>> i promise to read. >> i promise to read. >> each day and each night. >> each day and each night. >> i know it's the key. >> i know it's the key. >> to growing up right. >> to growing up right. >> i will read to myself. >> i will read to myself. >> i will be to a crowd. >> i will redo a crowd. >> it makes no difference. >> it makes no difference. >> in silence or loud. >> insiders or loud. >> i will read at my desk, at home and at school. on my beanbag or bed, by the fire or the pool. each book that i read, put smarts in my head. because brains grow more thoughts, the more they are fed.

so i take this oath, to make reading my way, of feeding my brain, what it needs every day. all right, everybody. clap for yourselves. [cheers and applause] .. >> in the featured program section of the page. >> c-span's local content vehicles are traveling the

country visiting cities and towns as we explore our nation's history, and some of the authors who have touched upon it through their work. this weekend on booktv we take you to downtown indianapolis for a look at the new kurt vonnegut memorial library. >> kurt vonnegut was, perhaps, the greatest american writer. he was a world war ii veteran. he was a hoosier. he was a satirist. he was a political activist. he was a husband, he was a father, he was a friend. he was a prepped to his fans. -- friend to his fans. he would write back to his fans. he wrote more than 30 pieces of work including plays, novels, short stories, some of his more familiar books are "slaughterhouse five," which is perhaps his most famous. "breakfast of champions," "cat's cradle," and many other books.

vonnegut always brought in his midwestern roots and often wrote about indiana and indianapolis specifically, and if i may read a quote, many people ask me why should this vonnegut library be here in indianapolis, and i have many different answers, but then i found this great quote that says, "all my jokes are indianapolis, all my attitudes are indianapolis. my adenoids are indianapolis. if i ever sever myself from indianapolis, i would be out of business. what people like about me is indianapolis. " so we took that as a green light to go ahead and establish the vonnegut library here in indianapolis. we have an art gallery, a museum room, a reading room, a gift shop, and i would like to share details about these rooms with you today. this is a vonnegut, kurt vonnegut timeline. i -- if you would allow me, i'd

like to read the quote at the top of this beautiful painting which was created by the artist, chris king and a vonnegut scholar, rodney allen, and both of these individuals live in indiana. all moments, past, present and future, always have existed, always will exist. we can look at all the different moments just the way we can look at it a stretch of the rocky mountains, for instance. they can see how permanent all the momentums are. it's just an illusion we have here on earth that once a moment's gone, it's gone forever. and something that's unique about our timeline is we actually start on the right side and move to the left rather than the left side and move to the right. one thing we wanted to mention about this quote, we hope that

vonnegut would know that while e he may think that, may have thought that once a moment is gone, it's gone forever, we like to think that the moment of kurt vonnegut will live on forever here at the vonnegut library. he went to cornell university. he was studying chemistry. he did not plan to go into architecture like his father, with but he did think he would move into a science career and discovered at cornell that he was not very much interested in doing that. so he enlisted in the army during world war ii, and i'd like to point out a moment here on the timeline that's very important in the life of kurt vonnegut, and that is 1944. edith weaver vonnegut is dying from an overdose, probably intentional, of alcohol and sleeping pills. vonnegut enters combat in europe.

he is captured by germans in belgium during the battle of the bulge. soon he is riding in a boxcar with other american p.o.w.s to dresden, unlikely to be bombed. it was not a military target. as vonnegut rode in on a train, he was able to view this beautiful city, and then he was placed in a slaughterhouse where the rest of the prisoners of war were held. his slaughterhouse was slaughterhouse five. over here we have an exhibit that we call the dresden exhibit, but it's really his world war ii experience that became so important in his writing and his world view later in his life. i'll start with his, a photo that was taken right after he was released as a prisoner of war along with fellow prisoners.

we also have his purple heart that was donated by his son, mark vonnegut, to us. he received the purple heart for frostbite, and kurt vonnegut was embarrassed to have received the purple heart for frostbite when so many of his friends had, had suffered from other types of physical problems and disease. we have a fine first edition of the book "slaughterhouse five." this is important because "slaughterhouse five" is probably the most well known book written by kurt vonnegut of the 30-some piece of writing that he completed. this was possibly the most famous, excuse me, famous. >> why? >> why was "slaughterhouse five" famous? so vonnegut, let me give you a little bit of history about what happened to him in germany and my impressions of why it

affected people so much. vonnegut, as i read, he was taken to this slaughterhouse. while he was in dresden, the allies bombed dresden, and so his own countrymen as well as allies bombed this city. it was a horrible bombing. it was literally a firestorm, and tens of thousands of people were killed. and these were noncombatants. these were women and children, you know, and old people. and vonnegut, one of his tasks as a prisoner was to go out and remove the bodies, you know, from these burning buildingsing. and he also was required to bury the bodies of women and children, and that affected his life tremendously. he came back from his world war ii experience being completely against war. he was searching for peaceful resolution to conflict and

supported diplomacy and other approaches to, to solving problems. i will also point out a photo that was taken after he came back from the war. he got married to jane cox vonnegut who was from indianapolis as well. this photo was taken on their onny moon, and -- honeymoon, and as you can see, he is in uniform. vonnegut and jane had three children, mark, edie and nannette, nanny. and this many years later his sister alice died just a day or two after her husband had died in a freak train accident. alice had four children, and three of them came to live with the vonnegut family, so they had quite a large household, seven children, and vonnegut at that time was writing books that at

that time were less familiar, but he had publishedded several books and articled for magazines as well as working a job as a car salesman for saab. the experience of writing about dresden and what happened to him was tremendously difficult for vonnegut. it took him about 20 years to be able to publish the book "slaughterhouse five." jane, his wife, had, you know, encouraged him to write it. she worked as his editor on the book. she asked questions and got clarity on issues and helped him to retrieve a lot of those memories that he had repressed. payoff the family -- because of the family situation with the addition of more children and the success that have coming with the publishing of

"slaughterhouse five," his marriage with jane was, was rocky. just, his daughter edie had mentioned about a month ago that that, that experience and the publishing of the book and all that fame brought to vonnegut contributed to their marriage dissolving. and at that time vonnegut had met the photographer, jill cremens and, eventually, married jill cremens, and she was, you know, his second wife and was the only other person he was married to during his lifetime. i'll move you over here to the, what we call the political activity exhibit. and vonnegut continued to talk about his interest in finding

peaceful solutions to conflict. i think that's another thing that made him very popular during the vietnam years and after. this photo which was given to us by "the new york times" was taken during the first gulf war. and there's vonnegut out this at columbia university -- out there at columbia university. you know, i'm sure it was a large crowd because even to his dying day, vonnegut would attract a large crowd. it was -- i have been told he was like a rock star coming into his different speeches in large auditoriums, always filled the auditorium. so here we are in the art gallery portion of our library. i'd like to take you over here and show you a vonnegut quote

that's signed that was given to us by his artistic collaborator. he says, "i don't know what it is about hoosiers, but wherever you go there's always a hoosier doing something very important there." this quote was in the book "cat's cradle," and it's a very funny exchange that the main character has with a fellow traveler on a plane, and that fellow traveler gives this quote. next we have possibly his most famous piece of artwork, the sphincter. vonnegut, in his humor, he associated the asterisk with this anatomical feature. and we, we actually have used this asterisk in other pieces of our exhibit including our timeline which you may have thought had stars in the sky, but they're actually vonnegut's

asterisks in the sky. we also have life is no way to treat an animal. this is the tombstone for his famous character kilgore trout who appeared in many, many of his books. and it is understood that kilgore trout is based on vonnegut himself. and interestingly, the character kilgore trout died at the age of 84, and vonnegut also happened to die at the age of 84. >> what did kurt vonnegut die from? >> he collapsed, he fell down steps of his new york city home, and he went into a coma and never came out of that coma. he often joked that pall mall

cigarettes would kill him, and he would sue the maker, of pall mall because the warning label on the cigarette package said that pall malls would kill him, and they had not yet done so. but he actually happened to be smoking a pall mall while standing on the steps. so next we have here two pieces of artwork created by morley safer of "60 minutes" fame. morley is one of our honorary members, they were close friends. he wrote the introduction for the last vonnegut book that came out, but these two with pieces of art, the first on the occasion of kurt vonnegut's birthday was create inside 2003 as a gift -- created in 2003 as a gift to kurt vonnegut. and then the second was created when morley found out that

vonnegut had died. and that was 20076789 -- 2007. we are in the front of the kurt vonnegut library in the gallery room. we have kurt vonnegut's typewriter that was used in the 1970s. this was donated to us by his daughter, nanny. he wrote, you know, many of his more familiar books during the 1970s, and we're happy to have this typewriter. he, he was not a fan of high technology, and he did not use a computer. he preferred to, to use the typewriter through his dying day. he liked to work in his home on an office chair and a coffee table. he would slump over his typewriter. vonnegut would go out into the world every today. he talks about how he had

learned that you can buy postage stamps over the internet, and he just thought that was horrible because then, you know, if, if he chose that route, he would not have the everyday experience of going to the post office. and those everyday experiences and the people he encountered during his daily walks were the basis for some of his stories. he met a number of very interesting characters in new york city, and going out and meeting people, you know, was a way for him to capture new material for his work. von gut is timeless because -- vonnegut is timeless because these issues, i mean, we still have the same issues. we're still suffering with war, disease, death, famine, environmental issues, you know, he said your planet's immune system is trying to get rid of you. i mean, he, he felt we should

take care of the planet. these issues, you know, have resurfaced, and it does not look like we've found any viable solutions to these problems. so, you know, i think his work is timeless. >> c-span's local content vehicles are traveling the country visiting cities and towns as we look at our nation's history and some of the authors who have written about it. for more information go to c-span.org/lcv. >> dr. bush, how did the juvenile justice system get started in this country? >> well, it got started right around the turn of the 20th century, the first juvenile court law was passed in illinois in 1899 establishing a separate court for juveniles, and along with it came separate institutions for juvenile offenders. the system was so popular that it was copied by almost every other state in the union by the

1920s. texas adopted juvenile court in 1907. >> and you write that the juvenile justice system has failed many this country. why do you think that it's failed? >> well, it's failed pause it's failed -- because it's failed to live up to its founding promise which was, basically, that it would establish a more protective system for youthful offenders. the juvenile justice system was founded on the concept that children were different from adult offenders, that they were less responsible for their offenses and that they were more capable of being rehabilitated. so juveniles were supposed to be separated from adults and treated differently from adults. it's really failed to do that. today it's very common place to see abuse scandals in juvenile institutions that are scarcely different from adult prisons. juvenile courts have adopted most of the same procedural features as adult courts. so to many critics, and i guess i would include myself in that

group, it really has failed. >> tell us a little bit about the scandal of the west texas state school that caught the public's anticipation and sort of fueled this -- attention and sort of fueled this issue. >> well, the scandal broke in the news media in early 2007, and it was a sex abuse scandal. in fact, as we're sitting here right now, the last mayor figure in -- major figure in that scandal is on trial four years later just to give you an idea of how long it's been going on. in this case, a couple of administrators at one of the facilities in a remote area of west texas were coercing sexual favors from boy inmates, several of them. using their power as administrators. this went on for years, and it was basically covered up by higher ups within the state agency that oversaw that institution. and it was finally leaked out and then publicized. >> and what is a super predator? >> super predator is a word that

was coined in the mid 1990s by a criminologist named john eulio. and it was originally intended to mean kids who kill without remorse, without conscious and sort of randomly. really captured in some of the popular movies of the period like "natural born killers." and in the mid 1990s you'll recall there really was kind of a national panic over violent juvenile crime, and that word payment attached to that panic -- became attached to that panic. the word carried a highly racial connotation to it. it seemed to many critics to refer to african-american and latino juveniles who were increasingly overrepresented in the incarcerated juvenile population. >> so what role do you think race plays in the problems with our juvenile justice system? >> i think it's really central in a lot of ways, and i'm

certainly not alone in thinking that. whether you want to believe that youth of color commit more crimes as some conservative critics believe or you want to believe that the system actively discriminate against them or institutionally discriminates against them in some way, there's no doubt that race is a central factor in the juvenile justice system. >> how is texas a good case study for problems throughout the entire country? >> well, texas throughout much of the 20th century was one of the largest juvenile justice systems in the country just in terms of the number of youths and the number of institutions that it managed. it's also a useful case study just because of the political and economic clout that the state has come to acquire over the course of the last 50 or 60 years. it's one of the largest states, it's one of the most demographically diverse states, it's one of the most geographically diverse states, and it's one of the most politically powerful states.

several recent u.s. presidents have come from texas. several important national legislators have come from texas. >> what -- why did you want to write this book? what was the impetus to get you started? >> um, my, my impetus to get started on this book really was an interest in how we as a society decide who the good kids are and who the bad kids are and then what is to be done with them. and i initially began looking at popular culture and representations of youth, and then i became dissatisfied with that and decides i needed to look at -- decided i needed to look at real kids and real policies and institutions that affected them. >> so where does, after all of your research, where do texas and other states go from here? have you seen improvement since you've written the book or as you were writing the book? >> well, there's been a lot that's changed since i finished the book. as we sit here, the legislature is considering abolishing the

agency that oversees juvenile justice in texas. several of the large facilities have been shut down. as i was finishing the book. lots of kids have been sent back to their communities, and there really is a movement to move away from big institutions again and towards community of-based facilities -- community-based facilities, and part of that is being driven by the budget crises affecting many states across the country including texas which has something like a $27 billion deficit to deal with right now. so that's really fueling a lot of this sort of progressive movement in some ways. >> well, great. thank you very much. >> thank you. >> what i tried to do is weave together letters that trace the footprints large and small of the people from bondage to self-determination, from the civil war to the war in iraq, and as i said from dusty plantations to the glistening white house. the correspondence of unsung

slaves, soldiers, lovers, fathers, mothers, artists, activists are woven together with those of historical giants from phyllis wheatley to paul lawrence dunbar, langston hughes, alice walker and toni morrison to benjamin banker, sojourner truth, w.b. duboise and colin powell. the likely misses of the extraordinary are matched by the equally poignant letters of the ordinary who, pen in hand, shared their joy and pain, ec ecstasy and heartache. >> this letter is from hannah grover to her son, cato. -written june 3 -- it was written june 3,1805. my tear son, cato, i long to see you in my old age. i live in caldwell with the

minister. i pray you come to see my dear old mother, or send me $20, and i will come to see you in philadelphia. if you can't come to see your old mother, pray, send me a letter and tell me where you live, what family you have and what you do for a living. i am a poor old servant. i long for freedom, and my master will free me if anybody will engage to maintain me so that i don't come upon him. i love you, cato. you love your mother? you are my only son. this from your affectionate mother, hannah grover. p. s., my dear son, i have not seen you since i saw you at staten island about 20 year ago. -- 20 years ago.

if you send any money, send it to dr. bonner, and he will give it to me. if you have my love for your poor old mother, pray, come or send to me. my dear son, i love you with all my heart. hannah von buskirk. >> this is a letter to dinah, september 19, 1858. i take the pleasure of writing you these few words with much regret to inform you that i am being sold to a man by the name of pearson, a traitor who stays in new orleans. i am here yet, but i expect to go before long. and when i do go, i want to send you some things.

but i don't know who to send them by. but i will try to send them to you and my children. give my love to my father and my mother, and tell them good bye for me. and if we shall not meet in this world, i hope to meet them in heaven. my dear wife, for you and my children this pen cannot express the grief that i feel to be parted from you all. >> we're taken behind the public facade of scholars and activists. dr. martin luther king's letter from a birmingham jail is here along with his private message to his wife who in 1960 he

writes from a state prison. >> this is a letter from dr. martin luther king jr. to his wife, coretta scott in 1960. hello, darling. today i find myself a long way from you and the children. i am at the state prison in reedsville which is about 230 miles away from atlanta. they picked me up from the dekalb jail at around 4 a.m. this morning. i know this whole experience is very difficult for you, especially in the conditions of your pregnancy. but as i said to you yesterday, this is the cross that we must bear for the freedom of our people. so i urge you to be strong in faith, and this will in turn strengthen me. i can assure you that it is extremely difficult to think of being away