with the original plan, but in about 1915, there was a regrouping of the clan, and by the time you're in the 1920s, this group, very, very patriotic, very pro-america, very anti-immigrant, anti anti-foreigners kind of thing. it takes hold the culture, and for a moment in time, there's a blending together of a lot of commonty of fund -- commonality. one of the reasons they've had a difficult time repudiating it because they have a hard time acknowledging it was a part of the past. >> you can watch this and other programs online at booktv.org. >> this photo from little rock arkansas was taken on september 4 #th, 1957 outside central high school. david margolick's book uncovers

the stories of the two women in the center of the photo examining their lives leading up to the day and beyond. he talks about his book next in front of an audience including elizabeth at the clinton school of public service in arkansas. this is just over an hour. >> when you look at any great photograph, there's always more to see than what meets the eye. on september 4th, 1954, a stoic young black girl, a member of the little rock 9, was met by an angry mob in the first days to desegregate little rock central high school. one of the many yelling behind her was an angry young white girl with narrow eyes and clenched teeth. elizabeth brian. they capturedded this moment in one of the most recognizable photos of the civil rights era

depicting the hate and furry of one young girl, and the timid demeanor of another. this image circulated around our state, the nation, and all around the world. do you remember how seeing this photo for the first time made you feel? who knew that the photo of these two young girls, one black, one white, both 15 years old, born less than four months apart, living within miles of one another, and both beginning the 11th grade, would be so powerful in symbolizing the race legal legal relations in america. more powerful, is the poster david margolick saw of the two women. this time the women were smiling and embracing one another. two women, one black, one white, but this time, they were no longer entering the 11th grade. they were grown, and this was a poster of reconciliation.

david came across the poster during the trip to little rock for the past -- let's try that again. david came across the poster during a trip to little rock, and for the past 12 years, with other jobs under his belt, he's investigated what lies within that stoic image for his book, "elizabeth and hazel" two women of little rock. he created a dual biography so we can understand the emotions behind the two women bound together by one single photograph. david margolick was a long time contributing editor for "vanity fair" joining the team in 1995. prior to that, he held similar positions at "newsweek" and "portfolio". he worked from 1988 to 1995 as a legal reporter for the "new york times". he contributed to a column, at

the bar, covering trials of oj simpson, and william kennedy smith just to name a few. a graduate of the university of michigan and stanford law school, david has written pieces including a long form article entighted "a predator priest," about bringing a profile priest in his community to justice. david says of his new book, it's an honest acknowledgement of racial sensitivities that exist in this country, and how when it comes to race relations in america, it can be very complex and an ongoing process. the relationship between elizabeth and hazel is like a metaphor for america's racial history, a reflection of how much more this country, blacks and whites, have to do. everyone, introducing david margolick. [applause]

>> well, thank you. i gist want to make one correction, in your nice introduction which is that i was a reporter for many years for the "new york times," not the "new york post". [laughter] that may not mean much to people down here -- [laughter] but in new york, there's a big distinction between the two. [laughter] i also want to say that skip mentioned that about elizabeth's birthday, and you might think that it's just a great coincidence that we're having, that we're having the pub date of my book just happens to overlap with elizabeth's birthday, but that's really not the case. we deliberately wanted to

commemorate her birthday by publishing on it as a fitting tribute to her and just sort of -- we just thought it would be good karma actually. [laughter] we couldn't go wrong coming out on what for her is an important birthday, and so that explains the non-coincidence. i want to thank skip -- i've already been here once before as some of you know. i recognize some of you already, and i want to thank skip for having me back. when my work is further along, considerably further along than it was the last time, it's nice to have a second bite at the apple, and i just looked out, i see a lot of familiar faces, including a lot of the people that i interviewed, and that's also very gratifying. it's always gratifying to see a pile of books over there, and

some extra chairs that they are unfolding at the last minute, which is an author always likes to see. nicoli sent me a list of the people who'd signed up for this afternoon's program, and on my blackberry, i could only get the first half of them, but i looked down the list, and i saw max brantly, wiley brantton, betsy jake, and johanna louis, and that's just the l's. those are people who talked to me and helped me. i'm sure there's a lot more of you out here, and so it's a chance for me to thank all of you as well. one of the questions that i'm often asked in interviews about this book is when i first saw the famous picture of elizabeth

and hazel, and my answer is always the same. i have no idea when i first saw it. who can say when you first saw a picture like this? this is the kind of picture that just seeps into jr. consciousness. it doesn't happen at any particular time, for any sensitive person, it's the kind of picture that you grow up with. you notice it at a very early age, and it's just engraved in your mind. you never forget it once you see it. it's just one of those pictures. it's leek the picture of the -- it's like the little boy with the cap and the hands up in the warsaw ghetto. it's a picture you see once, and it sticks with you. it's a picture that -- i mean, there's many famous pictures of the civil rights movement, and we all know the images of the fire hoses and the german shepherds and the heart breaking images of people sitting in lunch counters having coffee poured on their heads or freedom

riders being beaten, but this picture is different. there's something different about this picture, and what is it? what is it about this picture that stapedes out in our -- stands out in our minds? i think there's a lot of things about it, but it's particularly the face of hazel that sets it apart. i say in the book that the picture is of elizabeth and hazel, but the picture is really more of hazel than elizabeth. if you look carefully at the picture, hazel -- elizabeth is already walking out of the frame. elizabeth is even out of focus a little bit. it's hazel to which your eyes are drawn immediately, and it's all -- the way that it fell together, it's all just perfect staging in a way, the liking it perfect, the lighting it coming in from the side, it's early in

the morning, it's bright, it sets her face apart, she's in perfect focus set apart. she just stands out, and then there's the expression on the face, and what, you know, what is that expression? it captures, i mean, what picture better captures what the attitude of the south towards what was going on, the attitude of the south towards deseg segregation -- desegregation in 1950s, the absolute rage and indignation that southerners felt, the contempt, the utter contempt for black people that's captured in that picture. to you, sort of a more modern notion, there's also a notion that is applied now to modern warfare. there's the asemitry of the picture,s fact of the forces,

the powers in the picture are so disproportioned. there's just one black face in the picture, and that's elizabeth who's surrounded by white faces, and all of the power and the force and the influence in everything is all gathered in the white community. e liz beth is very much alone, so elizabeth's face, as i say, is the only black face in the say. there were very few -- at the point she showed up that day, she was the first black. i say in the book we talk about the little rock nine. at that moment, she was the little rock one, and it took me awhile until the picture -- until i actually got a good print of the picture. elizabeth is very hard to read in a way behind those sunglasses that she was wearing. it's hard to know what she was feeling at that moment.

she's described it on many occasions, but it's hard to see it unless you study the picture very carefully, which requires a good print of it, and like any good picture, you're always discovering something new every time you see it, and i notice that if you look behind those sunglasses, you can see, you can see into her eyes, you can see several things. you can see the sadness in her eyes, you can see the fear, of course, you can see a certain kind of resignation as if she almost expected something like this to happen. you can see heart break. study that picture sometime, and you'll see all of those things in her eyes. so that was -- that's my answer to the question of when i saw the picture the first time. the second time, it was just

described to you. i was in little rock to do a story, a clinton related story, a story, truth be told about paula jones -- [laughter] if you remember her, and i guess it was sort of -- i had limited enthusiasm about doing the story to begin with, and i think it was probably my good fortune that she wouldn't speak with me, and so the story never happened, and that may be just as well, but, of course, as a amateur student of american history, i knew all about central high school, and i knew about the picture, and so i made a pilgrimage to the old mobile station, then the visitor's center, and that's when i saw the poster of elizabeth and hazel, and i was just amazed to see this poster. i didn't know anything about the two of them ever getting together again. i guess the story was sort of a local story, and i had missed

it. i had not read it in the papers where i was, and the idea that the -- that these two people, these antagonists had come together, and there they were smiling and seemingly comfortable with one another standing in front of central. i thought, now, there's a story, that's a real story. it was at that point that i started to make some phone calls, and i don't remember, honestly, whether it was that visit or another visit, but i think -- i'm pretty sure that i saw the two of them very quickly. the two of them were still speaking at that point, and i arranged to visit with the two of them, and it was memorable for me because we all went to a diner. elizabeth, her husband, hazel, it was a barbecue diner outside

of little rock, and it wasn't simms. [laughter] i discovered that later and became a repeat customer, but it was not simms that time, and it was a historic occasion because i remember that elizabeth insisted on treating us all for lunch that day. it was the first time that elizabeth had just gotten her first credit card, and she had this piece of plastic, and she was not sure that it actually worked. [laughter] that you could walk out of a restaurant without handing over cash, and shemented to make sure the -- shemented to make sure -- she wanted to make sure the damn thing worked, and it did, and so elizabeth treated us to lunch. i didn't realize at that point, this was in 1999, that the two of them, that the relationship -- all of the optimism that had been generated by that reconciliation poster, the relationship had already started to fray.

i guess if i had been paying special attention, i might have noticed it, but to me, they presented -- they were both very polite with me, and they seemed to be getting along and presented a united front, and maybe i was just oblivious. i mean, i remember that i asked hazel something about how they were getting along, and she said, well, let's just put it this way. the honeymoon is over, and now we're taking out the garbage. i suppose that maybe should have been a flag for me, but it wasn't, and -- but it quickly became apparent that if i were to do a book, it was not -- the book -- the path to the book would be a little bit rocky, and that it turned out that that day, hazel felt that elizabeth and i were sort of in cahoots.

i had the naive assumption like most white people, very naive about race, and i had just assumed that, you know, in talking to a white woman and a black woman and trying to win them over and win their confidence and get them to agree to talk to me for what was then just a magazine story, not a book, that, you know, whites would be natural allies, and it would be the black woman who would be more spectacle and weary of me, and it was actually quite the opposite, and i think that hazel quickly felt that -- hazel had done her homework. she's an interesting woman and a self-taught woman. she never graduated from high school. she dropped out to have a family when she was 17 years old, but she had done her reading in the civil rights movement, and she had learned that when the naacp

was founded, i think it was 1909, i may have that wrong, but about 1909, there were jews active in the establishment of the naacp, and there was a historic relationship between jews and blacks, and she felt that, you know, a jewish writer and a black woman were going to be sort of naturally allies, and weren't necessarily going to be -- that i might not necessarily be impartial in all of this, and so at that point, elizabeth steps out of the picture, and for the next seven year, i never spoke to her again. she would never meet with me. hazel leaves the picture, and refuses to speak with me despite i write her letters, and she's

interested part of this larger disillusion with everything that happened, so the first seven years of my research, and i had her suggest to you before that i was not working full time on this for 1 years. -- 12 years, i was gainfully employed for that time to, but for the first seven years, i concentrated my work on elizabeth, and it started, there's a nice little victorian bed and breakfast place not far from here in a pink house, and elizabeth came over, and we got to know each other, and that's what the interviews began, and there was a lot to talk about. i had to learn about elizabeth's family. i learned about the influence of her mother and particularly of her grandfather, her experiences at -- in the segregated schools of little rock, and what it was like to grow up black in little

rock in the early 1950s. we talked a lot, of course, about her year at central, and the experience -- the horrible experiences that she had there. you know, of course, there's this assumption that has grown up in recent years that a lot of this stuff is exaggerated, and i urge if anybody who thinks it's exaggerated, take the trip of to fayetteville like i did. turns out to be a long drive. these states are big out here. [laughter] the very long drive up to fayetteville where mrs. huckabee papers are, and mrs. huckabee, the vice principal for girls at central high school was quite a pack rat, and she saved all the disciplinary cards from that year, from the 1957-1958 school year, and there's a lot of them,

and there's a lot of them listing the various complaints that the little rock nine had about people -- objects thrown at them and being scalded in the shower, thrown down the stairs, and having their lockers broken into, and being harassed in gym class and having stones thrown at them and all of that, and it's all there in documents in mrs. huckabee's files in fayetteville. it was useful to go there. so i had a long time to interview elizabeth, and it was a -- it was a very satisfying experience. elizabeth is an extremely intelligent woman and sophisticated woman with a great appreciation for history in which i admire her for enormously. she understood what i was doing, and she never interfered with it. she didn't try to lobby me or

propagandize me or spin me in any way. this was true even after -- i showed them both my book before it was cast in stone, before the publisher pushed the button, i mean, when it was still malleable enough to change, and i remember i saved it. it's still on my answering machine, that i was very curious to see what their reactions would be, and one day i came home, and there was a message from elizabeth that i listened to with some aprehenciveness. david, this is elizabeth. my heart dropped because i knew she read. book. she said, david, there's factual errorren os 16, 82, 83, page 95 -- [laughter] she listed about eight or nine different mistakes that i had made, you know, that the street lights didn't go into her

neighborhood until a certain year or the oil was not on the streets before election day until such and such a time, or i had misspelled mr. crist's name at dunbar or whatever it was. these were the mistakes. elizabeth, you know, never tried to spin me or change my conclusions or attitudes on anything. she was just concerned i had the facts right, and it just heightened my already enormous respect for her. there were many things that i was afraid to ask elizabeth about. i mean, there's sensitive things about, you know, the many years that elizabeth spent sort of in the wilderness before she went back to work for judge humpfry, which i don't know if he's here,

i hope he is, and then the death of her son and the tragic circumstances there, but i did eventually ask, and it's all in the book, and she answered these things all unflenchingly, enormously courageous of her. finally, after seven or eight years of research, a version of my story came out in "vanity fair" on the website. it was never actually in the magazine, and then something mere rack cue louse -- miraculous happened. hazel read the article, and at that point, she could see i had no an bad against her and another not yankee do-gooder to take hot shots at her. even though she was not speaking to me, i tried to understand her

best i could and didn't have it in for her. also, she was heartened by some of the things elizabeth said about her. they had not spoken at this point for several years. the last time they spoke was on september 11th, thee september 11th of 2001 when hazel was in massachusetts and got scared by what was going on, and even though they were no longer talking to one another, who did hazel call? elizabeth for support and that says something about the relationship they had formed. at that point, i started to talk to hazel and make up for lost time, and i felt lucky about that because the book got a certain kind of symmetry. i wanted the book to be elizabeth and hazel, not just elizabeth, and so i caught up with hazel, and she soon

learned, i soon subjected her to the same incessant kind of questioning that i had subjected elizabeth. elizabeth was amazed i kept having more questions for her, and whenever i said to her, you know, this may be it, i don't think i have more. she laughed. [laughter] she came to laugh at a certain point because she knew there'd always be more, and then hazel got subjected to the same treatment as e liz beth, and i learned her story going back to redfield. she took me to where she grew up, to little rock, where she lived when she first moved here. i learned about her background, her sort of racial attitudes, a little bit about the -- about the day of the picture and how in a way how typical the picture was of somebody of her

background, you know, reflecting the racial attitudes that she had grown up with, but also in a sense a-typical, and important sense a-typical because she was an a-political girl. she didn't care about politics, didn't think much about politics, she was into boys and dancing, which was why she was sort of dressed the way she was that day. i mean, steve's show mattered more to her than brown vs. board of education. [laughter] she's the first to admit that. there was a lot of acting out that day. i mean, she just, you know, she was somebody who was kind of a performer, and she wanted to out perform the other girls that day, and that's what she did, and that was the moment that will counts happened to capture in the picture. she was just acting out, and she was also 15 years old, and i

think that, i think that's an important factor. she looks much older than that in that picture, and people judge her as older than that rather than a 15-year-old girl just out to impress her friends, so i followed hazel's story up through that very dramatic moment that we mentioned before in 1962 or 1963. it's even significant that hazel didn't remember precisely when it happened, but she'd seen these disturbing images on television. she was living in a trailer outside little rock with two young kids, saw images of the civil rights movement and these images of brutality, and she realized she had made her own unique contribution to that, and that i think it dawned on her slowly that her own children were going to grow up realizing that was their mother in this

picture in their history book, and she had an account to settle, and so she picked up the phone one day, this is one of those rush home things where people have different memories of the same thing. it's unclear whether she reached elizabeth directly or the grandfather answered the phone and took a message, but one way oar the other, at some point, they actually spoke, and elizabeth and hazel said to her, i'm the girl in the picture, and i just want you to know how sorry i am for what i did, and there's really not that much more to say about the conversation. it was a very short conversation. i think that there really was not that much more for either of them to say, and that was it, but it was, to me, an enormously significant moment in the story because, you know, every author wants to like -- it's easier to like the people that you're

writing about for whatever reason. you want to like them, and you want to trust them, and i thought it was very significant that in 1962, you know, when there was no oprah on television and no television cameras around and nobody was watching and nobody was recording it and not every, you know, not every moment was considered for tabloid television, and in the privacy in a trailer in the outskirts of little rock, hazel made that phone call, and so that, to me, put into a different light everything that hazel did subsequently. ..

with a number of sort of hobbies. allie dancing and various new age kinds of things. but also tries to get involved with the black community in certain ways. she starts working with unwed mothers and mothers with children in foster care. she works with underprivileged kids and takes them on field trips. again, the only cameras there were pointing shoes people happened to bring with them. there's no coverage of any face. her husband makes fun of her fur is still trying to atone for the

picture. but this is how she wants life insurance to be a role model for her children. and she's bothered by the fact that the picture keeps appearing with increasing fee every anniversary the picture appears that it's in all the history books in the fifth anniversary and 10th anniversary and all of that. and no one ever bothers finding out whatever happened to her. you know, she thinks she knows she's evolved, but no one else knows that. and she's not press savvy, so it doesn't occur to her to call anybody out and plant this story anywhere. it really takes the 40th anniversary concert is bring out her story. and i would imagine many people here remember the 40th anniversary in how she comes forward how the original photographer comes back to town and takes the second picture is that becomes the poster that sort of gets all of little rock's hopes up that skip

rutherford decides to put on a poster and is sold in the visitors center come is still being sold tercentenary apparently. people still want to believe the message of the poster. this is reconciliation at the bottom of it. and everybody remembers how excited everyone was in the idea was that if these two people could make up, perhaps little rock which has lived in shame for all of these theories and was an embarrassment to its citizens and laughing stock around the world. maybe little rock had finally turned the corner and there is hope leasing the relationship between elizabeth and hazel and their extensible reconciliation. on the one hand of course we know in retrospect that this was naïve to expect that two people could reach a cab so significant. but on the other hand, it was

pathetic. what i describe in the book is a story that's really quite extraordinary about how the two of them developed a relationship with one another. again, when people weren't looking and they made presentations together, they spoke to high schools and college kids in grade school kids together, they became sort of a roadshow and talked about their respective experiences. that part of it is all public, but they also started to hang out privately, too. they went to our shows together, three shots together, they buy books together. they went to hot springs together. and they actually discovered they had a lot in common and became -- they became friends into quite an extraordinary degree. and i mention that any motorist

in little rock was happy to pass them in a car and saw this white woman in black woman sitting in a car at the intersection, the woman driving because elizabeth never got her license. hazel is always the driver appeared those are the two women in the famous picture in here they were driving around together. whoever would've come to that realization would've driven off the road. so there was this bond. but as i say by the time i came along in 1999, it was already starting to fray. and i describe this in the book. i describe the causes of it. anything from elizabeth standpoint as they say, elizabeth is a student of history. elizabeth is very demanding of herself and of other of an very precise. she speaks precisely.

she demands precision from other people and she thought she couldn't believe that some of the things that hazel couldn't explain or sort of unconscious errors of omission. she thought it had to have been deliberate. and mean, i would be the first to say maybe elizabeth would agree. elizabeth was tough on hazel and demanding on hazel and she couldn't believe, for instance, that a photograph, seen that horrible could've been something as horrible as what happened on september 4th out of 57 could have been undertaken so lately. there are two of been more of a story to it. hazel had to have remembered more about it than she did. they said she didn't remember more about it and was as casual about it as she was added to have been a conscious attempt at dissembling. it had to be deceitful. they couldn't just be forgetfulness or inattentiveness. and there were many things like

this that elizabeth took issue with in hazel story. and i was one thing that was happening. from hazel's 10-point -- i mean, hazel felt this tension from elizabeth and felt antagonism coming from other members of the black community and other members of the little rock nine seem to resent her present at various events who thought she was out to cash in. where it should then all these years? you know, she was clearly out to make a buck. she couldn't possibly be sincere. and of course, he will do better than not admit that all of these years she had been working for racial. she couldn't convince other people of god. then there was the fact she took in the white community for all the probation and people who thought he is always a great embarrassment to the white

community she had become the symbol of white little rock that all of the good kids at central high school had been tarred by her brush and the world had come to think that everyone at central high school was like hazel that year. in fact, hazel had even been in for that year. her parents pulled her out within a week of the time the picture was taken and she wasn't even his tenet and show that year. and they wanted hazel just to go away. and they found hazel to being embarrassed and cheered and so, hazel found she was named flak from that community as well. and there's a store in the book about hazel going to one of her class reunions. it's absolutely striking to me that somebody in hazel's mission would have the nerve in the gut in a way to go to a class reunion, but she did go. and everybody sort of ignored her or kind of snickered at her. she heard people snickering nut

through the picture. she told me one of the girls in the picture -- one of the girls who were snickering at her was one of the same kids who had shown out the second floor window at central the day the black kids actually write. so hazel felt she didn't need this. you know, she didn't need this kind of disapproval. and she started to withdraw and has continued to withdraw to resent. in though, among all of the people i talk to for this book in a site day, i see a lot of you in the audience, hazel is not here today. hazel said that she hoped that -- she expected the interview she gave to me with the last that she would ever give. and publicizing a book on hazel will not go on television. hazel has -- hazel is out of

town. i spoke to her the other day and she's out of town, you know, it is probably a preplanned vacation, but it's also a little bit convenient. and i don't say that disparagingly, it she doesn't want to be around for any days. and i laughed out that they even got flack from oprah winfrey. the two of them went on oprah winfrey together. and opera seem to resent their reconciliation or their relationship in opera was first to call them very preemptory empires and quick with both of them in florida there was an episode where she was discussing the most important photographs of the 20th century and of course the picture of elizabeth in hazel was among them. but she got them on and off the program very, very quickly. and even though elizabeth and hazel were sort of coming apart at that point in a relationship

was growing more distant, they could both agree that they had been ill treated that day. and felt very bad about it afterward. i always lose track of time. i hope the name reasonably on time here. so, i think -- as i say, the last conversation was on september 11, 2001 and they've not spoken since. in looking around, i want to talk a little bit about how little rock has treated me working on this book. i have to say that i was self-conscious about coming down here. in the course of doing my work, i was very conscious, as they say, but placing myself in the position to judge in the convenience of the 21st century of judging people.

it's very easy to take potshots at people from different areas and not to have been here at the time and not to have known how i would have behaved. there is a quote that i came across. i'm not going to read anything from a book tonight, but i'm going to read one quote that i came across in the course of my research that i thought it captured my attitude towards my work so beautifully that it's the epigraph in the book. it's from frederick douglass he says, my interest in any man is objectively in his manhood and subjectively in my own manhood. and that's the way that i feel this project, you know, it was really a chance for me to try to assess where i would then and what i would have done in 1957 if i had been here. you know, a white guy, a student at central has cool for a

citizen in little rock or whatever and whether i would've stood up and how well i would've stood out. and you know, that's the attitude with which i tried to write all of this. i try to let the facts speak for themselves. i tried not to be any more judgmental than i needed to be and not to take the easy shots. a lot of people in iraq among most people in little rock were very nice to me. i got help small kinds of people at various research libraries. i placed a in the little rock paper for people's recollections. i had many interesting experiences, some very moving experience isn't some surprising next he says. i mean come history is always more complicated in the complications of the prices of history what nick said sublimation and satisfying to do. i mean, i remember in particular

in response to one at that i placed in the democrat gazette for people who remember the picture, i want to design the people in the picture and i wanted to find people who were at central with elizabeth. and i went to retrieve as many stories as they could. and i remember -- i thought that was some heckling before, but i don't think it is. i remember one woman calling me. i didn't get any responses to these ads, but i remember that there was one woman who called me. and she said, you know, my father was a segregationist. a white woman calling. my father was a segregationist. but he came home -- he came home tonight that that picture of elizabeth ran. i hope they get this right. a random in the democrat before been the gazette is the democrat was evening paper.

it was a very similar picture taken by a fellow named johnny jenkins that ran in the gazette the next morning. he's going to delta was not identified in either picture, which is interesting. one of the editors -- attacks and many of the newspaper people who are covering the story. one of the editors said that things were so inflamed that there was no need -- no sense in identifying her. besides tuition was just a generic white crow, generic segregationists grow and there was no need to identify her. but anyway, this person contacted me after the ad ran. and she said, my father came home that night we were sitting around the dinner table. and i'll always remember him saying, i don't want my kids going to school with them either, but they didn't treat that little black girl.

and i thought that was so moving that that was what he said in that she remembered it after all these years, that that picture -- that picture scandalized -- and very stephen segregationist that picture. my only -- the only fault that i would find, as i say, hazelwood tell you that apologizing, that coming forward was a mistake. to her it was a bad mistake that she made. it was ill advised. she says she's sorry that she did it and that all of these -- all of these people on those pink slips in mrs. huckabee's file in fayette though, none of them ever came forward, or very few of them ever did. they went on to live their life. no one ever gave them any grief. i tried to call a few of them.

and i didn't get very far with most of them. i remember calling one person in particular whose name was all over the files. i think probably a name that many of you would recognize, somebody in a position of some prominent in town. in a high number of me. he wouldn't talk to me about it. that was one way to do it, which was to pretend that nothing happened. and so, why not judgmental about a lot of people, i am judgmental about the people who really ran amok that year and were allowed to run amok at the school authorities and really paid very little price for it and in later years never did come forward. and i think also that there is this dangerous trend to pretend that things are not all that bad and that things have been exaggerated and that the little rock nine is sort of created a cottage industry of sympathy and

that enough already with this and let's just move on. and it's all exaggerated. and i would urge people not just to read my book, which is after all secondary history. you know, just go back and wait for the contemporaneous documents. go back into mrs. huckabee's files and read those reports. she had no ax to grind. she was just recording what was happening. and so i think that kind of revisionism of surface on the 50th anniversary. there is a story the democrat gazette in which many of the people who are at central in 1957 and 58 were saying that it was really just a few bad kid and think that not really been that bad. we have to guard against that. and i think that no one has been more vigilant about guarding against that of elizabeth. one of the remarkable moments in

the story is elizabeth -- elizabeth, a woman who once used to have to bring a waste basket lined with a plastic bag with her when she spoke in public for fear that she'd get sick while she was speaking, she was that scared of public speaking. elizabeth having become a depth and passionate and articulate and confident enough to give his speech was the one who was chosen to give a speech at the commemoration of the visitor center the day after that article ran in the paper. and you know, she is an eyewitness to all of this, and no one was betters suited to counter these arguments as things are not really all that bad and she gave a very impassioned speech about that that was very moving. so this story has a very happy ending for me. i mean, i feel very proud of

this book. i feel privileged to have met both elizabeth and hazel. and as i said, i've hired them both and that's a great treat for an author. i met a lot of interesting people doing this book. i think probably 10 visits to little rock and i've enjoyed my trips down here, even when the town was snowbound and completely paralyzed with maybe half an inch of snow. [laughter] and i learned that iraq apparently has has no snow trucks and i was grateful that there was food in my hotel because they would know where to begin everything was closed. but the town was nice to me and most of the people i interviewed were gracious and patient with me. and i hope that they feel that my book is fair. that's the most important thing. so it's a happy ending for me.

you know, as it stands it's not a happy ending for elizabeth and hazel. i tried not to sugarcoat it. i tried not to influence it in any way. i didn't think that it was my role to church to bring them together. and you know, when i would come down here i would visit them separately. i would really talk to one about the other until the very end the reporter always puts out the hard questions until the end. but at a certain point, i would have to say, you know, hazel says such as though about you. is this true? hazel elizabeth said such and such about you in just crisscross and go back and review what one of them had said about the other. but one thing struck me in i don't know whether elizabeth would agree with this or not, but i was struck by how each of them, when they talk about one another, they each get choked

up. i mean, it's very clear to me and maybe i'm just the outsider in the armchair psychologist, but it's very clear to me that it's the strong bond that exists between these two women and very profound connection between them. and you know, it wasn't my place as i say to bring them together. i asked only at the very end at the behest of my photographer. my photographer said, you know, we have tried to get a picture of them together. payola to history to post one more time together. and i actually relaxed and lead to those. and i don't know if you could predict what their reactions would've been. after all the years they put into it, my reaction was a little bit naïve still. but elizabeth was smiling because, as they say, elizabeth is a student of history and elizabeth relates for better or worse, d.c. people and perpetuity are going to be

joined together and certain obligation for the sake of history to that history see them as they turned 70. i hope i'm not giving away some secret there, elizabeth. [laughter] and so, elizabeth was game to do it appear she said i'm not sure what i was dating her, but i would do it. and hazel said -- hazel didn't say no. hazel said i'm not ready yet. and the operative word there is yet. and i am hopeful that sometime when we're all out of the way and nobody is looking at nobody's paying attention to them that the two of them to come back together again in some way. and that would indeed eat a very important question. it's a mac caring about the story and my book and i'm happy

to take any questions you might have. [applause] >> we have time for some questions, so please raise your hands. ms. abrams. >> why am i not surprised that you're asking the first question? >> you've got to know me very well. >> i did and you are extremely helpful. i must've seen you on that list because i got the a's on that list and you must've been on there. he went on there, okay. >> chicha shows that. >> david, i am a scholar history and i have great respect for you as a researcher of history. but most historians also our profits. my question to you is online at the history that you did for not

only little rock, but for this country and at the time that we are now as a prophet of research and the divisiveness that is now president as we have an african-american president, what is your projection of how far we have come in this country, not just in little rock? >> well, my first comment is that the word's history in profit, at least when profit is spelled with an asp are rarely associated with one another. and probably profit is not much more. i think that -- i think that this story has hopeful and both pessimistic and hopeful elements to it. you know, just extrapolating from this story. and as they say, i think that on

the one hand you could read this with great despair, you know, that to people of good faith had the experience that they had. on the other hand, as they say, i think that there is this very profound connection between the two of them. and let's face it, there is an amazing collection of material that i came across. i want to take up too much -- i want to give people a chance to ask questions, but i want to take one slight digression to say that there was an mit professor who came down here in 1957 to research what was going on in little rock. and i went to look at his papers at mit. he died several years ago.

and his papers were absolutely voluminous. 40 boxes of them. there is everything in their podesta, the route, which was heartbreaking. and so it turned out that i do -- his son-in-law was a former "new york times" reporter, whom i knew. and he said, let's look around. i spoke to his son and his son said, you know, there's on my box of this stuff in the back of my closet. let me just look in there. sure enough the little rock file with the mayor. and he spent several days down here interviewing the leading citizens of little rock, going to the arkansas -- the segregated club, the little rock club. no or blacks allowed. this researcher was loud in there because he was a guest of the people, but he could never have joined.

and the world that these people describe a fan of both got to do something like all of these people are now dead. and it's like spoon river anthology for those of you who remember their voices from the dead talking about little rock in 1957. andy was really pretty bleak place. and you know, racially it was in the neanderthal age. and you know, you don't have to be pollyanna to know about the strides that have been made since then and how even an event like this would have been unthinkable back then. you know, you fly to little rock. i always think these are superficial things may be, but the first thing you see when you fly to little rock is the little rock airport commission, the photographs of those five or six people and i think there are two blacks than for whites or whatever or maybe it's three and three. and you are reminded right off the bat how much different things are here. at least on the surface.

and so i think all of -- so much antagonism towards obama is racially oriented and they remain very, very deep divisions in this country in real misunderstand anything real animosity. and there's a of a lot of work still to do. and i almost feel guilty tacking on, look how far we've come because that's the usual pollyanna ash addendum. but there is some truth to that, too. >> yeah, i've got a question. >> looks like any historical book bring elements of truth because people were things that happened say that something happened here. i don't know much about it, but something happened here.

but it happens everywhere. it happens everywhere. and that is what made me start talking about those painful memories and that type of thing does continue. it happens everywhere. but some people go to the primary sources. [laughter] >> and there is a primary source. [applause] >> i think you should take that as a compliment. >> she is the primary source and so with many gene. >> stille says spirit is. >> okay because i've often said that the one biggest mistake that i've made in doing this book is not writing concurrently about many gene in doing a box that.

you know, there could be too many people different than many back for. they are complete opposite, only united in how each of them as. and it was a missed opportunity and i hope that somebody else does her book. >> it's really more of a compliment. i had a pleasure to read this book this past month. and if you don't have a copy, don't leave without it. and a couple of things i want to say. dave describes addresses that the two girls were that day. and i was so -- i could identify with both of them because i had both of those dresses. so that's the kind of care that he took in telling the story because he made them very easy to identify with it and the other thing i want to say is

that more often than not, folks come from out of town and try to write the story often make all of you white people felons and all of the black people heroes. and instead, you gave us to beautifully complex human beings. and i really, really appreciate that. >> i'm grateful to you for saying that. complex human beings. and i really, really appreciate that. >> i'm grateful to you for saying that. complex human beings. and i really, really appreciate that. >> i'm grateful to you for saying that. the story about elizabeth and her really, really appreciate that. >> i'm grateful to you for saying that. the story about elizabeth and her sister, anna, making her skirt for school is so powerful to me. and the fact that elizabeth never wore a skirt again, you know, the skirt that was made with such hope for the first day of school and that she put it up in the attic and it disintegrated at some point was turned away. andy abrams first of all had the

right idea but that was a dress that should've ended up at the smithsonian. that is where he belonged. instead it disintegrated. i'm glad that you notice that. you know, ralph brody is here. ralph came to my last talk. ralph and i have different feelings about parts of my story, but i have great respect for him. and i tried to be fair to him and as i say, i try to put myself in the shoes of anybody who is here then and not just throw around these very easy generalizations about people. this is a complicated situation that was thrust upon little rock. and you know, i try to capture it, as much of its complexity as they could. >> yes, he's got a question right there in the back.

>> my name is care lack of lack of a second near school student. i actually was with mrs. eckart on the 50th -- when they have the congressional gold medal ceremony earlier this year. i was the person responsible should be alongside her for the whole function. so several hours. so that was inside her stake in thank you so kindly for being so wonderful. my question to you is this. are they to stand the upper national race drama ends at a ranch in texas, where there is a rock. on that rock was something derogatory and inflammatory. how would you go about advising today's youth and understanding the history associated with that with so many disconnected from

that particular history and the word associated with eyebrow? >> well, first of all come i am hopeful and not just for my own selfish reasons that people read a book like this. i mean, everybody is in high school at one time or another. and i think this book sort of frames the issue from the stand point of two high school kids living through all of these issues. and i think for people who don't know much about this gear up for these issues, it's a good initiation into them. that is the first thing. the second thing is that i think that this has to be addressed with great candor. and i mean you absolutely no disrespect. that rock bed maker had on it. people won't say because they think it's better not to say the

word. but the whole outrageousness of that episode can be captured only if you don't euthanize it or says it over or it's scary. it needs to be articulated, you know? and i didn't hesitate if that word came out in the course of my book, i used it because that was part of the language of 1957. another perry story illustrates that it's part of the language of 2012. or 2011. it was painted over and apparently it disappeared at some point. but beneath the surface of the history of this country, there are a million episodes like this. it's everywhere. it's absolutely everywhere. and you know, we do ourselves no favors not to acknowledge it. and i'm kind of pleased whenever haley barbour says some paint or when an episode like this happen

or we can each think of many other nsaids, where race sorted peaks up its ugly head, it needs to be discussed. it needs to be ventilated. it hasn't gone away and it's deeply embedded. and so, i think it a good thing and it's in stark good when it happened. even when we discuss it, as you and i are discussing that now, and needs to be discussed explicitly. >> ladies and gentlemen -- [applause] >> this event was hosted by the clinton school of public service at the university of arkansas. to find out more, visit clifton school.uis vyas.edu.

>> what qualities in a candidate would incentivize voters to hire or fire them? >> it's not exactly the way i approach the question about because that's really up to the voters. voters have a variety of different characteristics that they consider important. in the characteristic that voters find most consistent and candidate is the primary determinant to vote choice. the second characteristic come at least in congressional actions that voters consider important is prior experience so what do voters behavior. klee, those are the two factors voters consider most strongly when deciding whom they want to hire or fire. >> in your book you compare competitive elections that the structure of corporations that when an employee is not performing they should be fired. what is the disconnect between

competitive elections and the system you discuss in your book like >> disconnect is there's a lot of different definitions of a competitive election. one of the things i talk about in the book is the fact that people have conflicting definitions of what a competitive election is. for example, too closely associated disconnects in the elections in which the final vote tallies for the candidates are closed and elections about which we are certain about the results. they are related but different definitions and competitive elections. when we talk about uncertainty, for example, what does that mean? election as a way to hire or fire's buddy. you have an incumbent running for office but essentially what is happening is there's an employee whose contract is up for renewal. we renew that employs contractor not? that is really what an election with an incumbent is. to think about what it means to have a competitive election by the uncertainty definition. in a competitive election is which we're uncertain and

there's a random element, especially competitive election in the case of incumbent is tossing a coin to decide whether or not to fire an employee. that's not a good idea. if you want a strong company, what you do is retain the employees were doing a good job deterministically and fire employees doing a better job. what you don't do is flip a coin. but that's what a competitive election as if to go with the definition of uncertainty. their other definitions of a competitive election was run into other problems. the basic issue is if you think about elections as an employment mechanism, most of the definitions of the competitive election don't make a lot of substantive sense. they met with objections to making your best to improve the system? >> essentially the argument of the book is that if you want a healthy company, what you do is pose a credible threat to fire employees who do not do a good job.

but the purpose of doing that is give employees an incentive to do a good job. as a result, they don't get fired. if you have to fire people, something went wrong. the argument in the book is that elections should operate in a way such that there is a deterministic threat to fire incumbents who do a bad job. i'm not threat causes them to behave in such a way as to be fired. and what that does is avoid definitions because if that happens we will not observe elections that are close or marginal. we will not observe in certain elections. we will not observe turnover and officials in most definitions of the competitive election. the important thing in the book as that would pose a credible threat. it is always the case, in that's something that wrong. >> how do you post the threat to that the election process more

seriously or at least their political performance quite >> that's voters responsibility. nothing we can do to force voters to post a credible. we can play allowed to some degree, but ultimately voters are not willing to pose that threat, based nothing we can do in a policy sense to pose that threat or to faux supporters voters that the threat. it's the responsibility of employees to pose that tattoo employees and employers not pose a threat, there's nothing you can do structurally to create that threat. >> so who is the audience that you would like to read your book? >> there's a couple of audiences. one part of the audience of scholars, people who study elections in a very different ways. but the book is also targeted to some degree as political pundits because there is a common argument in politics among pundits that we need for a competitive elections. i don't think these arguments are well thought out.

part of the problem with these arguments as they come from the belief that elections are analogous to markets. elections are like markets. therefore we need competitive elections. i don't think that analogy holds. it's more useful to think of elections has employment mechanisms, which is what they are. so essentially the audience for the book are the people who make these kinds of arguments about and it democracies and i think they are not. >> with the upcoming campaign in 2012, what changes would you like to see in that election process? >> i'm not sure that there are any major policy changes that i would like to see because i am not convinced that any major policy changes would have a to effect on credibility of the threat to fire incumbents. in fact the threat had depends

on the capability and willingness of voters to pose a different atlanta do so, there is nothing we can do by changing the law to create that threat. so as far as policy, i have some counterintuitive argument about election law and how election laws should be designed. but ultimately, none of those policies will work as voters are going to pose the credible threat to fire incumbents to do a bad job. >> thank you.

>> yes, the first book was on the ground for impeachment of clinton.mpeachment rendering the various ways liberals lag. actually, the column book, how lils. to talk to a liberal if you mask covers everything under the sun, including dating tips in ev washington. >> sandor, treatment, demonic, are those fighting words? gy, >> a while, like i said, i was ? liknking of calling this book demonic.e hinkin butg a small slice of christianr would understand that i was talking about and i want people to write my book. of work in thi

think you'll learn things, i think you'll sigh the world in a -- see the world in a different way so, yeah, we give them zippy titles. we put me on the cover in the black cocktail dress usually because it annoys liberals. >> host: from if democrats had any brains, they'd be republicans? could be the best of ann coulter according according to you? >> guest: it's more of a quote book, yeah. >> host: here's one quote: >> host: steven in south jordan, utah, you're on "in depth." good afternoon. >> caller: hiann. i'd l >> caller: i have some comments about religion and the but liberals. there are s principles that have applied and acted upon thend ace

spiritual and economic well-being of individuals econol being of individuals as well as nations. and these principles came from god himself, and they formed a foundation of civilized society, and they're commonly referred to as the ten commandment pes. what the liberals have done in probably the last 50 years is turn these into the ten inconvenient truths. and you can go back to lyndon johnson's great society, his welfare program. he turned honor thy father and mother into honor thai mother and big government. and we can see what that's done to the black families and a lot of families. i don't know, have you ever read the keynote address given by obama? >> guest: um, no, but i think you need to read my book, "godless," where this point is made more pithily, i think. that is not an inconvenient truth. no, the platform of the

democratic party is breaking each one of the ten commandments one by one by one. thou shalt not murder. what is the most important issue to the democratic party? yes, that's right, abortion. sticking a fork in the head of little babies sleeping peacefully in their mothers' wombs. thousand shalt not steal, their entire tax policy is to generate class envy and steal money, redistribute worth. certainly put no gods before me, they put every god before the real god. um, i don't think there's a living liberal who wouldn't give up his eternal soul to attend the carters' "vanity fair" party to be cited favorably in in the "new york times." the worshiping of idols is sport for, it's more than sport. it is religion of the left. their religion is breaking each one of the ten commandments one by one. >> host: and from "godless" you write:

these pro-choicers treat abortion the way muslims treat mohamed. it's so sacred, it must not be mentioned. the only other practice that was both defended and unspeakable in america like this was slavery. >> guest: uh-huh. that's true. and interestingly, even, um, even in places where slavery was accepted, and it wasn't in many parts of the world, people would not let their children play with slave traders the way i imagine people wouldn't today let their kids -- it's one thing to say, oh, i'm pro-choice and let a woman decide. it's a different thing to let your kids play with a child of a local abortionist of which there are not very many. it's a repellant practice. but it is peculiar that they'd elevate this and pretend it's a constitutional right, and yet we can't use the word. you don't have, you know, gun rights groups refusing to use the word "gun." it shows you what a hideous thing it is and what a hideous thing they know it is.

>> host: now, another recent tweet from ann coulter, why doesn't barack obama tape the same speech and have them run it every night? new berlin, wisconsin, you're on. >> caller: okay. good afternoon, ann. it's wonderful to talk to you. i just finished, i have finished reading your book, and be i love it. >> guest: thank you. >> caller: and, basically, i'm here from the home of joe mccarthy, scott walker, paul ryan and also bass teague days -- bastille days. i just read your book at that time. i asked people why are we celebrating bastille days? so we had a lot of fun with that. but i want to know one of my main questions, because i do watch all this back and forth and all this stuff. so many times that if we would just follow our constitution, we wouldn't be in this mess. and one of these main things is article i, section 11 of the constitution. you know, basically, all the powers are vested in congress. they are not vested in the

bureaucrats. they are not vest candidated. and what are we going to do, to me, to bring back that and make people understand? to get our power back for we, the people -- >> guest: i'm so glad you ask. um, no, this is, this is a very important point. democrat policies are so unpopular that democrats have had to stop promoting them themselves. releasing violent and, you know, child molesting, murdering criminals, for example. so instead they just nominate judges and then assure us that the judges are very moderate and centrist, and they get up to the supreme court and suddenly discover, look, in this 2 200-year-old document, we found one. there's a right to gay marriage and abortion, and we must release 36,000 criminals from the california prisons. a recent united states supreme court ruling, by the way. so now they get the courts to do their dirty work for them and tell us it's a constitutional right. and i think the only way to rein this in, i mean, obviously, we

have the method we've been trying for the last 20 years, quarter century, elect a republican president, um, wait for vacancies on the supreme court, get a supreme court nominee who doesn't hallucinate when reading the constitution. um, that really didn't work out so well. we had three, you know, three republican appointees -- sandra day o'connor, david hackett souder, justice kennedy who all voted to uphold the heart of roe v. wade though not the reice holding. as and ally ya said, i don't know how that's fouling precedent. -- following precedent. in any event, we need to get five at large supreme court justices. this is one of my plans, just for a laugh to start engaging in if conservative activism and to hallucinate the sort of rights equivalent to the rights being hallucinated by the liberal justices so that we'll suddenly have a right to a flat tax,

we'll have a right to own a rocket-propelled grenade, we'll have a right to free champagne for blonds. um, all kinds of fantastic rights i can think of. oh, i think we'll declare the withholding tax unconstitutional. and then our justices can all admit it was just a joke because liberals can never understand how heinous their policies are until it's done to them. and the alternative plan to, i can state much more quickly, we need a conservative, a republican executive to say in response to an insane supreme court ruling, for example, some of the guantanamo rulings under president bush, um, i wish he had just said thank you for your opinion, the constitution makes me the commander in this chief. i am not, i am not giving, you know, special constitutional rights to terrorists grabbed on a battlefield as happened at guantanamo. thanks, supreme court. >> host: first a tweet and then an e-mail. the tweet by scott wagner: i like the way she flings her

hair, can she sell a dvd of that while she reads "demonic"? that's the tweet. e-mail, tim johnson. ms. coulter lays it on the line, and all who disagree are, in her words, stupid and demonic. >> guest: um, no. some are misguided. mostly i think it is the worshiping of false idols, however. i think it is this desire to be considered cool and in and be not have to think about anything. >> host: her public appearances are an avalanche of gnarl words, and if serious conservatives want to be taken seriously, the first thing they have to do is distance themselves from the likes of glenn beck, rush limbaugh, grover norquist and ann coulter. >> guest: well, i don't know about the other guys, but i would say not at all for me. [laughter] snarl words. i mean, this is like what i said about joe mccarthy. what's your point? what are you disagreeing with?

what's the snarl world? was i think that was not -- because i think that was not all sweetness and nights in that e-mail. [laughter] but this is how liberals avoid talking about the issues. i mean, that was the theme of "slander" that they anat metize us. racists, sexist, ugly, mean. don't listen to this person, don't read this american. danger, danger. well, if you could argue with us on our ideas, i think you'd do so. and if we were despicable and harm? ing, i don't think we'd have -- snarling i don't think we'd have so many fans. .. >> guest: was that guilty clerics i remember the theme of it. no, i think that it godless. it's the liberal saints and how

they -- it is sort of the reverse of what i just said. the democrats knew techniques that drives them crazy that conservatives have their own media, talk radio, media, internet, and fox news where you can occasionally see a conservative. so there approaches to send out sobbing hysterical women to make their points and you can't respond to them. from cindy sheehan to the jersey girls to joe wilson, they had a relative guy. you can't respond. they're allowed to waste the entire left wing agenda on us. >> host: next call for ann coulter comes from georgia. >> caller: hi, such a huge, huge fan. former president and merry state university and a former reagan scholarship recipient also from the phillips foundation. >> guest: that's great, congratulations, nick to meet no you. >> caller: that was back in thaw 2007, but really i have two

questions for you and i am reading demonic right now by the now way and it's my favorite of hery books. i've read literally everyone's entire grounds and misdemeanors. i read it when i was in eighthdr grade. just so you are a fine american and will go fire you are. >> guust: you are a fine american and will go far. >> caller: is it true your mother is from paduca, kentucky? >> guust: yes she is. i was down there a couple weeks ago almost, we had a family reunion. >> caller: i'm really want a

autograph of my book, "demonic". ue gn't figureutow to i can't figure out condescended to you. mehost: i'm sure you can get it to me through the phillips. foundation. tom phillips is the owner.. >> guest: to phillips. brought up "human events". conservative book club. very other publications. he gives out, very impressive that you won this award for a young journalist. they get an award, i guess it is called the reagan award. i haven't been judge. i'm aware of the various winners and tom phillips, so he oversees this whole complex which i'm a small part. you can definitely get the book to me through the phillips foundation. >> host: next call for ann coulter comes from new york city. hi, mike. >> caller: hello. good afternoon to all of you. i would, like to talk about the recent act of white terrorism in norway. initially this is described by people on the right as

muslim terrorism, which was incorrect. then it was described by people on the left as christian terrorism. which is also incorrect. the only way this could have been described is that and drers breivik, is a white racist terrorist who committed an act of white terrorism in a worldwide system of white supremacy. forget christianity. forget right-wing. for get left-wing. that is the only way this should be looked at. and to do so any other way is, incorrect. >> guest: i agree with part of that. and as luck would have it, i read his mannyfesto. not all of it. it gets a little representative