salary is honor, and that is something that is worth a lot. how can you put a dollar figure on that? >> you can watch this and other programs on line at look tv.org. >> next kristie millard presents her book "ellen and edith" woodrow wilson's first ladies. >> it is wonderful to be here. is very heartening for a writer to see so many readers togethert in one place. ofea course, writers are first d foremost readers too and when i started this project, amazingly enough, i completely forgot the first rule of being a good reader, never judge a book by its cover. i had seen pictures of woodrow wilson, and i came to the he was cerebrall

and cool, that he was a sternhe schoolmaster, that he would save grandma presbyterian.. .. ellen askin wilson and i decided she couldn't possibly have been interesting or important. i've never even heard about mary ellen hobart pack, which are wilson's intimate friend for eight years. i had heard about edith bolling galt even in everything i heard was bad, she was a power-hungry woman who seized power when woodrow wilson had a stroke, that she was a secret woman president. fortunately i live right here in washington d.c. and just up the hill behind us is the library of

congress, the sponsor of this great event. and it is a temple of learning and a fabulous resource for researchers. so, i started reading woodrow wilson's letters to alan acts can in 1883, just after they became engaged. they had a two-year engagement and wrote each other hundreds of letters. and what i discovered when it is reading the letters is yes, he was very cerebral, but he was far from cool. he was very romantic and passionate. soon after their engagement, she wrote her, i am not a boy any longer. it is less for you to teach me that fast and measurable difference to train a youth fancy and demands over austrian

laws. and sometimes absolutely absolutely frightened that the intent to give my for you. two years later, just before their marriage, he wrote her, asking her to imagine the warmest of cases pressed down upon the sweetest center of the ellipse. woodrow was not just romantic, however. he was unusually dependent on women for the fulfillment of his own powers. he could not work unless he was assured that a woman he loved loved him also. fortunately, alan was the perfect partner for woodrow wilson. she loved him very much and she told him so eloquently. she was a very unusual woman for her time and place. she corrupt after the civil war

in a small town in georgia and was unusually well-educated. her father was a presbyterian minister and alan was an avid reader. it was said she could find an apt quotation for any occasion. she also had abundant artistic talents. her work had won a prize at an exposition in paris and by the time she was 23, she concluded she was never going to find a man who could live up to her ideals. she decided that she and her friends would open a women's boardinghouse and they would support it with her artwork. people began to call her alley at the man hater. and met woodrow wilson. i fell in love and got married. allen was not only a loving wife, she was a capable housemate.

woodrow wilson was at really a fan, but he may have suffered from a learning disorder. he was almost ore he had great difficulty in learning foreign languages, soha ellen learned german in order to translate the politicalr monographs that he needed for his research. she also made digests ofa political science books in english for him. with her help he achieved the first of his ambitions which was to be a professor at his alma mater in princeton, university. once he became a professor ateae princeton, he was a very populai professor, he began to be invited to make speeches. and she helped him a great deal with his speeches as well, providing those apt quotations when he needede them. he was invited to give a very important speech for the 150th anniversary of the founding off

princeton. and they collaborated closely on that speech we found manuscripts with corrections in both of their handwritings, and at one point she said the ending is a little flat.e you need to make it soar. you should read a poem by john milton. she told him which poem to read. if you compare that poem to the speech, you can see that's justh exactly what he did. the speech is full of metaphors that, obviously, came from herl experience about art and domestic affairs. the speech was a huge success. and it was clear that wood wilson was destined -- woodrow wilson was destined for greater things. now, ellen loved being a professor's wife. for her, that was the pinnacle of happiness. but she knew that woodrow had more ambition, in fact, that's

partly what had drawn her to him. she once said i can be a great wife to a great man than a small one. so when wilson was elected president of princeton college, she went along. she moved her house, she began to entertain, she had to entertain former president theodore roosevelt and the great african-american educator booker t. washington. this last rather scandalized the georgia aunts. and woodrow wilson was, again, very successful. he was so successful that he began to think of a career in public service which is what he had really always wanted. and he began to be discussed for governor of new jersey. but in 1906 with his rosy

prospect ahead of them, a tragedy befell the wilsons. woodrow wilson woke up one morning in may blind in his left eye. he'd probably had a mini stroke. he was 49 years old. and he was devastated. the doctors told him that he might have to give up his career entirely. there was no medication for hypertension in those days. they told him, however, that he could recover if he just took regular vacations.. so in january of 1907 he went to bermuda for a month. ellen was planning to go with him, but she didn't because at the last moment she had a family emergency. he went, and two days before he was due to come home he met a fascinating woman. mary alan hobart peck.

she was the leading social hostess of the island. she entertained the governor general, she entertained mark twain. and when woodrow got back to princeton, he started to write to her. ellen had always encouraged him to have friendships with other women. those pictures notwithstanding, woodrow wilson had a very silly side to him. he loved to sing and dance and tell jokes and recite limericks. ellen was a much more serious person, and she couldn't keep up with that side of him. she wanted him to have cheerful female company ons. companions. but this time she sensed that something was different about mary peck. so when woodrow wilson went to bermuda in january of 1908 and once again ellen was prevented from going by a family situation, she issued an

injunction to him to watch himself with mary. and it was no use. there on that tropical island with all the sea breezes wafting across his skin he became completely infatuated with mary peck. there's a scrap of handwriting on a slip of paper that says: my precious one, my beloved mary. when he got back to princeton that spring, ellen was furious. she accused him of emotional love for mary. he went on vacation to england that summer, and ellen went to an artist colony in connecticut. she had given up her artwork in order to devote herself to woodrow, now she took it up again to have some part of her life that was not entwined with his. all that summer he wrote her

pleading letters begging to be forgiven. we don't know what she wrotew because all of her letters are missing. sum we think that she probably burned them. but at the end of the summer,'tk woodrow wrote her a very happy letter. obviously, she'd forgiven him, and he said it's even better to be loved if you don't deserve it. so wouldn't you think that he would stop seeing mary peck? no, he department. no, he didn't. in fact, as soon as he got back to the united states, he and ellen went up to massachusetts where mary lived with her husband during the summer. i don't know why she did that. it could be that she wanted to see this rival. it could be that she wanted mary to see her and to know that shee had the better claim on him. it could be that she wanted to

protect woodrow wilson's to reputation because he had a political career ahead of him.o so she pretended that mary peck was a family friend. sure enough, in 1910 woodrow wilson was elected governor of new jersey. once again ellen rose to the occasion. she'd been active in welfaredrow work in her community. this was known as municipal housekeeping. women argued that if they could run households, they could also clean up their communities. this was considered a safe alternative to the scary idea of women voting. so she began to investigate the state institutions, and she made a tour of many of them. this is a really groundbreaking move on her part. woodrow kind of tagged along on that o tour.

woodrow's administration was such a success that he began to be spoken of as a potential presidential candidatement ellen recognized that there was a big obstacle to his running for president. william jennings bryant who had three times been the democratic nominee for president and who woodrow had insulted publicly several years before.een so ellen arranged for woodrow to have dinner with bryan, very intimate dinner. and sure enough, woodrow found he liked bryant, and they spokeo from the same platform after that. and she did as she had doned br before, continued to see mary peck as a family friend. woodrow began to travel around s the country making speeches. ellen followed his progress very

closely, sending him telegrams of commentary.odro at one point she sent him a telegram and said stop saying you're not running for h president. ve it just makes you look foolish. he stopped. you're not running for president. it just makes you look foolish he stopped. sure enough, he became the democratic nominee in june of 1912. partly, with the help of bryant. that summer when the republicans held their convention, william howard taft, the incumbent was opposed by former president theodore roosevelt. taft won and roosevelt was so bitter over that loss that he formed a third-party, the progressive or bull moose party. >> and he was really seen as the bigger competitor to wilson.

he was so popular. so one of roosevelt's advisors came up to him and he said, we've managed to obtain some letters of woodrow wilson's to mary peck. you should publish them and just campaign will be over. you will win. and roosevelt said, no, that would be wrong. also, he said nobody would believe me. who's going to think the man is a romeo. he looks like he ought to be working in a drugstore. [laughter] >> so he did not publish the letters and woodrow wilson won. so in the beginning of 1913, ellen found herself in the white house. it was not a place she ever wanted to be, but once she was there, she felt she had to use it for its maximum benefit. she began to be interested in what we would now call urban renewal.

up here behind the capitol were a maze little alley ways, they were little, dark and dirty. they bred crime and disease. they were full of dilapidated little houses. at that time the federal government was running the district, and she wanted federal legislation to tear down those houses and build modern hygienic new houses at low cost for the residents. she got a white house car, and she began to take members of congress around those alleys to show them the squalor that existed right behind the marbled halls of the capitol building. as far as i know, she was the first first lady to lobby outside of the white house to a car that was not on her husband's agenda but in the send year of woodrow wilson's term, her health began to decline.

and by june of 1914, she could no longer get out of bed. her doctor was in denial. he thought she was suffering from nerves. woodrow was distracted because at the end of june, the arch duke france ferdnan was killed. it was clear that ellen was dying. this was two days after all the european powers had declared war on each other. ellen knew she was running out of time. so she made two final requests. the first was to her husband's chief of staff. she asked him, please to go up to capitol hill and tell the congressmen she would die more easily if they would just pass that alley legislation. the senate took action right away in time for her to receive

word before she lost consciousness. the bill was eventually passed but it was never implemented. with the onset of world war i, they needed all the buildings they could have, dilapidated or not and in any case they had more important things to think about. ellen's second request was to the white house physician. she said, doctor, please take care of my husband, and then she died. woodrow was disconsulate. he wandered the halls of the empty, echoing. he told one correspondent that he was reading detective stories as a man get drunk just to forget. you might have thought he would have turned to mary at this time, but due to the pressures of the presidency, their relationship really had cooled.

and in any case, that would have confirmed the rumors about them. so he was alone. by the spring of 1915, the doctor became worried. after all, his patient was the president and the world was at war. so he introduced a friend of his, edith bowling galt to the president. mrs. galt was a widow. she was the proproprietor of galt jewelers which we old timers in washington remember fondly. it was known as the tiffany's of washington. she was 15 years younger than woodrow. she was vivacious, cheerful, flirtatious. the first night she came to dine in the white house in a long black velvet gown, woodrow wilson's secret serviceman said to his valet, oh, she's a looker. and the valet said, yeah, he's a

goner. [laughter] >> and he was. he proposed marriage to her just two months after they met. she refused. she said they hadn't known each other long enough and in any case it, hadn't been a year, the minimum amount of time before a remarriage. woodrow didn't give up. in july, he invited edith to vacation with him and his three grown daughters in new hampshire. and he proposed again. this time, she accepted. but they kept the engagement secret because it still had not been a year since ellen's death. there was another wrinkle to this romantic saga and that was mary. woodrow confessed to edith -- he called his relationship with mary a folly, long-ago loathed and repented of. she forgave him but she made

sure it was over. they announced their engagement in october of 1915. even before they got married, woodrow took her into his confidence. he wanted her to share every aspect of his work with him. he showed her secret state department documents. he annotated them for her better understanding, and she loved that. she liked to say, i love the way you put one dear hand on mine while with the other you turn the pages of history. they got married at the end of december, 1915. 1916 was a presidential election year and woodrow was running for re-election. edith campaigned with him. she was a big asset to his campaign because she warmed up his austere image. in november, woodrow wilson was

narrowly re-elected. they were using the slogan, he kept us out of the war. but shortly after his inauguration, the germans resumed unrestricted submarine warfare and the united states was drawn into world war i. edith's role changed almost completely. she volunteered in a red cross canteen, handing out coffee and sandwiches to the soldiers as they came through union station. what she really liked was anything to do with woodrow. she named battleships. when he had to sign commissions for new officers in the army, she made a little game of it, risking away one paper and putting another one down in front of him. trying to see how many they could do in an hour. she even decoded the telegrams coming from europe, arguably, her most important job was

keeping the president healthy. every day she would drag him out to play golf. they were both terrible golfers but they enjoyed it a lot. on november 11th, 1918, the war ended. and woodrow made the surprising decision to go to europe himself to negotiate the peace treaty. he was the first sitting president to go to europe and, of course, she was the first presiding first lady to go to europe. they were greeted like heroes. they were met by thongs of people throwing flowers and cheering them. they stayed at buckingham palace. edith wrote home, it was like a cinderella existence. but once the negotiations began, things got tough. and woodrow's health began to suffer. finally, in june of that year, the treaty of versailles was signed. it provided for a league of

nations, an international body that would mediate disputes and hopefully prevent war in the future. but when woodrow brought the treaty back to the united states to be ratified by the senate, the senate refused. they were jealous of their constitutional prerogative to declare war and they were afraid the league of nations would oblige them when they didn't want to. they wanted to add amendments or reservations. and woodrow wanted the document ratified as written. so he undertook a speaking tour by train all across the united states to california and back. it was september. it was hot. of course, there was no air conditioning in these metal cars. he was speaking every day, sometimes more than once. as they returned from california

and wound up through the rocky mountains, the altitude began to tell on his blood pressure. in pueblo, colorado, he collapsed. they raced back to washington, but it was too late. a few days after they arrived, he suffered a massive stroke. he was paralyzed. he could hardly speak. nobody knew what his mental faculties were like and as president he was completely incacapacitated -- incapacitated. edith decided to carry on. she had done what no other first lady since, she instructed the white house and doctors to keep his condition a secret. and she was the one who decided what should happen next. the next 18 months, the rest of

his term, she later characterized as her stewardship. she decided who could see woodrow wilson. she decided what issues would be brought before him. mostly, she just deferred things. she wanted to wait until he should recover. she was implored to take more action for the sake of the country and she said, i'm not thinking about the country. i'm thinking about my husband. some people say that if she had allowed woodrow wilson more access to his advisors, that they would have changed his mind and gotten him to compromise on the league of nations. we discovered that edith herself wanted woodrow wilson to compromise. she thought his failure to compromise would mar his place in history. but she urged him gently.

and when he resisted, she didn't insist. she always did what he wanted. so they stayed in office until the end of his term in march of 1921. they left the white house. they settled here in washington. he was the only president to have done that after leaving office. three years later, he died. after his death, edith had opportunity to run for office herself. she never took it. she was not interested in public office and political power. she never proposed any new legislation or lobbied for any cause. she didn't even think women audit to have the vote. i began this project thinking that edith was the path-breaker,

the secret woman president. but i discovered that ellen was the one who shaped history in her own way. she was the innovativer. in her husband's administration, there was an assistant secretary to the navy, franklin delano roosevelt. his wife, eleanor roosevelt, was a young wife who sometimes visited the white house and knew ellen wilson. after ellen's death, no subsequent first lady lobbied for legislation until eleanor roosevelt entered the white house in march of 1933 during her first week there, she went up to capitol hill and began to lobby for an alley bill. as we all know, she lobbied for a lot of things in the next 12

years. and after her, most first ladies have felt they could and should have a cause of their own. this book festival was founded by laura bush, whose cause was libraries and literacy. arguably, a direct connection between ellen wilson and where we are today. i also discovered that being close to a president may seem glamorous, but it's very tough. all three of the women involved with woodrow wilson paid a heavy price. but i think that ellen realized this. she, of course, died in the white house. mary peck had wanted to go to the white house, but she wound

up in a boarding house on the wrong side of the tracks. edith had to nurse an invalid in the white house. but ellen could have been speaking for all three of them, when she wrote woodrow at the end of her life, this has been the most remarkable life history i ever even read about. and to think that i have lived it with you. i wonder if i am dreaming and will wake up and find myself married to a bank clerk. thank you very much. [applause] >> so i think we have a few

minutes if anyone would like to ask a question. sir. >> i'm really looking forward to reading your book. i've probably read a couple of biographies of woodrow wilson and most recently went to his childhood home, et cetera. and i saw a documentary about the women's party and the women's suffrage. and he let women be jailed for protesting at the white house. >> that's true >> alice paul led a number of women in prison on hunger strikes. and he comes across as a southern gentleman who had racism and antisexism as part of his nature. so it's really surprising to hear that he was as dependent on women as your book will demonstrates. do you have any comments on these weaknesses of his, i guess? >> well, the first comment,

thanks very much. that's a very, very good observation. one of those is that -- it was a sign of the times. many women themselves did not approve of the vote. there were two branches of the women's suffrage movement. my grandmother was involved in the non-alice paul one. i discovered in the course of my research that she had been received at the white house because they were not picketing. they were trying to do it through political action. and he respected that, and he wanted to encourage that. i had not known that before i started researching the woodrow wilson papers in the white house log. edith was even more indignant than woodrow. woodrow used to invite the picketers into the house during cold weather for coffee. and when they refused to come in and be given coffee, edith just had a fit.

she thought that was terribly rude to take their gentlemanly overtures which we understand that would cut their point. but it was certainly nothing that -- that i'm a big apologist for where woodrow was concerned. i certainly think the women in his life, particularly, ellen, were extremely admirable. ellen herself was a great activist through her work for the alleyways. and she was recognized by the leading african-american newspaper at that time, the washington bee. after her death, they wrote and said, if only other white women could be as active as she is in trying to ameliorate the conditions of the african-american community in washington, we'd get ahead further. but woodrow wilson was a

southerner. everybody in his, you know, large number of the people in his cabinet were southerners. it was part of the culture of his time and his administration. thank you. yes, ma'am. >> that's not on? >> yes. >> thank you for writing this book. it's very interesting. and my question is, what happened to edith after his death? was there some sort of federal support or pension for her to care for her or what happened? >> good question. she lived for 38 more years. at the time she died in 1961, she was 89. and by the way, she died on woodrow wilson's birthday which kind of gives me goose bumps. but there was no definite policy about giving pensions to the widows of presidents. they had to be negotiated kind of on a year by year basis.

i think eventually they were established. but in the beginning, it was a little bit dicey. she, of course, had been quite wealthy before she married woodrow. she had that flourishing jewelry star although that kind of took a hit during the depression and she had economize from time to time, she did all right. she never had children. and she donated their house on s street near dupont circle to the national trust for historic preservation. it's a wonderful little museum. a little time capsule of life in the 1920s. so if you're interested in woodrow wilson, that's a great local place to visit. >> thank you. do we have any indication as to what ellen's illness was? >> yes. she suffered from -- what was then called bright's disease, which was kind of a catch-all phrase for kidney trouble. she had first been diagnosed

with kidney trouble during her third pregnancy in 1889. but, again, they didn't have a lot of medicine or treatment for that, and she probably would have succumbed to kidney disease in any case. woodrow was extreme guilty about it. he felt that the pressure of the white house had done her in. but i think she -- she always was going to get kidney disease. and that's what she died of. >> hi, i wondered if you would talk a little bit about the course of your research for this book? you mentioned the library of congress. what -- what documents you came across that were most important? if you knew what you were looking for when you came in or if you found things while in the course of your research that you didn't expect? >> well, first, i have to say i couldn't have done it without the help of my research associate robert h. mcginnis. and also the fabulous annotated

collected letters and papers of woodrow wilson which were edited arthur link. 69 volumes of papers. the originals are in the library of congress on microfilm but thanks to that wonderful annotated book is always resource but some of ellen's papers are there. edith's papers -- one of the most poignant i found among ellen's papers were two notes that she wrote to margaret, her oldest daughter a few days before she died. and she said the doctors say i'm going to get better, but i don't feel i'm going to get better. and she also said, my nights are so full of pain. they were just, you know, heart wringing to read those and to hold the papers that she wrote is also very magical. and especially for edith's papers.

all of edith's papers are there. many of them were not collected because, of course, the woodrow wilson papers pretty much stop with his death and she's got another 38 years. so the papers for the chapter on her life after woodrow were very, very key there. and at the risk of sounding like an infomercial, i just have to have a big shoutout to jeff flannery and the manuscript reading room because they're just wonderful. anyone who wants to do research there, will find a great team. >> thank you. >> first, i'd like to thank you for your tribute to these great women. i was wondering if you could talk about ellen and woodrow's three daughters. if any of them followed in their mother's footsteps with advocacy or supporting other great men or what of their own accomplishments they had on their own. >> great question. their oldest daughter margaret was a singer. we felt at the end of the day

she probably didn't have a whole lot of talent and people were nice to her because her father was president. i think this might have gradually dawned on her because eventually she went off and lived in ashram in india where she died. the second daughter got married and their son became dean of the washington cathedral. a very beloved figure in washington. and, of course, woodrow wilson and edith are buried at the cathedral so there's that nice connection. the youngest daughter known as nell married one of woodrow wilson's cabinet members, a man considerably older than she was. william gibbs mackado and they had children. and they were later divorced and he married somebody even younger. i would say the middle one was the closest to her mother. she had been active in the settlement house movement.

she used to argue with ellen about woman suffrage. jessie certainly felt that she -- that women should have the vote. ellen simply didn't want to come out and say something contrary to what her husband had said but in one interview she said at least working women should have the vote to protect themselves. i just got a couple minutes. you have one more question, madam? >> yes. thank you. i was intrigued by edith's role after her husband had the stroke. it sounds like she was a surrogate president. was there any debate at that time about wilson being declared incompetent and the vice president taking over? and if you would care to speculate what that would have meant for our history? >> it's a big question in 2 minutes. but it's a good one. i'll do my best.

yes. she was deceptive. no two ways about it. there was a committee of two senators who came to see what his condition was like. one democrat and one republican. and she and the doctor orchestrated the viewing of woodrow to have him seen at his best advantage, completely hoodwinked these two senators who came away and told all the press that he was doing just fine, thank you, when he could hardly get out of bed. so she definitely was duplicitous about that. and, yes, i think it would have made a huge difference if she had not lied to the american people, basically, about his condition. she knew that he wanted to stay in office, and all she cared about was what he wanted. she was not thinking about the country. alas and alack. certainly, if he had resigned, the vice president would have taken over. the vice president would have

compromised. we would have joined the league of nations. then the question gets trickier, would that have made a difference? some people say, yes, if we'd joined the league of nations, then there wouldn't have been world war ii. there was a league of nations, of course, we weren't in it. but it did nothing to stop world war ii. in 1937, bob found a great study that showed that 70% -- a gallup poll showed that 70% of the american people thought it had been a mistake to go into world war i. this was in 1937. we were a very isolationist country at that time. even if we'd joined the league of nations, it would have been with those amendments, which would have meant we wouldn't have had to do whatever the league of nations determined. so i don't think at the end of the day it would have made any difference but there are plenty of wilson scholars and some of

them disagree with me. if you want the argument on the other side, i refer you to the wonderful biography by john milton cooper of woodrow wilson that came out a couple of years ago. he's very >> this event was part of the 2011 national book festival in washington d.c. for more information visit loc.gov/bookfest. [applause] >> well, back in july of 1926, 85 years ago this month, this country was celebrating its sesquicentennial, 150th national birthday. and here in texas i imagine it was quite, quite a big deal. but in fort worth, texas, just a ways from here, the festivities were overshadowed somewhat by a brewing local battle, one that involved political, replishes, business and civic leaders. the catalyst of this particular battle was a preacher. the issues were both public and

personal. and the citizens found themselves polarized. some talked about conspiracies and others about troublemakers. and on july the 17th, 1926, it all came to a head when a successful businessman, someone pretty well connected to the movers and shakers of the town, went to pay a visit on a local pastor. but this was not just any pastor. far from the typical man of the cloth of his day, he was a multifaceted personality ruling over a religious empire. more than just a preacher, he presided over the largest protestant congregation in america. in many ways, america's first meg church. -- mega church. he was a radiobroadcasting pioneer and star, the publisher of a tabloid newspaper, and he was viewed by many even beyond texas as the emerging leader of a movement then near its apex, a movement called fundamentalism. and as the businessman argued with the preacher that day, the language became hot, and within a few moments gave way to the

thunder of four gunshots, three of which struck the businessman. he fell and us with left for dead. no one in the church office, and there were about 20 people working there at the moment, approached the wounded man to offer help. before the man on the stretcher reached a local hospital, he had breathed his last breath. the dead name was named dexter elliot chips known as d.e.. the preacher was the reverend dr. john franklin norris, well known as j. frank norris or the texas tornado or to many in fort worth simply as "that man. "and the story of what happened that day 85 years ago and for the following six months or so is likely what i've called the most famous story you've never heard. and the story reached all the way here to austin because, eventually, the trial -- which was one of the most celebrated trials of the decade, a decade that was known for famous trials like the scopes trial and, of course, leopold and lobe and

sacco and vanzetti and so forth -- this trial was one of the most captivating at the time. but it's been lost to history. it's a footnote in a lot of books, it's a story that has made it into some places, but it's never received its full treatment, i think. the context, of course s the 1920s and i've always found to be a fascinating time. it was a time just after the world changed when the soldiers that, you know, here we have just this year in march the last living soldier of world war i, a man 110 years old was buried at arlington national cemetery. there are no more from that era and, of course, fewer we see every day from the greatest generation, world war ii. but in the 1920s people came back from world war i, and they had a changed view, a somewhat, i think, influenced by what they saw in europe and what we know about the 1920s is you had two

things sort of happening at the same time. one is this tremendous revolution in manners and morals in the country. they're sort of casting off restraints. you have women voting, and you have a lot of independents. you have a bit of a sexual revolution that goes on. you have all the media things that come along, radio, of course, begins to become a very popular medium. eventually becoming the media of the day. tabloid newspapers are still very strong. movies. the film industry had been around for a few years but really reached its, got its traction in the 1920s. and along with that the cult of celebrity came along. what andy warhol would later describe as 15 minutes of fame really existed long before that in the 1920s as sport figures, golfers and baseball players and movie stars became famous. over against that you had this reaction to that revolution. and it was described in an odd

word that was created at the beginning of the decade by warren harding who ran in 1920 when he said we want to get back to what he called normalcy. no such word. he wasn't the first -- he was the first republican, i guess, to make up words. but he said normalcy, getting back to the way things used to be. and a lot of people, that resonated with them because they saw the country sort of blowing apart. a lot of the values that they held were changing, and so you had a number of things that came ahong at the same time that sort of emerged, and one was a movement called fundamentalism. when you hear the word fundamentalism today, what you usually think of is it's associated an awful lot with islamic fundamentalism and terrorism and, of course, also people throw it in the with christian fundamentalism and often make the mistake of using evangelicalism and fundamentalism as interchangeable. they're not completely interchangeable. but fundamentalism was reaction to the modern world, and it began as a theological movement

that sort of was reaction to sort of the theological changes that were taking place in protestantism, but it also became a culture thing. it was something for people to get involved with. and i think it's hart for us -- hard for us to imagine today, but it was such a pervasive movement in the 12920s that the -- 1920s that the famous sage of baltimore, a man by the name of h.l. mencken, said that if you were to heave an egg from a pullman car anywhere in america, you're bound to hit a fundamentalist in the head. and there were millions of people who embraced it. so it was much more than religious, it was sort of a cultural reaction to the way things have changed. another movement that was very big at least for a time in the 1920s and certainly even here in the state of texas was the ku klux klan. it had seen a revival. there have been many manifestations of the klan even up until our time, many of them

marginal, but the most significant emergence of that particular movement were, of course, during reconstruction with the original khan. but in about 1915 there was a regrouping of a klan, and by the time you come into the 1920s this group, very patriotic, very pro-america, very anti-immigrant, anti, you know, foreigners kind of thing really takes hold in the culture, and for a moment in time there is a blending together of a lot of the commonality here of fundamentalism and the ku klux klan. this is something that evangelicals -- and i am one -- have a difficult time acknowledging and one of the reasons i think they've had a difficult time repudiating it is because thai had a difficult time -- they've had a difficult time acknowledging was that it was, in fact, a part of the past. >> watch this and other programs online at booktv.org. >> ms. donahue, what made you write this book, "slave of allah," and why was it important

for you to write it as an anthropologist? >> i'd done field work before 9/11, in fact, in the '90s off and on for about ten years, and i did field work in an area nearby where zacarias moussawi grew up. this was over in the east of france. and in october of 2001 i read an article about somebody who had been picked up before 9/11. he was at a flight school in minnesota, and i realized that he had grown up in this area which i was quite familiar with, and he had a background that i knew something about. he is the son of moroccans who had moved to france before he was born, so i had difficulty growing up in an area of france which was not always totally resent i have to -- receptive to north africans. >> and what was your relationship, you know, with the people who were involved in this trial? how did you go about covering

the trial? what was that process? >> well, curiously, i was the only academic to think of going to this trial. i have a friend from graduate school who had told me she had a connection to the trial, and i learned quickly that anyone was able to go. any, any person could go to the trial as long as there was space for you in the courtroom, so i thought, okay, i think i need to go there. and the trial actually was in alexandria, virginia, in the eastern district court. that site was chosen, actually, because the pentagon was in that district, and they were trying to have the trial somewhere in the same area where one of the attacks had happened. it got to be at the trial, i was at, actually, the initial jury drawing and then at the two different phases of the trial. so i got to know the members of the press. there were no other people who were there as academics attending the trial. i really got a good eye sight

into what -- insight, actually, into the way in which the press was writing about this person. >> and what role did the media play during the trial? did their coverage affect the outcome or affect the way people were thinking about it? >> you know, i've been thinking about that, and, of course, the jurors were told not to read any coverage. when they got home -- they did go home at night, they weren't sequestered. they were told, however, read nothing, talk about nothing, don't talk to your family, don't -- if you go to work, because they would go on fridays, they could go back to their own jobs, don't talk to anybody there. but there were a few people who were on the jury who said when they were being, you know, interviewed i don't do news or, you know, i don't read the news. so i think there was a big attempt to keep the jury separate from the press. on the other hand, the nation was reading the coverage, and actually was being covered by,

al-jazeera in the arabic-speaking world, so people were following this trial. the french media was particularly interested, especially as it came closer to the time whether he would get the death penalty or spend life in prison. >> and you write about the unexpecteds that happened. i mean, there were a lot of unexpected events in this trial. it took longer to go to trial than people thought. there was some witness tampering. what were the lasting effects of those, and did the public perception of this trial change because of that? >> well, it was deemed a circus for a while because there were so many attempts to start the trial, and then they decided to, you know, put it off. there was an attempt to get witnesses such as khalid shake muhammad, the mastermind of 9/11, to either be able to come to the trial to give testimony or to interview him through some other means. and that was prevented by the u.s. government. there was no way that those people could be interviewed. and so there was a legal fight

in which the judge threatened to throw the whole case out. it went up to the supreme court, came back down. and then there was a decision, actually, to have the interviews with people like khalid shake muhammad be rewritten into a format that both the defense and the prosecution could allow to be presented in the trial. >> and your writing from the point of view of an anthropologist, and you raised the question of representation. so there's national and personal identity. m what can we learn about representation from this case? >> well, he, i argue in this book that he had three different, was attempting to represent himself in three different ways. one was legally. and actually for 17 months he represented himself. he, in a sense, fired his attorneys, his defense attorneys. so there was an issue of legal representation, did he have the right to do so? well, the judge decided, yes. he actually did quite a good job for a while, and he for a while

kind of stalled out the proceedings. he would actually write his own proceedings. he would do it in handwriting because he was not allowed any other means to do so, and he would write these full of jokes and plays on words. and finally the judge had had enough be. so that was his legal representation. then there was his social representation, who was this guy in terms of his nationality and religion. and he was at that point beginning to say i'm not french, i have nothing to do with them. i'm a member of al-qaeda, and he was trying to make that clear to the public. he knew the public was reading his pleadings. and then there was his own personal representation. who is this person? and he was feeling, i think, somewhat thwarted in being able to explain who he is and how he thought. so the way in which he managed to get around that was to as the judge left the courtroom, he would wait until she was halfway

out, and then he would stand up, and he would say something like, you know, god bless allah, or long live osama. say whatever he could before he was then taken out of the courtroom. and the media would all, the press would all sort of press forward, and they would all try to figure out what it was he was saying and dually write it all down and publish it in the newspapers. >> 9/11 was a day that affected most people in america in some way. so how were you able to separate yourself from the coverage and the news media and whatever feelings you had to put together this book? >> uh-huh. well, one thing is that it was, the trial was in the 2006, so it was five years after 9/11. i mean, i had not an immediate family member, but i knew of people who had died horribly. but you get a hint of the courtroom setting, and somehow there's a way of removing yourself from those personal feelings. i think courts are designed to try to do that. on the other hand, the

prosecution would try to bring back all of those memories, especially when mayor giuliani, former mayor giuliani came to testify. he was, he was determined to permize the impact -- personalize the impact of 9/11. i wasn't in the courtroom at that time, but certainly the web site has the coverage and footage of horrifying images, and you just, you know, figure out how to find the person behind this excruciating experience. and who was this man? and that's really what i tried to focus on. >> and it's been ten years since, um, september 11th, so have we learned anything from this trial as a country? what can we still learn from this case? >> well, sadly, we haven't learned that we can actually have a trial in the civilian court. instead, you know, there's going to be this move to try people like khalid sheikh mohammed in guantanamo. yes, this trial was extremely

expensive, and the government as far as i know has not released the amounts. it's in the millions of dollars so, yes, it was very expensive. on the other hand, some of the reporters covering this case particularly for the arabic tv press through the bbc said to me that he was amazed at the fairness of this trial. he had the right to speak. he had the right to express himself. he had the right to make pleadings. he was not taken out and hanged or executed. he could speak, and the judge, i think, to her credit bent over backwards to make sure that he did have those rights. and there are certain rights in the u.s. court system, and i hope that people will realize that in the military commissions that similar right need to be afforded to those people. >> thank you for your time. >> thank you. >> booktv has covered over 9,000 nonfiction ars