england and midwest and this resonated to this constituency, this anti-catholicism. and so lincoln campaigned under that slogan in 1858. >> you can watch this and other programs online at booktv.org. >> melva douglas was the first female news anchor on the west coast. she recounts her life and the many stories she covered during the appearance at the bookstore in new york city. >> a thanks of you being part of my dream, a dream realized. i never could have imagined myself in this place at this time talking to people about a life that i had been privileged to live. everything that's happened to me i consider a gift. so when you hear, which i will tell you in just a minute, how i

started, where i started from and then realize where i am today, you too will say never in my wildest dreams. but i basically am a southern girl. i wasn't part of the great migration. we got there a couple minutes before that started. i was born in monroe, louisiana. that's the northern part of louisiana. it doesn't even have the romance of being, you know, new orleans and all of those customs. but i was born in 1932 and you can do the math in this town right after what they called the flood of the century. my mother was 15 years old when i was born. she worked as a laundress. i was given the label of being a farmed out kid. the first farming out, though, was the best part of my young

life. i was given to my mother's middle sister. i went to live we are. she was a childless woman who wanted a baby very badly. so i was very, very spoiled up to the time that i was about 3.5 years old. after that, the world changed. she had tuberculosis and died. and for a child and obviously there must have been news about it. i was sent to the home with my mother and father lived. in the southern style, it was a very crowded facility. i call it that because people came from the country when they got a job, went back when they didn't have one. they came from mississippi or wherever they were living and we all sort of bunked in together. remember, these were the depression years. what i was given was what a lot of small children were given back in those days. there were no bedrooms for all

of us so i had what was called a pallet which was my very own. blankets that are put together and you sleep on them at night and you rolled them up during the day. and it made it very easy when i was being transferred from one relative to the other 'cause i had very few things to pack up, luggage to take with me. if that. so that's how i started. by the time we were ready to migrate to california, i had lived in seven different homes by then. all of them homes of relatives. all of them people who were doing the best they can by a little girl that was quiet, withdrawn and constantly trying to find ways to please so that maybe will keep me permanently. and that did not happen. we ran into not traditional but something that probably has

happened to many southern blacks. my uncle, the brave guy that he was, worked for a meat packing company he experienced an accident, a serious one. one of my aunts -- one of the households where my aunt worked -- there was a young white lawyer who heard of my uncle's permanent injuries and filed a lawsuit on my uncle's behalf. we thought nothing of it except that there was a real buzz as to why a black man would ever think he could file a lawsuit against a major company in the south and get away with it. but soon we found that through some miracle a judge somewhere ruled in my uncle's favor and we had about 10 minutes -- we had, i watched the adults rejoice and then soon that evening the young lawyer came to let my family know that the decision had been

made by some in the community that he should be tarred and feathered and in the southern tradition it would be best if all the men left the south. and so the plan started that evening to as quickly as possible get the adult men out of our house. most of them went by automobile. my uncle went on a freight train and that's how we joined -- preceded the great migration but only so slightly. it was a while as also custom before the women left and then even a longer while before the children left, at least my brother and i. so we were sent off to arkansas to live with a grandfather and that's where we stayed until my father came for me. i felt all of my life that my brother was the favorite because he was the baby who got to stay home. so that was the way we came to california. i would say to my brother, i'm so glad that daddy loves you

because then i get to go with you. and so that was my thought of my importance in that circle. so you can see why i would write a book that says never in my wildest dreams, expectations were never high as to what i would become. but i think all of those shifting around, moving from place to place, gaining knowledge from relative to relative as to what makes for a good person, learning that dedication to work, honesty, that's the one thing my aunt perlean to stand. she just hated a liar and i lived with her through much of my life. and so we moved to california and i thought this was going to be it. this is going to be, you know -- this is peaches and honey and all of the good things, but as what happened by then there was a war and we were living in a basement apartment, like many

others, sharing these facilities and there were 11 of us in this two-bedroom basement apartment but we made it. they made it. they all ended up getting their own homes and eventually i went with my aunt and her husband to live in one of the brand-new housing projects and, oh, were we glad to get it. and for a quick minute, i had my own bedroom. [laughter] >> that was something. and as life would have it, soon after my uncle -- or my uncle, yeah, my uncle's brother and his six children arrived and life changed again. so i was very accustomed to change, so it's nothing for me to get used to the pace of being a journalist where there's constant change and constant moving around because you learn to adapt to whatever it is. and life for me continued along a path that could have been predicted. i did well in high school.

i passed my s.a.t. scores, very high. and i forgot one thing. i forgot about money. and i didn't have anyone in my family who had ever gone to college so by the time i realized i needed $300 to go to college, it was too late for scholarships and no one in my family had the money. so i went to work. soon after was married, soon after that i had two children and started a different life until one day i grew up. and when i grew up, it was because i read so much. that i knew so much from reading and i loved reading. and i attempted writing. certainly it was -- it was the caliber that if you in those days if you got a magazine and you -- there was little writing contests in there and you could send it off and i don't think anybody ever answered, but it was a great opportunity for me to pretend to be a writer. and life then took a funny twist. i started to try to help women

in our community and the black middle class women were just realizing they had a place in the nonprofit world with various charities. so i start writing little cut lines for photographs that would go in the black newspapers to talk about working for the march of dimes or whatever it was. and started to work with a photographer named chuck willis. his dark room more was bill moore, the man i've been married to for 46 years. so that was -- [applause] >> so what started out as trying to help others turned into a real winning proposition for me. and that work led to my first paid job, if you want to call it that, was for "jet" magazine as a stringer. i got $5 a week and that was because the bay bridge toll was 25 cents and so that was to cover getting to san francisco to cover events. and for that i got a job working

for a black weekly newspaper and that's where i learned a lot. my editor was a former a.p. reporter who'd spent 18 years in the far east. he just had a problem with too many drinks and finally after 18 years, a.p. sent him home. and no one would hire him but the owner of a black weekly newspaper. and i was his only staff member. so i learned to do everything, you know, right headlines, pick up the copy, pick up the safeway ads, bring back the proof sheets, whatever it took to get that little newspaper published. but it was while there that i had one of the greatest and most surprised -- i think of it now as a fun event in my life. while working there, one day the bell range. that's what we had in the front because we had no receptionists and when the bell range we knew somebody was there. so darrell, the guy that i was working with, darrell lewis,

went to the front and soon the bell range again and he said, can you help me out? and i said, what's going on? and he says well, malcolm x is here -- i don't think he called him malcolm x. i'm not sure but he had a proper name better than i can remember right now. but he said, he's here and i said, yes. and the man with him said, well, ma'am, brother malcolm don't talk to white people. and i said what? and he said, that's right. i didn't what to do so i said, well, what do you want? and they went on to explain that they wanted to place some copy in our paper, and i said that to darrell. they want to place some copy in the paper and darrell said to me, well, how much is it? and are they willing to pay? and i said -- and he said how much are you willing to pay? [laughter] >> we told him and they said we're not paying anything. they're not paying anything. [laughter] >> so finally darrell said, i

don't have enough space and i will have to edit it and i repeated that, of course, for which i was told -- i mean, they told, one of them said, we can't have you do that. no. yeah, we can't have you do that. and it was at that point that i turned to darrell and said they don't want to do that and we stood there silently for a moment and then with a smile on his face, malcolm said, i will edit it myself. and that's my malcolm x story. i was an interpreter for two men standing less than 2 feet apart of different colors who needed somebody to interpret in english what they were saying to each other. so -- i don't think anybody else has had that experience with malcolm. i had been in his presence and so on as part of my job for the press but it was a wonderful moment and had i not been there working for peanuts, i probably would never have experienced it.

but that led to other jobs with the black newspaper, which then led to the idea on my mind that i wanted to go further so i took a job -- i got a job in radio. these jobs did not come with salaries. to learn. so i learned a bit about radio. i finally got a clerical job, put me in a position to deal with people who sold airtime. i was a traffic manager. it's very clear to people that i wanted to be on the air. finally the new salesman got smart and knew if he wanted his customers to run at the proper time, he would find a show and the belva davis show was formed and i had the show that was for women, supposedly, i was a women's editor at the program

station and i put the shows on saturdays where all sorts of famous people would come by and i once a month would have a little luncheon where i would use the fried chicken from my sponsor who boston farms chicken, clean peaches from del monte and whatever else it took to make fried chicken, potato salad and invited women and would have a studio full of people. and they would come on saturdays. the ladies would enjoy lunch, boy, this was a fun life. until one day my news editor at the station invited me to go with him because he needed help and he was a one-man band to the republican national convention. it was being held at the cow palace in san francisco. and i volunteered to go. we couldn't get credentials because we were black. they were not credentialing people of color. there were very few delegates

but one of them we knew and he was on the central committee and he got us two tickets for the gallery. we were there the first day and we got by okay. second day, former president eisenhower made a speech that came close to being racist. from that speech, of course, as today, the hooligans took over. they berated the press. they used language that i could not repeat in calling members by the press by name, in fact, in one very famous correspondent was arrested and taken off the floor that night. soon the attention turned to lewis and i. and we were there and lewis was a man of steel nerves, i call it, or at least he was a really great actor. so we said -- he said we will not be driven out. so we took our time, packing our gear because now we're surrounded. there's no security. we don't know what to do.

then they started to throwing things at us. we still worked at a normal pace. got our gear together, started our walk down that long ramp to get down to the main floor. and by that time, things were getting a little hot because we could hear bottles hitting the floor that were being thrown over the -- down the aisle. as we were going, one bottle got closed to my head. people asked me after all these years can you remember this. i said how many times have you had a bottle thrown at your head? if you had, you will remember it happened so my lips started to quiver because i thought i was really going to lose it. and lewis whispered in my ear, if you cry, i will break your leg. [laughter] >> for some reason, i that made sense to me. that he would do this if we ever

got out of there. but then the real fear came when we hit the door in this lonely cow palace in the dark of night as to whether we'd make it to our car. we did. and in the car driving back we talked about it, and i realized we had been harangued but we were people with no power. none of the daily press would be interested in our story but those guys in there have been doing a great job down south. they have covered dr. king. they had started to move america. i want to be one of them. if i'm going to get harangued i want to have some power to fight back. why would i make that decision? no college, no training, no education. i didn't have anything to convince me that any white employer would want to hire me. but i started applying all around the place. and finally, i was doing all things, a pretty pageant for

black girls that i considered my civil rights work because it was my fight against miss america that denied our girls the right to participate. so we started our own pageant. i presented the girls on television and a writer from a daily paper wrote that surely, somewhere in television there must be a place for belva davis and i acted as though that was carved in concrete. and just applied to everybody and anything until finally in 1966, i read a story about a wonderful republican woman who loved ronald reagan and had said that if he was elected she would quit her anchor job and work for him. the day he was elected i called her boss and i told her i wanted to apply for her job and he said what do you mean do you want to

apply for her job. well, why do you think she was leaving well, i read it in the newspaper. and indeed she had plans to go before they had wrapped it up and the job was open and about 70 women applied and for whatever reason, the westinghouse owned cbs stationed hired the only black in our area, black man named ben williams and six months later, they hired me and so they had two black people in the state of california working on their channel, of all channels. and ben and i took our responsibilities very seriously 'cause we knew that we had to do well, neither of us knew anything about television. but we both had faith that what we wanted to do was a good thing for our time and our place. and that was the beginning of a

television career that has now spanned 43 years without a break. never a day without a job. and that's something i'm very proud of. [applause] >> so this charmed life that came from nowhere, from a dream, has taken me on journeys that i couldn't have imagined. i've had the opportunity to come south, to go to georgia. have my chance to do my march. have my opportunity to be spat upon, straight-away in my face. my cute little blonde girl that i asked a question of. i've had the opportunity to go to the white house. i've had the opportunity to talk to presidents. i've had the opportunity to twice go to cuba and interview fidel castro. i was called upon by the labor

movement to go to south africa after nelson mandela's election to try to work with the blacks and the whites to tell them what it was like to go in and intergrate a broadcasting operation because south african television, as you well know, was all white. but we had to have separate meetings because each had their own fear. so both my husband and i were privileged to be the people to travel in south african-american for well over three weeks just trying to talk to both sides, to get them to see what was possible if you're determined to do well. i think my most memorable trip outside of this country, though, was to kenya and to tanzania. and i was there in 1998, right after the bombing of the u.s. embassies there. and i landed there through a fluke. i was sitting on the news desk reading copy about the bombings and whoever had written my copy, 'cause it was a breaking story,

wrote about the fact that 12 americans had died. and i got off the set and started to read the story myself, and then i found out 214 africans had died and 5,000 others had been injured and it was never mentioned. so i had a little belva tantrum and i was known for those over race issues and it was nothing in the way so they just didn't, you know, not pay attention. and so i talked about it and a few -- a couple of weeks later, i'm at a social event and i'm saying i'm distressed with it and a young black woman from the national medical association, you know, that's the black medical association said i too am enraged about it and i'm doing something about it. i have $250,000 worth of medical supplies that i'm going to take to africa. would you like to come along? and, boy, did i want to come

along? but i thought i have about a snowball chance in hades like this book. you're beginning to understand the title but i'm a local reporter in san francisco, wanting to go on a story that no american team is in kenya or in nairobi at that time. there was reuters and us when we got there. but i'm getting a little bit ahead. we -- i petitioned my news director. i laid out the story and i almost fell over, fainted when he said, yes, you can go. and so with the team, my husband and a photographer and two black physicians, we went -- we took off for kenya with these supplies. and i started to read this part to you but i think i'll just tell it to you because we went there over the objections of our government. we also knew that the cia was very much focused why we wanted to do this. so we were uncomfortable and we

felt that we were truly on our own from the beginning but the kenyans embraced us wholeheartedly. i was so moved by the way they had handled the hysteria of thought bombings. the psychiatrist of nairobi got together on radios. people who were frightened, people who needed goods. they talked to them because it was why us, why me and why no aid from the u.s.? and they spent two solid weeks almost nightly and daily counseling the citizens of that area. so when we arrived with some of the supplies they needed to help these people, which were not available, they were all embracing. when we went to the airport to pick them up, though, we found they were missing. this was the administration of the president known for those things that presidents of that

era are known about. we asked about it and nobody could find it and by now we're impatient and we have seen those patients in the hospital and we need to know how much materials they have bought so standing there in the hangar where they were supposed to be, i was finally referred to a man that looked very important. i was told he was one of the sons. and i went over to him, and i explained to him, you know, we photographed this material when it was being loaded off trucks onto air france planes, flown here free of choice. i have videotapes of those planes taking off. i have a bill of lading from air france telling me that that plane land here and here's a list of what they say it contains, and if you don't find it, everybody in the world is going to know this? how am i going to have let everybody in the world know and

we stood and we stared at each other intensely and finally with a smile this young man, whoever he was, said we'll just wait. i will be back. and surely enough, about a half hour later, he reappeared and he said come with me. my husband thought we were coming with me to the jail because he thought that's what they did with people who crossed the government and the kenyans had told us that you just just disappear. and so we went with him and there were the supplies. and the doctor, a strong brave woman just broke down in tears and i dared not joined her because i wanted to very much because the steely eyed man was still looking at me but i think for me there were many moments in my career that i could say were treasured moments and i'll talk about some of those but that is the one that i am so

grateful for my beginnings and what i learned about what you can do if you just keep pushing to the wall. my motto as a reporter always had been yesterday was yesterday, tomorrow's challenges is what you worry about. you can't take that baggage and let it drag you down. you just have to keep moving forward. if not, you'll be weighted and they will accomplish whatever those who don't want you to succeed doesn't want you to do. that is really the motto behind 43 years of success. and that is able to lay it down from time to time and move on and refresh yourself with whatever the new challenge is. we faced many in the bay area as you know. we had the jonestown massacre murder. we had our mayor and our supervisor killed by a fellow

supervisor. we had the sla kidnapping. we had -- my daughter is here. found out about this later, threats to our daughter's life because of the patty hearst kidnapping. we're confronted as to how much of that we should tell her and how much of that she should know about it. but we believed it enough that we moved from our home in the suburbs to a place two blocks from our -- my office. i can't say that my daughter was a kind person during those days. she was very upset and she left her friends behind for reasons she didn't understand but those things happened. and like most black reporters from time to time. i had my turn with the authorities, with the police department. and my son was the person who paid a price for that. it was only in fear, but he was finally arrested for making an

illegal right-hand turn because i was reporting racial profiling. and i had two, three, four black police officers who confirmed the theories of the stories and it was more than the department could take. so that is my journey. enough said. i hope that you will read the book. there are many more stories about many, many people. and a long relationship from the beginning black panthers party until then. my husband and i were born in the same town. our fathers knew each other. and so i had friends who helped them in the early days to become what they eventually became, internationally famous. but for some of the wrong reasons. i keep going further but i'll stop. and if you have questions, i'd be happy to take them.

do you see -- do you see a change in that or do you think that it will have to go back to the way it was where black people will have to find her is to get information that represents their community? >> well, or in a business ready industry. the business of journalism has

changed radically. we are still trying to figure out what the formula is for the future. we know that technology is the greatest killer of jobs in terms of reporters that is out there. we have not -- i worked very closely with the television union and the american federation of television are to stand in the years i was the eeo chair fighting for more employment. it is difficult when you are in an environment where the government no longer keep who is not. we fought that battle and of all things wanted to eight-degree, with a republican administratiot we have not been able to build on during the obama administration. we have not found the fcc as friendly as we had hoped it would be. plus vat, the way jobs are

described today, they are multitasking assignments. if you are working print you are still taking pictures and you are still doing video and you are blogging and doing all kinds of things that reporters never had to do. if you are in television you are shooting your editing and you are reporting. you are doing all sorts of things at my generation never had to do. we have the internet that offers all these blogging opportunities so that people in charge can feel the world is open. go start your own. that is what they say. you have to have the skills and ability that we know universally if we are to exist as a unit, as a country, we have to have reliable voices that we can trust or how are you going to manage yourself? how we going to manage the politics in your country if you have a right and a left and you are left in the middle to try to figure out what is right and what is wrong. as newspapers have closed down and gone to using the tools of

the trade today, they have felt less need for people to gather information. they are just as happy to pass it around between each other because it makes the bottom line but better. so it is a challenging period. it is challenging in its own ways and in a way more challenging than it was at my beginnings because we at least had the government to turn to, and we had equal employment opportunity committee to help us bring this first group of people in. you know what is at sad about that now? a lot of those people, they are younger than me, our senior reporters. they are at the top of the wage scale. the way business works, you fire the people making the most money. they don't ask about abilities or skills. they just look at the payroll cut. so these are new challenges now, and i certainly don't have the answer to it because then i would be on the circuit.

but i do know that it takes looking reality square in the eyes to stop pushing for what was yesterday and figure out what tomorrow is. that is the only way you can win the battle. >> good evening. i have a quick question. do you think that the standards in journalism compared to yesterday has changed anyway today? for example when i'm reading articles on line, think the quality of the written word is deplorable. half the time -- they don't cover the full facts. they are just giving a bunch of jargon or what i would call bs. so what are your thoughts on maintaining the standard of yesterday but exacting them in today's new media so to speak? >> right, know the no the standards are not being met and we know that. when you can have npr make a huge mistake by just getting the wrong information and trying to get it passed, to me that is a

sign that we had better slow up. i think a lot of people are beginning to get that, at least a little bit. we really take gossip as news. i love social media. not that i practice it but i think it is a great thing for people who want to connect with one another and want to be social and want to have friendships that grow. i think you should do that but you shouldn't call it journalism. i think that -- i don't say you have to maybe go as far as i did when i started. if i came up with a new bit of information, i had to come to my desk and say guess i have checked resources for this. i don't even know people know about two sources now. much of the stuff gets on the air by hearsay. now, we are at a point where we are going to have to, and we are getting into these troubled times of the republicans in the budgets and what is truth in what is not and we have let this

just float because we didn't have whatever it took to fight back. they left the foxes of the world takeover and lead the discussion and eventually i know that there are a couple of people that i am familiar with who are traveling around the country trying to organize a different outlook at least on the news so that you get still the right and the left. nowhere where we should be as journalists, but i have no real answer as to what we do to make it happen. >> good evening. is a pleasure to have you here. i would like to ask you a question. in 1996 telecommunications act passed by congress, do you think that destroyed a lot of -- because you have one station back here at new york about conversations and how. there is really no opportunity. do you think the telecommunications act destroyed a lot of things?

>> there are those out there who have been working on this for very long time. they were just able to formalize it without. and i walked into a station in san francisco, a cbs station. there were nine logos on the door. nine operations in that one building and it is going to get tighter with the purchase of nbc by comcast. nobody seems to know how to stop this freight train because no one wants to be opposed to commerce and job creation. there is no job creation that i have seen that come out of most of these big mergers. but yes of course. the fcc is weak at best. the law is very much on its side. we are brave to go to the supreme court with anything because we don't want to codify that some of these actions are legal. so we keep working around them and lobbying and trying to do the best we can. i think as i said before, i

don't mean to be a naysayer but i think we are in perilous times in terms of really hanging onto with those on the right keep talking about the american dream and they don't seem to really understand that means freedom. >> ms. davis i have to start off by thanking you for making it possible for young people like myself who want to get into herbalism particularly broadcast journalism, if that is what we choose to do, to be able to have the opportunity to do it so i want to thank you for that. i was surprised to hear say earlier that it was difficult not to get into the industry than it was when you started. i would have thought it would have been the opposite. but it seems as though for people my age now at this time who want to get into broadcast journalism, we have to sort of reinvent things as opposed to our white counterparts because the opportunity seemed to be more available for them.

what advice, and i know it is cliché, but what advice would you have for people of color, young people who want to get into the industry particularly on tv to sort of distinguish ourselves and become marketable in this industry? >> i think is -- that is what my union dreads the fact that i say this. of today's trade is what you have to do but you have to have in your back pocket all of the basics of journalism. good writing, to be curious, to have some passion, to want to bring something to the table to guess that is what will drive you to tolerate the tools of the trade. but if you don't start with that in your heart, you don't start with that kind of expansion, then it is going to be even more difficult because you won't get that inward glow that comes from having done something because you know it is right. at the tools of the business that a drug so many people down, you know people who are in tv

the don't want to edit and don't want to shoot and don't want to do whatever they don't want to do but there are very few places you can do and not the required to do it. i know the unions fight it all the time. we are still battling it. you know, the one man band but it just seems to breed like rabbits goat -- growing everywhere. so when i say tough, i meant because i had a community that fought to get me my job. they were there, ready to pick it and picketing meant something. there was a commission whose job it was. there was a report that called for the hiring of black americans to cover the news more fairly. so i have those tools. hugh don't have those tools. you are just out there in the world of commerce trying to figure out how you can fit what you want to do and to this game where somebody will pay you to do it. now what we need to do is what those other kids are talking

about of other colors except we don't have as many family members with connections that can help us grow, you know, the beginning projects. so we have to do what we have always said we needed to do as black people, learn to work together more and to find some of those people who are sitting on top of the empire state-building with great jobs in big money whose skin is brown to somehow get them to realize in the end date too are black and they really need to look for-profit and prodigies and people who can tell a story. [applause] alright. oh, a question. just one second. there he various. >> hi, i read your book and you talked to talk to dave very calmly and almost

matter-of-factly about your childhood and growing up and the pallettes he slept on the floor in the kitchen under the table. am i correct? >> no, i spent my high school, my tenth through 12th grade, i lived with my aunt and this is the crazy thing about people who are slightly nuts. we were very poor. we had a house-senate had a dining room table. but there were not many bedrooms, so i was still the pallid kid. from the tenth two the 12th grade i slept on the floor under the dining room table. at the funny part about it, had a little job. i saved up enough money because my white girlfriends for having sweet 16 parties and i threw myself a sweet 16 coming out party. centered around the table that became my bedroom at night. none of my friends ever knew that i slept there. i didn't even tell my closest friends but it just tells you

which you can do and how silly you can be when you are a dreamer. >> i just think it is so interesting because your childhood was so much harder than you are making it seem and to me it is remarkable that you have come from that to where you are now. it is just extraordinary. >> i just want to say basically my real motive in writing this book was to write it for young people who think they have their ears that they cannot cross today, that because they lived in the projects, because they didn't have any money, because they did make it do here, they didn't get this degree or the other, they should just let the world float by. we all than individual responsibility to use every gift that god has given us to the best of our ability. that's it. thanks. >> i think one of the things that struck me in my short time, and i say short time about 20

years in the business, you mentioned the people of color who are at the top. while there are great number a great number of people like yourself who have made it a part of their mantra to reach back, i would have to say there is an equal number of those who have a seat we decided i have got mine, you go get yours. i mean, what is the psychology behind that, because they don't come from my time. they are certainly older than me. and is there any way, is there anyway to turn that around to make more of them responsible for what it is that they are supposed to do? >> i sometimes treat my brothers and sisters to come from that foreign students and that is why he wrote this book. i think they need to read and hear more from those of us who have had to calm the longest. many of them were the people that were chosen for the harbert scholarships in the free

education and maybe associations with other groups, you know, living wherever people go who are rich on these trips. for us it is silicon valley. we have a number of very high-ranking blacks in silicon valley that you never see at anything that is even associated with being black. i worked very hard to establish a museum in the bay area called the museum of the african diaspora about five years ago in oakland. for that, our mayor, willie brown, decided we were going to put this but me sam as part of the five-star saint regis hotel in the convention center of san francisco. as mayor he could make them give us a space but they couldn't make them pay for it. so i somehow got chosen to be the person as i was minding down my career, to raise almost $6 million for this museum in two years. i did because it represented all that i respect.

the oneness of the human race, the fact that the earliest relics of human life come from the african continent and the theory by the leading scientists at both berkeley and stanford arafat indeed this is a true story and this museum is dedicated to telling that story. and so while i was doing that, to raise the money of course i got these fat-cats from google and so on would be my first ones that i would get to -- and they would write the check. not one of them did. in fact, one man of color who bought the top floor of the saint regis hotel for $30 million was one who i thought would be now a guy that after all we are in the basement of the building he is in. it eventually, he did give some money but during those first years i was so wide-eyed that i

really -- they had more millions than they would ever know what to do with and it didn't happen. i think we just have to look at that is educating these people along with everybody else. >> i want to say thank you to you, belva davis. i have known you for a very very long time, since the days of your beauty pageant, the miss bronze pageant which was an awesome period. i have watched you connect the dots between culture and commerce and politics and in a way that belies the up bringing that i did not know about until i read this book. before i knew if there were tears coming down my face because i have never seen you as perfectly poised as you are now. it would never in my wildest dreams what i think that you had

ever to endure anything that you had and i want to thank you for being such a formidable role model and for not stepping back from that but rather for embracing it and to look at the bar that you have raised for everyone that you open the door for to come through after you. it is a high bar and it should be because as much as you have done there is still so much more to do so i just want to say thank you, belva davis. >> thank you. [applause] i really am grateful to all of you who have come out tonight and i hope that you will read it. there is lots more to the story in my professional life which i skirted over because i know that you know about those events. you know something about the circumstances of that but what you don't know is the blackness of the story and everyone of these big incidents, something happened that was unique to the fact that i was a black woman on

the scene of that story. and that is the other story that needs to be told, that we can integrate but when they get into the newsroom, we are going to see things a little bit different. we are going to have to fight and we are going to have do you know, sort of be disliked every now and then, but it is why those people who marched in alabama and mississippi took the beatings they took for us and we owe them. >> i came to thank you earlier as someone who was in the bay area while you were at westinghouse and you were just an incredible role model the whole time i was there. i want to say not only to your

struggle to make it as a woman of color in the news. hugh gave us and we were trying to get into sales and sales in the bay area. you were gracious to those of us and i was one of the few to get in that ultimately worked at kpix but we always look that you as an example and we could make it in sales the thank you. >> i want to congratulate you because we all know the station managers come out of the sales department. so by the time i could see some black faces in sales my hopes were high. may be one of these days. okay. >> thank you so much. thank you all for coming. i just want to give a shout-out to cheryl wells who is was in the audience and just want to say thank you so so much for the conversation you are having with their children. you can do so much with so

little. what can they do with all they have got. the book is at the register. we hope that you not only get one for yourself but pass it on to a child. we have to make these legacies. if we are going to move forward. thank you very much for being here. >> thank you area much. [applause] >> about five years ago i got a letter from a teacher that i had in eighth grade in chicago. she had saved one of my papers that i had written about thanksgiving. she must have really liked the paper. she really liked this paper and she mailed it to me and she said i kept this all these years

because it was one of the best papers i had gotten from a student, and i read that paper and i was going hey. i was really good. >> host: the blessings of thanksgiving. >> guest: what it meant to me. i don't know. >> host: is it on your refrigerator now at your house? >> guest: it is that in some box with all of my memorabilia, but it was remarkable that she had saved that. anyhow apparently i did write ready well and i had an english teacher that said you need to join the highest old newspaper. i had never thought of writing. i actually liked acting. i was in a lot of plays and things like that, which i'm very grateful now because that helps me as a television broadcaster. >> host: your voice. >> guest: learning how to use and project your voice and not being afraid to get in front of people and.

>> speak. i joined a the newspaper and they gave me a column. they weren't home rooms then. they were called the visions in my job was to go around to all the home runs and interview people about what was going on with the people in the grades. kind of a gossip column or something who won a spelling bee and who won the science fair, but i enjoyed so much having access that me, carol, could go around to these rooms and talk to the teachers and talk to the students and know things before anybody else knew them and then write them up and see my bylines. oh my goodness, you must be a worldly woman they used to say. it is kind of a heady experience. >> host: and so you make the decision that this is going to be your life work.

>> guest: i am like i love this. the attention, the access, people coming up to me wanting to tell me information, and i was a curious child who read a lot. i guess i was pretty nerdy, but it all worked. the reading, the writing, the access and being able to ask questions and get answers was just wonderful. and i said this is what i want to do. but did i know anybody who was a reporter? did i know anybody, white woman that was a reporter or any woman? all we knew was lois lane from superman and brenda starr from the comic books. but the idea, i knew there was a "chicago tribune" and the chicago sun-times and the chicago daily news that were all

great newspapers in chicago at the time and my parents were avid newspaper readers. so seeing that bylines in the newspaper there and people were covering things, murders and fires and politics, i just decided that i had to do that. >> host: you go and you tell your parents of that this is what you have decided. you want a career as a journalist. what did they say? >> guest: . [laughter] silly girl. silly little girl. you can't be a journalist. women don't do that. and certainly black women don't do that. you need to go become a teacher and so you can take care of yourself. you can always get a teaching job but we don't want to spend tuition. it was a struggle for them to get my tuition together for me. and it was like you need to be a teacher or a nurse or a social

worker. that is just about all the things young women in their early 60s would aspire to. and i was just no, i don't want to do that. i really want to do this. so there were a lot of fights in my household and a lot of slamming of my door and putting my foot down. again, this was the first know. no, you can't do this. i was just determined. finally they saw i was not going to be happy. i was not going to be a good person to live with in less i got this opportunity. so they supported me and i thank god for having supportive parents. they didn't go to college but they made sure me and my sister did. >> host: at some point you hear a second know, the second of many no's when you apply to northwestern. >> guest: of northwestern university in evanston illinois.

it was right outside chicago and that is where he wanted to go because of the best time it was one of the best journalism schools in the country. i had great grades. as i told you i was in all kinds of the two goodies and things and i had a b+, a- average from high school and i applied at northwestern and little did i know there was a -- going on. they have acknowledged it now that there was a quota of the number of jewish and that number of blacks that they took into the college. so i go to this admissions counselor and he tells me i was wasting my time. that i needed to go become a nice english teacher, that i could get a job. but i would never get a job working for the "chicago tribune." so i knew what was going to happen and i got a rejection notice a few weeks later. we regret to inform you that, i remember those first words.

>> host: a thin envelope. >> guest: thin envelope. no forms to fill out. this little tiny letter. i was like, and my parents thank god did not say we told you so. but i said i'm applying someplace else. >> host: you do just that and you end up eventually graduating from where and what year? >> guest: the university of michigan and why do you want the year so everybody will know how old i am? >> host: nevermind. >> guest: 1962. >> host: 1962 you were in michigan and you did well in school. >> guest: i did well in school again and there were 60 graduates in my class. from journalism and everyone had a job at graduation time except me. and so i went to work at the chicago public library where i had worked every summer from the time i was 15 years old.

here i am with a degree and i am going back to my high school job, my college summer job. and i was disappointed but i just felt something was going to happen. and i got this call from the dean of the school saying that he had lined up an internship for me. it didn't look good for the university to have one black student who did not have a job, so he worked very hard to make that happen. and that is how i ended up in tuskegee. >> you can watch this and other prague rims on line at booktv.org. >> up next on booktv harlow unger presents the history of the boston tea party which occurred on september 16, 1773. a report of the demonstration against the collection of import duties by the british was composed mostlyof