july so hopefully we'll get 13 books done. we've done three but as you can see we've got them in the different processes now. so it really just depends on the books. this is another book "letters from italy." you can see we've done a little tissue repair there. we're real excited about the project. >> you said you got a grant. where does the grant money come from? >> the grant money came from the college of charleston. we got $6,500 and it goes to buy the supplies, the leather and the tissue paper and it goes to pay my student to do the work this summer. he attended for five days a book-making leather book workshop in pennsylvania with don rash and so i've been teaching him hands-on here and

the next step after we get them to this stage we will gold tulle the back of the books. they were all hand tulled with jp mackenzie esquire and that will be the last part of the project. >> do you know on average around it costs per book to do it? >> it's going to depend on the size of the book because you've got some of these books "the works of john locket" obviously a lot bigger this book so we have estimated -- about $350 when we did the estimate on the books that we would be working on this summer, per book. it's really funny 'cause the end sheets to match the end sheets -- the sheets are about $28 per just the marbled sheet to match these end sheets and so

i need six sheets. but my student is a chemistry major and he came in one day and just asked, could i repair a book? well, i'll teach you how. he's been working in the library on and off with me this past semester and we're so excited to work on this project this summe summer. >> for more information on booktv's recent trip to charleston, south carolina, visit c-span.org/localcontent. >> and now on booktv, a book launch party for john merro, author of "the influence of teachers" and presents his thoughts on how the system can be reformed. this book party is held at the renaissance hotel in washington,

d.c. and it runs about 30 minutes. >> yes, hi >> i'm ashley kincaid. >> hi, ashley, how are you? >> i'm good. i have some associates that i would like to introduce to you. >> cool. i heard about this. yeah. >> and these are the student officers. >> how are you? >> they are here in dc. >> my name is lonnie. >> nice to see you. spencer nice to see you. where are you from? >> i'm from -- >> you're the president you can be first. is in front north new jersey. i go to -- >> i was born newark, new jersey, but a long time ago. >> i'm from ohio close to lima about 70 miles from columbus. >> what's the name of the town aljer. one of my kids went to kennon and i just got back to toledo

about the peace of the union there and in terms of teacher evaluation, yeah, where are you from is there >> i'm from new jersey, it's right on the shore. >> so you know -- you're convinced you're going to be teachers. >> yes. >> convinced, why? why. >> submitted influence with my teachers coming from the urban life i want to be an influence in other lives. >> well, you know, you're smart. you're going to be able to make a lot more money doing something else. >> for me it's not about the money. it's for the children. >> i'm going to talk a little bit about how i think schools have to change because the world has changed so dramatically. how about sunny >> that becoming a teaching is something that -- >> do you have a family? >> we bought a farm. >> do you have an educational

background? >> no. >> what do your folks say. >> they know i have a plan laid out and that's what they're most proud of. >> and what year are you in high school. is in front i'm a senior. >> i'm a senior also. >> so you're off to clemin the fall. >> university of new jersey. what we call rutgers. >> rutgers is the state university? that's cool. >> i'm going to the ohio state university. >> you mean the -- >> and so you don't to have decide for a while. >> no. >> that's pretty cool. they say teacher training is changing -- i was just talking to a guy that teacher training in maryland they won't let you become an education major until after your sophomore year, and

that you start in schools. you don't just stay in the university or college campuses you go spend a lot of time in school and that -- i mean, that's really important now. i mean, other countries, say, south korea, would be a teacher in training might spend that first year paid but watching and doing practice teaching and so to see if they really have what it takes. that's great. i think it's terrific that you're here. i would offer you a glass of wine but -- >> but i would say no. >> i wouldn't offer it anyway. [laughter] >> but that's terrific in yeah. >> thank you. >> great to meet you. >> i'm going to point you out when i say something. >> bob wise. >> oh, bob, how are you? >> there was one of the of the -- >> sure. >> i want to say thing one board

efficiencies -- >> are you a fan? >> i'm the chairman of the board. >> you are now the chairman. >> yeah, yeah. >> she said she read the book and i said, you know, i didn't go to the earlier meetings -- >> i'm going to stay until i finish talking to bob. >> you know this guy. >> yes. >> i'd never gotten around it. i'm an admirer of linda and of renee so i guess it's something i got to do. >> deborah thomas. >> debra. >> debra. >> like your reader. >> congratulations on this book. >> i think you'll like the book. >> i know i like not the book. liver not like what you do.

>> the previous book was a clunker but this one is pretty good. it december appeared. heavy. it was a heavy weight doorstep. this one is a pretty good book. this time i listened to other people, i said read this, i don't understand and i rewrite and rewrite. what is it easy writing makes it hard writing. >> well, in my writing days i used to write for members of congress and i used to read ember the complex stuff you did it. so you told it with stories. that they could understand. >> i've got some stories in here. >> thank you for all you're doing. i really appreciate it. >> what did you think of today? was it okay? >> oh, very much. so thank you spiral in our state with the biggest achievement gap in the united states.

>> really. >> minnesota yeah we were 38th in 2003 and now we're 49th. the haves and have nots have not swollen in that many years. come see us. it's an evil secret. >> oh, boy, it is. >> it's not good. 89% of our white males graduate. 29% of our black males. but they're talking about it. and your book helps. i appreciate everything. >> mark, how are you? >> congratulations on your book. >> thank you. >> reading what you write from time to time. >> how are you doing? you're still making waves. >> we're doing fine. >> we're still in trouble, though. >> no kidding. i don't know whether -- it seems like every once in a while they

have two steps forward and then you take two steps back or sometimes three steps back. [inaudible] >> and we -- the thing that get me so upset is the -- [inaudible] >> are not reflected at all in those success rates. they had that meeting with the 16 countries, okay, and the only reason we were there was that we were the hosts. we didn't qualify. >> that's right. >> they wouldn't let me in but i heard from jim kelly and others and the attitude was, what are you guys doing? >> well, you really have to take your -- [inaudible] >> yeah.

>> that's 'cause -- >> taken as a whole, if you look at the principals work -- [inaudible] >> the specific strategies that they use, but -- [inaudible] >> a lot of it has -- >> you see them all going up. >> that's right. and it's scary. [applause] >> so my assigned role is to introduce a video from someone that i know you all know, and he will say some things that i think will tell the story about tremendous contributions, his

passion, the impact that he's had over the years, but before the tape rolls, let me just say as a member of john's board it's really been a privilege to regularly visit with him and his staff to see the kind of caring of incredible journalistic standards and quality that they apply to everything single task they set out to do. i also want to tell you that i thought i knew everything john had ever done, but when i read this book and i realized i didn't know this, and his book like many of his video pieces really are thought provoking. even though i know most of you are experts in education, i think you will find some of his background information but also some of his questions in the way he present the context to be really very informative and very

thought provoking so i encourage you to buy a lot of the books and send them to your friends or give them to your colleagues at work because here we are public television hook but the sale of this book helps funds the enterprise for continuing john's important work. so with that i'm sure that if jim lehrer could have been here, john's long time colleague and partner in public television, he would have done so. but he did the next best thing which is create this video. so enjoy. ♪ >> good evening, i'm jim lehrer. in the news this evening john merrow our education correspondent has written a book, the influence of teachers. i believe john is the leading education journalist in america.

he should be he's been at it for a long time. john's the only reporter to have interviewed every u.s. secretary of education often for this program. in his long career john has learned how to get through doors that are closed to others. >> the bottom line is i don't believe that you are going to be the leader that is going to take this school in the direction that we need it to go in and have the highest expectations for the kids. i'm terminating your principalship now. >> in the late 1980s he talked his way inside the college admissions process, a first for any reporter. >> she's got an a plus in and b minus, b plus in psychology and a in bible 1 i don't think that's a very strong record. alumni case but i think we'd say no. >> i think maybe the most difficult thing is we're an applicant actually comes up -- comes in the office and says,

why did you do this to me. and then begins to cry. >> john can be confrontational as he was with this union leader in philadelphia. >> you're asking can you evaluate a teacher on the performance of the students? >> yes or no? >> no, you cannot. >> you cannot evaluate a teacher on the performance of his or her students? >> right. >> john was the first to expose how a supposedly nonprofit organization for children with add was secretly receiving money from the makers of ritalin. >> you don't see that as a conflict of interest taking money from the drug company? >> we see it as a responsibility of the drug company to give us that money. >> but he also knows how to hang back and let the story reveal itself. >> the next word is strenuous. strenuous is spelled strenous.

. >> that's not how strenuous is spelled. but his students might never know it. after all these years, john is still at it because there are stories to be told and because he's vehicle fun. ♪ >> i had a date to keep at my office in a part of town that's seen better days. yes, i've had better days, locking for the best exposing the worst. this is my story. ♪ >> mr. merrow, i presume? school sleuth. the influence of teachers is a good book and an important one and i'm happy to show my support. [applause] >> if this were the newshour, john, you would now be in

conversation with jim and that would than even more special for us. that's just wonderful and we should all be grateful for that kind of quality journalism. it's now my privilege to introduce josh kauffman. i now understand at least in part why josh and john are close colleagues. john has made it his business not only to tell stories and keep us informed of education but to really be a person who understands the content of what it takes to educate kids and too many people in journalism today i don't think really understand the substantive issues on reporting so we really don't get the full picture. josh kauffman is in the same vein. he's a lawyer who has worked on the computer and cyberside of the world. he's worked on arts and entertainment but he has a stimulus plantive interest and knowledge in each of these arenas. he worked for 10 years preparing computers and had been involved in the arts and entertainment worlds so he too brings real

substance and real content to his work as an attorney. josh, we welcome on you behalf of the institute to our party. [applause] >> it's a real pleasure to introduce john. i had to be circumspeck in what stories i can tell. john and i go back 30 years and i helped john incorporating on learning matters and do his exemption status. and i've been on the board of learning matters i guess since its inception. although i'm not in the education field, my contributions have generally been more on the entertainment side of the business, i've been so impressed with john in learning matters over the years. i represent a lot of people in

the media. and the plans and the quality of what learning matters presents and has presented over for 30 years now is to me one of the most things. you see a piece where learning matters and it is balanced. it is unlike today where everything has an agenda. everything is shrill. learning matters -- both sides get an opportunity to say their piece in their own words, in their own manner but john doesn't shy away from controversy. if it's the chad piece or something else, it doesn't matter. everybody is there. everybody gets their say. when i'm talking quality we're talking about our organization has won peabody awards and several emmy awards. the word is top, top-notch there's nothing better on tv. there's nobody better than john. nobody knows this industry better than john and he's in just a position where he

presents the issue. school salute was wonderful because it was talking about how to find your good school, you know, with all the obvious things were brought up but it was the things how old on the things are in the bulletin board, how many cars are in the partly after 3:30. it's that in-depth look but there's no blinders. it's out of the box and learning matters has been there for these years. and all the revenue by the way from the teachers goes to learning matters. john has created 100% of the royalties. this is not a book to lend to friends. this is a book for to you buy and to encourage your friends to go out on amazon.com and buy. we want to buy and not lend so all the revenue all the royalties will go to learning

matters. so that being said, it is with incredible pleasure that i recognize my good friend and colleague john merrow. [applause] >> thank you very much. thank you very much, josh, marty, sandy. on behalf of learning matters, our small and energetic production company, i am -- i express all our gratitude for you folks for being here -- i want to say just a quick word about the three folks who you just heard from. marty you know as community schools, president of the institute for educational leadership and he's a big deal. but when he goes home, he's not that big of a deal. his wife helen blank is a power house. their daughter molly is an up and coming and already excellent

filmmaker to to be friends with marty is like winning the trifecta, frankly. marty, you're a lucky man as well as a special friend. now, josh kauffman has been, as he said, a personal friend and our attorney for 30 years. a founding member of the board. he has gotten me out of trouble more than one but more importantly he's kept me from getting into trouble which is actually more important. what was the most recent one was david guggenheim of the disgraceful documentary waiting for superman. josh, i hope we'll be friends we'll have more years. sandy welch is a leader of learning matters. she has steered us through some incredibly tough times.

she took over as board chair when our founding chair judge william mcnulty when -- sorry. lost a battle with cancer. and then, of course, she inherited that job just as the worse recession since the depression yet and we're not through that part yet but sandy you have been just terrific. i just want to say a couple words about the book championship you'll enjoy. first, strenuous. that came from a document about a teacher and we were not trying to embarrass that young man. if you watch the whole documentary you'll discover he's a junior high school phys ed teacher and he has been told by his superintendent who was also the high school principal in a small town in georgia that he has to go teach high school english, high school math and

high school history. you may have noticed who the students are. it's too common of a story. georgia add loophole that allowed a teacher could teach up to 49% of stuff that he or she had never studied. it's only when you went to 50% when you were actually out of field. they've since closed that loophole somewhat but it's a disgrace and we probably should frost that guy's face. he's a nice young man. he was put in a position where he could not succeed and teachers generally have an attitude, put me in coach, for whatever reason. and he would have lost his job had he -- it's a statement about how we treat teachers and how we treat the neediest of kids. i wrote this book "the excellence of teachers" as this war was heating up. this ongoing war fighting over

tenure and in the book i talk about two camps. there are -- there's one camp which says -- it's a matter of defining the problem. what's education's problem? and this one camp says the problem is people. we just need better people. we could just have better people everything would be solved. now, that side has a firepower. it has waiting for superman, it has lottery, it has opera and education nation which is a quasi and it has chartered school and venture capitalists. hedge fund guys supporting and the other is diane ravitz with the mega phone and the teacher union and a few other people and it's an unfair fight.

so the other side is saying no, it's not a matter of better people. it's a matter of making teacher a better job. we need to make teaching a better job. now, there's some data that says that, in fact, is the problem. i mean, we lose 40% of teachers in the first five years. 40%. no other profession you can dream of has that rate of churn. and it matters this is a country of 311 million people and 4.2 roaches. 1 out of every 100 americans is a public school teacher. if you add up all the accountants and the lawyers, doctors, if you add them together we've got more teachers than all those people put together. it really does matter. there's a huge amount of churn going on in the mrofrgs in 1--

profession. mode is the most common. in 1987, the modal for years of experience was 15 years. there were more teachers who have been teaching 15 years than any other 14 years, 12 years, et cetera, et cetera. what do you suppose the mode is now, 2012 data? >> 1. >> somebody was here -- it's 1. we have more first it shall year teachers than if any other time and i see jaws drop. it's a huge opportunity. there are astounding things going on in education. but if you think the job is to make teaching a better job, the problem there is that there's a trade union definition of better job. it is how late can you get there in the morning? how soon can you leave after 3:00? how many days in advance does

the principal have to ask you for permission to come watch you teach? it's a very narrow trade definition. you can't just lay blast unions because some school boards sign these silly contracts. so the better job, better people battle is raging. but the point of the book is this is the last war. this war is irrelevant. absolutely irrelevant to our children. how many of you in this room are over the age of 27? [laughter] >> well, yeah, so am i. [laughter] >> okay. if you're over the age of 27, you went to school because that's where they kept the knowledge. think about it. the knowledge was in the textbook. it was in the encyclopedias. it was in teachers' heads. that is simply not true today. now, information is everywhere.

our schools remain these answer factories, these regurgitation education stuff when, in fact, we ought to be helping our kids to help formulate questions. how do you turn information into knowledge. somebody said what's the difference between information and knowledge? information of is knowing that the tomato is a fruit. knowledge is knowing you don't put it in a fruit salad. maybe not. think about it. think about it. so we should be helping our kids formulate questions. how do you know that. how do you separate the wheat and the chaff and, of course, we're teaching values so there's -- there were three -- there's three reasons if you're over 27, three reasons you went to school. one reason because they kept the analogy and the other was for socialization. let's learn to get along together. you're a different color.

let's learn to get together. there's an app for that today. [laughter] >> i say it lightly but, in fact, there is our kids are like -- it's like pen pals on steroids. your 14-year-old is socializeing with a whole bunch of people she thinks are 14. they might be a 40-year-old congressman. [laughter] >> so our -- we have to teach our kids about the power this technology and the power to abuse the technology and sexting. they have to be armed. they have to be literate. now, the third reason we went to school, and that's custodial care. we still need school. we got a place to send our kids or in my grandchildren. we have to keep them safe and off the streets. if the education that's provided is merely this regurgitation

education, then it's not quite meaningless but close. then schools, in fact, become dangerous places 'cause children are smart. they have high energy and if it's not used purposefully and positively it will be used negatively. i guarantee it will be used negatively. you can see it. you've heard of cyberbullying? that's really just child abuse by children. you want to call it what it is. the stakes are really high at this point. the challenge is to transform -- schools are not going to go away. charter schools are not the answer. as wonderful as many of them are. they're 5% of our kids. 5% will go to that school so we need schools places where children learn to ask questions.

learn there's no question to be afraid of. learn to ask why. how do you know that? how do you know that you know that? inquiry. it means project-based learning. it means turning around so we don't put teachers in the position of that poor young man. it means ways to engage kids and get -- to get rid of these answer factories in this he regurgitation education factories. i think you should read the book. i think it's absolutely vital that -- that there be a force to where this attack that's going on as if the problem is just the people. i firmly believe that if you make -- teach a better job so that the men and women who went into teaching for all the right reasons, you'll find we had a whole bunch of people all along we just need to take away the shackles and redefine what we're doing in a transformative way and i hope you'll read the book but in any case thank you very

much for being here. let's party. thank you. [applause] >> john merrow is the president of learning matters, a nonprofit production company that focuses on education. for more information, visit learningmatters.tv. >> susan and miller are the authors of upheaval of charleston. booktv spoke with mr. williams

and mr. hoffias when we went to south carolina on our recent cities tour. >> august 31st, 1886 was the largest earthquake ever to hit the east coast of the united states. there were three epicenters. they were all within 10 or 15 miles of charleston, south carolina. but the earthquake was felt all over the east coast. there was panic in new york city. in chicago, in detroit. richmond had a riot because all the prisoners at the state penitentiary demanded to be released and the story went out that there was a riot that had gone on. and there was guns trying to put down what they thought was an uprising all through the southeast and even down to cuba they were seeing flashes of light that came from the earthquake and glasses were shaking off of the shelves.

so it was huge. >> and, in fact, it caused a lot of havoc in the area around charleston that was not known outside of charleston at night. it's an interesting time for the earthquake to hit because the city and the world is sort of on the cusp of modernity and they are used to having instantaneous information because of the telegraph and you get closer and closer you get more dramatic effects. the most dramatic to me what they call sand blows or geyser that shot up 2 stories in the air and the biggest pocket of those was actually around 10-mile hill which is right where the charleston international airport is today. >> physical you'res hundreds of feet, long were breaking open in the ground. railroad trains were being

toppled. major damage all around the area and surprisingly, not that many people killed. probably 60-some that night eventually more than 100. the numbers are a little vague because a lot of people -- the records never quite came in. but over 100 people killed. >> it's a huge international story. people seemed to have sort of forgotten btdz disaster in the wake of the san francisco earthquake in 19 stereotype 6. it was exactly 20 years later but it was truly an earthquake that had implications across the united states it was national international news. it was a big story. >> how did the city respond? what did they do? >> for a long time they didn't know what to do. the city council didn't meet for days. everybody that night he fled from their houses. went out into the streets. stayed in any open space they could find, sleeping in the

streets, sleeping in the city parks. a lot of people went out to stay on ships that were in the harbor. and then they started to go back to their homes in the morning and the after-shocks drove them right back out again into the streets so people stayed away from their homes for several days. and in a city as racially charged as charleston, remember, it's only 21 years after the end of the civil war and 10 years after the end of reconstruction when whites took back all the government in south carolina, there were tensions among everyone and the parks were integrated the night of the earthquake and they quickly broke into white camps and black camps with people separated by who they felt comfortable with. but they stayed out in the streets for days until the city

leaders were demanding that they go back. saying you are not going to be damaged by falling plaster. you have much more a chance of getting a problem from exposure to the elements in the parks than if you're at home with your cracked ceilings. >> they did initially sort of act like they were paralyzed to some extent but they did get around to realizing that they were going to have to provide relief. that was something that charleston, white charleston, was really opposed to at first but this was clearly such a big disaster that though they had a huge hurricane in exactly a year before in 1885 and refused national relief at that time they decided they were going to have to accept all of the money that was coming in. and first provide food for people. so they established soup kitchens. they established a commissary

where they hand out free food, dry food that people could come and got and they were very proud of themselves getting this enormous effort setup. they provide tents. it's a little hard to get tents. they built wooden shelters. when they finally do gear up, it is sort of an efficient bureaucracy. but by our standards today, it did have some flaws. >> well, it was fumbling. they would set up a program and then the next day they would junk it and say, no, no, we've got to do something told different and 24 hours they junked that and set up something spiral new again. as with a lot of disasters, a lot of the story is one or two people, especially one taking charge and kind of saying this is how we're going to do it. and in charleston, that person was farn sis dawson the editor

of the news and charleston courier and he was the leading figure of the relief company of distributing the money he sent the news out around the world and people sent hundreds of thousands of dollars to him personally for him to distribute however it needed to be done. and he convinced people around the city saying oh, my god, we are devastated by this earthquake. a year ago the hurricane. the civil war, we're cursed and he rallied everybody and said no, we're not cursed and we can recover from this. we can rebuild and we can make charleston as great today as it was yesterday. and he's the one who convinced people that they could rebound and they could recover. >> and he's a very interesting guy, too, because he was british. he's a transplant. and charleston traditionally did

not take well to come-heres as they still call them. but he came over to fight for the confederacy and he stayed because he really felt that he could make good here in a way that he never could back in england. expo doesn't really share native south carolinians presentlies in a lot of way. he's married to a very unreconstructed woman from bridgeport who actually wrote of the great diaries from the civil war and he is sort of on both sides of the fence. he is able to talk to people who are from various classes, various races. he does take a lot of stands for social justice that are unexpected. and yet, he is still very much a man of his time. >> and he's a huge figure in the democratic party at the time. in the 1880s the democratic

party was -- in the south was the party of white people. and the republican party which was lincoln's party was the party of black people and of very few whites who came down the people everybody talks about being carpet baggers he was the leader of the democratic party not just in south carolina but in the south. when he put out the word saying we need help, people responded. and money came flooding in from all around the country. from england, from japan. the queen of england sent her condolences. everybody responded. one of the things that triggered that was the fact that it was 21 years after the end of the civil war and a lot of former union soldiers in the north kind of banded together and got in touch with the people in charleston

and said, we will send you money. we will send you supplies. we will even send you armed troops who will take post all through the city of charleston and won't that comfort you and the response from charleston was, thanks anyway. [laughter] >> we can get -- we can get along just fine without having more u.s. government troops in the streets. that is not going to help us. >> but they do, in fact -- the north and the south take this up as a sort of cause. white south carolinaions in particular is a way to reunited for the north for business reasons and the north think as a way for south carolina and, oh, we tried to destroyed that miserable city too many years ago. had cradle of secession is now we want to help clean it up. we want to make amends. we want to reconnect.

so for white people, this is a great triumph. for black it's a real threat. that means they are conveniently uniting to forget the causes of the civil war. to turn their backs on the movement for plaque equality which had a pretty good run. so it's a very turbulent moment in the city's history. >> well, and the white city leaders are reaching out to are all former confederate officers. those are the people who are running the city. and when they put up a relief committee to help all the people in the city, even though the city is 60% black at this point, they put no black people on any of the committees. a small town near here that's actually closer to the epicenter than charleston somerville put black people on their relief committees but on charleston, they did not even consider it. and there was a really strong

effort especially led by black ministers here to try to say, we can reach the people who need the help better than you can. let us help you find them and the city leaders said, no thanks. we do not need your help. labor was a very good thing. the whole city of charleston was being organized by the knights of labor, which was a labor organization that was active all around the country and they said, we're in touch with laborers in charleston. they're the ones who are injured. and whose houses have been damaged. let us help you and the city told them we don't need your help either. we can take care of it ourselves and they put the word out around the country. we know what's going on. we can take charge of it. send the money to us and we will take care of it for you. >> so that was actually going to be my next question is when they were -- it's already like you said a racially charged environment.

when it came down to giving out the provisions, my assumption it didn't happen equally at 60% of the population like you said was black. how did -- i'm sure that didn't happen the situation? .. >> all sorts of meanings attach to relief. in fact, they really were pretty equitable, i think, about giving out food. >> the commissary and the food kitchen, the soup kitchen that they were running, the vast matter of the people who were in

line for it were black people, and they pointed that out on a regular basis. but on the other hand, of course they were. um, they were the ones who had fewer supplies at home that they could draw on. they were the ones who were in frame buildings that were in much worse shape and that were more easily damaged. even though a brick building, um, will crumble where a wood building is more flexible in an earthquake, buildings that are already in bad repair are going to fall. and lots of low income people's frame buildings did fall during the earthquake. >> so you mentioned, um, francis warington dawson. you said he had joined, he had come to the u.s. to join the confederacy, and now here he is during the earthquake, he's, you know, trying to get aid to black people. how did that go over with his fellow confederates?

>> dawson is a very powerful figure, and during this period he seems to be able to lead public opinion partly because he's just so energetic, you know? they're all squashed. they're wanting to go home and take care of their own families and their own needs, and be it all seems sort of like a burden. and dawson comes out, um, fighting and really concerned about people's needs. he also is one of the people, though, who is always saying, you know, we toabt want any -- we don't want any idle hands here. we don't want to give any money and food to people who can work. so at this moment in the earthquake, he's regarded as a hero. >> and on the earthquake relief committee lots of people are proposing let's shut it down right now. let's stop giving out money to all these people, and dawson is one of the main figures who is saying people are still suffering. we have to keep, um, giving money out much longer.

they were ready to shut down the relief effort within about a week or ten days -- >> uh-huh. >> -- from when they first set it up. and as it was, they shut it down less than a month after they set it up, after they pleaded to to the country we really need your aid and your support. and less than a month later they decided that giving free shelter and free food was keeping people from making the repairs that were necessary in charleston, and a little suffering would actually be helpful for the city because it will push people into making the repairs for the salaries that the richer people in the city were more willing to pay. >> and, in fact, the people who are arguing against this optimistic view are mostly black ministers who are writing to newspapers, black newspapers mostly in the north, and who are saying, you know, they're not telling the whole story.

it's really worse than they're reporting. dawson himself writes to his wife in switzerland repeatedly, it's really a lot worse than we're telling in the newspaper. >> and if you were living here, you would either be dead or in a lunatic asylum. you couldn't have stood it. and many people have that problem. there were all kinds of reports of earthquake-induced insanity with people, um, just fleeing -- lots of people actually died of fright, according to the newspaper accounts, and the death records that doctors in town -- >> or committed suicide as a result of the earthquake. and, in fact, all of this was ratcheted up a good deal when, um, the national newspapers were suddenly filled with the prediction of a man named ezekiel stone wiggins who was a self-proclaimed weather prophet

and who predicted that the greatest earthquake ever seen, much larger than the charleston earthquake, was going to hit the united states on september 29th. of course, remember, they're still having aftershocks, they're certainly willing to believe that the most insane things can happen. and wiggins' prediction actually dovetails with the prediction of a nameless black woman in liberty county, georgia, who supposedly sat up in her coffin on the night of the earthquake and predicted that the world was going to end on september 29th. so a kind of hysteria really sweeps the country. it's certainly not local. it's people in michigan and in galveston, texas, and in new orleans. >> people in michigan climb up, they build a big platform up in the air, they climb up into it -- parents and children. they put on ascension robes so

that when the world ends, they will be well-dressed when they go up into heaven. they take a picnic lunch with them it case it doesn't come right away, and they just sit there ask wait. [laughter] and this was really happening all around the country. there are lots of stories about the gulf coast where they're doing this. charleston, all work came to a stand still. lots of people said we don't have to do any work at all, because we're not going to be around here in another week. and that day, of course, everybody is standing there watching their watches and the clocks on the church towers just waiting to see what's going to happen. and what happened was nothing. [laughter] and then they had to go back to work and say, so the world is not going to end, now what are we going to do? how are we going to repair the city, and how are we going to live together? >> >> so how long did it take for

the city to recover? >> you know, they claim that they were completely recovered a year later. >> they put on a huge exposition, a big gala week where they announced come and see how we have recovered. there is no sign of damage anymore, and everything is all better. we're back to business one year later. >> but if you read "the new york times" and places that don't have so much of an agenda, they're saying, look around. there's still a lot of damaged buildings. they really have not recovered as well as they are giving out. and, of course, um, if you look around the city now and read the papers, everything was sort of patched up hastily, and we are still dealing with shoddy repairs from the earthquake. >> yeah. so 125 years later we're still having to go back and make repairs on the building that had been done poorly right after the earthquake, the city hall, um, lot of the school buildings are

now, they have studied them, they have determined that they couldn't survive an earthquake as strong as we had in 1886. they've moved all the children off of those school -- from those schools off of the peninsula, and they've got to make repairs. and on a lot of buildings they're probably going to have to tear them down and rebuild them because what we had was not sufficient to survive again. >> the city actually did, um, move on from providing food to providing a lot of the money for repairs. and they would send out inspectors, and they would give people vouchers to do these repairs. if you go back and look at those records, they still exist. um, a lot of the time the inspectors would come in and say, no, really, this is not adequate repairs. and the homeowner would sign off on it anyway, and everybody would just sort of agree to go on. they wanted so badly to be back in a kind of normal situation. and i can certainly understand

why. but, um, that was the second phase of relief. and i think it's what the city was trying to fast forward to after they got through that initial free food and shelter phase. >> one, we worked on the book together for 11 years. we would work on the story of the earthquake and think that that was the full story, and then realize that we had to go out a little bit further. we had to go two and a half years later. the hero of the earthquake, frank dawson, was murdered. and his trial was this huge event that was covered all around the country to understand why people reacted the way they did, we had to go back to 1876 and 1865. and so the story kept getting bigger and bigger. but one of the things that we liked the most were the little part, stories, the little elements in it. we're speaking right now in the

wentworth mansion which is one of the grand buildings and great hotels in all of charleston. um, and it was actually under construction in 1886, nearly completed, when the earthquake happened. you can still walk around and see pieces of stained glass that are warped because of the shifting of the building that happened the night of the earthquake. the man who was building it, um, came under attack because lots of people said we are out in the streets, you know, we we are lig under tents and under canvas, and look at the place that you have. you are not doing enough to reach out to us and to help us in our suffering. and it was a, it was a small battle going on in charleston at the time. the man who built the building here was on city council, he had set up the first paid fire department, real professional fire department in be

charleston. and he quit city council in part because of the criticism that he was getting here. all of the small tensions that would have, that always exist in any city suddenly when there's a natural disaster like this, the first reaction is, oh, let's all reach out, and let's all work together. and the second reaction is that those tensions just get bigger and bigger and bigger. people don't forget them. in fact, they kind of take advantage of the chaos that's going on right now to work with those tensions and make 'em bigger. >> so, actually, can we go back and talk about what, ultimately, happened to dawson? >> sure. >> frank dawson was under attack after the earthquake. he was, um, under attack really from what we would consider the left and the right at the time. he became the target of a man who would eventually go on to be

a u.s. senator, benjamin tillman, who was a very colorful character with very salty language. >> "pitchfork" ben tillman. >> yes. although he was not called "pitchfork "at the time, and, in fact, he didn't hold office at the time. but they established a rival newspaper to try to bring dawson down, and there were some wonderful sort of pitched battles on the steps of city hall where tillman stood up there and attacked dawson, and dawson tried to defend himself and really was not nearly as good a speaker as tillman and had the start of plummy british accent that made him seem more alien. so you would have thought what was happening was entirely political. he had all sorts of enemies in the city. and, ultimately, what happened to him was very tawdry and mundane. he had a young swiss woman that his wife had brought back from

switzerland in 1887 who was living in the house and who, apparently, had a kind of sexual magnetism that is not apart in her pictures -- apparent in her pictures. her name was elaine. everybody but frank and sara seemed to realize that she was a knockout and that she stopped traffic. but she caught the attention of their next door neighbor, a man named dr. thomas ballard mcdowell, who was married and had a child but who started stalking her and immediately saying, i want to marry you. i'll divorce my wife and marry you. which was patently absurd because south carolina at that time did not even allow divorce. so he stalked elaine, and in the meantime, he has tried to hire his brother as a hitman to kill his wealthy father-in-law and kill her, actually, he's going to