speights museum in d.c.. and we conclude tonight's prime-time programming with our weekly act awards program. ..

but people0s museumity with the civil rights act. the year that a man who uses words in a most revolutionary way, martin luther king, was the youngest to get the nobel peace prize, and the year that dick gregory -- that was like the sound track to the pain of latin america. so i wondered for you as a kid what books meant and what words meant for you. >> well, a proper question. i must say honestly, the first book i was exposed to when i grew up in a pentecostal church, and you know i was in church every day for a week. monday night at 7:00, tuesday night, 7:00, wednesday night, 7:00, bible study. thursday night, 7:00, missionary meeting. friday night, 7:00. young people. 'saturday morning prayer at 9:00 a.m. sunday morning, 9:45, sunday

school. 11:30 a.m., sunday more than worship, 5:30'm children worship, 7:30 people sunday worship, and i did that for 18 years of my life. a long way of saying the bike first came to read was the bible. it is the book that to this day i still have most of the things are from the baseball, and it was -- the experience of learning to love to read the bible that turned me on to reading. i think that's true of a lot of black folks, given or christian upbringing, and the wonderful stories in the bible. it wasn't just that i would read the bible for the sake of reading it. i was reading it long before i came to the meeting. i was reading it long before it became real for me but i loved the story-telling in the bible, and i say for all the books ever

written, it's hard to find a text where the stories are more empowering, more uplifting, more inspiring. are you serious? david and goliath? andrew in the lion's den? i love the stories, and all of these affliction, old testament, new testament, the stories were to powerful to me as a child growing up in the pentecostal church, and that opened up the door to other books that changed my life. invisible man. a black kid growing up in a poor black family. ten kids, 13 of us living in a three bedroom trailer. if anybody felt invisible in this all-white community i was raised in, it was me. i understood the rage. and so i had to pick these books out. i had the strength of the black folks in my church to seek these books out. years later, james washington,

classic text, a testament of hope, which is an anthology of the text of dr. king's work who i regard as the greatest american this country produced and not because he is in the oddend and he is my friend, but because he wrote a book that saved my life. cornell west wrote, race matters. it changed my world views about race matters in this country. those are some of the books that impacted me. >> so, obviously this is a conversation so we're going to have a q & a segment. so if you have question, write them on cards being handed around, and i think lovely miss michelle -- we have some volunteers that will gather your cards and we'll get to as men questions. i'm a baldwin -- magic and

mayhem on the page. it's march of international women's issue month, and we saw a wonderful kenyan writer, her memoir about a beautiful, beautiful story of kenya, and really the political turmoil of kenya. of course, the anniversary of the -- and we saw isabelle, a prize-winning journalist. so when it comes to the ladies and the writing, what women writers do you kind of turn to where their books kind of do what i call trouble the waters, they make you think, they stimulate, they challenge? >> there were two that we all know.

-- or four of them that impacted my life. and i'll tell you a story about each. books told works of fortune, moved me so much as a child. we be cool. i remember learning that as could child and it stuck with me and i remember the first time i read this book i decided, this negro is crazy. but we became friends, and i was obviously involved in her services later, and my tv and radio show a number of times. [inaudible] >> memorizing her work.

second, tony morrison. i made when i was a student, and i don't want to filibuster here but i was so anxious -- i remember like it was yesterday -- i was so anxious to ask tony morrison a couple of things, something that seemed that all -- and at it one of the rarest times in my life when i was -- so silly i deliberately got through the first book but i wanted to see tony morrison. i talk to cornell west every day. but tony morrison -- i stood up and i asked her a question in such a way and talked to me afterwards, and again, won't go into all the details but i remembered that the way she handled me asking a very silly,

adolescent question, and i've had many experience on my television show where people have said really stupid things, but they said things that were factually incorrect, where they said things that were terribly embarrassing. i was talking to an african-american author one day who was a major television talk show host now, who shall remain nameless, who happens to be a black woman, but in the context of this conversation, she said to me -- she had a chapter in her book about race, and show wrote, how die know -- she side she hated being call african-american. and just an american. so she was trying to distinguish, i'm just an american. and so we got into -- when i read the book we got about a deep conversation on the tv show and at one point she said to me, how do i know i'm even from africa? and i wanted to say, girl, look

in this mirror. she said, i could be -- and she -- this is live were we're live and she said to me, how die now i'm from africa? i could be from egypt. she said this on national television. and all i could hear in the become of my head was tony morrison and remembering how she treated me in that moment when i said something really silly, and i turned to the camera and i said, ladies and gentlemen, we'll be right back after this commercial. i could have pounced, because i didn't like her arguement to begin with. but i didn't need to pounce. because the humiliation and embarrassment, i saw her handlers go, oh, and i just let it be, and i remember how tony

morrison treated me when i said something silly and i chose not to pounce. so it wasn't just her writing. i'm a male, obviously, and i love her earlier stuff, and tony morrison really didn't -- almost 40 years old and she just started, and i was always reminded that even at that early age -- i grew up in a poor family and i wondered how i would make a contribution. and tony morris sin did it at 39 or 4 , there was time for me. miya angelou took me on my very first trip to africa. if you ever meet her, mention tavis smiley, and she'll tell you the story of my first trip to africa and all i did for ten

days, and i was glad, was carry her bags around africa. i was a kid and for ten days we went to ghana, and i sated a her feet. for ten days i listened to her conversations with everybody. including the president. she gave a lecture at my first time going to africa, and i'm at her side, with miya angelou giving a lecture. my first trip to africa. been to 16-18 countries out in but i'll never forget the first time i went courtesy of a african-american writer, and what resonates with me. my own world this, three-bedroom trailer, being deep in poverty being laughed at every day and made fun of every day, felt pain in all ways, all worlds.

i resonated with her book even when i was -- and this has been such an inspiration for me over the years, primarily bus it's hard to find a writer who speaks with greater clarity and more courage. she is so courageous and so clear what she wants to say, clear to the appoint of unsettling you, clear to the point of unhousing you. so clear in her work. so those are some of the -- there are many others, and i get to chance to be inspired with news and transfirmed every day, talk to so many wonderful writers. >> my mom and my dad's country, i'm from ghana, too. >> i loved it. >> at it kind of mandatory. so, then, books for you --

obviously you interview authors all the time in your work, but in the beginning, words are not just your living, they're your love. you heal a whole relationship with language based on your love of books and i feel like we create -- when you love books you create a relationship with them. they can be refuge, a friend, escape, savior, and i wondered about maybe difficultyies -- talk about where you are today, becomes that have been either refuge -- i think books can save your life. words are that powerful, and i wondered if you had moments where particular books stood out that had the power for you. >> one will sound silly but -- the first is a book -- a

beautiful book -- a series of books called -- and when i was -- i read the books day in and day out and i read it day in and day out. if you know the story, there were four kid on their own, they were in a big world, trying to navigate, trying to be independent, and it just resonated. i had wonderful parents but our situation was so difficult at times. holes in my shoes. cardboard in them going to school, wearing hand-me, down clothes. i won't go long on this, but a whole bunch of us had that story so my story is not unique, but something about the box cars, even though they were not black,

the situation resonate with me and i loved as a child-i read that book over and over, anything in that series i could get my hands on, would read. that was the first book. and again, keep in mind, i'm raised in an all-white community, an all-white school. and i really feel for young people these days, even today, who find themselves living in places and being educated in institutions that do not expose them to the best of blackness. it's another reason why -- while i don't do it every day, i have become much more open over the years to children's books in the platforms i have on tv and radio because i want parents to be exposed to material that would be good for their children, particularly parents of color. when you saw holly robinson

talking about two books, i took those conversations deliberately and tried to make a statement to the audience about the time of books they out to be exposing their children to. and the other book, james watson. i did not know at the time when i put the hands on it, but -- interviews and writing, wonderful, and i have four, five different libraries between my house and my office. i have four or five different libraries, and at every one of my libraries the only book i have in every library, my office, my tv studio and my house, my radio, everybody

everyplace i go, i do not have a copy of that available. i have copy available in every writer and every location i work. my never know at what point in the day i'm going to need to reference something from king because he is so powerful. so that book i take refuge in all the time. always going back to that. and i have five copies. am an art collector. and artifacts. malcolm x at fares and king, miles davis. i'm a collector of art and sculpture and artifacts. one of my prize pieces is a copy of a testament of hope, in hardback, signed by the author, and everytime i go to that copy it -- i look at the names and it

was a gift from the king family of what king martin luther saidg and all the kids in descending order, all the kids in order of -- in chronological order, all of their names are signed, coretta scott king, and everybody signed it. i have a lot of kings but this book is signed by, at the time, all the living members of the family, and i open that become now when i'm in the library and i pull that book out and see coretta is not here, and yolanda gone. and i treasure that gift from the king family and i use that become all the time. so there are others i find refuge in as a child and as an adult. probably use this book more than any other book. >> this is one thing i remember

going to the launch of your imprint, smiley books, and watching isabelle wilkerson on that clip talking about the great migration. we come from a history where literally words were current because they were forbidden. so they were this stolen precious thing that was so particularly and peculiar special to us but when you think over 20 years, the business of creating books, the publishing world has really changed and one of the things you talk about is the need for authors to do more than just have a relationship on the page with their language. they need to think about the industry and how they're going to bring those books to an audience and have that audience fall in love with that work. talk about that. >> i know a person far wider, more -- will be speaking about

this very thing. my name is on the imprint, smiley books, by a long-time editor and leader in this industry. is she here? sheryl is the person who runs smiley books and makes all the wise choices every day. but i say three things that occur to me as the guy who -- cornell west. people we have on our roster. we have a great roster of authors about the three things that come to mind -- people laugh at me, we decided this is

a number of years ago but the industry was already teetering, already on the precipice of failing and now we're getting closer to the age where people think and the industry things so much about digital publication and all the book stories are disappearing and the independents are gone, and barnes & noble is the only one standings and there's a fight about the future of barnes & noble, and the who industry is saying, have can opportunities to get their work printed. at it just changed so dramatically. but these are hard truths. particularly at a black writers conference. no particular order. number one. people aren't buying books. to be truthful they aren't necessarily reading books the way they do. it's a hard reality. dr. west and i were talking, if you're a would-be writer or a write are just getting started, i hope you understand what

you're up against. i hope you know you're cutting against the grape. i hope you know you're going up the rough side of the mountain. if you would be an author and an african-american author, at a black writers conference, understand this is not the same -- what you're being to undertake will not be easy if you think it will be, then stop now. you don't have the courage and the conviction and the character to stick it out to be creative in what you do, get your work out, stop now. i don't want you to beat your head against the wall, give yourself a migraine or an aneurysm because this is difficult, hard work. evolution of our culture and of our civilization, so much of that ties into our preoccupation, with reality television and the like. it's a whole different world. so you have to understand, this is difficult work because the industry is changed so much.

number two, you have to be prepared in this industry now to be really creative about what you do. put another way, black writers need to understand this, and this goes for all of us. we have to get away from believing or thinking that success equals readership and best selling. that success equals a million sellers. i'm not going to lie. i don't write a book -- i don't want to invest the energy, time, effort into a book that ain't going to sell. if i wanted to do something that wasn't going to sell, i wouldn't have wrote it. so if you write books because you want them to get out there, but even i have had to step back. when you have a television show every night and a radio show every day, people know your name. i it doesn't necessarily mean everything you write is going to be a best-seller and if you

define success by the number of books you sell, then i think you miss the point what it means to be a writer. imagine defining success by the number of books sold. defined by in the number of books you sold -- if success is clearly defined or only defined by how many books you sell, then you miss the point. so you have to accept, and i accept now, it's really about doing the work that needs to be done. at it about your calling. your interests and your purpose. at it about challenging folks to reexamine the assumptions they hold. expanding the inventory of ideas, introduce americans to a concept they've not considered. getting people to look at the life in the world. success is not just about the number of books you sold. case in point, michelle alexander is doing extremely well now with this book, "the

new jim crow. "money when the first presented it, they printed two or 7,000 copies. i want to see it was between two and seven thousand. that's all they printed on the first print of her book. but michelle alexander, with this provocative text, got to work and went around the country, doing all the thing outside have to do to get the country engaged in a conversation about our criminal justice system, about what the calls the any jim crow. now thanks thanks to cornell wet become has 200,000 copies. look at the conversation. look at the conversation that michelle alexander has kicked up about the racist prison

industrial complex and prison system we have. so success isn't defined but the number of books sold. and dr. west is one of my dearest friends and we have done a lot of things but never written a book together until now. and it's called the rich and the rest of us. a poverty manifest stop we have been talking about this for a long time but now the book comes out in april and we're going around the country. i don't know how this book is going to sell, and it doesn't near the me, doesn't matter to dr. west. we're going to do our part to continue to raise ire on the american agenda, a conversation about the poor in this country, and how we reduce poverty and eradicate poverty. this is not about book sales. this is about the work. so you have to understand the

industry has changed. number two i hope you don't define success just by the number of books that you are selling. and number three, how creative are you willing to be? how hard are you willing to work? how are you going to engage social media? how are you going to challenge african-american media? i made a joke earlier that wasn't a joke about the fact that other institutions in black america are not covering this black writer0s conference that happens every year. it's not like they don't know it's happening. it happens every year at the same place and same time. i'm not trying to demonize all black media. i'm trying to suggest the black media or black people in media are more important and more necessary now than ever before. black media are more important and more necessary now than ever

before. and a whole bunch of them bought into the nonsons of a post racialers in when obama got elected. america is less racist trayvon martin would not amen that. but we are less racist but we're not post racial, and anyone the era of obama, the black media, which has laid down, the black media, in many ways who have not pressed him the way he ought to be pressed but the black media is still more important and necessarily than ever before. why do you say that? because there's certain questions that don't get asked if youent ask them and certain people you saw on this real early -- certain authors who would never get profiled if we don't profile them. so our role in this process now

is more important than ever before because of all the things. >> so let's take some questions from our audience. this from -- what would you credit as your greatest obstacle to achieving your level of success and what advice do you have for young professional seeking greatness. >> i glad they asked about seeking greatness. [inaudible] i'm glad the young person asked about greatness. let me take you what west says all the time. trying to frame it in my own way. my own voice. my own ideology. you can be successful without ever being great but you will

never be great without being successful. you can be successful but never great, but you can never be great without being successful. success without greatness would be donald trump. i'm not hating on the donald. donald trump is successful in his world. now, brother couldn't go through bankruptcy two or three times and still be successful. i'm going to life that alone. that's for another time. but ain't nobody going to call donald trump great. you can be successful without being agreement but you can never be great without being successle. greatness, as dr. king says, any of us can be great because any of us can serve. out it takes is a heart full of great and the soul generated by

love. we're back to the formulation of love and -- if you're going to write, i want to know do you love what you do? do you love the people you talk to? and who are you serving in your audience? who are you trying to love, who are you trying to serve through your odd audience? so i'm glad you understand that greatness and success or two great things and the greatest obstacle i face -- i told somebody the other day in the conversation -- this is somebody i was meeting with because they are so highly placed so highly placed in the industries they work with, and so high on the hierarchy charts i was trying to meet we the on a project. so i'm meeting with them. i'm goo-goo gaga over meeting them and we had an hour and a

half in washington, and for the better part of 90 minutes i was listening to this person who i was seeking help and partnership with, not complain but just open up to me as if i were intimate with him. opened up to me's the hell where they are due to racist, and prejudice, even at the level they operate at. a story about john johnson -- you all know the story. mama only grew up -- only owned oning in her whole life. she was a domestic cleaner, cleaning for white people, and she was able to buy one, only one thing she opened, the furnish in -- insurgent furniture in her apartment. and he talked to his mama into owning -- into pawning,

basically, the only thing she owned, her furniture, and for that she got $500. his mama loved him so much that she basically pawned her furniture and gave her boy $500, and with that $500, john johnson started ebony magazine. went on to become almost a billionaire, and the rest, as they say, is history. she is dead and gone, and ebony magazine is still going. the point is -- i love the story about how he was working to not just be successful but to be great and enfire people. so i have found that even people at the highest level have obstacles to ensure every day just to get to where they are. you read john johnson's book and see all he had to go through. he had to outsmart the white folks just to own a building on

michigan avenue because negroes couldn't own property oning onin michigan avenue. so we all face the same obstacles. no matter how high up in the process. that's a long way of saying this. as long as you black, understand this, that being black is a perpetual obstacle. being black is a perpetual argument. >> just becomes one last question. is there a book currently out on the market that can or does describe the scope of the african-american experience in 2012, and if not, do we need such a book? >> good question. a lot of weight on one sentence. a whole lot of weight. i don't know that i would put all of that -- i will say this. there's so many stories about

our journey, that still needs to be told. i go back to the books -- i'm always amazed that people spend the time, the energy, and be dedicated and disciplined and loving enough and committed enough to spend all of that time writing a book to tell a story that so desperately needs to be told, and to this day, while i can't point to a particular single solitary book that does that, there are so many stories that still need to be told and that's why i'm still bullish on books. i'm still bullish on books

because there's so many stories about our condition that need to be told. some of you may have seen on my tv show, right around the time -- went viral. i got into a tet atet on my tv show with two sisters. we went back and forth for a whole night on pbs about their being nominated for playing maids in this movie. you can figure out where the conversation went. what my attitude was about the nomination. 80 years here we are back to where we started. the two should have been nominated for being a maid and i said i'm mad at you for the work you've do. not mad at you for the role you choose. i'm mad at the -- the only thing they want to celebrate is the same story line, and it's just

so much more -- so much more about us that needs to be told. again, don't want to belabor the point. i will say i look at your beautiful faces, there's still so much work that need tuesday -- needs to be done and the reason why smiley books is in business, we don't expect to get rich at smiley books. what we intend to do is to enrich. not to get rich but to enrich. we went to enretch -- enrich the dialogue and tell stories that need to be told. so we talked about the challenges out there these days and every one of us has a story. put another way. every one of us is a story. we don't just have a story, we are stories, and our stories need to be told.

do what it takes to tell the stories that are again untold. >> i was going to ask you to answer this briefly. one book you wrote was how to make black america better. last question. how have books made you better? >> wow. they make me better every day. one thing i love about what i do on television radio, just being engaged with dialogue with him every day, you get a chance to talk to authors. i was telling somebody today i'm going to ask my team -- i'm curious now, this conversation has made me curious -- does the percentage of persons who appear as guests who happen to be authors. i know -- that's so rare these days. katherine cryer on my show and she said how rare it is that she

gets -- a wonderful book about our democracy but she was saying how rare it is that we have access to television shows or radio show, you don't have to speak in a three or four minute interview and just try to get the surface of the book out, but there's not enough places today where you get real down in-depth conversation about what really matters. and so every day i feel so fortunate, i feel so blessed, and i nowow do, to be on television, on a radio, where i -- this is why ownership is so important. i own my radio show. i own the building. i own the studio. i own it. some we own smiley books. we sheryl makes all the decisions. why is that important? when you're trying to sell a story you know need to ofs to be told, some folks don't want to

be told. so that control is very important. so every day i get a license on tv and radio to interview people and talk to people, who have written wonderful books issue get enlightened and get encouraged and get empowered, i get inspired. so black books and black authors do that to me every day. i know they do for countless other people. so we have to keep writing and keep imagining, keep creating, you have to keep meeting in wonderful ways, different ways, to tell the story that can be told and i can't imagine -- hears some titles -- all the black writers. [applause] >> tavis smiley. we got our literary swagger. thank you so much. thank you so much. >> a round of applause for tavis. and our great moderator.

and yourselves. fantastic. >> this event ways part of the 11th national black writers conference. for more information, visit national black writers conference.org. >> so many of you might not have been bornin' 1973 and 1974 and watergate took place. most americans voted for richard nixon, yet when facts came out suggest that laws were violate, the american people, including the overwhelming majority who

supported richard nixon said, congress, you have to investigate, the laws have to be enforced. no matter what. and in the end, when the house judiciary committee acted on a bipartisan basis to vote for the impeachment of richard nixon, the country overwhelmingly supported that verdict. and what did that tell us? that more important than any political party, and more important than any president of the united states, and more important than any single person and more important than any ideology, was the bedrock principle of the rule of law and the preservation of our constitution. and americans united on that theme, regardless of how they vote just bat year and a half before that. we're not talking about ancient history in that vote. people put behind them their own partisan views and said, what is good for the country and the rule of law and one standard of

law was critical. so, i said, gee, you know, that's a really important principle and i believed in it, too. and then we got the bush years. the can'tability principles pretty much worked. i won't say they were perfect. hardly government doesn't operate in a perfect world, and that in itself is rarely perfect. but then we got to the push years and things changed, and so i and my coe author cynthia cooper wrote a book about impeachment. i wasn't an expert on it. that's a niche area of expertise in this country that ten of us have had the experience of dealing with the terms of the constitution and the impeachment proceeding that worked, in the nixon impeachment proceeding. but we saw, and we wrote a book, and we saw, however, that there

was no accountability through the impeachment process and we knew the framer0s of the constitution and it was clear in the debates that once the president leaves office, he some day maybe a she, can be prosecuted. there was nothing in the framers debates that said, oh, you have been president? free. you get a forever free from jail card. knopp sense -- nonsense. the framers understood that president can do very bad thing. they're human. they created checks and balances because they understood president can do bad things and understood congress could do bad things. they were not ideaistic about people. they were very practical and very pragmatic. so, he said, okay, let do this book about what kind of accountability can exist? and to our surprise, as we began to l