out, so at least as jim has said, that was the end of his campaign for front and roosevelt in 1936, but it worked. every state but maine and vermont. >> i elected him. >> he elected roosevelt and by a great landslide history so i think we should thank jim for that. [applause] amazing because of jim's role and roosevelt scholarship. he actually only got to see the man once, which was if you had to choose a moment to see fdr if you had known this would probably be one of the seven moments i would have liked to have seen him if i had the choice. he was there at a the boston garden in 1940. i think it was the night before halloween as i remember. roosevelt was speaking and the famous thing he said was, i will say this and i will say it again and again and again, your boys are not going to be sent into any foreign wars. and he got a round of applause

and carried massachusetts, including many isolationists in massachusetts. many people later on faulted roosevelt for having said something that was not true. the way he explained what he had said was that, i might have said come except in the case of attack and that begin a is attacked it is not going to be a foreign war so he felt that was a pledge that was fair. and they think he was probably trying to be very exact because he knew jim was in the audience and he would be writing about him later on. [laughter] so he had better be very careful. in any case, jim, as bob was nice enough to mention, spent much of world war ii with a combat historian where franklin roosevelt was his commander in chief. jim once said when i came back from world war ii, i knew i must write a book about franklin roosevelt, and he started very quickly with 1945 not long after the president died. i think at that point the

presidents -- were still in the torpedo factory and alexander virginia. than they were moved here and procedures at the roosevelt library in those days were little bit more relaxed than they are nowadays. jim has told me more than once of the fact that he and frank friedel, the great roosevelt biographer, were both here and they were here for long spells and they were away from their family so they wanted to get as much done as possible while they were here and hyde park. as much as they otherwise had to do it in hyde park of course but they wanted to get back to their families. and so in the relaxed atmosphere of of the time they were able to pay a security guard to stay until midnight silk they could just work until midnight and gets their research done a little bit more quickly. it is not quite done that way anymore, i don't think, bob? i think the federal marshals may be coming to take jim away for doing that. but life has changed. in any case, as both bob and susan have said, the lion and

the fox is one of the classics of not only roosevelt but historical literature in this country. virtually everything that has been written about franklin roosevelt in that time in the last 55 years has been influenced by what jim wrote at the very beginning and the lion and the fox. and, he has often been asked by people who do not read every word of the book, where did the title come from? and this is a particular question because i remember jim telling me that when the book came out in 1956, he was promoting it on "the today show" and at the suggestion of his publisher he brought a stuffed lion and a stuffed fox. they wondered what this was about and perhaps getting them interested in the book. needless to say it comes from machiavelli that a great leader must have elements of a lion and a fox. jim drew true that have been teased about in the second volume to make the point that a

great leader has to be a leader who has central principles but ultimately he or she adheres to that at the same time must be able to be as crafty as a fox at times to carry those principles out. so in any case the book came out in 1956 and was nominated for a pulitzer prize. it was one of the finalists and it was edged out by a book that we have not heard anything of sense which was called profiles in courage. [laughter] there were many professional historians and i was six months old at the time so unfortunately i wasn't one of them but who felt as good as profiles in courage was that the price should've prize should have gone to a professional scholar. and i will not vote one way or the other except to note that the second volume, roosevelt the soldier of freedom, which came out in 1970 was the winner of the pulitzer prize of the judges finally made it up to jim as was well deserved.

so, we are going to hear jim reid from roosevelt, the lion and the fox, but i think one thing that you will know is that i reread it again recently, knowing that i was coming here. i first read it when i was 16, and i knew very little about the roosevelt period. i did not know who father coughlin was or many of the issues, particularly of the 1930s and it just made those things real to me. i felt, by the time i had finished as if i had lived through the period and that is one test of the great work of history. is a book of great litter airy element. the way he sets the scene and you will hear this in the first excerpt of jim reeves is, it is almost -- you have the sense you are there but the most important thing and susan alluded to this, is that there is now a very well developed discipline and american colleges and universities and also abroad called leadership studies.

leadership studies did not exist in the early 1950s when jim was writing this book. little did he know that hammer writing this book, he was doing a lot actually to create what will ultimately become the discipline of leadership studies. and more than once i heard him tell the story that when i began he said this book on franklin roosevelt, i felt this would basically be a political science book looking at fdr as a case including leadership and what you can glean from him, the mistakes he made and also the successes, what we can use to develop other american leaders in the future and also be better citizens. and he said you know the problem was that fdr is a personality that completely took over and the result was he became a much more conventional list, anything but conventional but a much more orthodox biography and he said my leadership study shrank to a think it was about seven pages at the end of the book. there is a note on political

leadership which jim modestly says you know, that is the way my original in intention began to shrink. but what is really key about the book and i will close with this and let jim. >> , is that when you read it, it is a wonderful story. how could it not be? it is beautifully told and you feel as if you are there but jim did something that is much more common now than it was in the early 1950s. he is saying we shouldn't just know about this period because roosevelt was an important president, because important things went on in the 1930s in the 1940s, but one reason that you were called in studies and past national leaders is to use him or her to make ourselves better, to make society better and essentially grabbed a lesson that you can and this is my language, not his, from this life and from these times. that is what he did and if you read books now that do that a lot of the reason is jim burns. so that being said one

further -- one final comment. and talking about how jim wrote roosevelt, that line in the fox, jim has on other occasions reminded me that my undergraduate record of williams college and -- capable of being revised downward, so a little careful with what i've been saying that in any case with great affection all i can say is that you are getting to hear something that i have never heard and i think nearly 40 years of knowing jim byrne since i was 17 years old and that is, it never heard him read from any of his books in public so we are on now about to have a very great treat in a very great honor. jim come , can you begin reading for us? [applause] >> thank you very much for that wonderfully exaggerated report on my life. much appreciated.

well, i think i should just get to doing what i'm supposed to do here, which is to read from my work, and i want to apologize to the two or three of you who might have read my book on roosevelt having double jeopardy now having to hear it read from this table is i think maybe a little too much so please forgive me. election, 1933, the evening of february 27, 1933 at hyde park was a cloudy and cold. a stiff northwest wind swept across the dark waters of the hudson, and toss to the branches of the grand old trees around

the roosevelt home. inside, a warm living room, a big thick shouldered man sat writing by the fire. franklin d. roosevelt's pencil glided across the pages of yellow legal paper. quote, i am certain that my fellow americans expected that in my presidency, i would address them with a candor and a decision which they present the present situation of our nation and tells. the fire hissed and crackled. the large hand with a stick fingers moved rapidly across the paper and wrote, the people of the united states want direct, vigorous action. they have made me the instrumene instrument of their wishes. he scratched out humble because

he realized there was no time for humility. during the next two days, frightening reports continued to reach hyde park. piece by piece, the nations credit structure was becoming paralyzed. crisis was in the air. but it was a strange numbing crisis, striking federally and the western cities and then in the south a thousand miles away. it was worse than an invading army. it was everywhere and nowhere, for it was in the minds of men. it was fear, but at hide bark, the next president was serene. on march 1, the president-elect left hyde park from new york and then for washington.

washington was somber under her cold march rain. the crowd quietly waited while the train, glistening with its jewellike lights, backed into union station. policeman in black raincoats bustled around the rear car. secret serviceman, hands in their overcoat pockets, searched through the faces of the crowd. wearing a grey hat gray hat and overcoat, hardly visible, roosevelt walked slowly out on the back platform, his wife at his side. his sons, james and john, helped move him swiftly to a car. he sat back confidently with a smile. tension in washington was mounting. the federal reserve lord reported that a quarter billion

dollars -- a billion dollars was quite a bit of money in those days, a quarter billion dollars worth of gold had poured out of the system and a week ago it seemed likely that the new york banks would have to be closed. in his hotel room, roosevelt worked over his speech. nearby was a copy of thoreau with the words, nothing is so much to be feared as fear. saturday, march 4 donned cloudy and jealous. chen alvarez, face great, gray, roosevelt repeated the oath of office. the cold wind rippled the pages of his speech as he turned to face the crowd. roosevelt's face was stern and that. quote, if i read the temper of our people correctly, we now

realize as we have never realized before our interdependence on each other, that we cannot merely take that we must give as well. that if we had to go forward, we must move as a trained and loyal army willing to sacrifice for the good of a common discipline. the people had asked for direct, vigorous action, for discipline and direction under leadership. quote, in the spirit of the gift i have taken, unquote the plea for divine providence. at the end, roosevelt waved to the crowd and suddenly smiled his great electrifying smile.

it was very, very solemn and a little terrifying. eleanor roosevelt said afterward as she talked with reporters in the white house. the crowds were so tremendous that you felt that they would do anything if only someone with tell them what to do. [applause] >> okay susan, what do you think? [laughter] >> it is magnificent writing and here in here you see political scientist at work, but also a historian's art and some of the lyrical descriptions and jim's incredibly rich vocabulary, the golden trees in the numbing

crisis and the invading army of fear. that is not the way someone writes an encyclopedia. that is an artist writing and certain key lines about fdr crossing out the word humble. i don't know if you remember george washington's inaugural address. and his other addresses whenever he accepted a position of authority. he was always hedging his bets and emphasizing his deficiencies and inadequacies and saying to people, you were the ones who elected me in case things go wrong. [laughter] but fdr realized this was no moment for washingtonian humility because if he spoke about his deficiencies, there could be mass suicide in the country at that point. the people needed confidence and hope. general jim creates a juxtaposition between the bleak atmosphere, the bleak landscape, the hopelessness, the banking

crisis and fdr's serenity, it sure fullness, optimism. i think that is such a precious gift that he gave to the nation, and then be and not guerilla dress itself in which he speaks about people's interdependence and they think this is the great revolutionary transformative moment, because it is goodbye to the laissez-faire doctrine into the rugged individualism, that characterized american ideology and society for decades. now there is a new ethos of community and interdependence. we are citizens and the same community and the same society and now we are in the same boat. we have to help one another. it is not time for social darwinism, survival of the fittest. this is what a society really is. it is a national community of people who are interdependent. >> nicely said and i was thinking that roosevelt

referring to himself as humble, you can imagine roosevelt haters and maybe even jim's dad would have find it politely laughable when fdr would refer to himself as humble and any circumstance. more fodder for the roosevelt critics. i agree with susan and one thing that she said that really said a lot to me was the way that, and you will see this all through this book and all of jim's writing, it works so well on the level almost a fiction it is written so politically especially the expert -- excerpt which is her but at the same time almost without you knowing it he goes back and forth between that and making very important political science points. you know there are some very interesting devices. one of them is not in one of the excerpts he is going to read today but as i remember think it was in his treatment of the first 100 days and he says something like, if fdr had ever stopped during the 100 days to consider what were the qualities that allowed him to be effective and made a list of them, this

would be the list, one, two, 34 but roosevelt said he was much too busy and it was never like him to do things like that anyway. the point is he never forgot roosevelt was probably the best example of that time and that century and in the retrospect still how we can look at a president use it to draw larger lessons. i want to say a word about the second expert -- excerpt. >> the second excerpt is about the buildup to the war and roosevelt's caution and even his wavering. here jim goes into quite a stringent critique of fdr and 1938, 39 and 40 when one there is a powerful isolationist block both in american society and in congress. >> the other thing that the shows and we should cover jim here is because he is going to turn red with embarrassment that

it shows his intellectual honesty. jim burns at the time was a roosevelt democrat. to this day i think he would say he is a roosevelt democrat, but that does not allow frank roosevelt to pass through this book and he is very critical at moments where he feels that he needs to be. so the result is that as much as he agreed with probably most of fdr's aims during the presidencr becomes a political tract and he is very tough on the man at certain moments. jim, do you want to read part two? >> i think this will illustrate what you say. buildup to the war, roosevelt's caution. back in february, 1939, a friend of the president's had sent unto him a letter from a man who had long supported the administration.

risen and to spare and indignation, the letter spoke for the millions of americans who could not understand roosevelts cautious tactics. quote, why don't you tell our idol, fdr, to quit beating around the bush. get on the radio and be honest with his people. of course we cannot afford to let friends in england gets. of course we should prepare to help them. if that is not enough, then everything we have got. why stall? why not talk realism to the american people before it is too late? all the passion in that letter left the president unmoved. other persons, even heads of nations, had asked him to take the leadership against the aggressors. he had not done so.

on the contrary. the president's behavior had been almost a caricature of godlessness. what was the matter? in the gravest international situation, the nation had ever faced, where was the leadership of the man whose very name since 1933 had become a symbol of candor and courage? one explanation for his caution lay in the nature of the opposition in congress and among the people. in a 1937 poll, 19 out of 20 people answered a flat no to the query whether the united states should enter another world war. the late 1930s was a period when father coughlin and john l. lewis were ripping up

isolationist feelings when tucson, fascism constituted, remember some of you, the wave of the future. two decades of fairness over world war i and its aftermath had left a hard scar issue. roosevelt felt that events and facts themselves would educate the public, so they did, but not quickly enough. he did not lead opinion toward a position about war. he tagged along with opinion. sometimes he lagged behind the drift of opinion, favoring more commitment by the united states to join efforts against aggression. during his second term, roosevelt seem to forget the great lesson of this and not the real speech of 1933. that courageous affirmation in

it self changes the political dimensions of the situation. that speech was more than a speech. it was an act that loosened a tidal wave of support by the new administration. the most important instrument a leader has to work with is himself, his own personality, and its impact on other people. when the people people's opinions are vaguely directed away the leader is headed but lack depth and solidity, action by the leader can shift opinion in his own favor. to be sure, more than speeches were needed after 1937. but the not real speech of 1933 stood as an index of the leaders influence when he takes a posture of bold affirmation. indeed, roosevelt to a

surprising degree was captive to the political forces around him rather than their shaper. in a democracy, such must ever be the case. but democracy assigns a place for creative, political leadership too. the forces of roosevelt stemmed as much of his own actions and personality as from the unmuted political environment. he could not reshape his party of foreign-policy attitudes, reorganize congress and the bureaucracy or solve the economic problem. largely because he lacked, in my view -- that is added -- a necessary intellectual commitment to the right union.

roosevelt and in a sense was captive to himself as well as to his political environment. he was captive to his habit of mediating among pressures rather than reshaping or responding eclectic lead to all the people around him. in balancing warring groups and leaders against one another, of improvising with brilliance and festival. inpatient of theory, insatiably curious about people and their ideas, sensitively attuned to the play of forces around him, he lacked that burning and almost fanatic conviction that great leadership demands. roosevelt was less a great creative leader than a skillful manipulator and a brilliant

interpreter. given the big decisive event, depression at home or naked oppression -- aggression abroad, he could traumatize its significance and convey its importance to the american people. but when the crisis was less frightening but no less serious, and when its solution demanded a union of intellectual comprehension, and unified and continuing strategic action, roosevelt saw his efforts turned to dust. as in the case of the court-packing, the purge, putting his country behind efforts towards collective security. he was almost -- always a superb tactician and sometimes a courageous leader but he failed to achieve bad combination of tactical skill and strategic planning that represents

political leadership. [applause] >> the that is quite a critique that jim has articulated about roosevelt and i wonder if jim would agree that, in this case, fdr wasn't aligned, wasn't it -- a lion and wasn't a fox either because i assumed the fox has some goal and strategy in mind too and hear fdr was wavering and so cautious, as you say a caricature of cautiousness, that i don't think that he had had the commitment to a clear foreign-policy. and i find that interesting. here jim is operating not as a historian but as a political scientist and a scholar of leadership, who is injecting his

own prescription for leadership in his discussion of fdr. and jammies to talk about the for c's of leadership, conviction, commitment, courage, and compassion and sometimes compromise, but when it comes to -- in some cases compromise is necessary and helpful but when it comes to naked nazi aggression, it is certainly not an occasion for compromise. so here jim is criticizing fdr for being passive in the face of the mounting crisis and he stresses the opposition between this cautiousness and the affirmation of leadership in the inaugural address. >> yeah, i just had to quit once. one is that remember again, he was writing 10 years after dr .. as god.

so for him to be this critical was a very courageous thing at the time in his critique really stands up all these years later. the other thing that occurs to me is another book of jim's i am sure many of you have read, the deadlock of democracy it came out in 1963, seven years after the lion and the fox. president kennedy read it. it was one of the most influential books politically at the time. one of the themes is how much residents are foiled by the deadlock of their intentions he saw it in 1963, perhaps more sharply, but i'll bet the first time he really came to understand it was when he was going to comprehend it as it related to fdr in the second time. with that, one more reading, jim? >> this is not part of my report, but i think i was too hard on fdr partly because some of the presidents we've had

since fdr -- [laughter] third and last, election of 1940, the sphinx and convention. it had long been certain that 1940 would be no ordinary year in american history, for three years politicians in both parties had been maneuvering in preparation for a crucial election year. since fall, it had seemed likely, too, that the waiting armies and bombing squadrons of europe would swing into full pace at the new year and would have consequences for america.

above all, 1940 would bring an on set to the riddle of the sphinx, the riddle of the sphinx, with ruse vet's seat, and if so, could he win a third term? what were the president's secret thoughts on the matter? every sled of evidence, every offhand presidential remark, every list of presidential appointments were scoured for possible hints. by 1940, his intentions were a national guessing game. most of the guesses, however, jumped to the false assumption that roosevelt had made this decision to run or not to run, and that all his actions stemmed from this simple fact decision. they did not know the man. roosevelt was not bon -- one to make a vital political

decision months or years in advance and stick with that decision through thick and thin. his method through most of his career was to keep open alternative lines of action, to shift from one line to another as conditions demanded, to protect his root to the rear in case he wanted to make a sudden retreat, and fox like to snarl his trail in order to hide his real intentions. more than any situation roosevelt ever faced, the third term demanded this kind of delicate handling. it was charged at the time he was ensuring his renomination by telling off the chancellors of all his suspecting rivals. quite the contrary was true.

in a series of shrewd yet bold moves, roosevelt helped build up a host of presidential possibilities. not only did he encourage the rest of the candidates to contend with one another, but enlarged the field so there's a host of rivals wrestling for delegate votes. the president did not miss a trick. he never closed the door completely on the possibility of his own availability, yet he told visitors time and time again that he needed to define nor intended to run. roosevelt's basic problem, if he chose to run, was not how to get the nomination. his ain't to get a december sicive majority was never in doubt, but how to be nominateed

in so striking a manner that it would amount to an emphatic and irresistible call to duty. this party call would be the prelude to a call from the whole country at election time. only a party summons in july in short would make possible a popular summons in november. the chicago stadium, tuesday, july 16, 1940 -- that evening settle gave the keynote address. partway through, an incidental mention of roosevelt's name unleashed a spontaneous demonstration, but he, pounding

his gavel, managed to quiet the hall. finally, he came to his climax, a message roosevelt had sent him to deliver, "tonight, at the specific request and authorization of the president, i am making this simple fact clear to the convention. the president has never had and has not today have any desire or purpose to continue in the office of president or to be a candidate for that office or to be nominated by the convention for that office." a hush spread across the convention hall. he wishes in all earnestness and sincerity to make it clear to all the delegates in this convention are free to vote for

any candidate. that is a message i bear to you from the president of the united states. there was a moment of stunned silence. delegates looked at one another uncertainly; then from loud speakers around the hall came the cry of a single thunderous voice, "we want roosevelt!" they started parading down the aisles. everybody wants roosevelt roared the loud speakers. the world wants roosevelt, roosevelt, roosevelt! in an hour, order was restored, but everything now was anticlimatic. the next day, roosevelt's name was put in nomination, and

ailing old senator glass name -- nominated jim folly with a few rasping words that could hardly be heard and occasional boos and cat calls from the floor. impatiently, the convention waited while they were nominated, seconded, and given sad little demonstrations. [laughter] the only ballot was the first. roosevelt 946, tidings 9. hall, 5. then folly, a party of the end of the end moved roosevelt's no , ma'am vaition pi acclamation to a roar of ayes.

late at night on thursday. the president announced the convention from hyde park. it is with a very full heart that i speak tonight. i must insist that i do so with mixed feelings because i find myself in a conflict between deep personal desire for retirement on the one hand, and that quiet invisible thing called conscious on the other. lying awake as i have on many nights, i have asked myself whether i have the right as commander in chief of the army and navy to call upon men and women to serve their country, and at the same time, decline to serve my country in my personal capacity if i am called upon to do so by the people of my country. like most men of my age, i had made plans for myself, plans for

a private life of my own choice. today, all private plans, all private lives have been, in a sense, repealed by an overriding public danger. only the people themselves can drafted a president. if such a draft shall be made upon me, i say to you i with, with god's help, continue to serve with the best of my ability and with the fullness of my strength. [applause] >> i have two quick points. one, you see a combat historian writing history here. i don't think anyone else would talk about alternative lives of

action and roosevelt protecting his root to the rear. jim served as a combat historian in the pacific during the war, and his job was to interview soldiers before, during, and after battle, and he was at all the great battles, gam, and others, and so this is really the technique and the art of a combat historian, and the other bottom line here is i think roosevelt's strategy of the draft. two weeks after the convention, burke and wadsworth introduced in the senate and the house and the selective service act, the first peacetime draft ever, the universal come compulsory training, and the strategy here was to maneuver behind the scenes to engineer his own draft, and then he could say, well, i can't refuse a draft, and that was the prelude to the drafting of millions of young american boys, so that was

brilliant, and, of course, the international situation is what impelled roosevelt to seek a third term. if not for the international crisis, there would have been no justification at all for a third term. >> yeah, and i think also jim wrote about roosevelt's very great tendency to set people against one another, especially in 1940, divide and conquer. that was the way he was nominated because there was so many people running that they split up the delegates so roosevelt could be easily drafted, and trfs a cost -- there was a cost to that. for instance, we're sitting in a center this afternoon named after henry wallace he was his third term vice president. when wallace went to chicago in 1944 hoping for renomination, fdr said if i were a delegate, i'd vote for henry wallace. he was pulling the rug out from

under wallace behind the doors, and in the wallace case, he was very angry at fdr until the day he died, and it's really quite generous of his family, these many years later to close the circle with healing by supporting the center, but you see stories like that all throughout fdr's presidency. one story i remember jim telling me is about someone else feeling foiled by fdr, and that was across the massachusetts line, a great figure in massachusetts political history, james michael curly, the former mayor, the inspiration for the last hoorah serving two terms at once, in public prison and public office at one point. i came from chicago, so he made me feel at home. [laughter] jim said going to a democratic convention, in 1952, and there's

james michael, and the delegation -- i think it was 1952, james can fact check me on this if i'm wrong. he was writing this book, the lion and the fox, and he said, well, do you have a strong memory of president roosevelt. he said, yes, what a bastard. [laughter] he also mentioned to me once he overheard a member of congress saying to another member of congress fdr is his own worst enemy, and the other member of congress replied not as long as i'm alive. [laughter] that was another side of this, but i think we've run to the een of our time. all i can say is you can see why jim burns is one of the great funding fathers, not only of roosevelt scholarship, but of american political science and historical writing in this country, and all i can say is thank god for williams college for bringing us all together. thank you, all, for being here.

[applause] [applause] >> thank you very much. >> thank you, all, for coming, and give one more hand to our guest, susan dunn, michael beschloss, and -- [inaudible] >>

>> next from the harlem book fair, a forum and manning marable's biography on malcolm x. this is a little more than an hour. >> good afternoon, everyone, and welcome, again, to the 2011 harlem book fairment i'm williams, an associate professor at fairfield university, and the chief historian at the jackie robinson museum, and i want to welcome you here to the forum. we are here to discuss manning marable's biography on mall malcolm x and the impacts of the

life and legacy of this african-american icon. manning marable began the study as a corrective to the highly influential biography of malcolm x standing as one the most important works of african-american literature ever produced. despite its widespread influence and acclaim, there's always been questions concerning its autothen -- authenticity. the autobiography presents a unique portrait of mall come's life as a american morality tale, but it's always been at odds with the complex individual many knew malcolm to be. the liberal control that haley and the press enjoyed over the final draft begs the question what malcolm himself included in the book had he lived. when confronted with the obvious errors in the book, one scholar, the late manning marable, like many asked the question, "how much isn't true? how much hasn't been told?"

for more than two decades, manning marable answered those questions his life work. the product of that work is malcolm x: a life of reinvention. he contends the primary goal was to uncover the truth about mall come divorced from any personal or political agenda. "the great biography explains to portray them as a virtual saint without normal contradictions and blemishes that all human beings have. i devoted so many years in the effort to understanding the interior personality of malcolm that this disappeared long ago." the work has been hailed by some as the most important book on malcolm x ever written. others denounced it as an attack on malcolm's legacy and unproven facts and just spklation. our panel today sorts through the controversy as we examine

the legacy of malcolm x and manning marable's re invention. we like you to join in the conversation. there's microphones up front to take your questions, however, given the turnout for this event, please limit your remarks to questions for our panels. having said that, we have with us this afternoon the distinguished panel of scholars and activists to discuss the book. let me briefly introduce them so we can move on to our discussion. they are award winning author, journalist, co-author of civil rights yesterday and today, and editor of the forthcoming by any means necessary reviews of malcolm x, a life of reinvention, herb boyd. [applause] next we have award winning historian, tough university professor and author of white days and black nights,

dr. peniel joseph. [applause] next we have former associate director of columbia university's malcolm x project and researcher assistant from manning marable on reinvention, historian zaheer ali. [applause] last, but certainly not least, we have award winning author, activist, play wright, poet, african-american icon in her own right, harlem icon, and national treasure, dr. sonia sanchez. [cheers and applause] now, let's move into the discussion and beginning with zaheer. what questions drove manning's research, and how do you think he would have responded at the misconceptions the book received? >> well, first a lot of us began to make the mistake of aligning

manning and malcolm's names because he spent so many years working on the project. this was a dedication for his for over two decades, and the actual work on this book took concentrated effort of about 12 years, and what set him off on this discovery is initially he wanted to do a political biography of malcolm, but what he discovered is while the autobiography is a very powerful story of personal transformation, it is a depoliticized story, and personal transformation does not take place in isolation. our stories don't take place in isolation. what malcolm experienced takes place in a specific political, cultural, social, religious context, and what manning set out to do with this biography is map that architecture of malcolm's life, and so in doing

so, we begin to see that malcolm's life is one of certain continuities and themes. for example, we see a very robust and detailed discussion of his family's history which is something that malcolm himself doesn't really treat in the autobiography, and this lays the foundation for understanding the conversion that malcolm experiences in prison, you know, with the nation of islam because it's his siblings introducing him to the nation of is islam, and joining the nation of islam was part of a religious spiritual conversion as much as it was coming back to his family. it was a family reunion because many of the ideas taught in terms of black-owned institutions and blame independent movements and reorientation towards africa and the third world was something he heard echoed in the teachings,

and that's one example of how malcolm's life gives us a richer understanding of this transformation. malcolm just didn't pop out of nowhere, and what's important looking at the black freedom movement or social justice movement, a lot of us initially look at the heroic figures, great men as though they made everything happen on their own, and i think what the biography sets out to do and what manning set out to do is give us a sense of the world within which this person worked and struggled. >> thank you. sonya, you knew malcolm who would have been 86 years old this year if he lived. was this is reflection of man you knew or fall short in the betrayal of the icon? >> i didn't know brother malcolm as a dear cherished friend, but i knew malcolm like other people

who had known malcolm by following him, by, you know, listening to him, going to universities listening to him. i do talk in very real terms about the first time i finally spoke to him. i belonged to the new york corp. which we thought we were probably the most militant organization on the planet earth because you name it, if it was not right, we tried to shut it down, and so when new york corp. took that vote to come back to a place called harlem, to engage harlem with change, a note came from brother malcolm that said simply when we were going to have a demonstration that you cannot do anything in harlem without me because i am harlem harlem. i'm not a revisionist. who do you think that man think he is; right? can you imagine saying that to us; right? i mean, he's racist. we always had to be reminded he

was racist. somebody said he was racist, and you said, uh-huh, he is. that day, i went in front of the hotel teresa where brother malcolm came with the soi and spoke, and i was with some corp. members on that island who said after he finished speaking that i'm going to leave. you know, sometimes how you are on this cloudy day, you watch the buildings gain color from the dullness of the day, and i watched malcolm's face gain color from the dullness of the day, and i jumped off the island, and because i'm tall as you can see, i was able to manage to go in and out and the soi and actually touch him on the shoulder and say, mr. x, and he turned around, he looked -- he was looking for the person who tapped him on the shoulder, he looked down, and by that time the soi was ready to remove me.

he shook his head. he did the whatever. i did not agree with most of what you said, my brother, and he looked at me and said one day you will, my sister. the thing about that is that i looked at his eyes, and we should always look at people's eyes, and he had the most gentle eyes on the planet earth. i read the book that our brother, our dear brother manning wrote. every now and then we came across the idea of this man who was a kind gentleman, jimmy would say in the book when he expected malcolm to tear somebody up, you know, because they were like, you know, he was just this aggressive man, this, this right man. he looked with gentleness and began to teach of the the point of me and this book is i don't think brother malcolm reinvented himself, but continued this river, this journey that he was on, and he went from change

after change after change. it was not reinvention. reinvention means at some point there's something underneath there that you reinvent yourself for some kind of, you know, end. i think this brother was one of the greatest intellects of the 20th century, that he in no uncertain terms had the ability to look at what was going on in this place called new york city and the country. he had the ability to look and say simply i am going to get this information, i'm going to change, and like the boy's life, when we teach the boys, we also teach the three most important periods in this life, and in the same manner, we should give malcolm the same benefit that he was not reinvented, but also like to have other great thinkers of the 20th century, also was able to reimagine what it was to be an african-american, reimagine what

it was to be a black man in a place called america, and that is, to me, very important than his reinvention. you reinvent yourself often, it's for a motive, you know? i don't think there was an al tier your motive here. the other things is i taught the autobiography of malcolm x, both of us who taught him through the years did not just teach that. we gave information also that manning had. we came with the information of the hiroshima reinvention of our dear brother. you know, we also came and understood that part of that book was not just written by the brother, that there were other people who came in and wrote that book, and we taught it with the understanding that we also had to add to the book, and the addition was that what malcolm had done after his return of from mekkah how he set up

various organizations, and that was very important to us and how he had changed and the most important thing i know when i taught the autobiography was that how alarmed people were around him that he was changing so have -- very fast. manning was right on that. he was changing fastly fast. he was looking up, making statements, and people could not keep up with him. to this day, people fixate malcolm at the point he was there at the early 60s, and you and i know when you do a really close reading of his life and work, you understand truly that had he moved to another place. >> thank you, st. sanchez. peniel joseph, you in your book, "waiting for the midnight hour" malcolm is in that narrative, and you talk about the impact on american democracy and the black power movement. one of the greatest insights of this new biography of malcolm, and how does it change the intelligent comiewl landscape in

which we understand him? >> certainly. one from the outset, manning really takes malcolm seriously as an organizer, as an intellectual, and as a global figure, so right now we're in harlem, and we think about harlem that is a city within a city. when i refer to harlem, i think of harlem as a city. people say it's a neighborhood within new york city, but it's really black mekkah, black metropolis. when we think about malcolm x, he stapedes alongside people like dr. martin luter king jr. and gandhi in the post age of deglobalization. malcolm is that big of a figure. usually, when we talk about the post civil rights era and post black power period, malcolm is written out of that script, so what's very, very important for us to understand about malcolm x is malcolm at bottom is an

organizer. what's great about this book, this malcolm x biography is it shows the inner workings of how malcolm transformed the nation of islam. there's always been a dialogue with the nation of is leam and malcolm x and his assassination. people say, look, malcolm could not have been what he was. they say he was the greatest fruit of the tree. when he organized the in this case of is -- nation of islam, you see a real relationship, the nation of is lawn -- islam before malcolm x, and after he release from prison, after the next 12 years, he worked day and night to transform the nation of islam, and nos just as a religious institution, but a political institution. malcolm x is the organizer and what's interesting is in the

last year of his life, he doesn't have time to organize the muslim mosque and the african-american unities. how's come people had less than 500 follower at the time of his deet? he helped organize a group that was now making millions of dollars, global in scope, and he was under a threat of death the last year of his life, and he tried to organize two different organizations. i'll conclude by saying what's so important about malcolm is that malcolm is a local organizer who transformed the black freedom struggle, but he also impacts a by what we mean with democracy. he has a long running dialogue with martin luther king, the student nonviolent committee. he's transforming democratic institutions, and if we exclude malcolm from the civil rights landscape, if we exclude malcolm from the human rights landscape, if we exclude malcolm as one of

the most eloquent contribute ims of democracy and capitalism, we do him a disservice and ourselves a disservice, and when we think about where we are now, black politics in the i age of obama, malcolm would have been a critic of where we are now. he even criticized the nation of islam and the honorable moo homed who he said saved him. when he found corruption, wherever he found it, immorality or wrong doing, he spoke truth to power even under the threat of death, and that's the example we need to follow today. [applause] >> thank you, peniel. many critics and former activists of malcolm denounced the book and accused him of tarnishing the legacy. what is your position on the controversy and do you believe the book elevated or diminished

the legacy. >> let me say right from the start that nothing can diminish malcolm x's legacy, nothing. [applause] as wog of my friends said, he's beyond teflon, you know. [laughter] welcome to the new york sauna, you know. it's an inner jen wraition -- generational thing. the book stimulated this, and we need even more than just manning's book, but there's a number of other books we also need to consult and read in order to really frame an context malcolm's life and legacy. like sonya i had a chance in 1958 to meet malcolm, and he changed my life. heaven only knows what i was on my way too, but he showed me a direction, and i was very eager to follow him. the first time i went to the mosque in detroit, i was meze

rised, just captivated. my cousin took me, and as usual he had a black board object stage, writing all the time as he's talking to people, and i noticed he misspelled a word up there, and i nudged my cousin, hey, man, you know, you going to tell him? i said, no, you tell him, no way in the world i'm going to correct him on that. after it's all over, we have a chance to meet him and we all stand in the aisle, and he goes up and down, shakes everybody's hand and thanks them for coming out, and i had later on in life, i shook will chamberlains's hand, but it was a powerful grip. it was like he could point down the road of it. it's the strength of that hand, his integrity that has lived

with me all these many years, and i knew manning very well at the same time. what we have here is a book by no means is perfect. it's hard to think even the autobiography is not perfect. i think we need a dialect look at manning's book to point out the positive and the negative aspects, and for me, i think that what we'll do with the upcoming book is sort that out a bit. a hundred reviews came out on the book. i read most of them, and working with dr. ron daniels and others, we've come up with a book tentively entitled by any means necessary, and looking at the conversations and reviews and critiques around manning's book,

and just looking at going over these reviews and everything and trying to gather the impressions of people like peniel joseph who will be a part of that. i think i saw dr. todd burrows came in, and he'll also be a part of this particular effort. it's an attempt, zaheer, to keep this dialogue going, and it's a very important discussion. those who may have seen the "new york times" this morning in terms of the reopening this case, looking at some people who for according to manning have escaped a prosecution, and some people who were unjestly accused, who had nothing at all to do with that assassination. you still have a lot of work to do so sort out exactly what's going on, and i think i'd like to be a part of this whole pursuit of the truth. one of my students asked me and said, is this book -- fiction or

nonfiction? i say, well, i thought about, you know, alex haley and the roots thing and we say that's faction -- [laughter] you know, he had to create a lot of things that's impossible for him to know the kind of discussions that may have gone on with distant ancestors and everything. well, i don't want to go that for and puts manning's book in a faction category, but certainly it wairnts discussion -- warrants discussion. maybe as we continue the discussion here this morning, we can talk about the infee dellties and the homosexuality that triggered and spurred discussion and debate around the book. i stand in the middle, prepared to take it from both sides of the room. >> thanks, great, herb. certainly everyone in the panel is welcome to answer this. sonia, in race rebellion and revolution, manning argued memorably that a black scholar has a specific mandate to produce scholarship that is

descriptive, prescriptive, and corrective. i'd like to ask you in this particular book, did manning meet the responsibility, meet that standard in this book by writing a study of malcolm that prescriptive, descriptive, and contributive? >> i'm not too sure that he did all of that. you see, i come from a generation that truly believes at some point that we relearn many things about people when we write about them, but we are not necessarily obliged to reveal them all or talk about them if it will not benefit the people, if it will not benefit the scholarship, and i think that at some particular point, i don't think that if i had been writing the book that i would have in a sense included some the things that he included when it did not benefit our knowledge of this man called malcolm, and our

knowledge of this woman called sister betty. i mean, that's just my opinion. of what i do know, however, my brother, is that what manning did do in this book is that he did show us that ma come demystified, that manning demystified this sense of malcolm, and he also talked about how malcolm demystified also the white america m i think this is really crucial because i think for the young people sitting here, you got to put this in context at some point. to read this book in 2011, you know, you know, you really have to in a sense have been in that place to understand what it was to have a man like malcolm in a sense to be on the idiot box, that is the television -- i know we're on television -- [laughter] on the television, and he would challenge people like who should

be challenged down in washington, d.c. today. i think every time i look at some of those senators, i think by golly, by gee, it would be great to challenge malcolm because he would put them in their place, tell them exactly what they should know at some particular point. what i i'm saying on some particular levels is what manning is attempting to do with this man called malcolm, i wish at some point he would not in a sense become a voier to this man's life. we are so attuned even as scholars and writers to that part of people's lives, you know, who they slept with, why they slept with them, who came to the hotel, who did not come to the hotel. that's unimportant as far as i'm concerned, as far as this man is concerned, and it should not be our concern. i think what we should truly understand at some point, and i'm suffering from vertigo so if

i go off a little bit, it's because i do go off. [laughter] it's a disconnect, you know, vertigo. it's a very interesting ting. i was in the tornado in alabama, and i have ears that still hum and hurt and the head still hurts, and also the body. that has not on balance, you know, so at some point i just want to say is this man malcolm who asks who taught you to hate the color of your skin? who taught you to hate the texture of your hair, the shape of your nose? who taught you to hate yourself on top of your head to the soles of the feet? who taught you to hate your own kind, the race you belong so so much, what taught you to hate what god gave to you? he liberated our minds by dissecting america concerning police, integration, white

liberals, our government, he did all of this, you know on no uncertain terms, and he made us also begin to look at the idea it's possible to challenge white america, you know, this political murder, this economic murder, the social murder, the mental murder that happened. he showed black america's racial posture, the private interest beyond the public word, and he called at a very early time along with people for a black united front which many people are not talking about at some particular point, and i think what i'm looking at in this book is the conversation that will happen now again about malcolm, about a black united front, the conversation also about america, the conversation about what does it mean to have a black president in america? you know, the conversation that we don't have someone like malcolm necessarily talking. i don't mean people who responds

to what goes on, but the point about malcolm was a initiator. his life was not just response at all. i always call him and the people in the freedom moment are what i call the thunder of angels. that's who they were. they were about reconciling us with ourselves, and helping us reclaim our hurts and histories. i wanted to begin by saying there's a saying that if you want to create a new body, you must step out of the river of your own memory and see the world as if for the first time, and our brother malcolm and martin and the freedom fighters, the brothers and sisters in the south and the north helped us see the world of our foremothers and forefathers and also as if for the first time. this man, this man, this man, this careful, craftsperson of words, and you see what i wanted manning to do always is to be as careful a craftsperson of words

as malcolm was. you have got to be a careful crafts pern -- craftsperson talking about him. he had an eye that informed us that agent vism and work that flows from the heart is god's conscious activism. his eyes looked back to africa, the caribbean and took god out of the sky and put god in our hearts, feet, hands, and eyes, and we did. we are ever grateful for that man for doing that, teaching us what america was truly all aboutment i think that this man, manning, you know, attempted to do this in some uncertain terms and also, too, his idea always that this man was reinventing himself, that this man was always packaging himself, you know, for america and for

blacks -- i doubt he was doing that at all. he was not packaging himself or reinventing himself. no, not at all in this place called america. >> well, i'd like to tackle that because i think that one thing many people have not read the book, some of this criticism of the book in terms of -- there's two pages of the book where that talks about homosexuality as a suggestion and different points talking about alleged infidelity with sister betty. and the overwhelming bulk of the book in terms of manning's book is really the political side of malcolm x and how malcolm little -- i won't use the word "reinvention" is transformed to malcolm x and changes in a very, very short prosecutor. malcolm x is the self-made african-american of the 20th searching reinvention. that's a huge tradition.

there's harriet tubman, self-made black men and women, and they talked about self-determination, so the bulk of that book is a dramatic example of the way in which malcolm's call for political self-determination was also reflected in his personal life because his family are actually pie pioneers of black nationalism and set to ohm ha, nebraska and run out of nebraska by racial terrorists, by white sue preppists who are ran out of lancing, and his father is killed and lynched in lancing. think about him, he transforms himself overtime based on the situation that he finds himself in. he finds himself growing up in an america where small deed democracy does not exist, and even though he joins a nation of islam talking about armageddon and says the whole country is doomed, malcolm spend his life trying to transform the institutions even to the point

like sonia sanchez says when he's a human rights activist, he becomes a global evangelist for a human rights version of islam. he becomes a revolutionary pan-africanist that people are going to pattern their own lives after, so malcolm is always on the cutting edge of transformation and self-determination, and the book that we're talking bouts, manning marable's malcolm x: life of reinvention, it's important for everybody out there to read it for themselves. manning is getting a lot of posture and miscriticism from people who gpt read the book. remember, in the black community, we cannot have sister betty cred cows. malcolm had no sister betty cred cows. everything was open for criticism if it was corrupted, not helping people. that's why malcolm is the black working class hero of the 21st century. we can't say we can't criticize

malcolm x u but have to criticize all the icons. is it constructive or deconstructive criticism in personally, i think do i agree with everything in the book? no. like herb said, it's not a perfect book, but the bulk of that book, 95% of the book is about malcolm as a political figure; right? and the personal biography in the book is 3w0*u9 -- about malcolm, the gentleman that sonia talked about. the suggestions of homosexuality form a droplet of the book, but have overwhelmed the reception of that book. the bigger revelation of that book is that malcolm x is this human rights organizer in the 1960s who's impacting dr. king, impacts civil rights movements, impacts the state department and cia who follows his every move because they are scare the of

what he's doing in north africa enthe middle east and malcolm's revolutionary approach to islam is something we should all think about now in the age of the war on terror. malcolm had a different conception of islam. he saw it as a global, human rights philosophy that can be melted with antiimperialism, a critique of capital im, and a human rights revolution. he goes to both conservatives and liberal muslim clerics saying how can we refashion islam in the united states and build these bridges for a human rights movement? >> you talking about it, please? >> yes, well, first there is manning marable taught that history is a context of interpretations over facts, so there is, you know, think of how many books there are on george

washington, john f. kennedy, on martin king. there should be no one book on malcolm. there's always going to be an ongoing conversation as more materials become available about who malcolm was, about what he did, about what he spoke to and what he meant. manning expected a vigorous discussion around the issues. >> and there should be. >> absolutely. malcolm was not a sacred cow, and either was manning marable. manning marable writes with, to me, if you read the book, great humility where he can be defentive about what he says about malcolm. he's definitive. where he cannot, he is not. people criticized him for the could have, should have, would have, might have. his storians doesn't deal with certainty. you also deal with probability, and your job is working with a string of artifacts that may be

you have three artifacts to cover a month of activity. what's the meaning of the three artifacts for constructing the subject life over the course of that month. we don't know exactly what he did day in and day out, but you can proximate it based on patterns of activity you see from the artifacts. when manning set out to do the biography, he began building a cronology. there's points in the text where the lang could be flippant, but people need to know he approached the issue including the sensitive personal issues with great gravity grappling with how to represent if at all, and so he compiled his massive cronology drawing on letters, correspondents, fbi documents,

bureau, special services, manhattan district attorney's case file, oral histories he did and interviewed archived here at the schaumberg and the newspapers, pittsburgh courier niewp, amsterdam niewp, and so drawing on these materials plugged them into a cronology and where we found and where he found clusters of these sources, those events, those items became sound posts. they obviously were sights if they generated three to four newspaper articles. i'll give an example. in the autobiography of malcolm x and the popular narrative as we know, most people believe his first international travel took place after he left the nation of islam. that is not true. malcolm traveled to the middle east in africa in 1959. now, in his autobiography, it's one line, and then he moves on;

right? manning gives it three to four pages of details because malcolm wrote articles for the amsterdam news, pittsburgh courier, the bureau special services documented the trip. while he was in egypt, he met the man who became president, nasa invited him to a meeting. he was supposed to meet others in 1959. he writes the article in the pittsburgh courier bout all of these connections he made in 1959 while still in the nation of islam. fast forward to 1964 when he's traveling, guess who begins writing and contacting? the people that he met in 1959 so this is the kind of work that is done in this book. you get a fuller sense that what happens in 1964 doesn't come out of nowhere. it comes out of the this longer engagement malcolm had with the

muslim world. now, as to the human side of malcolm, most of us who studied malcolm, read the autobiography, listened to the speeches, one of the best speakers of the 20th century, sharp political thinker, but he was not a political machine. he was a human being. he was -- i mean, he really tried to be a machine at one point according to what we have in this book. he has to check himself into the hospital for exhaustion, and like a few days later, he's back out on the road again. what's important, you know, and this may be a generational thing in terms of historians and manning really tried to come to an understanding of what was public and private and why private was important in certain instances. in the case of malcolm's challenges that he had with his marriage with dr. betty, i think, and what this comes

across is malcolm is the head of a religious community that is patriot that promotes a certain gender constructed gender roles of men and women. >> all america was like that at the time. >> that's true. he's trying to impose this -- part of the challenges in his family is his trying to impose this -- these gender roles and expectations in his personal family. malcolm, as much as he was a dynamic political thinker, we have to be critical of him on the issues of gender. in his own autobiography, you know, he says of his wife, i think i trust her; right? maybe 75% of the time. in evolution as a political organizer, not until he's with the noau when he appoint the several women to lead up the organizing. one of the reasons we have to

explore the personal relationships to gender and roles because as we move forward with the black freedom movement, we have to have a conversation about gender, a conversation about -- and it's not just about protecting women. that is part of it, but if you're protecting women only if they submit to your understanding of what women should do, then we have to be critical of that; right? these are some of the areas where i think manning -- people said humanizing and now humanizing 1 a bad word tab called a human being -- [laughter] to be humanizing of malcolm, i think, gives us a couple things. one, it tells us you don't have to be perfect to accomplish great things, and malcolm was not perfect and accomplished great things. see, when you have a vision of an unblemished hero on a ped stool out of reach and you present that to ourselves and our children of whom we know are not unblemished and have

failings, we're like that's somebody to be adored, not like us. manning tried to give us a comprehensive view of malcolm in all his complexity, and we can debate different at -- aspects of this, but manning would have welcomed that debate. he was not perfect himself and historians rely on probabilities where certainties don't exist. ..t the life of someone who lived 39 years, and you, you know, think of your own life. how much of your life is documented so that if a historian came along would they really be able to compile an accurate accounting of your day-to-day activities? probably not. they would go on maybe two or three letters you sent, a few christmas cards, a few birthday cards, a few e-mails. think of, my god, what you've posted on facebook. [laughter] do you really want somebody

building your life story off of that? but this is what historians try to do. and in some cases they succeed admirably, and be i think many cases manning does that using malcolm's diaries which are here at the schaumberg. he's the first scholar to publish a critical investigation of malcolm's life based on his diaries. you see malcolm writing islam is our bridge to africa, and african-american is the bridge to islam. i mean, you see him working and trying to make these connections. and so i think, um, those are the ways that this book really -- and i just wanted to convey that. because, unfortunately, manning is not here to convey the spirit with which he worked. and those of you who know his work, race, reform and rebellion, capitalism underdeveloped like america, this was a man who was a committed activist. nothing was too big or too small for him to do. i saw him speak at universities, i saw him speak at public libraries before ten people.

he had a deep commitment to social justice for black people, and be he did not set out to smear or take down or destroy malcolm. he wanted to bring malcolm closer to us because he felt that malcolm had been taken too far away from us. and malcolm needed to be closer to us to inspire to do what we needed to do in the 21st century. [applause] >> go ahead. >> and this is what happens when you have a dynamic panel, and i want to in the spirit of malcolm make sure we have enough time for questions from the audience which will be in about six or seven minutes. i want to direct the final question to herb. herb, malcolm is perhaps the most authentic lead freres the black working class who ever lived. in what ways did his personal biography offer hope to the urban under class and society's margins? what cowe take from that example? -- what do we take from

that example? >> beautiful question. let me say a couple of thing before we get to that. zaheer, you talk about -- how many people out there have read the book? show of hands? i should say in the process of reading the book since we're talking about 600 pages, you know, so it's a pretty huge upside taking. but -- undertaking. but i think you have that responsibility, you know, listening to what we have to say up here, you have to arrive at your own conclusion about this project, about this book. no investigation, no right to speak. you've got to get into it. in fact, one of the things you can do is check out the exhibit that's right upstairs here. i think one of the coordinators who helped pull that together, christopher moore, is here. by all means, visit the exhibit before you leave because you can see, you know, some of this here kind of so-called reinvention. transformation is fine, you know, but i like political evolution. i think that malcolm was ever

evolving. it's like a process, you know? new information is coming in. again, zaheer, as you say, think about your own lives in the terms of how you've changed from, you know, one year or from one incident, you know, or from one meeting to another. and begin to get a better feel on who you are and where you stand within the context of all of this here matter in motion. so i think it was a political evolution that malcolm was undergoing, and he in 1964 and 1965, those are the most important year of his life as far as i'm concerned. because he had reached a certain kind of plateau of awareness. can you imagine here's a man who's traveling all over africa and meeting with some very important revolutionaries, people who had changed the whole dynamic, political and social

dynamics of their country. that's high cotton. he's in real high cotton. it's kind of like in a process of learning on the run too. because he hadn't read all these things and gone through all of these kind of changes and a kwame, you know, julius, nasser, and he's sitting talking to these individuals. can you imagine at certain moments it must have been a little bit of intimidation, a bit terrifying for him to meet with such important individuals and be his own sense of preparation. however, you are talking about someone who was a quick study. you look at that diary. i remember when the two crates first came in here to the schaumberg, and we opened those crates up. i was fortunate enough, howard dotson invited me and the late james gilbert, photographer, to

come over, and we opened up these crates and saw all of this here, a plethora of information. tremendous stuff. it had gone through a circuitous change because one of the daughters had put it in storage down in florida, it had been auctioned off. a man had bought like a pig in a poke, he didn't know what he had. my goodness. he sent it off to san francisco to butterfield's where it was going to be auctioned off. the family stopped that process with a court injunction. all of it came here. you must understand that. zaheer, you mentioned 1959. that's a very important year because that's the year, march of 1959 is when punitively he, malcolm x, wrote a letter to elijah mohamed about troubles he was having in his marital relationship with betty. what malcolm said in that letter and, of course, that letter has

to be challenged because it's only one reference that manning gives to that letter, and it's coming from that gary senate. the same man who claimed to have had the original letter and be put it up on ebay for, i think, $125,000. it was the same man who supposedly had the letters of adolf hitler, original letters from hitler that turned out to be a fraud. so we have to question then, you know, the reality of that letter, the authenticity of that letter because it stimulates this whole discussion about the so-called infidelities. the other concern about the homosexuality comes from a man named malcolm jarvis that who was fingered by malcolm as part of his burglary crew and went to prison. so you understand here's a man who may have had some grievance about, you know, being fingered in that particular ordeal.

so, again, you know, all of the things we see we have to go back to the sources, go back to the sources of these concerns in terms of infidelities and homosexual allegations. take it back to the sources and find out, like, can they stand scrutiny? are those worthy and authentic documents? >> i'm going to let you respond the that quickly, but we're going to take questions so if you have questions, please, move forward. >> very quickly. you know, when manning was, as i said, when he did this chronology and pulled all these sources and where he found clusters of sources where he found sign posts, he didn't include anything in the book that he didn't have at least three different sources for, right? in the case of malcolm's challenges in malcolm's marriage to betty, that letter mentions many things that could be verified in other sources such that -- including malcolm's relationship with evelyn, you know, according to other documents, letters, um, the

memoir of collins who were malcolm stayed. evelyn was known to be someone who knew malcolm when he was detroit red. so there's certain things referenced in the letter. i mean, i think what your point is fair, and this is why scholars have citations, and i think manning is fairly transparent in be saying where he gets these materials from. even if you throw out that letter, it's true that malcolm and betty had challenges in their marriage. actually after each of his first three children were born, and he left the house after each of his first three children were born. i mean, we have to come to terms with that. if you want to throw out that letter allegedly written in 1969 on the homosexual allegation thing, and i think it's really important how we have this conversation so it's not like a charge that's being made because it's something bad to be called. first of all, manning isn't the first person to raise the issue

of malcolm's potential same-sex encounters with oh -- other men. this was done by bruce perry in 1991, and bruce perry claims many, many more encounters than just this one. and around this particular one he found particular sources, one was jarvis, one was collins, one was malcolm's -- what he wrote in his prison record he wrote paul lennon as his employer. paul lennon is this white businessman. the other was letters he wrote to his siblings saying that paul lennon would vouch for him to get parole. so manning from this says, and it says plainly, based on circumstantial but he believes strong evidence. so it's circumsubstantial. you don't have to believe it, and he goes on to say very clearly there is no other evidence of any same-sex

encounter that malcolm had with anyone after this point. so i think it's really important to say that. manning never says malcolm was gay because gay is an identity that is, has evolved over the last half of the last century. at the time, you know, some people have a one-drop rule of gayness. [laughter] like, if you, if you look at another person of the same gender, um, automatically you're put in this box. and that's not what manning did. so i think it's important to say. and i think it's transparent. you can challenge it, and i think that's fair to raise those questions, but i think to understand how manning reasoned his conclusions is also important. >> thanks, zaheer. >> why don't you recognize dr. ben is here. [applause] >> yes, please. >> dr. ben is back there. >> dr. ben, can someone help

dr. ben? [applause] thank you for recognizing dr. ben and his incredible contribution to the history of our people. we're going to take questions from the audience now, we'll begin here with this gentleman. can you state your name and ask your question? the. >> yes, my name is leslie, i'm a high school teacher and graduate student at rutgers university. fantastic panel and enjoying it tremendously. >> pull the mic up a little bit. >> malcolm x was in harlem in the 1940s, and manning marable introduces the fact that during his time this '40s he was around the formation and experimentation of modern jazz. did malcolm -- that malcolm was in contact with charlie parker, felonious monk and dizzy

gillespie. and this music is, in many ways, music of resistance and rebellion and race. i was wondering if you could talk a little bit, because this was something i was not aware of, how jazz was influential to malcolm's life. >> one of the great thing about the book is that manning marable argues that the jazz he listened to as a young man, and he even said that malcolm perform inside a jazz club as jack carlton as a drummer, and, um, that they were reflected in the his cadence and his speech, right? so in addition to the fact that malcolm being around all these big time musicians, some of whom he sold marijuana to, um, he's really influenced by, um, their showmanship, he's influenced by their sor tore y'all flare. he's influenced by their presence in a way. and like sonia says, i'm not going to say reinvention or

packaging. a part of that political evolution that mall.com x undergoes is connected to being in that world of harlem in the 1940s. and i think it really influences his rhetorical style because, without question, the best speaker of the 20th century is malcolm x be, a person who can get his point across the best while saying the most succinct words possible, and he speaks in the ordinary language and vernacular of black folks whether they're from the rural south or the urban north. it's going to be malcolm connect today that. >> one of the important words that -- very good, peniel. one of the important words that associates him with that music is improvisation. for the jazz musician, that's the life blood of their creative activity. there's one good book, there's no way we can do justice to that, it's a very, very

intriguing question, but the best book i've read on that connection between malcolm and be the world of music and particularly jazz is frank cover sky's book. and he does a remarkable job there certainly from comparing the kind of discipline, the kind of articulation, the kind of understanding, the sentiments of that music and its connection to our history and cug -- culture and struggle particularly as it relates to john coltrane. >> also, my brother, he also was a poet. and no one really, many be years ago, i mean, the year after he dies w.b. asked me to come and put together some of his speeches, and i put it together as a poem and read it. i wished i had that tape to this day. but it's a staccato and the pace that he did, you know, it's the music that he did that you heard, um, it was the high and

the low, you know? he would take you there and then bring you back done. and as you say, my dear brother, the improvisation, the poet of the sixes, we learn how to give speeches from listening to malcolm. we learned how to come in to arouse people, but also before we left, we brought them back down so they could go home and be safe. this is what we learned from him, and it was all in terms of this thing called jazz, this thing called music, this thing called the beat that black folk had, you know? you talk in this very hip fashion, you know? and his, and his -- if you listen to him, you saw him, you spot him as a new yorker. you know? i mean, he was a new yorker, you know? because of how he spoke. um, and because you knew that he was as hip as most new yorkers were. yeah. [applause] >> and i think one of the important pointing to the highlight is when malcolm set out to write his autobiography, he did it initially to highlight

the transformation of islam. so he did it pre-nation, post-nation and rendered his activities as apolitical. but when we cover the political subtext of much of this formation, and i think just as detroit red the hipster was very political in many ways, so are many be of our young people today. i think it's important for us not to dismiss cultural formation as lacking any potential for political consciousness just as we shouldn't do that with our young people today. >> great point, zaheer. brother, your name and your question, please. >> i don't have a question, i have a comment. my name is todd stephen burrows, i'm a lecturer at morgan state university, and i'm co-editor on a second book that's going to collect reviews of manning marable's malcolm x. the first book is going to be published by -- [inaudible] i wanted to thank those two

publications for rising up and doing this. >> i hope you have some women in there because all i hear is men. >> thank you, sister sanchez. [cheers and applause] but i have, i'm sorry, dr. burrows, i have to get to questions. so thank you. take the next one. and, you know, one of the things that manning does get credit for, we definitely want to -- he said comment, but i have to move on, folks. >> thank you. >> next one. thank you, sir. >> hi, how are you doing? >> hi. what's your name, sir? >> [inaudible] >> and your question? >> i haven't read the book, herb, hopefully i can say something. we did study under dr. clark, and, of course, he knew malcolm personally. and helped malcolm. um, i'm going to wait to read the book, all this hysteria to

calm down over this relationship with your wife. i mean, i don't think that's strange that a husband and wife have an argument from time to time. particularly a guy like malcolm who was a world traveler and had to leave home many, many be times, and she had a family, and they had a family. this thing about his same-sex relationship, i haven't heard from the panel that any of these, um, folks that said they knew anything about it themselves had a relationship with malcolm. so i'm just going to take that with a grain of salt. >> sir, i'm sorry, your question. >> my question is that it doesn't seem like marable in his life's work ever approached anything dealing with icons in our community that would have stirred so much controversy, so i have doubts that even some of the stuff that's in the book is

authentically, can be awe they wantically attributed to dr. manning marable, particularly since he passed away a week or so before this thing came out. i have suspicions about it. >> zaheer? >> he wrote the book. [laughter] and just very succinctly, the book, you know, this was not something that was run off at kinko's the weekend after he died. [applause] >> good question. >> it was completed last year, so it was, he wrote the book. >> yeah, or definitely. >> not the illuminati, manning marijuana bl wrote the book -- marable wrote the book. >> what's your name? >> my name is whereas min brody, i'm a writer, and i want to say i feel blessed to be in the presence of sonia sanchez. and dr. ben. my question is, do you feel some books have to put a little tinge of sensationalism in the book just to be able to sell the books? >> well, i, i would say in terms of this book i don't think that,

and zaheer would be an even better source. i don't think that anything manning put in the book was for sensationalism or to sell books. he was not that kind of author, he was not that kind of man. he had a lot of integrity. i do think that the publisher is going to take the two instances where he raises question and suggests that there may have been same-sex -- not to say that he was gay, but this happened in the 1940s, and then to also talk about alleged infidelity, i think, when they're sending out press packets and they want to get some publicity and get some newspaper interviews and sell some books, they're going to take ahold and say, hey, what's the juiciest thing in a biography that's really talking about malcolm x's political transformation, his political evolution and the way in which that resonates for us in our current contemporary historical times. so the idea that the author in

this case was thinking he wanted to sensationalize malcolm, i say absolutely not true because of the integrity and the kind of person manning marable was with. but in terms of the publisher and in terms of trying to sell, well, a publisher's trying to sell books. >> yeah. sir, dr. ben wants to say something. i guess we could wheel him over to the mic? the. >> absolutely. can someone take the microphone -- >> take the mic to him. [inaudible conversations] >> i don't know if it'll reach. >> [inaudible] >> they're bringing a wireless mic. >> they're going to bring a wireless mic. do we have any questions as they're getting dr. ben taken care of? any additional questions? come on down, sir, please. quickly. >> while that's happening, we haven't talked about this one thing. one of the things that manning felt very strongly about was the unanswered questions around malcolm's assassination, and the role, the potential role of the state not only in surveilling him since 1950, but in disrupting all of the organizations that he was a part of. and i think today's new york

times has a story that suggests some of the traction being generated from this book. >> yes. >> around the questions of his assassination. that was something that was really important to him. >> great point. la glad you -- glad you brought that up. >> yes, sir, your name. >> i'm rodney jenkins. i love the book, i read the book, and one thing i wanted to ask because i hear reinvention, transformation. to me, i think, malcolm always had a pan-african outlook, so i wanted to know how important was malcolm's early socialization in his younger years? i feel like, yeah, he did transform and reinvent himself, but he also had that pan-african outlook to reach back on. so i want to know how important was the socialization, and how can we use that to educate our younger youth in today's society? >> well, very quickly, listen, let me recuse myself because that's one of my students at city college.

[laughter] >> i'll say very important because one of the things that's great about the biography, i think, is how he shows how malcolm is consistent as well. up with of the things that we -- one of the things that we have talked about as reinvention, evolution and transformation, but malcolm x is one of the most consistent human rights activists of the 20th century. what i mean by that is he's consistently on the side of pressed people, working class people, he's consistently connecting antirace struggle in the united states to what's going on globally. he consistently talks about a black united front. ever since 1955 he's talking about a black united front, something people still talk about to this day, and he's consistently and energetically criticizing the evils of economic injustice and racial justice. and, remember, malcolm is the person who talked about democracy's jagged edges. martin luther king talked about black america as a defense attorney.

malcolm is a prosecuting attorney. king is defending black folks, white folks and white folks to black folks. what malcolm does, he takes black humanity as a given and says there's something wrong with a society that doesn't appreciate black humanity and black citizenship. and that society should be held culpable, all right? he's a prosecuting attorney in that sense, and he's consistent even when he's part of the nation of islam. he says that there's something wrong in a country that allows child abuse, that allows racial segregation, that allows poverty and that allows violence to be perpetbe waited against citizens just because they happen to be black, and that's why after john f. kennedy's killed, he's not rejoicing in the killing of kennedy, he's saying that the killing is connected to chickens coming home to roost because the united states is the biggest purveyor of violence in the world, and that violence has had a boomerang effect and killed a sitting u.s. president. he's not happy, he's sad. he said that it's a tragedy to be in a country that claims to

be a democracy but actually isn't. [applause] >> dr. ben is micked up. we'll take his comment. >> a comment. >> okay. >> dr. ben. >> good afternoon. >> good afternoon. >> i'm very pleased to attend this affair. and i know i have concern. [inaudible] sonia sanchezs has made me understood some of the errors in my book. and i teach at cornell with my -- [inaudible] i understood that it isn't so good what mapping marable was doing. -- what manning marable

was doing. sonia sanchez was able to see what was done. the book was written because of -- [inaudible] the written because manning marable wanted to -- [inaudible] about malcolm, and he personally -- [inaudible] >> all right, thank you. >> thank you, dr. ben. thank you. thank you. [applause] zaheer. >> um, thank you so much, dr. ben. to the previous question about socialization, and be i think, um, again this comes back to the point of no one occurs or comes of being in isolation including great people. and it's important to understand that if we want more malcolms to be produced, they're not just going to pop out, and they're not just going to come out of the prisons and be malcolm, they're just not, you know?

the social context that we provide for our children and for people's development is incredibly critical. malcolm as a child, his mother read him newspaper articles from the negro world newspaper which was marcus -- [inaudible] what are we reading your children? you cannot be teaching your children consciousness and want them to be malcolm x. [applause] this is the point be, like, understand that this man comes of birth in a social, familial community, religious, political, economic, social context that makes him malcolm x as much as he makes himself, he is made by his environment. and so if we want to see more malcolm xs, right? as opposed to just a historical figure, we have to be very conscious of the social environment we're creating for ourselves and our young people. >> and let me add on to that. yes, he did have all that history with his mother and his father, but also when that family broke down, then he is at

a loss, you see? and we understand how then he will move into crime to a life of being a criminal, a life of being a hustler. you see, it's one thing you can have a base, but if you don't have, also, the community base -- >> that's right. >> -- if we are not out there support being our children, you see, if we're not out there making sure that they eat and they have a place to sleep, then at some particular point they get lost. we're blessed that malcolm didn't stay lost because most certainly he was lost. we're blessed that at some point and a place called a prison, you know, that his brothers would write to him and be tell him about that figure, that little figure, that little man who was going to change. i want you, the brother, who asked that question, from this book you learn this man was a thinker. this man was a person who was constantly learning. this man always had a book in his happened. he was always learning. he was not just listening, he was reading, and he was an educator, and he taught us.

and above all he loved us. how many of you can say you love us? he loved the good and bad in be us, you know? he was willing to wait, he was willing to walk up to a brother who was on drugs and in a sense by touching him and telling him that you are this man, this black man, you see, and make them come and drop all those -- [inaudible] and tell me that patriarchy runs rampant in here. of course. you understand the thing that women talked about, that patriarchy is a monster, that it still is a monster. and the point is we didn't get up and jump people and fight 'em, we began to move this these organizations in such a way that we challenged them. and this is what this man will do coming out of the nation. he is naturally going to come in with his new organization, going to give women places of power because the women who came in dealing with him were accustomed to places of power, you see?

so what i'm saying simply is that read the book. you must read the book. >> yeah. >> but don't go in as voyeurs looking for dirt. >> absolutely. [applause] >> go in as men and women. >> absolutely. >> that's right. [applause] >> as men and women who say what can we learn from this man's life? you know, that will help us survive this place called america, that will help us continue to learn, will help us with our children? what can we learn from this man as we travel to africa that if he were alive today, africa would be a different place. you know it and i know it. what can we learn from this man that will teach us that we've got to go down at some point and support this man, obama? teach him the language, the language of resistance. because he doesn't have it. obama doesn't understand the language of resi dance. but you -- resistance. but you will understand that malcolm taught us the language of resistance, what it was to resist in this place called

america, you know? and we've got to teach our children that language of resistance. it'll get better. every day we whisper, it'll get better. it'll get better. it'll get better. and we didn't contrary to what manning thought. we were not people who just honored malcolm, we learned from him. he changed our lives. i could not be a fool on the stage because of a malcolm. i could not be a woman who would go and try to take someone's husband because of malcolm. i could not be a woman, you know, who would get into a class room and look up even though at the same time he was saying, devil. but i have whites, browns in my classroom, but because i understood underneath this man, he was saying devil at some point because he was saying the worst thing you could call a white man was the whole, the term "devil," because that was the exact opposite of being spiritual and good and be religious and an angel. hear that. >> ladies and gentlemen, i am sorry to cut -- [applause]

dr. sonia sanchez off. but i want to thank you again for the panel this evening. there is a book signing that will immediately follow at the penguin booth on 135th street. you can catch up with our pan panelists there, herb boyd, peniel joseph, zaheer ali and my sister and your sister, sonia sanchez. thank you. [applause] [inaudible conversations]

next from the annual freedom fest conference don luskin on his book "i am john galt." he writes about what he sees as parallels between characters and the novels of ayn rand and some of today's business people. this is a little less than an hour and begins with an introduction by chip would the founder and ceo of soundview publications. >> if you can respond to the question of who is john galt?, s if that means something to you

you're going to love the next you program to read by thear way, i don't know who's doing it, butbe when i drive south from g it b jacksonville there's a billboarh from jacksonville, there is a billboard on i-95 that says, who is john galt? may be our next speaker will be able to explain it to us. if you heard our all-star prediction panel yesterday, you know there were fireworks. well, don luskin was the gentleman who lit the first match and got things really going. he is if you have read the program notes an avid believer in technology, but what happens? it stops. anyway, to tell us today with the future could be, please join me in welcoming don luskin on "i am john galt." [applause] >> thank you.

thank you for that great introduction. there is one substantial inaccuracy. i actually am john galt. but, you all are too. that is the secret of ayn rand's popularity. her books are lessons. her books are self-help books. her books are guides to how to live. we can all be john galt. we can all be heroes. just read what is in their carefully. my new book, "i am john galt," is a readers guide to "atlas shrugged" and "the fountainhead" to help you learn to live by can ayn rand he robe and at the same time to teach you what happens in the world when there are ayn rand type villains out there. now, i assume everyone in this room has probably heard of ayn rand. how many people here have read

"atlas shrugged"? i am actually stunned to not see every single hand in the room go up. here we have got two big thumbs up, fantastic. if you haven't read "atlas shrugged," and away i envy you because you have before you a fantastic treat. the first reading of alba shrugged is a transformative experience. in poll after poll when americans are asked what is the book that influences you the most, à la shrugged is always in the top two or three. "the fountainhead" her her other masterpieces also in the top two or three. i have to tell you there's a message in there. it is that we libertarians and individuals one of the -- we tend to sometimes think we are long.

i tell you i can feel very alone. it is fantastic to be here at freedomfest. i thank mark skousen for hacking me for years to come here. is great to see their like-minded people. they just don't happen to live in my zip code. back to ayn rand. à la shrugged was written 54 years ago and probably the best-selling book in the english language which is an amazing thing. it sells more copies every year. sold more copies last year than ever before in its history and when it came out in 19 50/50 seven and was a bestseller then. there is a narrative ding promoted by the conservative community and we know that is different from a libertarian committee and t. saying they reason it is having a surge in popularity is because "atlas shrugged" per tray soup world that is eerily like our world so for those of you haven't read it let me tell you what the world this. it is a world of decay, economic

collapse, of corruption and despair, things just getting worse and worse of an invasive parasitic government that takes over private capital and everything it does, makes things worse and when i make things worse it does them again. well yeah it does sound an awful lot like our world so you can on most say that ayn rand had some amazing prophetic powers nostra dominus so we ought to embrace her ideas. those of you have studied ayn rand's life knows the conservative movement is full of ayn rand. she's an atheist. the conservative movement is riddled with religious threats as she is never been popular with conservatives. we are going to talk in a minute about how that is a bit of a misreading of rand. the world described in "atlas shrugged" talks a lot more, talks about a lot more things than what is wrong with big government. it also talks about what is wrong with big corporations.

so we are going to get into all that. on the surface, the narrative of the conservatives is actually very good. you read "atlas shrugged" and sometimes you think you are reading today's headlines. one of the most memorable villains in "atlas shrugged" is a fellow named wesley mouch. they chose to pronounce his name mouch. i just don't get that. when i read "atlas shrugged" for the first time in high school it was definitely mouch. it has always been mouch for me. we have our own real-world wesley mouch. his name is barney frank. now, i don't normally use notes and i apologize for waiting these notes around but i have them because i want to be able to make exact quotations without error here. you might remember one of the refrains in "atlas shrugged" is every time wesley mouch did some

ridiculous thing that made the economy even worse, he and his cronies would meet in washington and they would say, we need broader powers. you know government is the only enterprise that when it makes a mistake repeats the mistake bigger. well let me quote barney frank. after the collapse of the u.s. housing industry in the u.s. mortgage industry, a collapse more than any single individual, he engineered by from his position in the u.s. congress, getting fannie and freddie to loan money to subsidize loans of money to people who couldn't possibly ever own a home, could never pay back the mortgages. that was all barney frank's work. when asked what we should do to clean up the mess, he said quote, unquote the way to cure that is to give us broader powers. you can't make this stuff up. the amazing thing is ayn rand did 54 years ago.

frank is more like mouch then you can imagine. you might remember that mouch got into government in the first place, started as a lobbyist. he was a lobbyist for henry rearden, one of the great heroes of "atlas shrugged." he gets into government by betraying rearden who has a certain kind of corruption. this is one of these things where when liberals are corrupt it doesn't get very well reported so you might be surprised to know that barney frank was censured by the congress for a scandal in which he ended up admitting to have used male protestant -- prostitutes and paid them and sustained them in his apartment in washington as a base of operations for them. did you know that as a member of congress regulating fannie mae and freddie mac, he placed one of his lovers as a financial analyst at fannie mae.

as a libertarian i have no objection whatsoever to his sexual preferences. i have a serious objection to corruption. we are talking about a deeply deeply corrupt man whose corruption daree nearly destroyed the world. another villain from "atlas shrugged" alive and well in our world is alan greenspan. now what character in alba shrugged is alan greenspan like? anybody remember dr. robert stadler? a minor character but a very key character. he was one of two college professors who was a mentor to the young john galt. and when golf was -- statler left academia to found the state science institute so he could do his experimental physics, theoretical physics, three of the grubby supportive capitalist and the people who pay tuition and things like that. john galt disowned him. he him.

now at the climax of "atlas shrugged" when the world finally totally goes down the drain, the climactic scene is when the government, having expropriated dr. stadler's work, this weapon almost accidentally detonate and dr. stadler's presence in the description of his death at the hands of his weapon is the science in a berkeley created one of the moving passages in "atlas shrugged." alan greenspan is dr. robert stadler. he is the most because he knew better. it is one thing to make these mistakes out of ignorance or peer power less like arnie frank did. alan greenspan knew better. alan greenspan for 30 years was a close associate of -- apostle of ayn rand. he was with ayn rand the day she died in 1982. best friends forever. he had no excuses. he knew better. when he first went to washington

in 1976, as president gerald ford's chairman of the council on economic advisers, ayn rand and her husband frank o'connor were right there in the white house as he was sworn in by gerald ford. why didn't ayn rand's him? she actually said to the press that allen is my man in washington. she did an long -- live long enough to see them become chairman of the federal reserve. she probably thought then that he was a double agent for capitalism right in the heart of washington. it sounds good if you say it fast, but if any of you guys have spent time watching it, the atmosphere is just an addictive drug. washington is like an aquarium instead of being filled with water it is filled with power. if you swim in around in it for a while you want more of it. alan greenspan did. the federal reserve chairman is the most highly empowered, most unaccountable economic czar on the planet earth.

it is better than economics. economics. is master of the universe and an ayn rand accolade got that job. the rest is history. he had an 18 year run as chairman. seemed like it was okay for a while. a lot of bad things happened on his watch. it seemed he always bailed us out. i remember seeing him on the cover of "time" magazine where the headline was chairman of the save the world committee. i met greenspan recently in washington and let me tell you what happens when you go into his office in washington to meet alan greenspan. you see a shriveled little man who was wearing a sign saying, broken. he is 85 years old. his mind is still totally there. his spirit isn't there. he is the broke and man. i would be broken too t if i was hauled before congressman henry waxman. have you ever seen henry waxman?

this guy looks like a combination of the original phantom of the opera with rod chaney sr. and mortar mercer. waxman grilled greenspan, got him to admit that all that self-interest ofcom all that virtuous selfishness of all that individual self-regulation stuff didn't work very well on the credit crisis, did it? greenspan said, yeah i guess it didn't work so well. he basically recanted. so when i met him i said did you really recant? i kind of thought it. he said no, not at all. that is completely taken out of context. no it is not. it was just like a year had passed. i had my copy of -- my favorite ayn rand nonfiction book is capitalism the unknown ideal which has to chapters written by alan greenspan wanted which is

called gold and political freedom. and i have a first edition copy of that with rand's signature and i dotted with me to my meeting with greenspan to get him to sign it. i said, do you still sign onto this? he said i stand by every word ayn rand said and every word i said foran rind. it is all stood the test of time. well, go to youtube. i don't know what he said to henry waxman. one of the lessons you can learn from "atlas shrugged" is if you don't want to end up being a broken man, have a little integrity. stick by your guns. now, one of the secrets of "atlas shrugged" during popularity is it describes the nightmare world of villains like this but it is also a profoundly inspiring book. it is the best of times and the worst of times. the heroes and it are absolutely

inspiring. who can read that book and not identify with characters like dan mctaggart and hank rearden and francisco d'anconia. it is a very inspiring book and i'm here to tell you that our world as meek as it seems is absolutely populated by those kinds of heroes. like all heroes, some heroes are tragic heroes like some of the heroes in "atlas shrugged" in fact. so let's look at some of the heroes of "atlas shrugged." henry rearden, the steel tycoon who invented a revolutionary new rearden metal had it taken away from him by the government that was blackmailing him. ring any bells? how about bill gates? exactly like bill gates, a college dropout created a revolutionary technology that transformed all her life's and extended all her lives, life, expanded dollar wealth, became the richest man in the world in the process, well-deserved and

then in 1999 using tax dollars that bill gates himself had sent to washington, washington sent to bill gates a lawsuit from the department of justice seeking to breakup microsoft on antitrust grounds which is a polite way of saying because you have succeeded too much. now just like rearden, when that happened, gates couldn't be bothered to dirty his hands hanging out with those yucky people in washington and i don't blame him. microsoft is a gigantic company. i think it only had two or three lobbyist at that time. boy did he learn his lesson. he kind of won the suit. he settled it on fairly favorable terms but microsoft is still struggling with the echoes of it and still straightening out their antitrust issues in europe for example. but there is another broken man. he stepped down as ceo as soon as the suit was settled. have you seen microsoft's stock rise lately? you can draw an x on the microsoft stock price were bill

gates stepped down. that x is above the current stock price. it is a broken stock because bill gates is a broken man. bill gates created the world's largest fortune. if he had stayed at the helm he could've taken the world's largest fortune and made it even larger. now he is giving it away. what do we call this? doctors call the stockholm syndrome when you identify with the kidnappers. our culture vilified bill gates for making money. now we'd love him because he is giving away money. that is sending a wrong message to our children. what is the lesson the bill gates? there is a life lesson and a dark lesson. the light lesson is you can drop out of school and become the richest man in the world. the kind -- and by the way this below are a effect to all of us, people rail about income and a quality. let me tell you the good side of

income inequality. when there's a guy as rich as bill gates that sets the bar. that means that something is possible for everybody that was impossible until he proved it to be done. it is like when the first guy up the four-minute mile. thank you bill gates for showing what can be done. we can still have it in america. the other lesson that bill gates is watch your back. don't make a the mistake of ignoring washington. let me switch to "the fountainhead" for a minute and talk about a hero from "the fountainhead." he happens to meet my favorite character from the ayn rand camden, the rebellious architect, the ultimate individual and one the most fascinating characters in all of literature from page 12 page 1000 or however long the book is. he is the only major hero in the history of literature who undergoes absolutely no transformation during the book. he is presented as perfect on page one imperfect on the last page. and what is it that is perfect about him? he is an absolute individual and

every step he makes, every success he has come every trial he faces, he is faced with absolute other integrity in his individualism and a sheer joy in his work. in our world, that man is steve jobs. steve jobs dropped out of college. he was an orphan. a guy that just came out of nowhere. think what he accomplished simply because he loves it. he is obsessed with this stuff. these are toys for him to play with, a campus rim to pay not. when he founded apple computer he completely transformed the computer industry from a command to control mainframe model to an individual empowerment desktop waddle. he made that happen. a few years later, he bought an obscure little digital rendering company on fire sale when george

lucas needed to get rid of it, called pixar. he had this idea that this could be used to create full-length animated movies. he thought that would be pretty cool. he would like to see a movie like that so he found this guy named john lasseter and they worked on a movie that would eventually be called toy story. he spent so many years on it and so much a steve jobs's when he came near to personal bankruptcy funding it and they also almost and discontinued boy story. toy stories in the top 10 dig is grossing movies of all time. has had two sequels which are on this top 10 list for the biggest grossing movies of all-time all time and he did it not to make money. he just thought it was cool. i remember meeting steve jobs in the kiddie pool and a resort in hawaii years back when we both had young children, and i went with my daughter into the pool and steve jobs is in there. he sticks out his hand and he says hi, my name is steve. i make movies. what do you do?

the secret is to just love your work. what else has he done? he created itunes and ipod. that is his third industry. he completely transformed computers and completely transformed movies and then completely transformed music. then he creates the iphone and completely transforms telephony. now he has created the ipad and gone back and re-transform the first industry he transformed, computing. so don't tell me there are heroes in this world. on that panel yesterday, i was the only optimist in the room. look, you can't meet steve jobs and not be optimistic. that is what is possible. i know there a lot of problems in this world but there are a lot of solutions to matt. another great silicon valley figures a man named t.j. rodgers. he is the ceo of -- and it's

been a freedomfest guest in the past. get on his cell phone and look at all the miracles inside of it. quite a few of them probably come from there. t.j. rodgers is like the character in "atlas shrugged," francisco d'anconia. d'anconia showed up in critical scenes when the main heroes were having a moment of doubt. he would show up to tell them what is what. one of the most often quoted passages in all of ayn rand is his famous speech about the nobility of money, where he is at a cocktail party and some eras says money is the root of all evil and he then goes on for 20 pages proving that money is the root of all good. t.j. rodgers is that kind of guy. he is completely politically incorrect. he is the ceo of the major companies says things that ceos are not supposed to get away with and he doesn't die having absolute moral clarity.

so i'm going to quote some of t.j. for you. like many ceos he is constantly trying to get them to have more gender diversity and religious diversity and more racial diversity on their boards and workforce. in franciscan nun named mary gormley, insisted they diversify their boards for gender and race. t.j. responded in "the wall street journal," choosing a board of directors based on race and gender is a lousy way to run a company. cyprus will never do it. furthermore we will never be pressured into it is bowing to well-meaning special-interest groups as an immoral way to run a company given all the people it would hurt. we simply cannot allow arbitrary rules to be forced on us by organizations that lack business expertise. i would rather be labeled as a person who is unkind to religious groups then as a coward who harms his employees

and investors by mindlessly following high founding but false standards of right and wrong. and he survived. [applause] in 1999, jesse jackson came to silicon valley. he was part of this program he had at that time where he went to wall street and declared wall street to be racist and went to detroit and came to silicon valley and declared technology to be racist. t.j. whose company at that time had 35% minority employees every one of them was a shareholder and 44% of whose executive bp's were minorities. he gave the quote to one new station and when i say quote unquote jesse jackson or are my two day siegel. he flies in an over everything and then flies out. [applause] the lesson here is .. just believe it. have the courage of your

conviction. just say it. if they sense weakness they will kill you. don't show any weakness. just believe what you believe. the hero zeidman talking about are businessmen and a lot of people misread alva shrugged to say what it is really telling you is that all businessmen are good in all government people are evil. go back and read "atlas shrugged." who is the main villain? the main villain is it businessman james taggart. the great pension that runs throughout the book is the conflict between james taggart the bad executive and his sister the good executive. all of the political imaginations executed by wesley d'anconia and the government parasites in "atlas shrugged" or because james taggart is pulling the strings with his own crony capitalist games. in our book when we are looking for an analogy to james taggart, we happened on a fellow named angelo rossillo. is that a name that is familiar

to anybody? is the former ceo of a company, guess we should call it the former country -- company countrywide financial. countrywide financial is the poster child for everything you could possibly do wrong in sub-prime lending. after mozilo secretly sold his stock in countrywide in 2007 the same week he gave a shareholder presentation saying everything was fine, from that .7 months later the company lost 80% of its value at which point it was >> but bank of america still pays in two weeks ago paid 8.$7 billion to settleregu lawsuits in regulatory

complaints abouton the fraudulent documentation of countrywide mortgages. let me tell you how fraudulent they were if anybody thinks all businesses noble. it is not. a lot of businesses number of the country right spent $339,000 to a part-time chicago house pierre who made $200 a weeknc after receiving a mortgage she $20 went home to poland and never made a single payment. 350,000 to the illiterate dairy worker making $1,100 a month than 398,000 to a woman unemployed since 1988. why would anybody lend money to people like that? it is simple because you make of the when you write the mortgage and the actual mortgagent is transferred to

all of us through government sponsored organizations like fannie mae and freddie mac was the connection between angelo mozillo and barney frank the unholy alliance of corporations and government. that is what ayn rand proposal and that was strode is about and that is when they got you plan corrupt companies and government get together. wrote angelo mozillo was so deep in bed with fannie and freddie it is ridiculous. countrywideozp had an exclusive deal with fannie and freddie to pass on the toxiclusi mortgages at bargain rates there was a program that countrywide known as friends of angelo this is where influential people were able to get loans fromfr countrywide on especiallye ab favorable terms. there would have to be pretty favorable lending

$350,000 i don't know what you'd do more than that but levy give you a list of those beneficiaries. a who's who of the sterling characters such as john edwards. some surprising characters who have survived, senator kent conrad wrote this very moment is the chair of the senate budget committee in chris dodd his name is part of dodd/frank the bill that was necessary because of what blu of? of kwanzaa jackson from hyde and daniel h. mud the man who grew up his name was mud and also the chairman and ceo of fannie mae.

this is what libertarians need to watch out for. the unholy alliance of government and corporations. to draw the contrast not to leave any idea of bankers are bad but given the most loving treatment in my book is john allison who's a former chairman and ceo of one of the top dozen banks in&t the united states ranked bye assets and are dominant throats of 13 southern united states.se out here you will not see that branch but mrs. severe alabama or tennessee you will. allison had of their

different principles thanur those that countrywide.t that blew up in the financial crisis and totally survive the financial crisis and how did allison due it? he happens to be the ayn rand fanatic 1985 when he became ceo, instituted awh policy of have the whole executive group freed "atlas shrugged." he%qñ created the statement of mission of purpose i have a copy. it is a remarkable book i am proud to say it is inscribed jimmy and speaking of and scarred by john, after i am done there will be a book signing of my book at there t laissez-faire booth and john allison who's here who will be speaking on the financial

crisis at 10:30 am will join me for the book signings if you've like to have not only the author but the main subject this is your turn to interact. it has been the best selling book but there are 30,000 employees are now and in over 25 years and how many hundreds of thousands of copies of this book have beenst30an embraced? this embodies the famous speech at the end of that list shrugged and is a summary of objectivism applied to how to run ally business. all 30,000 employees down to the tellers are evaluated every six months based on how they comply with the ideals. 512 quote to view from this to tell you the bb

anti-statement of purpose is. you know, what the purpose statements are save the whales are something like that. here is their purpose. and our olds my purpose is to create superior long-term rewards for our shareholders. we are in net for the money. who knew? [applause] t w i he is ons this to -- honest about a.in isn't having 30,000 employees share of 30,000 myers.ee that worked for countrywide. be honest with your employees.ploye this is a noble mission we all want to succeed and makell w money and understandwe shareholders have to makeo money.ju just say it. 10 fundamental the use the supportd this that bb&t i

will tell you how this helped bb&t avoid the financial crisis. number one is reality. don't we live been reality? and in every phase? angelo mozillo, lehman brothers, aig did not respect reality.idod i know what and a zero day live-in but look at the stufflo they did it makes no sense it was not about reality. that is a prime virtue.e. number two is reason. you are starting to see the ayn rand connection in. she calls her philosophy of objectivism i am a loss of for a reason. this is what it is all about.r reality is what is out there. reason is in here and the tool for dealing with them profiting from what is out

there you have to use reason to use -- to run your business. aig use fancy computer models. maybe if they threw in a few more greek later at -- greek letters they can try again. the third year at -- virtue is independent thinking. how about that? of bank to think independently.dew while the entire u.s.ile banking industry was figuring out how to compete with countrywide and earn the big fees, to be short-term greedy, they were inventing the crazy new exotic mortgages. that word has now been turned into a toxic such asli negative amortization in pick up payment. this is the way all banks

made their money except bb&t because there was the independent thinker who was not even high eight up with the hierarchy and said this is a bad idea. we will not do this. john allison did not make that decision but heard about it after it was made. and said i trained him while. they did not blow won up therl world war blew up when the world book because of independent thinking.3win the next value ise n productivity.nbnoth the next is honesty purpose of course, bankers areppos supposed to be honest andst not have their hands in theh cookie jar. but dishonesty pervades business especially when new-line at the beginning about the purpose of thehat business. this pervades businessesprom when you promote and give power to and perks and look the other way when somebody

bends the rules. perhaps then make a lot of money that year for the company. that does not have been at bb&t. next his integrity. how do they put this into practice? doo member the supreme court kilo decision affirming the government to seize private property inkeer handed over not for government use like to build a freeway but other private parties like real estate development which is a scandalous decision against property rights john allison heard about that and said there isn't a more he fundamental to the bank andd property rights. we cannot support this. was declared that bb&t will never make a loan to a real-estate developer to put[a up any burger that was

acquired through eminent domain. [applause] it just so happen that he got about 1 million letters from customers saying way to go. oh my god. i will move my checking account to you.h, you can do well by doing good. another principle is just as. very important they have grown by acquisition and mergers of takeovers that is a hard thing to do because what the big company takese over of little company, thee employees are afraid they will lose their job. at bb&t they look the employees to say you're in that area and you do it better than we do.t it is justice to give you

the job that makes bb&t a preferred acquire they can acquire adolor price. it also bb&t is headquartered in winston salem which is an area that ratio discrimination is the big issue and racial awareness is a national obsession. love me read to you from the book about what they say b policy on race. >> at bb&t we do notat b discriminate based on nine essentials. is since that cruel to call it a nonessential?sse [laughter] [applause] it gets better.s they go on to say we do discriminate based on competency, performance, a character. you have to love these guys. [applause]tely teethirty is the bank thattly

was bulletproof coming through smelling like a rose but a tragic end. afternoon and brothers' wealth and henry paulson came up with t.a.r.p, during that period when it was five then be debated, alice then took a courageous stand to oppose t.a.r.p.er his bank did not need it but he opposed it in general on the presence of moral hazardwan , did not want to seevern government taking over any but then when t.a.r.p passed, henry paulson have the idea if the treasury said this bank needs it and this one does but this one does not but all of those who did would be identified as a pariah so what we will do is all of you in the room are sick but we will give

you all the medicine because we don't want you to know who is sick. what was that? the government became a preferred shareholder in your bank, took options on common equity, made use 9200 pay -- to differ dufay's contract that best rulesment would have of executive compensation you would abide by and could come up with other rules which you will not question under this contract.ra bb&t had been audited the previous week and passed with flying colors. then one evening bb&t regulator met with john allison and said you really need to sign a contract.gn he said no need to. my bank is bulletproof you just audited us. and the regulators said thatir was last week.

we change the capital requirements. what are they two? maybe we pass. we don't know what they will be but we know that you did not pass. please sign this. what is he to do? a terrible position. absolutely morally opposed to signing the contract. but if he does that the government destroys the bank. so he signs the. hesnhe is now the former chairman and ceo of bb&t. he is john called and walked away. jon a ballclub the economic growth becoming an agent for the morality of capitalismital and that is what john allison is doing through the bb&t foundation and dowlingshe programs that dozens ofootp universities throughout the bb&t footprint to teach the morality of capitalism wheree a sign reading is out less shrugged. he is doing the work.

[applause] the last character with the analogy is a the real world i will talk about of bill and remember the fountainhead remember the maine character what is scheming toasoro or from a newspaper columnist ellsworth toohy i am talkingl about paul krugk grande. [laughter] and you cannot make it up the analogy is so striking it is downright eerie. both the socialist he says i'm a and negative shoulde defender of the welfare state which is the most decent social a range me as designed and advocates as states that offers everybody

additional income he and ellsworth toohey both paid to rich people he once wrote rich people must be defenders of the downtrodden other wise they have no hope of "justifying their existence." we have to kill them if they disagree? there is ad hypocrite thing are we surprised paul krugman has to be a veryrpo wealthy man he has a $1 million home and $1 million apartment in new york and multimillion-dollar e estate 6,000 square-foot home with staal ftse day ceilings and a fire pit a outside ready and other faculty members have been known to burned in effigy republican politicians. he hates the rich except for himself. paul reichmann and ellsworth

toohey show the incumbent 10 at the expense of the competence to make the official ideology of americans elite remade wants of meritocracy. that will last." both paul reichmann and ellsworth toohey are simple and outright lies ears. the public editor of the near-term zero paul krugman has daya disturbing habit to dicing and slicing numbers that please his acolyte.u both paul krugman and ellsworth toohey are physically very small with napoleon complex. krugman once wrote i am just nine imposing to be inspiring of iowa's own ai day few inches taller. he was even called

gnomeishly and some. [laughter] those bush tax cuts are a step for only the little people pay taxes. you be the judge. and he is also low crazy and roe to my economic theories have no doubt been influenced by my relationship with my cats. this explains a lot. [laughter] didn't he win the nobel prize and respected economist? yes, sir. arafat and jimmy carter and a barack obama one the nobel prize. you just have to be a you liberal or a terrorist. [applause] the real test is it you can make a correct prediction

for 1982 when krugman was part of the council of economic advisers in the reagan white house. he wrote the paper when we had just come off the peak of the u.s. inflation. it is called the annexation time bomb predicting inflation would skyrocket and through the rope back into a depression.nkpr wrote therhe paper inflation has been the were. practically at zero. he hates big government deficits as long as it is the bush shouldts restoration and terrified they will create sky-high interest rates. he loves them now withr obama. now he says don't worry itama has infinite borrowing capacity. 1983 i created a project called the krugman truth squad.ed p now the fancy word is crowd

sourcing where you use theer internet, blog, to get dozens of like-minded people to participate in a joint project was every time paul krugman rights of you stay up all night and fact check it catch every like on my air, distortion and come out of context quotation and e-mail meex i will have it published thet next day asd but truth squad. we did 100 of those over sevener years in resulted in dozens of major retractions by paul krugman of errors and lies and distortions but the floor it did that, it i had to results and not once but twice getting "the new york times" for the first time in more than its one century long history toa institute an official policy that the opinion columnist

are obliged to correct their ears. they did not have that policy. [applause] let me tell you what is so powerful. when they cannot lie, liberals have nothing to say. [applause] i just got the two-minute mark so i will end by saying i had a personal experience with paul krugman that was not pleasant entirely. [laughter] in the midst of this i went to a book signing of his and listen to him give a lecture to the audience that hong on every word and i had him describe to me a copy of the book. i identified myself to him. the next week he went on national tv and said i was

stalking him. [laughter]oncomm stalking is a felony. he accused of committing a felony because i paid for his book and asked him to sign it. let me tell you what happens on the age of the internet, for the next three weeks i lived in 24/7 world of hate. death threats, against my family, this is blood sports. make nblo mistake. this is why such rotten people are in public life because they're either in sensitivee who are not hurt by those kinds of things orgs such puritanical fedex you cannot get anywhere in the thereby you do not want them to rule you.

what is the ayn rand less than? you can fight the power. you identify of course, of the gold dacia like paul krugman make your of your mission to take him down, a poll of few things out to make him less powerful. there is a price but you can do it. we have a book signing coming up with me and john allison in the laissez-fairewoks booth. we will you to buy a copy of the book can get it signed an i promise i will accuse none of do of stalking me. [laughter] thank you very much. [applause]

[inaudible conversations] [inaudible conversations] . .