in 1876 and his death in 1877 remained a controversy for years to follow. for more information visit "the killing of crazy horse".com. >> "capitol hill cooks" is the name of the book. the other is linda bauer. booktv usually doesn't talk about cookbooks but why would we want to talk to you? >> this is cooking for a cause. 50% of all the proceeds and the royalties in advance goes to homes for our troops so it does go for the veterans to give them a wheelchair accessible home and who would want to know the favorite recipes of george washington to president obama with notes about why they like the recipes and this congress. >> what is president obama's recipe in your book? >> he has a and cheese, curry and shrimp linguine. >> how did you get access to those recipes? >> the beauty of it was my husband was the longest-serving white house socialite in history

and i was an intern during watergate so i know a lot of the folks and i have done free recipe books before and given them to charity. so this is two two to books and one for the same price so it is a great bargain and it is the best charity you could ever ask for. >> here's one recipe you have for close cake. theodore roosevelt. >> that's right and it is a healthy k., let me tell you. it is heavy and it is great. great. it is delicious. >> what other recipes you haven't had the people might be interested in? >> i think the best recipe is probably amy eisenhower's fudge. when she married i had she told my husband she did not a cook or even boil water and after she married him he was the chef. he ran across as million dollar fudge recipe and it is so good even kids can make it. fantastic. my second favorite is probably ronald reagan's pecan pie because it is just like pumpkin pie but it has the pecans and all the nuts are on top soda split -- typically political.

>> you also have a recipe from harry reid. >> it is chicken and africa cream sauce. it is very good. ron paul and michelle bachmann too sodas every political persuasion you could want. >> "capitol hill cooks." linda bauer is the author, recipes from the white house, congress and all of the past presidents. >> from the texas book festival in austin a discussion with michele norris author of "the grace of silence: a memoir" and isabel wilkerson, author of "the warmth of other suns" the epic story of america's great migration. >> thank you for coming to this session today. we have michele norris and isabel wilkerson and i'm going to do a brief introduction fora both of them and that i'm going to askbo questions. i will leave time at the end sot that people can ask questions too. probably about three times the 31 and you can ask questions. sk.

in the introduction to the grace of silence, michele norris writes should begin the process in 2009 because she became convinced an unprecedented hidden and robust conversation about race is taking place across the country in the wake of barack obama's historic presidential campaign and his extension to office. from this project, her painful family secrets from her father's shooting by the birmingham police, less than two weeks after his discharge from service of world war ii, to her grandmother's pancake mix as an impediment to aunt jaminma. she traveled from minneapolis to her childhood home in the deep south to explore the things left unsaid by her family when she was growing up. michele was chosen as a journalist of the year in 2009 by the association of black journalists and is a winner of a dupont columbia award for the york project race and the 2008 vote. she's the host of national public radio's all things considered and appear to "meet

the press," charlie rose and 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 warmth from other sons is the pulitzer prize-winning author isabel wilkerson's first book that chronicles the watershed events in american history, the migration of african-americans from the south to the north in 1970 to the stories of three people and their families. drawing on archival materials and conducting more than 1,200 interviews, the warmth of other sons chase is idmae and robert foster from their beginning in the south to the decision to live a better life in chicago among los angeles. the stories parallel experiences of immigrants who came to america and chronicles the major shift of american life in all parts of the country. she won the pulitzer prize for the writing of her book -- her

work as the chicago chief of "the new york times" in 1994 making her the first black woman in the history of american journalism to win a pulitzer prize and first african-american to win individual reporting. she's currently professor of journalism and director of the nonfiction university. i'm going to start by asking some questions. the first question i want to ask is how each of you came to work on your project, how you discovered your topic. >> i've probably been working on this book for long as i've been alive because i grew up as the daughter of people who are part of the great migration as is michele and the majority of african-americans as you might ever made in the north and midwest and the west, and i grew up around people who had migrated from georgia, the carolina, virginia, washington, d.c. grew up with the music, the language, the waves, the food and no one ever talked about it

being a great migration. no one set and someone who can agreed migration. and later as a journalist and interviewing people all over the country became more aware of how you did was because wherever he went, whether you were in los angeles or in chicago or detroit, there were references to the south. everywhere you went. and it all came together for me and i wonder whether they're no wrath for the huge migration which had gone on for most of the 20th century and that is what i set out to do. not being a novelist i wrote as non-fiction so it took 15 years of interviewing, 1200 people -- 15 years. [laughter] if this book or a human being it would be in high school and dating. [laughter] that's how long it took. and i had the chance to meet out of the 1200 cisco three amazing

protagonist whose story told the stream of the migration. i am part of the east coast stream, and michele, as we learn in her beautiful book, is part of the central drama from the alabama, mississippi, tennessee up to the midwest and that's the reason why i decided to do. >> if you look at the cover of my books is to words, a memoir, and that is surprising to me as anything in this process because it is an accidental memoir, it's not the book i set out to right. i intended to write a book that looked at how americans talk and think about race in the wake of the election of barack obama. i wanted to write a book of essays by would principally be of other people about how other people talk and other people

think, and i try to listen to the hidden conversation in the country based on some work i had done that we did in your pennsylvania with a group of diverse voters. what happened is when i turned the frequency to try to pick up the hid in conversation and lots of different places across the country i started to pick up static on the dial in my own family and i started to hear things in my family that i've never heard before. but i think happened is older people in the wake of the election that brought the, sort of fix field. they saw something they never thought they would see in their lifetime. you talk about the warmth of other sons. for my parents and my grandparents in that generation to dream a man of color would have been to the white house would be like reaching out and trying to touch the sun. when that happened they tried to excel and the stories came out and i realized the people i thought i knew so well had

locked away certain parts of their history purposefully to make sure that they could move forward to protect themselves but i realize it was mainly to protect me, to protect my sisters, to protect my cousins. they stopped talking about very painful things, in dignities, mistreat and my father's case violence, because they wanted our path forward to be clear. >> why did your own families leave the south for the north? >> garrey good question. that is one of the reasons i set out to do the book because my parents never talked about it come as with michele. this generation was and some ways a misunderstood segment of the greater generation. they grew up under incredible -- they were in many ways locked in a system, and i describe the great migration as the

inspection from the system which was unattainable and could not last and also ended violently through the civil rights movement but ultimately, these people needed to be -- i felt their stories needed to be heard and told, and they were not talking. one reason the story hasn't been told his people were not talking. they were not talking for many reasons. one -- very selective to get one is it was just too painful. another, when they left they left for good and did not look back. some people changed their names. one character in the book how no longer wanted to be known by the name he grew up with. some people melted into the new world and didn't look back and they started anew. they turned the page and acted as if what ever happened before hadn't happened, and their children were raised in a new environment without knowledge of what had gone before them or how it even got there and one of the questions i wanted to know is how did i get here? how is it the majority of african-americans in the north,

midwest and west can trace their roots in some very specific part of the south? i mean, it is no accident that michele's father was from alabama and in that in the midwest? i know that he went to boston but he ended up there, and i find it so inspiring this isn't a haphazard unfolding. these people making a decision, the decision of their lives, to leave the only place that they have ever known for places the have never seen, not knowing what the future held. and many african-americans, as is the case for any americans, wouldn't even exist because i wouldn't have existed, and michele like what not -- it would have been very different. my parents, to get to the answer your question -- story, you get us started -- [laughter] my mother from georgia to washington, d.c., my father might read it in a different decade from southern virginia to washington dc. they were from -- families were

the people that have their parents that had some education. they themselves had education but they couldn't use it in the system in which they were growing up. and they decided to go to a place where they thought they could. the happened to meet there and they got married. had there been no migration i wouldn't be here. i don't know who i would be or who would be sitting here but it wouldn't be me. and the same goes to you as well. so they were seeking that. i think the idea of a kind of political asylum the people were seeking is the kind of thing that it's a different way of looking at what happened with a migration that occurred within the border of our own country. within the borders of our own country there was an immigrant experience that wasn't unlike that of people coming across the atlantic. and it is my goal to show how much we have in common, how we have so much more in common than we have been led to believe. these people were left under incredible odds just to make the decision to leave, and my goal was to try to understand what

were they against, and how they make the decision to leave, and that the reader would be able to put himself or herself in the mind set of these individuals and be able to say to themselves what would i have done if i were living in a system and which it was against the wall for a black person and a white person to simply put checkers to get there. it is astounding that someone actually said that down to the law and in courthouses across the country there was actually a black bible and a white bible. that is astounding. and this is not that long ago. and how much was lost on both sides, have any -- how many black people, how many white people were deprived of the opportunity to just know people they might have actually had so much in common with? so many wonderful experiences were deprived of all races because of the system that we were under. so that was the reason they left. >> in my family's case, i learned through the reporting of this book exactly why my father and his brothers had 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 slow the writing this book and collecting stories for this book, and my father did me and the enormous favor by making sure that i knew his birmingham. i didn't know that it was a place that he was also shot by a white police officer, but i spent a lot of time in birmingham and that is what makes his journey so surprising to me in so many ways. i knew that day moved to chicago ultimately. they settled in chicago. he had five brothers. they were all incredibly handsome man. which you would see if you read the actual book. there's pictures inside. and i knew that the fed moved to chicago looking for better work. and you would see how handsome they were in the pictures because the use to take pictures of common experience that even though they worked in blue-collar jobs, my father and his brothers were postal workers

and teachers, they would go to the portrait studio and to this up and look like the nicholson brothers or john barrymore and send the pictures back home and those pictures will be essentially say we are doing all right up here. and desert of imagined this because when people get the pictures they would say they are doing okay, i want to get of north. >> [inaudible] [laughter] >> which was good work. you know, hard work but good work and honorable work, and my father was very proud to do that work. what i didn't know the ways they were not just running to something, they were very much running from something. in my father's case, running for his life. he had stood up to a police officer when he returned from the war of 1946. and he was part of a colewort of black veterans who returned to this country has 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 e .. 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 consequences though they didn't understand when they moved north of only understood in the riding of this book. the greater opportunity when they moved north. they had jobs, they could use the g.i. bill of more than ways

they could not in the deep south. but also, when the six sons moved north, even though they came back and visited from time to time, they left behind parents who continued to age, whose homes continued to age, whose health continued to deteriorate. and what i realized, the letters that i discovered and the interviews i did, that my grandparents who gave birth to the six strong hand some strapping sons were left alone in the later part of their life because their sons had moved north and felt like they could no longer come back. so the more you understand this migration, you see the benefits but you see that there were also great costs. >> michele contador mother is a fourth generation minnesotan. her experience and you're father's experience -- how did they need and what did she teach you about life and the north? which her experience would have been different when she was born and raised in minnesota. >> my mother is -- her family

was the only black family in a small town in the central part of, the north part of the state, alexandria. she and my father meant when her brother worked the post office, and my father and jimmy became good friends and he went home to minnesota with jimmy and at my mother and i was eight, you know, and loved minnesota and left the sort of tolerant community. and i grew up in an integrated community and i thought that that's just the way that life was and minnesota, that there was a sort of level of tolerance that i didn't see or experience in birmingham. what i realized when these stories started to spell out from my family was that the sort of easy integration i took for granted was not always present and even their community. my family's or blockbusters, so when my father left chicago and most north 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 the new, the parents of my friends were

very jolly to my parents when they first moved in. most of the families got up and left when we moved into the neighborhood, and i only learned this from my mother later on because again, she was protecting me, but the stories i share with people and talking about this, i realized how strong they were also help coming and how they sometimes 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 the houses next to the black family, my mother or i could have a little fun with this. [laughter] and what she would do is when the prospective buyers would come to look at the house directly next door to hours, she would send my sisters out in the yard to play. they were very clear they were going to be moving next to a black family. and if that didn't work she would walk outside herself and she was very pregnant with me, and so when she tells the story

she talks about how they go inside the house and we got the right moment and she would say to herself showtime. [laughter] .. vacation and you're father wanted to make sure that you i can't remember how you said it were better than the coca-cola and the american family and you talk about a lot, too, how appearance is very important and talk about some of that in your book, appearance been important for african-americans and that generation. i think tthe >> i think the book helped me to dress better. [laughter] >> i've known as isabel a really long time and she is always dressed well.

[laughter] >> as house michelle because the expectation which is one of the things there is so much to say about the assumptions made abous this generation of people that the assumption was if they hadn't gone to school and didn'd tell you education and didn'tlu work hard to get to your pointwk about working office good strong sturdy reliable honorable work and my parents doing the same thing. my mother had been a teacher and my father was a civil engineer. he had been a tuskegee airman. this group that migrates and generation to the people has been misunderstood for so long which is one of the things i wanted to come across but appearances were crucial and one of them-- in the story of a man named dr. robert joseph foster in my book is the story of a surgeon who had been a surgeon in the army during the korean war. he got out of the army and found out that he could not have-- practice surgery in his own

hometown of monroe louisiana, not terribly far from here and he decided that he was going to -- then he had anticipated on a course in monroe louisiana through the country of texas, a large country into 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 that he could not after getting past taxes and even past the eastern section of new mexico, he could not find a place that would rent him a motel room. that meant that he had to try 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 was a miracle he made it through the desert but that he made it at all because he was such a terrible driver. he had to go alone and at a certain point you have to wonder whether he made the right

decision but he gets the idea of how that generation is so important is that before he would 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 the free land of the west so he made a big effort to calm his hair to make sure he was wearing a tie and it brought out his sport coat and made sure that he was not wrinkled from the right. he went to this great deal of effort before going into ask for a room and this was well past the border of what was considered to be jim crow at that time and he still cannot get a room and he recounted the story to me and he said i have got over 3000 times as to what i might have done and he will-- there was nothing he could have done. i attempted to re-create that 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 and we were going

on hairpin turns in the mountains in arizona. we had, i was trying to follow it to the letter and even now, those stretches of land are very spread out. you can go for many dozens of miles without a single settlement. you have no light except your headlights. it is nonfiction so i wanted to be able to create for the reader what does it feel like to have your finger swell from having gripped the wheel for so long? what did if you like to have your eyes grow heavy from the lack of sleep that they began today? what was it like for him to have to push through in spite of all of that through the darkness knowing he had been rejected in his new land that he had chosen for himself and in fact brag to all the people in monroe louisiana about so i wanted to re-create that. we made it as far as numa arizona. my parents said i was beginning to veer from the road, had rented a buick lead the way and he said if you have seen a buick roadmap-- but i rented a buick

and we got to this part where i was veering off the road and my parents said we must stop the car. they had been through jim crow and they had to go through the experience of not knowing whether they would be able to stop and having to gather up, pack all the food in my-- they might possibly need all the i.c.e. and water you might need if your radiator went out and make sure you had a spare tire working, all of this effort they had to go through for a simple drive. my parents have been through that so they said to me as i was veering off the road, stopped the car. we have been through this before ourselves. if you won't stop, let us out. [laughter] so we stopped in yuma arizona and i felt very disheartened because he is not have that choice. it shows us how very far we have come as a country, that i could not even really full-- fully

re-create it. my parents said look, we have been through it and then there and done that, let's stop. i remember as i was reading it i wrote in the margins he did this without a cell phone. >> without a cell phone. [laughter] >> i won't leave my house to go down the street without my phone. >> he was driving through the desert with no cell phone. >> he probably couldn't get service there any way. >> probably. [laughter] >> now, when you talk about the appearances, the reason i spent so much time on it in the book is because as i look back with wisdom i started to understand my parents a little bit more. i just always thought they were typed a. and that they kept the garden beautifully that we had to shovel snow before anybody else in the neighborhood shoveled snow and i felt that was sort of a work ethic and i now realize everything they did in the way they ordered their steps was a

statement. they were sending a statement. our yard is taking care of. thank you very much. they would dress in a certain way because they were asking for respect. they were sartorial activists in some way and a way that they dressed in the way that they demanded that we dress. i didn't include this in the book but one of the things i discovered and i want to mention this because you talked about the burdens on the other side. when women of color would dress to go into town in birmingham for instance you didn't go into town without gloves. you always had gloves on. you always wear dress. the men wore hats and i'm not going to tell you how old are you on but well into the period of people weren't doing that people of color still did that when they went to the business district in birmingham and what i found in trying to find a police officer who shot my father, i was able to talk to people of that generation who at that point would have lived on the other side of the color line

in one of the things they talk to me about was having to dress a certain way because all the black folks were dressed so fine. so they felt like the whole point was to rise above the black folks so even if they wanted to go into town and just wear like a simple-- they couldn't because they had to prove that they were one step above so there were burdens on both sides. living on the other side and enforcing that in trying to decide if you could say hello to someone and if there would be a sanction for that. could you call that person mr. or mrs. eke as if you did you are suspect on the other side of the color line. there were prizes to be paid for that as well. that is why i view it as a cast because they cast is something that holds people fixed in a place and that means no one can move even once outside of the line dataset for them. the cast, the mold that is set for them and it is artificial by definition and could not last forever because a cast, if you

have a cast on a bone you can't wait to get it off because it is not a natural way for human beings to live. >> now, to be honest, what you see sometimes in kids today in a different way. all that bling bling is sometimes an effort to save i have worse, and i am expressing my words in a gigantic shame that has a big golden encrusted cross but it is in some way saying i have a value. i want you to see me, this is who i am. >> michelle, one of the most interesting chapters for me was your capture on aunt jemima. i'm wondering if he could talk a little bit about that, about your grandmother who played aunt jemima? >> first of all, if you use bank cake mix and if you use and jemima pancake mix, and jemima today looks like girlfriend.

she looks like she shopped at macy's. she has a pearls. she looks like she is on the church council. what i discovered again in a period from one of my uncles quite by accident and a casual conversation is that my grandmother had worked for a time as an itinerant aunt jemima. she had traveled throughout the midwest. she dressed up in a headscarf and a hoop skirt selling pancake mix at a time when convenience cooking was not the norm. add water and stir was sort of knew at that time. my mother was so angry that my uncle talked about this. she did not like this period and i couldn't let it go. and what i discovered is that my grandmother had earned a good deal of money doing this and that aunt jemima was all across the country. there was one right here in texas. texas was a big state so she

only had one one state and sometimes she worked in oklahoma. what i discovered in my grandmother's case, i had newspaper clippings of her work under the headline and jemima's coming to town. picture my grandmother and her description of her work. what she said as she would focus on children in these towns because she knew that 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 and a certain way to let them know she was educated in this was very true to me. i remember this very polished church woman in my life but that rang true because of the kid she was telling us, did you leave the g at the door? could you please finish the work? it is not i am going somewhere, it is i'm going somewhere. that rang true to me but what she did was she worked in her own way because by presenting this image of a hard-working woman, the kings english and

when she worked with very different than the aunt jemima you would have encountered if you picked up a newspaper or magazine of that day because aunt jemima been didn't look like aunt jemima now and jemima been spoke with a certain slave fatwa which was supposed to let you know she was uneducated and fairly happy with her lot and what i wound up doing is digging for that story and giving my family a gift and filling out the picture because my mom and her siblings and the older folks in the family hated that story so what i was able to show to them through research was that grandma did this in her own way. she took a job i could have been demeaning and lifted herself up with her earnings and lifted her people up by serving as a representative. i don't know what kind of-- she made with herself, when she had to tie a headscarf, a do rag on her head. i don't know what that conversation 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 and after hearing something that was very uncomfortable, that gave me great comfort and a good deal of pride. in that chapter, you end up with aunt jemima and ourselves by what we see reflected in the mirror of her history. what did you mean by that? >> what i realize is there are a whole lot of psychology wrapped up in and jemima and that's why aunt jemima looks differently right now, just walk up to a black woman and call her and jemima. she might look benign but i dare you to do it. [laughter] and yet when i talk to people about it, i did this exercise when i was working on the book. no matter what i was researching i would ask people at the end of the conversation what you think about and jemima? and they would be like what? i will tell you why i'm asking the question in a minute that do me a favor and tell me what you thing. what i realized is that many

people, black people have many views on this and many white americans had confiscated views in a different way. i found a woman who runs a restaurant and natchez mississippi if you have ever been there. it is a gigantic and jemima but she is so large that the restaurant is in her hoop skirt. and she too has had a makeover. she has lighter skin and she has a 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. i was like,-- 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 mammy's than we did with our mamas. and so she said, i don't understand why people don't honor that in some way. is and she yours first?

on the other hand i talked to african-american men in birmingham who said and jemima looks like my grandmother and she is the smartest person i know and what bothers me is that the companies do their advertisement and tried to take that image and turn it into something ugly, something that i love so when someone controls your image you don't control who you are. so i realize she is so much more than just an icon. so much deeper than that. >> i loved that story you tell at the end of the chapter about the white kid in target. do you want to tell that? >> i have young children and my son's favorite food is pancakes. he particularly likes and jemima's pancakes. he likes the syrup bottle. i was arguing with him, can we just by hungry jack's? right now we are making pancakes from scratch because there are only five ingredients anyway.

i was at target and a little boy at target, a little caucasian boy asked his mom, who is aunt jemima? and she looked at me. [laughter] with this sort of expectant look on her face like-- i am not going there, but you know after working on this book, i would have a conversation with her. i would actually see at target and talk to her. and jemima is my grandmother and let's talk about this. >> isabel you entered-- interviewed more than 1200 people for your book. i'm curious how you settled on the ida may gladney, robert foster and george starling. >> i started the book with a great deal of urgency because this migration began in 1915, world war i and ended in 1971 essentially the conditions that led to the migration and it in the south and there was no longer the need for this

outpouring of people to leave. so that meant there are three generations of people who participated in this directly and i needed to get 6 million of them and i needed to get the messiness i could. i felt this urgency because they were getting up in years and i wanted to be able to tell the story before it was too late. so that meant i had to go to all these places. i went to senior centers in and aarp meetings and catholic mass in los angeles where many people are from louisiana and catholic. i want to baptist churches in new york where everybody was from south carolina. i went to these little clubs and all the cities that represent the originating states where the people came from. there is a lake charles louisiana club in los angeles. there is a monroe louisiana club in los angeles. there are hundreds as you can imagine texas clubs in los angeles and there are similar clubs in chicago and also in detroit and in new york. i went to all those places to

find them. i was doing essentially a casting call and i had this one case where i wanted-- went into a senior center in los angeles and i would go in and i would say i am working on a book about the migration. generally i had a story, general post that i would take to let them know what i was doing. this one place i went to in los angeles, you had to get on the schedule. there were certain days that were better to go than others. if it was bingo day, it wasn't a good day. if there was a state once 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 brochures to the seniors who had been gathered there and he said we are getting reports of our seniors being taken advantage of. there are people who are running scams on our seniors. they will ask you all kinds of questions about yourself.

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 did you do for a living? [laughter] and he passed this out and then said next stop isabel wilkerson will be here to talk with you. fortunately many had not been listening because they were focused on the state dinner or they found me to be trustworthy or whatever, i don't know what the reason was that i was able to talk with them. that is what i did for many months. does kind of a casting call, kind of like the addition and then i narrowed it down to these three on the three were people i needed to have three protagonists, people you have never heard of so you could see yourself in these people and what they had gone through. three people, each of whom would represent one of the three streams of the great migration. one would represent the east coast dream and the other would represent the one in the middle,

and then the one obviously near and dear to people in texas because many people had to know people in los angeles or other parts of california because there is a constant back and forth and so i wanted to tell that stream. that was a strain that had been less written about so i need to find three people and i wanted each of them to give a sense of the breadth of the focus of migration. i also needed to have people of different classes because there are great differences gratification even among people who had been in a caste system. there were cast within cass in the south and i wanted to be able to reflect that. also i needed great characters, people who are open and honest about themselves. you could read it page and know you were reading about item may, or you could read about the inveterate gambler. he was a record store.

he was a character unto himself so you would know who you were reading about just by turning the page. people who you could see yourself in and become engaged in. sometimes someone will shout from the back of the rim why are there no pictures in the book? and my editor and i decided simultaneously there should be none because we wanted the reader to be able to see him or herself in these people. the people's photographs because i got the question so much, the photographs are available on my web site and they also surface on the internet is more interviews have been done. they are not in the book itself because we didn't want readers to be distracted by that. i needed three people who would together tell this story of, up until now the anonymous, beautiful and amazing and courageous people who made the decision of their lives and affected us in so many ways that we are still trying to figure it out.

so many famous people are products of this great migration. michelle is a product of this great migration. tony morrison is a product of this great migration. her parents migrated from alabama to ohio where she got the chance to do something that any budding writer would absolutely have to be able to do but she would not have been able to do in alabama which is to go to a public library and take out a book. her parents saw that and they migrated to ohio where she have the opportunity to get exposed to that. august wilson, lorraine hansberry, richard wright and some of the huge names in literature are products of the great migration and in music motown would not have existed and that is because barry gordy, his parents migrated from georgia to detroit where once he became a grown man he decided he wanted to go into the music industry. he didn't have the money to go out scouting for talent so he looked around him and there was diana ross who was a child of

the migration. her parents migrated from alabama. >> alabama was a great source of talent. >> mary wilson and florence ballard, all children of the great migration, rita franklin. her parents came from the south. so many people. created in a styrofoam. it is hard to imagine what culture would be like had there have been no motown and when it comes to jazz. miles davis parents migrated from arkansas to illinois. he would never have had the opportunity to spend hours upon hours that would have been necessary to hone his genius and become the musician he was at his parents not migrated out of the cotton country of arkansas. polonius monk whose parents migrated when he was five years old from north carolina to harlem where he have the luxury -- this would have never been possible in tobacco country in north carolina to spend hours upon hours to get basic lessons.

there would have been no time to do that in the cotton country out in the farmland of, small-town north carolina and john kohl train. john coltrane migrated at 17 from north carolina to philadelphia where believe it or not, he got his first alto sax. where would just be if he had not migrated and been part of the great migration and got the opportunity to go to the school of music in philadelphia? he practiced so much that he absolutely, the people in his apartment building in philadelphia complained. the nerve of complaining because john kohl train, the man of 12 cities who sang at all hours of the night. all those people would deny up and down to this day they complained about john kohl train playing his alto sax. he played so much that he had to

turn to a minister who gave him the keys to the church so he could play to his hearts content. one of the unknown things about this migration or unrecognized things is that he-- a beautiful translation of the southern state and culture from which it derived. in other words, the migration from texas to louisiana, those people are very different. the culture is different. i had to learn to eat all kinds of food that i wasn't accustomed to because the food, the music and language and references were totally different. the first thing you would get is where are your people from and in los angeles my people were not from the stream that created the los angeles migration experience. my people were from georgia. it was not always easy to go out and interview people so it turns out that miles davis and polonius monkeys to fight over john coltrane, and it turns out that john kohl train always had a special feeling for polonius

monk. their people were the same people and this is a permutation that shows me how different the african-american experience is even within our own country. one thing i had to discover i had not heard of was food became a big issue. in chicago, i was exposed to i was on the bus heading with some seniors to a riverboat casino. it is a big day for seniors. and someone broke out a delicacy that everyone-- there was uproar on the bus and i was wondering what is this thing? it had been brought up from mississippi, direct from the source. it was the good stuff. it was hot headcheese. [laughter] >> with pickled eggs? [laughter]

>> i'd never heard of it because the migration stream, we could talk about grits but we weren't exposed to that. what i'm saying is the culture, the people carried the culture with them. they transplanted the cells with them where they went. in some ways they went back to the south and it is a beautiful thing they did so the culture, american culture and are there and-- northern culture and merit of the and south as it was altered by the arrival of these people and we are still living with this. the world and and of its promise, and we are the primary beneficiaries because we are the children who have the opportunity to grow up in a freer place. at that time, now are reaping is different and there is a reverse migration but at that moment that was a thing they needed to do and they did it for their children. >> we have about 15 minutes left. the question i wanted to ask, you talk about michelle how your

book emerged from the conversations about race. i am curious how you feel your book has contributed to the conversations about race that are said and unsaid because you talk a lot about how white people and black people have these conversations sometimes with each other, often not with each other. how do you feel your book will contribute to that conversation? >> i feel it has come full circle. i set out to write a book about the conversation. i wound up writing a book about the conversation of my family and as they travel the country on a 30 plus city book tour i find myself swimming in the hidden conversation. people often come to hear about my story and wind up telling me there are. on my web site i have a link called your stories where people can actually leave their stories. i wound up writing a book about race but in many ways it is not about race. i captured my racial legacy because of these hidden conversations that suddenly started spilling out in this

period of historical and digestion and my family. things just started coming up. but 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 really know of their history? in my case there was this complicated racial legacy that i didn't know about that you know whether it is the depression or the dust bowl or the holocaust or polio epidemic, parents are often very careful about what they tell their children. if they want their children to soar, they don't put rocks in their pocket on the way out the door. they keep their stories to themselves. i hope that it would spark a conversation and i think it is starting to happen. in some ways, i have decided that there is benefit in having

those conversations in trying to capture your history because your history, it is your birthright and even if it is a difficult history it is yours and an incredible gift to take back and have-- pass to your children. you might not want to put rocks in their pockets but it is okay to put pebbles in there because they need to be grounded. they need to know where they came from. in the end, i hope that it has contributed in some small way that people might be interested in their own history. people might pick up the book and learn something, not just about my family but america. there were big revelations, grandma was aunt jemima. my father was shot. there were smaller revelations that i've learned about the country, little things that painted a bigger picture and i hope when people read the book that they will put it down and want to talk to somebody about it. at family member or a coworker. i hope-- that is my belief.

>> i shared with you my grandmother just turned 95 and i am having a hard time now trying to go back and tell her the stories because she doesn't remember a lot. do you have advice for how to get the stories out especially to older people who may not remember? >> isabel i'm sure we'll have advice as well. a couple of things that are really simple. if you want to talk to older people and they don't want to tell you certain stories particularly asked them about the area. you might not be able to go in the front door but don't go-round to the side doors. if you know they love, i would say the yankees but i'm in the wrong state for that. [laughter] so i will stop now but if you know they love baseball or they love all, think about and educate yourself about the 1950s or the 1960s. asked them about that. what did you wear when you went out on a saturday night? what kind of music were you listening to? bring them into the era and then

get them comfortable and maybe those stories will start to come forth. tape it if you can. i have a hard time talking about this because it makes me very sad that my father died in 1988. i worked in radio. i listen to audio all that long and 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 a lot of money. your phones usually have recording devices on them. take the time to do that. the last thing i would suggest to you, do it over food. [laughter] every time i learned something profound but 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 would usually introduce food to try to lubricate the commerce haitian.

if you have a loved one who loves lemon meringue pie, give them a mile high piece of meringue. if they like the pineapple upside down cake, the part that is burned and crispy on the edge make sure they get a piece of it and that will bring back memories and they don't call it comfort food for nothing. >> i would say that i actually shared a lot of these experiences that michelle had with her own parents. my parents, my mother in particular never talked about her experience in the south and in the process of doing the research in this book where i'm interviewing people for this, it turns out my own mother was not talking, not talking. she was by far the toughest interview i ever had. she didn't want to talk. who wants to talk about that? she was not going to talk. there are a few references in my book to my 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. i discovered things about how my uncle had left. the left because he discovered the man he was working for, he found the-- he was working for and decided he was leaving for detroit as for detroit as soon as possible. so i had no idea and the way that i found out some of this was i read every word of this book to my mother and my father had passed away. he did not live to see the publication of this book and that is such a heartrending thing for me because he so believed in it. i read every word of this 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. when i was in rome, georgia or what my mother used to do so i found in some ways my hope is that i'm making it okay, by validating these experiences and giving them dignity because they are dignified and incredible

things people have done, it will make people more willing to talk about that. in fact one of the places i went in los angeles, i was doing a reading and a father and his daughter showed up and they went -- i signed the book and they told me, we are getting ready to go right now. we are going to sit down and talk right now because maybe this will be an inspiration for doing that. my goal would be that the people that i've written about are not just african-americans who left one place for another. in some ways they left for the same reason and if our forebears would have ever left any part of this world to be on the land we are now on. michael would be for us to see that we have so much more in common than we have been led to believe. i love it when people come up to me and save my great-grandfathet grandparents came from romania. i love it and that is exactly the goal of all this. my hope would be that it will make everybody want to go back

and the oldest person in their family, take a lemon meringue pie. i found that it was quite helpful to get them to describe their recipes. have them cook and then it starts to come out. >> there are actually a crisis in my book where a ida mae from mississippi discovers they are using self rising meal for the cornbread in mississippi and she has connections. it is likely never made it like that before in the old country. a friend who was from italy, a battalion american descent, said we go through the exact same thing with apostate. so i love the way of getting people to talk often by going where you were not getting resistance. where do they feel comfortable and hoping they will lead you from there. >> i know we have to go to questions for two quick things. if you are trying to talk to people, use your children. mine for a big help to me. i have young children and my

mother also did not want to talk about any of this but i couldn't move forward until she got in the full than it took a lot for her to do that. she is incredible and i am so glad that she did. we have learned quite a bit because of that and one of the ways, the kids could ask a question. children are innocent and demanding at the same time and they can get away with asking questions that you never can get away with and i found mom would talk to me through my kids and the last thing i will leave before we go to questions is if you really do want to capture history you have a wonderful opportunity to do that the day after thanksgiving. if you are vermilya with story corps, a fabulous program, he champions a national holiday, relatively new holiday. it is the day after thanksgiving, a day when a lot of people go to the mall, a lot of us are with family members. you were eating leftovers and

watching football. while you are altogether take the opportunity on the national day of listening to listen to the people you love, chronicled their stories and put them away. >> are there questions people want to ask? [applause] [inaudible] >> there are another migration that is largely invisible. a century ago it was estimated five to 10,000 black people were turning into white achieve case being-- my question comes from

reading an account by the first white person to turn himself black which is not john howard griffin that raised. in 1948 in the land of jim crow and he uses the expression you can can't figure behind demand for the exploitation of sharecroppers and make source that isabel recorded. can you explain for the audience but you can't figure behind but the man refers to? >> the question was asked about the concept of passing african-americans who would pass for white mostly. >> i have discovered about a dozen stories just in the last two weeks and they mainly coming over through this link on my web site where people are e-mailing stories about family members that they discovered half past or people who themselves have passed and want to now reach

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

to tell the stories to younger people, maybe not necessarily younger african-americans but the kids who can't stop texting and can't stop looking on line because this is definitely something that has a lot of resonance with people in the community, the idea of a gration and looking for better pastures. have you had any experience of talking with kids at of that age group? >> our books are fairly new so it takes a while just to get the book and to get them to read it and pass it on but when it comes to migration, there are many people and they "hip-hop generation" that are descendents of the great migration. snoop doggy dogg, his family migrated from mississippi to los angeles. john combs family migrated from new york so tupac is one of the best-known people of the iconic people of this generation that

is a descendent of that migration also from north carolina to new york so i think that it takes time for people to recognize the connection and that is the reason why we want to record history because maybe people are not ready for it now but one day they will be and i have a friend, i'd bought it for her 5-year-old and she can't read it now but one day she will be able to and i think that is beautiful. >> we have time for one more question. >> i won't tell my story even though i would like to very much, but do you guys have any sense of what that migration has done for the south itself, for people who are still there, how may be the culture reverberated a little bit and change things or made things better there? >> it is my contention that the great migration helped to accelerate the drive for civil rights and for the end of the caste system for which the people-- in other words, it

showed the first of all the lower castes-- this caste system, the people who were being underpaid or not paid at all because they were working for the right to live on the land, they were farming had offers and they were willing to take them. that cost a lot of handwringing among the powers to be. editorials all over the place about what did we want to do? do we work them harder or do we aesop on them? there would be wholesale arrests of african-americans on the railroad platforms when there were large amounts trying to leave. authorities would board the trains and arrest them in their seats if there were large numbers of people leaving so there is a great deal of handwringing that attended those early attempts of people to leave. ultimately though it also led to an opening up of the sense of opportunity for those who stayed. may be that people didn't want to go but they had an opportunity to see what it was like and that helped to set in

motion what would not have been possible at the beginning of the great migration when there was believe it or not one out of, there was a lynching somewhere in the south every three days in the decades before the migration and the early decades of the migration so this is a very real threat people were living under so it would not have been possible for people to be marching in the streets and protesting as the later would in the 60s. by the 1960s african-americans who were here and the white people who supported the effort for freedom had more support for being able to move forward without. that had an immense effect on the south. that meant people knew there was a place they could go and there were people coming back showing them how they were freer in the north, even if some of that was untrue. they would save all year for that matching tan coat and people didn't know that. then the final thing they did was they provided leverage for

people who were there and might have needed a place to go once they put themselves on the line. that is black-and-white, and the people in the north as immigrants often do worse than-- sending money back south to move this process forward because they love the land they had less. one of the beautiful quotes from someone who was in the early stages said if i had a choice i would not have left. if i could do anything i wanted i would not have let the south but those who left ultimately said, i heard it over and over again in one form or another, based on how things were i have made many statements but leaving the south was not one of them. the south is still living with us. the south can take great pride in what these people did because these people did what they did not just because they left because they left with southern culture. that southern culture was the

music, the spiritual, the gospel, the rhythm that john kohl train took with him to philadelphia when he got that out helps out so sex and he has a lot of ménage is to the south and his work. i think is a interchange between the two. >> i see that when i go back to birmingham. what you had was a certain kind of bright light. people who could lead last, people who were the most ambitious left and when i go back to the birmingham that i used to know as a kid which was a vibrant black business district, it is decimated now. you know it is difficult to talk about. you talk about progress, moving forward and good things happening but under segregation doctors and ditch diggers live down the street from each other. they sent their kids to the same schools.

they lived in the community that might not have been rich but was rich in social capital and what happened is when people could move, you have this diaspora and it's sort of took something from that community. black businesses suffered comets additions like harper high school-- if you are black and lived in birmingham until the 1950s he went to harper high. it was the only high school. i could list a number of people who have gone to harper which is quite illustrious. when my father went to harper all of the teachers, all of them, every single one of them had masters degrees because they couldn't work anywhere else, so they went into teaching. that is a bad thing that they couldn't work anywhere else but imagine the kind of education you would get in that kind of environment. there was this sort of underside to integration that we don't always talk about that i had to

face in very painful ways in writing this book and something that really makes me quite sad. >> thank you. we have run out of time. [applause] >> i want to thank you for coming and sharing this hour with isabel and michelle and me. thank you. they will be signing books in about 15 minutes in the authors tent which is on the other side of this.

here is a portion of one of our programs. >> hello, everybody. i thank the host for the gracious hospitality. [inaudible] i am honored to be here alongside the doctor [inaudible] reza kahlili, and i hope i'm not schering anyone. by my appearance with the face and the voice. i was a student here in the 70's and after the iranian revolution i went back hoping i can help my country. my best friend was in the

revolution guard and i joined the revolutionary guard. they felt my expertise would help the establishment but shortly after i witnessed horrific events, torture, rape of teenage girls of their youth in prison just because they didn't agree with the clerical the establishment. i witnessed the execution, i witnessed this respect to human dignity, and i could no longer to get. i decided to travel back to the u.s. and i thought to myself i can take my family and go back to the u.s.. it was a second home to me. i had friends here, but i

thought i cannot remain silent in the face of all the terrific things this regime was doing to its people, and i thought that by contacting the u.s. authorities i could bring change to the government and if the americans knew what was going on, they would help me help the armenian people, so i contacted the fbi and they put me in touch with the cia. after several meetings of the briefings, the officer asked me if i was willing to go back to iran and become a spy, become their eyes and ears as he put. i was sent to your opinion by restrained over there to receive messages over the radio and

write in visible letters transferring information from the revolutionary guard. i had expected to get a multitasking watch, penn and perhaps the james bond car, but none of that happened unfortunately. i was sent some pencils and paper. through my years of working in the revolutionary guard, i had to battle a lot of mixed emotions because i had to repeatedly lied to my family on why i was being loyal islamic force and i could not reveal to them what my purpose was because that would be endangering the whole family. i think the biggest shock to me

was when i realized the west is not getting the message, that realizing the danger of this regime, but they were willing to cite its principles for what? agreed, leal, contract to the regime, not even india iranians and their blood spilled on the streets of iran, but it was the americans also, the bombing which over 241 servicemen coming u.s. servicemen were killed and many other incidents. so my hope is that the west would finally realize that this is regime and creates not only to the iranians in the region

but our very own national security. the reason i wrote the book was frustration that even today we are trying to negotiate such regime as opposed to helping the iranians meet their aspirations of freedom and democracy. so the point i want to get across tonight to you is that if you look back at history, you will see the human dignity, the evil acts of segregation, slavery, fascism, apartheid ethnic cleansing, communism, this succeeded in building a future for the war