>> was anything taken out? >> nothing was taken out. in fact, i work with the agency now for six years since i retired, probably have published two books and probably 200 articles, and i've really only had four or five things taken out by the agency over that amount of time and i have to say that at least on four of the five occasions they were correct and i was wrong. they're simply looking to protect classified information and sources and methods, and they've been very good to work with. i felt them very, very accommodating and very helpful. ..

and you don't do it sometimes the opportunity does not come around again. but second, we have so massively undermanned our operations in afghanistan that there is simply not enough american soldiers and intelligence officers to go around. they have so many tasks and so few people to do the that i don't think it is a surprise that we have not got him at this point. >> that said, what would you like to see the u.s. to in afghanistan, beef up or pull out or what? >> i think, sir, that we have been there too long. i don't think we have enough

soldiers in the u.s. military if we committed every ground troops that was available to rectify the situation. america as a society no longer knows how to fight a war domino longer has the stomach for it. we have lost, you know, less than 2,000 people in afghanistan from a population of 310 million, and we are rapidly -- rapidly wanting to leave. my own view is that we should have fought and won there, but i am on hawk only if we intend to win. i am afraid mr. bush and mr. obama have never been able to define a winning strategy. some my own view is that it is not worth another american rain or another american soldier's life to stay there. the one thing i would add, though, is when we leave it will be a tremendous defeat for the

united states. however redresses that, if we say the afghans had their chance it could not do it, if we say that we have some how satisfied what we went there to do, we may fool the american people, but we will not fool the muslim world. when we leave afghanistan without accomplishing what we said we were going to it will be viewed as the mujahedin defeating the second superpower. that can only mean that the muslim world will be more galvanized against us. more young men will flow to the battlefields. certainly more will take up arms in the united states. >> michaels stores new book will be in bookstores and did your 2011. >> in the book hands on the freedom plow 52 women who were part of the student nonviolent coordinating committee share

their experiences of the civil-rights movement. the editors and several contributors to the book present their thoughts at an event hosted by busboys and poets in washington, d.c. this program is an hour and 20 minutes. [applauding] >> thank you. i have the honor of moderating the panel this evening. this subject means a great deal to me because in 1964i was a student at tuskegee university in alabama. i took a bus ride that changed my life forever. i went from tuskegee to mississippi to jackson mississippi to serve as a volunteer for an effort that sncc had, the student nonviolent coordinating committtee had in getting out the vote in jackson, mississippi. i came back and i eventually became a member of sncc and left to work full time. this subject is, indeed, one

that is near and dear to my heart. this book, hands on the freedom plow, is a compilation of the works of many different women, 52 women who were members of sncc movement seven, number, black, white, latino, a latina. the book itself has have 15 -- someone said 16 years in the making. it really has been a labor of love on the part of the people who use the year, some of whom, the majority of whom were editors and some were contributors. this is the very first time that you have had -- that we have the assemblage of women's stories from sncc in this matter. this is a very, very meaningful work, and i think that you will enjoy hearing from the people here. without further ado i would like

to get started and first introduced you to read gene smith young who is a child psychiatrist practicing in the washington d.c. area. she has worked with a number of community oriented mental health programs to address the problems of special populations including children in foster care and mentally ill youths in the juvenile justice system. she has also instructed medical residents at georgetown and howard universities. a member of harris neck affiliate, the nonviolent action group and a published author, jean smith young worked as a field organizer in southwest georgia and mississippi. now that would give the floor over to tell some of her stories. [inaudible conversations]

[applauding] >> hello. hello. and testing. okay. we are soldiers in the. we have at hand on the freedom plow. but one day we will get all we came. we will have to stand up and fight anyhow. let's go. here we are. [applauding] so i started with that song because i really like it, but also because it represents the book. the third reason i started with that is i wanted to talk about the importance of music and song in the movement. tsa to start first with how did i get there. the way i got to sncc and to mississippi and georgia was i asked -- adjoined the action group in d.c.

at least for another day to talk about how wonderful. i can tell you that one day i said casually, this sounds kind of good. i think would like to go. the next day and meet her in the middle of the quadrangle where all of the other stories and fraternities are dancing and singing. somebody hands me this ticket to go down to atlanta. so that is how i got to sncc. i get to atlanta. i walk out this -- this six and a half, nine and a half, eight and a half raymond street. i walked up the stairs. nobody there except julien who wanders out from the back. he looks to me. i tell him know i am. oh, i guess he thought someone would be here to greet you. nobody to greet me.

i wanted to start talking about how i ended up going to school in philadelphia after jamie was murdered. i am going to read from that section of my part of the book. it may of 1964 by hit store ride north to oxford, ohio, where a thousand volunteers were to be oriented for the massive project. about the third day of orientation i was sitting next to judy, judy richardson in the back of western college for women auditorium. the meeting site was just a large enough to hold the 200 or so volunteers who had come for this training session. it was beautiful. a wonderful place to be to sing together. but there were so many people there that i could not figure it all out. i ended up turning to judy. i connected with judy as

partners. what will be the next phase? how will we manage all of these new people joining our organization? we know each other in a deep and abiding way. we can't even remember when we were introduced. we have always been together. my theory about this is that we have a special radar system that connects us. similar events in our lives. both have the misfortune of losing daring and creative father's early in life and the good fortune of having powerful, intelligent, and driven mothers to carry on. both judy and i in our early last of these two messages, life is tough and you cannot depend on any man to take care of you. you are very much loved, but there will be no pampering around year. that is a hard start in life. here we are in the auditorium and oxford try to figure out or we will to buy reedbuck bob came

forward. he was the architect of the mississippi, to five summer project. this was the big deal. this was a new phase in our work, a new phase in our lives. it was dangerous. i did not listen to closely when he talked because i had a gun used to being scared. i have gotten used to the answer of danger. that shows that it was better not to think about it. bob went on and on about it was dangerous, and we just ignore it. then something new happens. just as judy and i were sitting there getting in the mood bob was called off stage for a few minutes. when he came back he was a different guy. his body was stiff, and it seemed like he was being pushed forward by staff members, including his wife. the staff members lined up next to bob as he announced in an unusually hesitant way that three of our people were missing in philadelphia mississippi and

feared that these men were dead. dead. i had been moving around mississippi in a cloud of denial thinking that somehow i would be taking care of and nothing would happen to me. the reality gripped me and i was scared. i felt judy next to me. she was scared. everybody in the room was scared. and in this silence something bad happened to rid the room felt cold and empty. it was awful. the fear had made us stop being who we were, our vibrant and hopeful selves. judy was the only person that i felt connected to be returned to judy and said, let's sing. she said, no. i'm not doing that. so then i said, well, we have to do something. i still don't know where the song came from. it just came out of the sky. i don't know who taught it to me. in the silence as did up and started walking toward the front of the hall and seeing --

singing this song. i don't know why i have to cry sometimes. i don't know why i have to cry sometimes. it would be a perfect day but the trouble in my way. i don't know why, but i'll know by and by. and when i got to the front of that auditorium everybody had earned this song and everybody was saying. the mood changed. everybody stood up and joined and we were back. we were once again, and we were ready to take on the challenges that were ahead of us. that was the end of it. after that judy and i went on to separate projects. later in the summer after it was clear that they were dead by joined the group of the team that would go to philadelphia to work to show that fact we would

not be run off by this event. after this orientation of made the point, and this is important historically. long ago, several years ago we made a mistake when we had withdrawn from our position when herbert lee had been killed. we were all determined to go and follow his lead and go to mississippi, go to philadelphia and take our stand. that is my story. [applauding] >> betsy garmin robinson worked with sncc as a member of the staff from 1964 to 1966. in the 70's she moved to baltimore to do factory and union organizing which led her to a career in public health starting with occupational health research and ending as the director of nih id -- hiv

aids study clinic. in 1997 she returned to community organizing which she continues today. she is the mother of two daughters and has two grandchildren. [applauding] >> thank you. thank you, jennifer. so how did i get to sncc? i grew up -- my parents were working class. both got a college education. they joined the middle class and were very nervous about their new place in the middle class. therefore there were very worried about -- move in a little bit. they were worried about how people would see them. so there were very cautious. at the same time i grew up with -- i was kind of the fairness person. i was for fairness here and there. i don't know where i got it from, but that is how i side and. and then i went to college in upstate new york.

the citizens happened. i could not believe that black students in the south could not eat at lunch counters. there was just something about that that i could not believe. so i and several other women on my campus organized a support demonstration. the spring of 1960. that was the beginning. sematech me four more years to get to sncc. in the meantime i did north support organizing and raised money and sent whatever was needed and wrote letters and called congressman. in graduate school at berkeley i was part of a group, some of this is in the story. i was part of a group of graduate students. we read and wrote -- about social movements. one thing we learned was the struggle against racism, i guess institutional racism and the struggle of african-american people was one struggle with the energy existed for a real

fundamental change in the country. so i left. we talked a lot about the ivory tower and the graduate school was the ivory tower. you have to be part of what was happening in the country. i quit graduate school. never did get a master's degree. i left for sncc. what i will read is give you a little snapshot of what it might have been like. i was young, very naive, i have to say. a young white person growing up in the north without too much understanding or political education. so i'll just start to read and give you a little snapshot of what it was like. this is summer of '64. june of 1964 when sncc move its national office to green would mississippi freedom summer i went along. i've come to sncc in march. greenwood was a large town by mississippi standards but there were probably no more than six or seven dozen houses and then the recession because most

people live as sharecroppers on. the small friend houses were painted white with green trim and lined up on it aside. sometimes there would be a smaller house in the back of the main house. my host and hostess lived in rooms like this with only three rounds. for the whole summer they stepped on the living room couch and share giving me the only bedroom to be overwhelmed by their generosity i was respectful, but worried for years afterwards that i had not think them enough and not been as conscious of their sacrifices they should have been. that white liberal guilt. anyway, i am beyond that. do that was what it was. the office was on the first floor of an old building. it had three old wooden desks, each with a typewriter, a telephone, and the chair. i work the national phone its.

we communicated with the north support group mobilizing them to support whatever was happening in the south, whenever we needed it. contact the press, raise money, send funds for registration at freedom schools. we sent many hours typing stencils for the machines. anybody else in here is our aged to mark reproduce the plus reports detailing the activities on a particular day. there were four of us. ed and myself worked around the clock in the long sheriff's with no particular schedule getting a 4-6 hours of sleep per day. each week we received a check of $10, really it was $9.64 after taxes, from the atlanta office. that was supposed to purchase all of our essentials. it is where i spent a lot of the money on one regular meal a day

at an african american restaurant in greenwood. however, because all of the green would staffed as well as all of our visitors ate there i am sure, and he welcomed the freedom fighters to his restaurant, i am sure that he really supported us and there were many times that we a free. i ate my share of turnip and collard greens. in the mississippi office our work was protecting the field staff. leaving the office unattended was something we did not do unless the call command reporting that the council worker had run into trouble. the civil rights workers to be beaten, arrested, or killed for challenging the system. when we heard about and the rest we called the jail to let them know we knew they had somebody in custody. and we call the really

cooperative fbi. the justice department in washington families on our number contacts for them to start mobilizing, call a demonstration, a tall -- called the justice department, whenever it was. i am going to speak this part. my parents called the constantly because they thought that i was duped by communists. this is especially relevant today because there were four columnists of the time, right-wing journalists who repeatedly accused the civil-rights movement of being under communist control. my nervous parents who were kind of them fit in their new middle-class shoes tends to bring me home and send me to a deprogramming place. there were so convinced that i was not in my right mind. my mother send care packages throughout this time, even including an air conditioner for

the green would office when summer. on the one hand we sure that when my parents knew. i could not help wondering if they thought that these kids would bring me back home and and do the brainwashing. i think i should stop, jennifer. i have a little more, but i think i should stop. [applauding] >> and organizer, writer, photographer, and occasional as a professor. she worked for 1963 to 1967 primarily an alabama and mississippi supporting organizers with educational material and photographs. she was invited to northern new mexico in 1968 to help start agricultural cooperatives and

community health clinics. in 1990 perella was awarded a macarthur for her work in organizing mexican american and native americans. the preserved their cultures and economies. [applauding] >> i'd joined sncc reluctantly. i was working for the young christian students which is a liberation theology based movement of students on college campuses at the time which felt that christianity really have an obligation in terms of dealing with justice and poverty. because of the time of his working we were going, i was an organizer cahuenga by bus from campus to campus exhorting students to support the student nonviolent coordinating committee, the movement and the

bus system. then about somewhere in late 62i got a letter from the atlanta office from a friend of mine, casey hayden saying when i come south to work with her at the sncc office. that is when my so-called values and beliefs really collided with reality. i did not want to go. a release sat on that letter for two or three months and never responded. sitting in a bunk bed one time up in some catholic college in green bay wisconsin i thought to myself, what a hypocrite. sorry. you have to go. that did that reluctantly, got on the bus, went down to be there by the summer, got diverted to a summer program for

young black kids that were on their around doing since in their little world communities because there were reading about it, college students doing it. they were seeing it on television, and they were just doing the spontaneous things and getting the hell beat out of them, getting put in jail. sncc in the national student association put together a program to help these kids get some strategies and training in nonviolence. while there a lot of people were invited to speak to these kids and be like role models for them. i met frank smith. we had lunch together one afternoon. he said, how did you get your? what did you do before you came? i explained. he get really intense look on his face. i didn't know what it was about to be the next day i see him huddling with bernard lafayette has just come and from the field office and worked for sncc at that point. they came over and sat down and

said so, would you consider going to sama? i said, no. this is a blow, here is the situation. one of the ministers who was the strongest in the movement is a french canadian priest father who was ahead of the black catholic parish. we need him because he has been the only one to open for voter registration workshops. we cannot lose some. we are baptist. this man is dealing with his and some of his old parishioners who are not happy with the situation. he needs somebody of his own faith to be there. and so that just said give me some time to think about it. of course in know how the old catholic guilt thing kayten. their i was on the plane. really all of this is about relationships. i knew casey. i went back and she invited me.

it did not know frank and bernard, but they had the faith that i could do this. that did not have faith in myself. that relationship that we just established in that little weak is what made me do things i would have never done on my own. i think that is the story of a lot of us. so fear was of very large part of me trying to deal with the spirit of want to try to go forward and read to you where i was by about 1964. i looked down at the speedometer. hovered at 115. my 1957 packard hunker down and propelled the three of us down the mississippi interstate 55. glancing to the side as of the two towns 1962 chevy with white chocolate and strive to pass this book. the barrel of a long gun pumped up between the two men in the front seat.

it seemed like an eternity since we left memphis and got on the interstate. earlier that day of my companion, an older black woman and her daughter and i had left the sncc gathering at highland center in tennessee. we were on our way to the mississippi delta. traveling in an integrated car in daylight had left as all of little tense. on the stop for gas in of this i thought that the cover of darkness meant the worst of the journey was over. then i turned. i saw the white male occupants of the chevy staring at us. it was 1964. open season on civil rights workers. we got on the interstate and the tasteless. this is a packard, a cylinder, holding up at 120 miles-per-hour. this went on for 20 minutes. i just kept hearing my dad say, you know, you should not really speed because you could just blow overawed.

dad. get out of my brain. there was a semi in front. i thought, i'm just going to go shoot past that semi and part wide in front of them while still going because they will shoot me or us with a truck driver as a witness, i hoped. well, it freaked out the truck driver and people back. we hovered close to our guardian for about another few miles. the panic welling in my throat was held at bay by my companion's composure. if they had fallen apart would not have made it. signs for the base will exit emerged crashaw back up to 1205. the chevy was a six cylinder. it is kind of like not making it up the hill. i made the exit with a guy that truck or chevy insight. a cut the lights, slowed down the exit ramp into welcome darkness. the semi in chevy roared over us into the night. there was not a word spoken as

we continued to rebates phil on our way down to the delta. the terror gradually subsided. finally in small murmurous with a few tenuous chuckles we dared to believe it was over. i thought that packard must have been gas chariot maker. terrifying encounters like these became normal to those of us working in the movement who were new to the south. they have been normal for generations of those born and raised southern u.s. apartheid. as a civil rights worker we had to be prepared in a time in a place to walk the killing fields. we learned a variety of responses to danger, sometimes to fade into the background assuming. sometimes too emotionally play dead in the hopes that this doctor would lose interest. sometimes do something so bold as to gets them off balance enabling them to catch flights. finally ten survival census. we never knew that we have.

[inaudible conversations] [applauding] >> i became the next owner of that packard. >> i forgot that. >> i got sent and a lifesaver. martha press got, norman boonen, a field secretary and fund-raiser for sncc during her college years, a student and teacher of history, martha earned of master's degree in history from wayne state university and completed course work toward a ph.d. at the university of michigan. for 12 years she has taught various courses in african-american history at wayne state university, the university of toledo command the university of michigan. she has also remained involved in community programs including anti hunter and tutorial

programs. during several periods of her adult life she had also been a full-time homemaker raising three sons and caring for her aging parents. martha. >> thank you. good evening. i was born in providence, rhode island. when i was around six years old my parents moved from a white neighborhood that was fairly indifferent to our prejudiced to one that was downright hostile. the reason for the move was that my father and optometrist, was losing his sight. my parents decided to close his office and bought a funeral parlor that allowed them to rent out the upstairs living quarters and keep an office at the front of the house and tell my father could no longer practice. our new neighbor, a stone's throw from the window. the local motorcycle game

regularly congregated at the front of our house. once someone tried to set the house on fire. another time a father and i were told at gunpoint to leave the area. i spent most of my school years in all white settings experiencing that combination of petty meanness, isolation, being ignored and excluded. it came with what we then called representing the race. i could never be sure a teacher would recognize by upheld hand or that my classmates might resort to the inward or even physical violence. there is a kind of here and careful this that comes with being in this kind of position. from the time i entered college at the university of michigan in the fall of 1961 we were receiving fairly constant news and visits for movement activists including curtis casey came up to describe organizing efforts in mccollum mississippi

in the fall of 1961 and tom hayden became of that winter fresh from an albany georgia jail. in the spring of 1962 paid an invited a group of us to attend the conference in chapel hill, north carolina. in its berth with the freedom songs and stories of beatings and jailings sncc workers talked about baker's notion of radically democratic organizing and how seven freedom movement to liberalize the country as a whole, especially with seven back people voting. who could defeat the conservative southern congressmen who held a stranglehold on the senate and congressional committees? i was drawn in emotionally by being around people like myself who were, for the most part, black, political, and very radical. further, i was convinced that the organizing philosophies and strategies i heard about in

chapel hill just might work. i made plans to go south, but my parents who had lived apart for two years so that i could attend my mother's alma maters as a student would not hear of it. i continued to do support work for the movement and waited until i turned 18 and went south in the summer of 1963. throughout my time in the south and albany, georgia, greenwood, mississippi, and alabama i was always afraid to read not much happened to me directly. still, i feared being the victim of a deadly and excessive brutality visited on black people in the south. particularly on of the movement workers. buying paper downtown at green would one day in the summer of 1963, i noticed that the white man being greeted warmly by everyone as he made his way down the sidewalk across from us. all i ask is that the mayor know

my companion replied. that is brian be the back, the man who just shot and killed many evans. along with other civil rights workers we were passing the places where this or that beating or murder took place, including people like reverend reedbuck and sami yasin. my time in the south did expose me to the most brutal assets of seven races and. two days into the orientation at the beginning of the summer i learned that a black girl in her early teens from the nearby county had been raped by 13 white men. one was assigned bit of a man who had left this truck parked in front of a young woman south during the ordeal. she died of infections resulting from the attack. later that summer i went to campus outside green would at a plantation that looked as if it had been plucked from the history books. big, white columns.

off to the back in the side of row of small and unpainted cabins. some on stilts, a common type of structure in the south. near the end of our time i went into one of those houses on stilts. inside there was a small central stove and hardly any furniture. i found myself talking with the young woman who was my age and had at the baby. is the baby not feeling well? no. i think my baby has pneumonia for the third time. no, i said, chitchat. what to the doctor said? had didn't get to the doctor this time, she replied. the boss man would not allow it. since i had already gone twice this year. the baby is really sick this time. my sense was that she had accepted her baby would die and there was not really anything she could do about it. overwhelmed i left and went

around to the back of her house and threw up. my head spinning from this reality and filled with thoughts of generations of black babies denied such basic care and their mother's pain. just as with a gain a deeper understanding of the realities of racism. it gives me great sorrow to know that this kind of scenario is still too common in our communities here and all over the world where black mothers lose their children to hire preventable disease, and unnecessary violence. i gained a tremendous respect for the courage and resilience of the black people living in these communities maintain their decency and dignity facing these kinds of conditions on a regular basis. my respect britain fold as i joined them when they fought for freedom at the highest and deepest levels risking everything on the chance that some change could be made.

whenever i was canvassing in this black communities in the south, when i was asking the simple questions, would you like to try to register to vote or come to such and such meeting? the unspoken understanding was, of course. we know that you could lose your job, go to jail, get beaten up, your house might be bombed, and all to believe he might lose your life three there were people, thousands who actuy answered yes to these terms. that is what made up the civil rights movement. that movement did win the vote and legal segregation. it also liberalized america in ways that we did not imagine. freeing black people across the country from shame, say it loud, and black and i'm proud, bringing black studies which led to native american studies and sell on, softening the ground

and serving as a training camp for the women's movement, the peace movement, the student movement, and even advocating that human rights apply to all people including prisoners. i hope that one legacy of the movement would be that my children would not have to live their lives burdened with the kind of fear and careful list that the companies being a member of an oppressed race. this desire was not fulfilled. by the time our middle son reached high school age living in the detroit area turned out to be dangerous, especially for young black man. our son was attacked by the police, held up by armed robbers and present at random shootings and arrested. we all get used to hearing repeated gunfire every weekend. what had been the most difficult was a company our sons to the funerals of their contemporaries and children of our friends knowing that racism was the rich cause of these deaths and that there was no consolation.

i look forward to a day when our communities could be safe and secure places for young and old alike. our children will be attending excellent public schools and the parents will have jobs and adequate housing and was share the abundance that society has to offer. you might say i am a dreamer, but i know i'm not the only one. in the 60's we attacked a prisoner of oppression and felt the walls give way. there were openings made. now we must tear these walls down completely here and abroad. there is a song we used to sing in the movement which has been changed slightly to make it not gender specific. just my hands cannot tear prison down. just your hands can't tear person down. if two and two and 50 make a million we will see that day

comes around. we will see that they come around. [applauding] >> grew up across the river in arlington. she graduated from tuvalu college in mississippi in 1964. then she returned to arlington and worked in d.c. for the federal government. next came marriage and children. she retired after 30 years working in arlington elementary school. >> now today when there is -- it may not seem like the south. let me tell you of the things that i remember from the 40's, 50's's, and even the 60's. i remember that when the trolly

crossed washington d.c. to virginia is stopped. negress' had to move to the back. i remember a white army often was firebombed. it invited over a black army officer he had been stationed within germany. i remember a klan meeting posters on telephone poles. i remember my mother locking the car doors when he drove to college hill, a black neighborhood, and telling my sister and me not to look at the people in the cars stopped next facilites because they were colored. i remember in list -- endless discussions about whether or not a particular lynching victim was guilty of a crime, but not about whether and when she was right around. i remember the first and last names of my childhood friends and neighbors. sitting here amongst you.

only the first names of the blacks who worked with them. i never knew their last names. now, for what i have written for the books, some excerpts. im7 and white, as southern as the red clay of georgia, a seven as les mansion overlooking the potomac. northern virginia is where i lived, rural georgia was down-home. my grandmother used to say the only foreigner we ever had in the family was a yankee. as a teenager that meant my father. as a teenager witnessing virginias campaign of massive resistance to a court ordered school desegregation and knew something was terribly wrong in the south, both as a christian and as a southerner. i felt that when i had a chance to do something to chance things i should do it.

we seveners needed to put our own house in order. when i was a student at duke university in durham, north carolina in 1960 my chance came with a sit-in. a few of other white students and i joined the blackboard carolina college students at the lunch counters and jails. i had an office job and participated in the local movement led by the nonviolent action groups. my particular contribution to the book is a diary i kept. the next spring the freedom rides turned bloody. the students on different campuses mobilized to keep the rights going. members said that he was taking a vacation when he left on the

ride. then the photos of them stand and bleeding by this burning bus near anderson, alabama appeared. among seven students it was second only to nashville in supplying freedom riders. in early june of 1961i was in the group that flew from d.c. to new orleans to catch the train to jackson. during the two weeks and i was in the hines county jail i kept a diary. right here beaten in the him of my tempered skirt which was covered by heavy crochet in brussels. i crumpled and rhee crumpled the pages to keep them since -- concealed in my skirt. expectations of a shakedown and dwindling paper supplies contributed to an increasingly abbreviated writing style. pablo de day one, june 8th.

there are four cops on the walls and form mattresses on the floor. the place is pretty clean. bright yellow and comparatively cool. the toilets partially stopped. the shower is cool, which is good. shortly before the let's go out to a cardboard boxes that cigarette stomach candy bars, paper, and envelopes. we are not supposed to have anything to read or anything glass. however, we are able to bring in everything we were carrying for our backs. a regular prisoner in the cell next to us gets along with one of the trustees, and he brings the paper nearly every day. things can be passed fairly easily from one cell to the next. the food is plain, but better than some campuses. the boys are upstairs, but if we call to them the windows will be closed, but we can hear them saying. day number two. less that they brought around

paper. sent promptly made hers into an airplane. once, corn bread, kidney beans, green spears to more female freedom riders joined us. there are from up north. dale and winona. they came down with two white boys and one negro girl. the next cell. there was a rain storm which much of thunder and water until we close the windows high up and hard to close. i slept a good deal this afternoon and read some of my book on gondi. i finished it while i was in that jail. dinner potatoes, gravy, fish, corn bread. day three, i woke up as they were bringing in breakfast. no salt and the cold trips. the biscuits were better than yesterday. one girl from each cell got to go to get close. no opportunity to make phone calls that. the boys stayed, a group of

specially selected outstanding students who were brought in from jackson to study government. they always came by, about four or five. our first reaction was laughter. and wisecracks. they got very uneasy. after they went on to other cells we decided that we should be more dignified. when they came back we saying to versus have we shall overcome. in a positive third verse. we made it through it. almost this in as the lights went out the simi started until about 11:00. the boys would sing some, and we would sing some. a man named charles has a beautiful voice. someone sang how great thou art for regular prisoner. some white guy kept cursing and south. one guy answered back and then everyone sang louder. we quit around 11. was one of the most uplifting experience i have ever had.

day number four, the jailer said when we asked we could not make phone calls or call lawyer because of are saying. way past midnight. however, we can see a lawyer as he comes to see us. we are seeing again tonight. when we started a lot of the stuffing fell out. redemptive in the hall in protest. the dinner was a laugh. a tiny piece of bacon and molasses. if we are on the fourth floor. the jailers have a total of 17 more arrested ends. surprise, they turn out the lights. we sang more, but the left fans on and we could not year. bobbie, a trustee, says there trying to send this to the pan. some grow cried please, mr. kennedy. day number seven. many girls faced allegations.

i made a sign. attention torres, i am not a yankee. i am from georgia. the guard ticket. a souvenir. less selling and writing. sang songs. by the time i get out i will know how minority feels. actually, one of the seven white coral was eventually arrested. i had company. teefourteen, usual break, exercise and ballet. a little read and write. so many 17. not much peace. have not slept well. meeting on what to do with cigarettes, no rationing. taking to sleeping in the shower. sleep most of the day. jailers getting worse. drug taken out this morning.

jane got package. letters may be rationed. long day. dinner, long evening. danced. learning taught shock. lights out early. ten more were arrested. [applauding] >> oh, yes. >> lived in durham, north carolina. she was a teacher and fiction writer and has remained active in lesbian and women's anti-war in just a struggles. [applauding] >> so isn't this beautiful? >> yes. >> i am going to turn 70 years old in 2013. i have never been happier in my life as i am after this book has

finally come out. i was raised by two mothers in greenwich village in new york city. my mother by birth. i feel like this mike is not on. african-american. during the course of that childhood we spent a year in haiti. much less our racial composition. we were quite noteworthy. in this childhood i was cooled to accept and be proud of my other ness from the rest of conventional 1950's -- 1950's united states.

to be frightened by that, but also to accept that this was something ad had to do. one of the things i found fascinating working on this book as an editor was that many of the white women, not all, but many, perhaps most had had prior experiences of crossing cultural boundaries and had many of us had experiences directly with race and racism which for most people, white people in the united states was not particularly true in the 1950's. the other thing that all of us in the book or most of us, regardless of race shared with some sort of social or political activists experience. my experience aside from living

in a household which in itself was a political statement, although that is not what we lived together, and high school i was very active with something called the harlem brotherhood group which was connected with a student, the national conference for christians and jews. i think i saw ivanhoe comment. ivan also had experience at in cc jay. be bell let me -- so, for christmas of 1961i was at school that barnard. i received a phone call. i went in the eastern store maryland. one of the people who was arrested with me is also here tonight, reggie robinson. in the book, one of the people

also who was arrested. and angela butler as well. there are three of us that were arrested in that relatively small group, all from are in the book. at the age of 19 in the autumn of 1962 and went south to register voters in southwest georgia and is there for a year. i returned partly because the items in connection with the stay in the jail in albany, georgia i caught hepatitis. what i like to say is that the experience from the south really altered many things for me, among other things it altered my blood chemistry. it was pretty serious. have going to read just a little bit from the time. excuse me, southwest georgia. the autumn that i was in southwest georgia just happened to be the same time as the cuban

missile crisis. so i want to read a couple of sentences about that. in contrast to the movements uplifting music in october i heard u.s. bombers were overhead flying from albany turner for space to patrol leaving white segregationists like sheriff ziti matthews to go marauding in terrell county. and so i had this experience of government that sending these planes to patrol cuba from the air force base in the town where i was working, where many of us were working. yes, the federal government's position with respect to our safety even as voting registration workers which meant we were federally protected.

they were helpless to protect us and yet these bombers went over daily. my house was also attacked, although not quite as in such a dire weigh as much this. with the stories of terror that were told to us or were told in the south had in the old days had kept people in their place. that is what i'm going to read about a little bit. what we were told the story of james frazier. years before in baker county and by the way, bad baker is the county where shirley charonda came from. years before in bad baker county

frazier had been beaten to death in jail. mr. paige, who was an albany movement officer went to pick up the bodies for the federal. when he lifted the body and mr. pace told me the story frazier's broken bones collect like dice. the u.s. commission on civil rights lifted frazier's death as the last recorded lynchings in the u.s. that was 1963. there have been more sense. there were other southwest georgia cautionary tales. there was a lynching tree in lee county where foremen and one woman had been lynched in one day. in baker county people were not supposed to drive through town