they like the recipes and this congress? >> host: what is president obama's recipe in your book? >> guest: he has a mac and cheese and a shrimpling winny. >> host: and how did you get access to those recipes? >> guest: my husband was the

longest-serving white house aide in history. so i had done books and begin them to charity, so this is two books in one for the same price. so it's a great bargain, and thest the best charity you could ever ask for. >> host: here's one recipe you have for clove cake. theodore roosevelt. >> guest: that's right. and it's a healthy cake, let me tell you. it's heavy and it's great. delicious. >> host: what other recipes do you have in here that people might be interested in? >> guest: i think the pest recipe in the whole book is probably mamie eisenhower's fudge. when she married ike, she told my husband she didn't know how to cook, even boil water. she ran across this million dollar fudge recipe, and it's so good, even kids can make it. fantastic. and my second favorite is probably ronald reagan's pumpkin pecan pie becauses it it's just like pumpkin pie, but all the nuts are on top, and it's typically political. >> host: you also have a recipe

from harry reid. >> guest: yes, i do, and it's very, very good. i have ron paul and michele bachmann, so every kind of political persuasion you could want. >> host: capitol hill cooks is the name of the book, linda bauer is the author, recipes from the white house, congress and all of the past presidents. >> from the texas book festival in the austin, a discussion with michele norris, author of "the grace of silence: a memoir," and isabelle wilkerson, author of the epic story of america'srno great migration. >> thank you for coming to the session today. we have michele norris and isabelle with wilkerson. hav and i'm going to do a brief introduction for both of them, and then i'm going to askem questions. and i will leave time at the end so that people can askime questions, too, so probably about 3:30 we'll stop, and you can ask questions. in the introduction to the grace of silence: a memoir, michele

norris writes that she began this project in 2009 because she became convinced that anaus unprecedented hidden and robuste conversation about race was taking place across the country in the wake of barack obama's historic presidential campaignak and his ascension to office. from this project, michelle unearthed painful family secreto from her father's shooting by the birmingham police less than two weeks from his dischargevi from service of world war ii. michelle traveled from her childhood home in minneapolis to her father's childhood home in the deep south to explore the things left unsaid by her familt when she was growing up. michelle was chosen as journalist of the year in 2009 by the national association of2 black journalists and is thejour co-winner of the dupont columbia award. she is the host of national public radio's all things considered and has appeared ongs meet the press, charlie rose and

the chris matthews show and has written for "the washingtong o post," "the chicago tribune" and the los angeles times. the epic story of america's great migration is isabel wilkerson's first book. it chronicles a watershed event, the migration of african-americans from the south to the north and west through t the stories of three people and their families. drawing on archival materials and conducting more than 1,200 interviews, the warm of othere suns traces the lives of aye ma, may, george and robert from their difficult beginnings in the south to their decision to leave for hopes of a better life in chicago, harlem and los angeles. their stories parallel the experiences of immigrants whoamn came to america and chronicles a major shift in american life in all parts of the country. wilkerson wan the pulitzer prize for her work as chicago bureau chief of "the new york times" ir 1994 making her the first black

woman in the history of americah journalism to win a pulitzer prize and the first african-american to win for individual reporting. she's currently professor of journalism and directer of narrative nonfiction at boston university. and i'm going to start by asking some questions. the first question i wanted to ask was how each of you came to work on your projects, how you discovered your topics. >> i probably have been working on this book for as long as i've been alive because i grew up as the daughter of people who were part of this great migration, as is michele.r and the majority ofmi african-americans that you might ever meet in the north andh midwest and the west. and i grew up around people who had migrated from georgia, the carolinas, virginia to washington d.c. grew up with the music, thecani language, thea, folk ways, the food. and no one ever, no one ever talked about it as being a great migration. no one said i am someone who

came up in a great migration, and yet it was ever where. and i later as a journalist in interviewing people all over the country became more aware of hoe huge it was because wherever yoe went, whether you were in los angeles or chicago or detroit, there were always references tor the south everywhere you went.u and it all came together for me, and i wondered why was there nor grapes of wrath for this huge migration which had bonn on for most of the -- gone on for most of the 20th century? and that's what i set out to do. it took 15 years of interviewing, 1200 people -- it took 15 years. [laughter] if this book were a human being, it would be in high school and dating.book [laughter] that's how long it took. and i had the chance to meet out of that 1200 three amazing

antagonists -- protagonists. i'm part of the east coastig dream, and michele as we learn in her beautiful book is part on the central dream from the, from alabama, mississippi, tennesseee up to the midwest. and it's, that's the reason why i decided to do it. >> i, if you look at the cover of my book, it says two words: a memoir. and that is as surprising to me as anything in this process because it's an accidental b memoir. it's not the book that i set out to write. i actually intended to write a book that looked at how americans talk and think aboutlk race in the wake of the election of barack obama.r i wanted to write a book of of essays that would principally be about other people, you know,of how other people talk and how other people think. and i tried to listen to a hidden conversation in thisry to country based on some work i had

done on national public radio in a series of conversations that steve and i did in york, pennsylvania, with a group of diverse voters. what happened was when i turnedf the frequency to try to pick upe the hidden conversation in lotsp of different places all acrossra the country, i started to pick up static on the dial in my owno family. and i started to hear things in my family that i'd never heardt before.m what i think happened is older people in the wake of the election of barack obama sort ot exhaled. they saw something that they neveir thought that they'd see . their lifetime. you know, you talk about theld s warmth of other suns.feti for my parents and myothe grandparents and that generation to dream that a man of color would have been to the white house would be like reaching upd and trying to touch the sun. and when that happened, they started to exhale, and these stories came out. and i realized that the people that i thought that i knew so well had locked away certain parts of their history purposely

to make sure that they could to move forward, to protecte themselves. but i realized it was mainly to protect me, to protect myy sisters, to protect my cousins. they stopped talking about veryi painful things, indignities, mistreatment, in my father'sa case violence because theyce, wanted our path forward to be clear. for >> why did your own families leave the south for the north?s >> very good question. that was one of the reasons i set out to do the book, because my parents never talked about it.b as with michele.wi this generation was, in some ways, an, a misunderstoodnd segment of the greatest generation. they bore up under incredible odds. ways, locked in i a caste system, and i describe it as a defection from a caste

system which was unten and could not last and, ultimately, endedt violently through the civilnd rights movement. but, ultimately, these people were -- needed to be -- i felt that their stories needed to be heard and told. and they were not talking. one reason why the story hadn't been told is because the people' were not talking. they were not talking for many reasons.ey w >> selective. >> very selective. one is it was just too painful. another is when they left, they left for good, and they did not look back. some people changed their names. one of the characters of theames book no longer wanted to be known by the name he had grownnb up with. some people melted into the new world, didn't want to look backa and they started anew.and they acted as if whatever hadd happened before had not happened,dr and their childrene were raised in an environment oh not knowing what happened. i wanted to know how is it that the majority of african-americans in the north, midwest and west actually can trace their roots to some very specific part of the south.

i mean, it's no accident that michele's father was from alabama and ended up in the midwest. i know he went to boston, but he ended up there. and i find it so inspiring that this was not a haphazard unfurling of lost souls. these people were making al decision, the decision of their lives, to leave the only place that they'd never known for a place they'd never seen not knof what the future held. and many african-americans as is the case for many americans wouldn't even exist because i wouldn't have existed andbec michele, i think, it would havex been very different. i mean, my parents to get to the answer of your question,ents sorry -- you get us started. [laughter]u my mother migrated from georgia to washington d.c. my father migrated in am different decade from southern virginia to washington d.c. they were from families where the people had had their parents had had some education.t

they themselves had education, but they could not use it in th caste system in which they werei growing up.stem and they decided to go to a place where they thought they could. they happened to meet there, they got married.ld had there been no great migration, i wouldn't even beg here. i don't know who would be sitting here, but it wouldn't be me. and the same goes for you as well. so they were seeking that. i think the idea of a kind ofee political asylum that the peopla were seeking is the kind of thing that it's a different way of lookingre at what happened wh a migration that occurred within the borders of our own country.i within the borders of our ownf country there's an immigrant experience that was not unlike that of people coming across the atlantic can in steerage. and it's my goal to show how is much we have in common, how wee have so much more in common than we've been led to believe. these people bore up underi incredible odds just to make th decision to leave, and my goal d was to try to understand what were they up against and how did they make the decision to leaveh

and that the reader would behe able to put him or herself inth the mindset of these individuals and be able to say to themselves, what would i havean done? if i were live anything a caste system in which it was against the law for a black person and a white person to simply playi checkers together. that is astounding that someone actually set that down as a law and that in courthouses across the country there was actually a black bible and a white bible to swear to tell the truth on. that is astounding. and this is not that long ago. and how much was lost on both sides? how many, how many black people, how many white people were deprived of the opportunity toh get to know people that they might have actually had so muchn in common with. soly many wonderful experiences are deprived of all racesm because of the caste system weo were under. so that was the reason they left. >> in my family's case i learned through the reporting of this te book exactly why my father and his brothers had left. i had a different experience ine they didn't look back in terms e

of telling some of their stories, but they remained tethered to birmingham.he i went back to birmingham every summer.b so in that sense i may have bee slowly writing this book and collecting stories for thisng book. and my father did me an enormous favor by making sure that i knew his birmingham. i didn't know that itma was the place where he was actually shot by a white police officer, but s spent a lot of time in birmingham. and that's what makes his journey so surprising to me in so many ways.ng i knew that they moved toi kn chicago, ultimately, they allat settled in chicago.to he had five brothers. they were all incredibly handsome men which you will seeb if you read the actual book. there's pictures inside. and i knew that they had moved to chicago looking for bettert work. and you will see how handsome theyag are in these pictures because they newsed to -- used to take pictures. this was a common experience.thu even though they worked in blue collar jobs, my father and his brothers were postal workers or teachers, they would go to the portrait studio, and they would

dress up and look like johnc barrymore, and they would send a those pictures back home, andck they'd essentially say, we're doing all right up here. and they served as magnets.rt o people said, they're doing okay, i want to get up north.ing >> little did they know. >> right, right. [laughter] what i didn't hear, here's your postal uniform which was, which was good work, you know? >> hard work. >> hard work but good work and honorable work, and my father was very proud to do that work. what i didn't know, though, is that they were not just running to something, they were very much running from something. in my father's case, running for his life.th he had stood up to a police officer when he returned fromodu war, this is 1946, and he was part of a cohort of black veterans who returned to this country as changed men.ack ve .. changed. degette aboard a military uniform, they participated in the fight for democracy, and when they came back they wanted a piece of that, and this is

before the power to the people marches in the city. it was a very simple set of demand they wanted. they wanted jobs, they wanted respect, and they wanted to vote. and they were unable to do so. they were met with a white wall of resistance, and my father, this mild-mannered postal worker -- remember this is 1946 birmingham, alabama, so for a black man to stand up to a white police officer was to invite a special kind of trouble. and he wound up being wounded when the police officer gun discharged and grazed the side of his leg. he had to get out of birmingham jury quickly after that. and the rest of the brothers had to get out of birmingham. they couldn't stay carrying the north main at that point became a bit of a risk. there were ever consequences that i only understood in the writing of this book. the great opportunities to have jobs and the way they do, when

the six sons moved to visit from time to time. parents continue to age. there will continue to deteriorate. there will left alone in the later part of their life because their sons moved north and felt they could no longer come back. the more you understand this migration you see the benefits that were great. >> your mother is a fourth generation. how did her and her father's experience meet? what did she teach you about life in the north? her experience would have been different. >> her family was the only black

family in a small town in the central part of alexandria. her brother looked at the post office and jimmy became good friends and they met my mother. there was a tolerant community there. i grew up in an integrated community and thought that was the way life was in minnesota. there was a level of tolerance that i didn't see or experience in birmingham. when these stories started to spill out, this easy integration i took for granted was not always present in their community. my family were blockbusters. when my father left chicago in minneapolis, they refer first black family to purchase a phone. the people that i knew, parents

of my friends were very chilly to my parents when they first moved in. most of the families got up and left when we moved into the neighborhood and i'll only learned this from my mother later on because she was protecting me. the story i share with people is i realize how strong they were and how cunning and how great used humor to help them get by in a situation that could have crushed them. when everybody moved out and they were trying to sell houses next to the black family my mother decided i could sit by and cry or have a little fun with this. when prospective buyers would come to look at the house directly next door to hours she would send my sisters and out in the yard to play. they were very clear that they were going to be moving next to a black family and then she would walk outside herself very

pregnant with me. so when she tells the story, get inside the house and wait until the right moment to say showtime. >> your father was very much into keeping the yard nice and clean and he was a gardener. there was a part of him that was about appearance. something that struck me was you talk about the appearance. when you went on vacation and make sure, you were better than coca-cola. parents are important for that generation. >> working on the book helps me dress better. >> she always put the rest of us

to shame. >> >> because of the expectation. so much to say about the assumptions made by this generation. they didn't value education or work hard. the point of working hard in a post office, good, strong, reliable, hon. work. there was a civil engineer to help us. this migration generation or generations of people have been miscast and misunderstood with one of the things i wanted to come across but appearances were crucial and the story of a man named dr. roberts, the story of a surgeon who had been a surgeon in the korean war. he got out of the army. determine or found out he could not practice surgery in his own

town in louisiana not too far from here. he decided he was going to set out on a course that would be more perilous than he anticipated to monroe, louisiana and texas and on through the western states to get to california which was his version of the american dream but it was more perilous than he sought and it turned out that he could not after getting past texas and the eastern section of new mexico he could not find a place that would grant him a motel room. he would have to drive to through three western states in desert at night by himself. his drivers say it was not a miracle he made it through the desert but made it all because he's a terrible driver but that is not the story. he had to wonder whether he made

the right decision. or how that generation felt important but before he could go in to try to get a room he was very aware of what he was up against even if he thought he was in a dream land of the west. he made a big effort to make sure he was wearing a tie. and a sport coat and make sure he was not wrinkles from the right. a great deal of effort before going in to ask for a room. this is well past the borders of what was considered jim crow at that time and could not get a room. i have gone over 3,000 times what i might have done and there was nothing. i attempted to recreate that journey. i couldn't make it as far as he had. we were driving through the desert. we were going through the

mountains in arizona. i was trying to follow it to the letter. those stretchs of land are very spread out if you go dozens of miles. you have no light except the headlights. i wanted to be able to create the reader. what does it feel like to have your fingers swell from gripping of the wheel for so long. what does it feel like to have your eyes grow heavy from lack of sleep, to push through in spite of all of that knowing he was rejected in the new land he had chosen for himself in monroe, louisiana. i wanted to recreate that. we made as far as you mop, errors on a. my parents began to fear as i had driven, if you had seen the road map you wanted, i rented a

buick and we got to this part where i was very off the road and my parents said we must stop the car. they had to go through the experience of not knowing whether to stop having to gather up or pack volvo food you might possibly need. all the ice and water you might need if your radiator went out and make sure you had a spare tire. my parents have been through that. they said to me stop the car. we have been through this before ourselves and if you won't stop let us out. so we stopped in you love, arizona, he had not had that choice but it was no longer 1953. it was so inspiring because of how far we have come that i could not fully recreate the letter because we were passing

places like at and my parents said we have been there and done that so let's stop. >> i remember i wrote in the margins he did this without a cellphone. because i won't move down -- >> driving through the desert with no cellphone. probably couldn't get service there. >> when you talk about the appearance, the reason i spent so much time on it is as i look back with was the my start to understand my parents a little bit more. i always thought they were typed a. that they kept the garden beautiful. they had to shovel snow and it was a work ethic and everything they did, the way they ordered their steps was a statement,

they were sending a statement that our yard is taken care of. thank you very much. they would dress in a certain way because they were asking respect. they were accidents in some way in the way they dress and they demand we dress and i didn't include this in the book. one thing i discovered want to mention is you talk about burdens on the other side. women of color were dressed to go into town in birmingham you don't go into town without gloves. you always have gloves on. you are always dressed. men wore hats. i will tell you how old i am but well into the period where people were doing that people of color still did that when they went to the business district in birmingham. what i found in trying to find, they would have lived on the other side of the color line and one of the things they talked

about was having to address because of the black folks were dressed fine. the point was to rise above and even if they wanted to go into town they couldn't because they had to prove they were a step above. there were burdens on both sides. living on the other side and enforcing that to decide if we want to 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 suspect on the other side of a teller line. and there were prices to be paid for that. >> a cast is something that holds people in place and that means no one can move even outside the wind. it could not last forever because when you have a cast on

a bus and you can't get off because it is not a national way for human beings to live. >> to be honest, what you see sometimes in kids in a different way, it is sometimes an effort to say i have worked and i am expressing my work in a gigantic chain that has a gold encrusted cross but in some way saying i am a value. i want you to see me. this is who i am. >> one of the most interesting chapters was the one on and jemima. i wonder if you could talk about that. no surprise to you about your grandmother. >> if you use pancake mix, and

jemima looks like girlfriend. she looks like she shops at macy's. and pearls and looks like a church council. what i discovered again in this period of inhibition quite by accident in casual conversation is my grandmother had worked for a time as an itinerary. she traveled throughout the midwest. a six day region dripped in of full skirt selling pancake mix at a time when convenience cooking was not the norm. it was new at that time and my mother was so angry about this. she said this is not -- i couldn't let it go. what i discovered is my grandmother earned a good deal of money doing this and there were and jemimas all across the country. she only had -- texas is a big

state. sometimes she worked in oklahoma. what i discovered my grandmother's case was i found newspaper clippings about her work. under the headline and jemima is coming to town. what she said as she would focus on children in these towns because she knew this was the first time they would see a person of color and wanted them to be left with a good impression. she would talk in a certain way to let her know she was educated. this ring true for me even though i had a hard time imagining her because this was a very polished church woman but that rang true because of the kids. did you leave the g at the door? could you finish the words? not i am going somewhere but i am going somewhere. what she did was worked in her own way. by presenting this image of

singing church songs was very different from what you would have encountered if he picked up a newspaper or magazine because and jemima didn't look like her now. and she spoke with a certain slave patois which was supposed to let you know that she was uneducated and fairly happy with her life. what i wound up doing was giving my family a gift in filling out pictures of my mom and her siblings and other folks hated that story. what a was able to show was she did this in her own way. she took a job that could have been demeaning and listed herself with her earnings and lifted her people by serving as a representative. i don't know what horizontal she made with herself. when she had to tie a head scarf. i don't know what that was like but i do know when she talked to newspaper reporters about it

there was not shame in the way she described her work. after hearing something that was very uncomfortable, the good deal of pride. >> you end with we judge and jemima and ourselves by what we see reflected in her history. what do you mean by that? >> what i realized is there is a lot of psychology wrapped up in and jemima. why she looks different right now. newaukum to a black woman and call her aunt jemima. she might look benign but i dare you to do it. when i talk to people about it, i did an exercise when i was working on the book. i would toss people what do you think of and jemima and they would say what? i ask -- did give me a favor and tell me what you think. what i realize is many people --

black people have complicated views and many white americans have complicated views in a completely different way. i found a woman who runs a restaurant in mississippi. if you have ever been there. a gigantic and jemima. she is so large that the restaurant is in her hoopskirt. shea too has had a makeover. she has had a breast reduction. but the woman who runs the restaurant said i don't understand why people of color denigrate her. why they don't embrace her. she said in my community so many of us were raised by women of color who work in our families, many of us had better relationships with our mates than the others. i don't understand why people don't honor that. isn't she yours first?

on the other hand i talked to an african-american man in birmingham who said she looks like my grandmother and is the smartest person i know. what bothers me is companies through advertisements are trying to take that and turn it into something ugly and it is something that i love. if someone controls your image you don't control who you are. i realize she is so much more than an icon. [talking over each other] >> do you want to tell that. >> i have young children. my son's favorite food is pancakes and particularly likes. i was always arguing with him. we by hungry jack and do something else. we have pancakes from scratch with five ingredients. i was at target.

a little boy at target asked his mom who is and jemima and she looked at me. with this sort of expect and look on her face. i am not going there. but after working on this book, i would have a conversation with her. i would talk to her and say she is my grandmother. let's talk about this. >> 1200 people, wonder how you talk about george sparling? >> i started with a great deal of urgency. this began in 1915, world war i, and it is no longer the need for

an outpouring of people. we get to them as soon as we could. i went to senior center in the south side of chicago. and went to a baptist churches in new york when everything is from south carolina and these little clubs. and where the state came from. and in los angeles, the louisiana club and thousands of texans in los angeles hand in chicago.

and in new york. it is a casting call. and the senior center in los angeles and i would go and. and a general approach in trying to let them know what you are doing and in los angeles, we get on the schedule. if there was a lunch it was a good day. and in los angeles county department, he passed out, seniors were gathered. people running scams on their

seniors. they ask where you are from, where you are born and when you came to los angeles. how many children do you have? what do you do for a living. fortunately either -- they threw on state dinner, or whatever. i don't know what the reason was. it was a casting call like auditioning. then i narrowed it down to these three. protagonist be possible people you'd never heard of. you see what they have gone through. one would represent the east coast and the other one in the

middle and the one that is obviously near and dear, many people in texas, no people in los angeles or other parts of california because it is constant back-and-forth. it was less written about so i need to find three people and each of them to have left in different decades to get a sense of the scope of this migration. also people of different classes because there are differenceses even among people who had been a caste system. there were casts within the pasts in the south. people who were very open and honest about themselves. you could read a page and you are reading about opening doors or the degrees that were pretty

obvious. he was -- the things you're reading about turning the page. one of questions is the back of a room. why are there no pictures in the book? my editor and i, there should be none because we wanted the reader to see him or herself in these people. they are photographed, you can see them and they are not in the book itself and want people to be distracted by that. the people tell the story that up until now anonymous, beautiful and amazing,

courageous people, so many famous people. toni morrison is migrating from alabama. something that any writer would be able to do but they would not do in alabama to go into a public library and take out a book. her parents saw that and migrated to ohio where she had the opportunity to get exposed to that. will rain and richard wright, huge names in literature are products of the great migration. music, motown would not exist without the great migration. berry gordy and his parents migrated from georgia. once he became a grown man deliberately would go into the music industry and don't have the money, it doesn't look

around to anything. her parents migrated from alabama which is a great source. florence ballard were children of the great migration. so many people with the new art form, hard to imagine what it would be like without motown. we go to arkansas and illinois, never have the opportunity to spend hours upon hours that would have been necessary to hone his genius had his parents not migrated out of the country of arkansas. parents migrated when he was 5 years old from north carolina to harlem. the opportunity and a luxury would have been possible. to spend hours upon hours to get

music lessons. and the farmland of small-town north carolina. and john coal train migrated at 17 from north carolina to philadelphia where believe it or not he got his first, where would janice b.. he got the opportunity to go to the hall of music in philadelphia and to practice so much that people in his apartment building complained. the nerve of complaining because john cold rain, he is playing it all -- at all hours of the night. they complained about john cold frame playing his out those acts. he played so much that he

complained to a minister who gave him the keys to the church. one of the unknown things about this migration is each dream will be beautiful translation of the southern state from which it derives. from texas to louisiana those people are very different. the culture is different. all kinds of food by was not accustomed to because of the music and language were totally different. where are your people from? in los angeles, a lot of people were not from the stream that created a los angeles migration experience. it did not translate. it turned out that miles davis used to fight over john cold frame with research. it turned out he had a special

feeling for the month because they come from the same stream. their people were the same people. this was a permutation that shows how different the african-american experience is even in our own country when everyone comes from the south. one thing i had not heard of but food became a big issue. in chicago i was exposed to, i was on the bus heading with seniors to riverboat casino. it was a big thing for seniors in the world diamond ring. someone broke out a delicacy. there was an uproar on the bus. straight direct from the source it was the good stuff. >> with pickled eggs? >> i never heard of it.

we talk about grits but were not exposed to that. the people carried the culture with them. they transplanted themselves with them where they went and in some ways we're back to the south and is a beautiful thing they did. it is an american culture. a western culture. the merit of the north and south as it was altered by these people and still living with the affect. the world benefits from the affect of that and we are the primary beneficiaries of children who had the opportunity to grow up at that time and everything is different with reverse migration. at that moment that was what they needed to do. >> one more question. line up and ask this question now. the question i want to ask, you talked about how your book

emerged from the conversation about race. i am curious how that to the contributed to raise that were not said. you talk a lot about white people and black people have these conversations with each other and often not with each other. how do you think that will contribute to that conversation? >> it has come full circle. i set out to write about the hidden conversations and my family and as i travel for country on a 30 foot boat tour i find myself swimming in conversation. people often come to hear about my story and wind up telling me there's. it is called your story where people cannot leave their stories. hy welt up writing a book about race but in many ways it was not about race. i captured by racial legacy because of these hidden conversations that started filling out a period of

historical in digestion where things started coming out. that is the thread. but the broader tapestry is the central question. how well do you really know the people who raised you? how much do you know of their history. in my case there was a complicated racial legacy that i didn't know about. but weather is the depression or the dust bowl or the holocaust for polio epidemic, parents are often very careful about what they tell their children. if they want their children to school or they don't put rocks in their pocket on the way out the door. they keep their heart to themselves. i called this the great silence but i hope it would spark the conversation ended is starting to happen and in some ways i have decided there is a benefit

in having those conversations and trying to capture your history because it is your history. it is your birthright. even if it is a difficult history is yours. an incredible gift to be able to pass that on the your children. you might not want to put rocks in their pockets but it is okay to put pebbles in because they need to be grounded. they need to know where they came from. in the end i hope it has contributed in some small way that people might be interested in their own history. people might learn something not just about my family but america, and the big revelation. my father was shot. little things painted a bigger picture. when people read the book, they will put it down and want to talk to someone about it.

family member and co-worker. >> i shared with you my grandmother turned 95 and i am having a hard time trying to go back and tell these stories because she doesn't remember a lot. >> i have a bit of advice. a couple things that were simple. if you want to talk to older people and they don't want to tell certain stories particularly, ask them about the era. you might not go on the front door but you cannot go around the side door. they love the yankees but i am in the wrong state for that. i will stop now. educate yourself about the 1950s or 60s. i wonder what you wear when you go out on saturday night.

get the uncomfortable and those stories will come forward. i have a hard time talking about this because it makes me sad. my father -- i worked in radio and swim in audio all day long. my children will never hear my father's voice because i never recorded it. if you can record the people you love take the opportunity. you don't have to invest lot of money. phones have recorded devices. record and in quality and do that. the last thing i would suggest is do it over food. any time i learned about my family it was always at the table. anytime there is a difficult conversation with someone. if you have a loved one who

loves lemon meringue pie give them a mile high piece of morale and. if they like the pineapple upside-down cake, crispy on the edge make sure they get that. that will bring back memories. they don't call it comfort food for nothing. >> i shared a lot of the experiences that michelle had with her own parents. my mother never talked about her experience in the south and in the process of doing research where i am interviewing 1200 people, it turned out my own mother was not talking. she was by far the toughest interview i ever had. she didn't want to talk. that is in the pass and racist history -- into history. she was not going to talk. everything you might see in this book. i learned in the course of

research not going up, my mother did not talk about it. he left because the demanding working boy found the plan rope of the man he was working for. he was leaving for detroit as soon as possible. the way i found out is i read every word to my mother and father had passed away. he did not live to see the publication of his boat and it was a heart rending thing for me because he still believed in it. at a certain point i could not read it because she kept interrupting say all those things, when i was in rome, georgia, my mother used to do. in some ways my hope is by making it ok, by validating these experiences and giving them dignity because they are dignified and an incredible

thing people have done, made people more willing to talk about that. i was in los angeles doing a reading and a father and his daughter showed up and i signed the book and they told me we are getting ready to go talk. he hadn't talked before the we will talk now because this will be an inspiration for doing that. my goal will be the people i have written about are not just asking americans who left one place for another. they left the same reason any of our forebears' ever would have left any part of the world to be in the land we are now on. my goal would be to see that we have much more in common than we have been led to believe. i love when people say my great-grandparent's came from romania. i love it. that is exactly the goal of all this. my hope is it would make everyone want to go back and

find the oldest person in the family and take the lemon meringue pie, i found it was helpful to describe the recipe. have them cloak and it starts to come out. there's a crisis in my book where we discovered there using self rising meal for the corn bread in mississippi. our friend from italy, we do the same thing with the hostile. making it from scratch and doing the right thing and they're not doing that. i love the way of getting people to talk, going where you are not getting resistance. >> we have to go to questions. if you talk to people, use your children. mine were a big help to me.

i have young children. my mother did not want to talk about any of this. it took a lot to do that and she was incredible. we have learned quite a bit because of that. she edged their way for kids to ask a question. children are innocent and demanding at the same time. they could get away with asking questions that you could never get away with. my mom would never talk to me through my kids and the last thing before we go to questions is if you do want to capture history you will have an opportunity to do that the day after thanksgiving. you are familiar with storyboards, a fabulous program. he championed a national holiday. relatively new holiday you might not know about. it is the day after thanksgiving when a lot of people go to the mall. we are eating leftovers and

watching football. when we are on together 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 we want to ask? i have others. [applause] [inaudible conversations] >> another migration that is worth documenting is the phenomenon called passing. century ago it was routinely estimated 10,000 black people were turning into whites.

and the new york critic quite like me, and an account by the pursed white person to turn himself black which was in 1948 in the land of jim crow. he uses the expression you can't figure behind the man or the economic exploration of sharecroppers is reported. can you explain for the audience the figure behind the man refers to. >> the question that was asked was about the concept of passing. african-americans who would pass for white mostly. >> i have discovered a dozen stories in the last two weeks mainly coming through this link on my website where people are e-mail in stories about family members that they discovered have passed or people themselves have passed and want to reach

back and find their history. it was a phenomenon in this country that is greater than the numbers you cited. probably happens quite often. each of these cases was a tortured decision to figure out how to reclaim family members that reached over to the other side. i would pull your question a little bit farther and look around the room at african-americans, look at what they look like in this country. many of us are related to many of you. no one really wants to talk a lot about that. that is sort of the hidden conversation in america. >> my question basically was your stories unfold the population. have you had any problems telling these stories to younger

people? maybe not necessarily african-americans but the kids who can't stop texting or looking online. this is something that has a lot of resonance with people in the community looking for better pastures. >> one of our books are fairly new. to read them and pass it on. when it comes to migration, there are many people in the, quote, hip-hop degeneration that our descendants of the great migration. his name is calvin, migrated from mississippi to los angeles. and his family migrated from north carolina to new york. hip-hop was one of the best known people of the iconic

people of this generation. and the descendant of that migration from north carolina. it takes time for people to recognize the correction. that is why we want to record history. maybe people are not ready for it now but one day they will be. i had a friend who bought it for a 5-year-old who wants to design it but one day she will be able to read it. that is beautiful. >> we have time for one more question. >> i want to tell my story even though i would like to very much. do you guys have any sense of what that migration has done for the south itself for people who are still fare? how the culture reverberated all little bit and change things? have you seen any of that? >> it is my contention the great migration accelerated the drive toward civil rights and the end of what the people were fleeing. it showed that first of all,

this cash system, the people being underpaid working for the right person they were forming. this is a great deal of handling among the powers that be and talked-about what we are going to. editorials all over the place. the working harder or ease up? what do we do? there have been wholesale arrests of african-americans on the railroad track platform and trying to leave. and authorities board the train and a arrest them in their seats if there were large numbers of people leaving. there was a lot of hammering in early attempts to leave. all the money, and ultimately led to an opening up of the sense of opportunity. maybe people didn't want to go but they had an opportunity to see what it was like.

that set in motion what would not have been possible at the beginning of the great migration when there was one out of -- something in the south every three days in the decades before the migration and early decades of the migration. this is a real threat people were living under. it would not be possible to be marching in the streets and protesting as they later would in the 60s. by the 1960s african-americans who are here and the white people who supported the effort for freedom had more support for moving forward. that had an immense effect. they knew there was a place to go. there were people showing them how they were more free in the north. people in the south didn't know that. the final fate was they provided

leverage for people here who might have needed a place to go once they put themselves on the line. that is black-and-white. people in the north as immigrants often do were sending money south to helped move the process forward because they love the land they love. they don't want to leave. i read a beautiful quote that if i had a choice i would not have left. if i can do anything i want to i would not have left the south. those who left i heard it over and over again, based on housing and work, i made many statements in my life believing that is not one of them. they were part of a generation that had no choice but still living with the effect. the south can take pride and they did what they did not just because they left but they left with culture. that southern culture was the

spirituals the gospels, the rhythm that john took with him to philadelphia. there is an interchange. >> i see when i go to birmingham. >> people who could leave left. when i go to the birmingham that i used to know there were vibrant black business district it was decimated. it is difficult to talk about when you talk about integration and progress moving forward and good things happening. diggers and ditch diggers live down the street and go to the same school.

they live in a community that might not have enriched. it took something from the community. institutions like harbor high school. if you were black and lived in birmingham until the 1960s. they sell post cards. they left the number of people who go through harvard which is quite illustrious. all of the teachers, all of them. they went into teaching. imagine the kind of education you would get in that environment. there is this underside to

integration. >> we have run out of time. [applause] thank you for coming and sharing this our. and on the other side of this. >> this was part of the texas book festival. to find out more about the others that appear their visit

texasbookfestival.org. >> every weekend booktv brings 48 hours of history, biography and public affairs. >> i think the most for hospitality. i am honored to be here alongside the living. my name is reza khalili. i hope i am not schering anyone buy my appearance. i was a student here in the 70s. then after the reagan revolution i went back hoping a record help my country. my best friend was in the

revolution. i hoped my expertise would repair the infrastructure. i witnessed torture, rape, in prison just because of the clerical establishment. and execution, disrespect to human dignity. and i could no longer take it. i decided to travel back to u.s. and i thought to myself that i would go back to the u.s..

i have friends here. i thought i could not remain silent in the face of all the horrific thing that this regime was doing to its people. i thought by contacting the u.s. of 40 i could bring change to the government and see what was going on that would help me help the ukrainian people. so i contracted the fbi and they took me in touch with the cia. several meetings of the briefings. in one of my meetings, the cia asked me to become a spy. to become their eyes and ears. fa was said to europe and trained over there to received coded messages over the radio

and municipal letters transferring information from the beginning of the revolutionary guards. i expected to get a magical pen and perhaps a james bond car but none of those happened unfortunately. i was sent to some pencils and papers. throughout my years of working in the revolutionary guards. i had to battle a lot of mixed emotions because i had to repeatedly lied to my family about why i was being loyal to the force. i couldn't refuse to them what my true nature was and what my purposes were that would be indenturing whole family. the biggest shock to me was when

i realized that the best is not getting the message or realizing that the managers of this regime, it is principles. for greed or oil or more contracts to the regime. not only the iranians were being heard on the streets of tehran, but the americans also. and 241 service men were killed and many others. cabarrus would realize that this regime is a dangerous regime and not only to the iranians and the region but our own national

security. the reason i wrote the book dishearten was out of frustration at trying to negotiate as opposed to helping the iranian freedom and democracy. so i guess the point i want to get across tonight to you is if you look back at history and see that we defended the human dignity and represented the evil acts of segregation and slavery, fascism, apartheid, ethnic cleansing, communism, building a future for war.