can do business with. you have the tax cut, obama extended it, and i still count against it. they never should have extended the tax cut for the rich, in my opinion. then you have the commission cochaired by alan simpson. he doesn't pay any attention to that. and how about romney. well, what's romney could work your? which is the one we will know? the answer to your question, in my opinion, is that the primary process has moved the republican nominee so far to the right that he will have to make a sharp you turn. a persuasive one besides a sharp one. >> muchness and other programs online apple tv.org. university of virginia professor

risa goluboff talks about her book, "the lost promise of civil rights." the interview is part of book tv's college series. it is just over 10 minutes. the book is "the lost promise of civil rights" and it is by risa goluboff. professor goluboff, what is the civil rights section? >> the civil rights section is a unit of the government that was created in 1939 in the united states, just before world war ii. when it was created, it was part of the department of justice, and then it was created, it was thought to be -- it's charge was to protect individual rights, fundamental individual rights. but people were not exactly sure what that meant. with a first thought it meant was labor rights. the rights of workers trying to collectively organize into unions. when world war ii started, race

became much more prominent on the national political scene. the civil rights section started to think about how to protect the rights of african-americans. as a result they started to think about how to protect the rights of african-american workers. in the 1940s, it the civil rights takes a whole bunch of cases, and it prosecutes all kinds of employers for violation of civil rights causes. >> was informed by order or legislation? >> it was formed by executive order, franklin roosevelt, and at the request of frank murphy, who was the attorney general. frank murphy was a big labor guy from michigan. he was a very big supporter of labor unions and he was also that she goes on to a career as attorney general and supreme court justice. he was a big supporter of individual civic rights as well.

>> was there controversy about a? >> there was not very much controversy. it was very small, about seven people. a lot of what it does over the course of world war ii to, it can do, because it likely slides below the radar screen? does it still exist? >> it became a division of the civil rights mission. it doubled and gradually gets bigger especially after the 1964 civil rights act and 1965 voting rights act. in a way, yes, it does. >> how did the civil right section time to the title of your book "the lost promise of civil rights"? >> it is crucial to the title of my book. the book is about civil rights brown versus board of education.

>> 1954? >> yes, 1954. it is about brown versus board of education in 1954. the idea is to look at civil rights before mr. brown. we moved from there into a new era of civil rights. this book was what it was like before brown and what we had looking at jim crow. what they thought jim crowell did to them, the lawyers, and how it harms them, and their understanding of what jim crow was is a lot broader. there was -- the image was not only a law saying that black children and white children go to different schools, water fountains, antidiscrimination laws, it is also hiring whites

in the industry that only higher whites or african-americans for the worst jobs. government and economy meddled in discrimination. it reveals a much more total and economic deprivation and explication, as well as about stigma and symbolism in state-mandated law. >> during that period, risa goluboff, what were some of the successes of the civil rights section? >> the biggest ones had to do with agriculture workers in the south. actually, who were really a lot of the worst off of african-americans. and americans of any racial

color. a. a lot of the complaints akin to the civil rights section or from agriculture workers in the south who are essentially held in slavery and forms of involuntary servitude. they asked the civil rights section for help and they actually prosecuted individual employers were holding their employees in involuntary servitude, and they went on from those agricultural cases to cases of domestic workers, which usually involved african-american women. those workers complained that not just that they were being held against their will, because often, they were allowed to go to the store by themselves or leave their employer's presence, but they were so subjugated to them that they were kept in attics or in chicken cubes, ever felt little they were paid almost nothing for their labor, they were never given days off. and there are cases that the civil rights section prosecuted in which they say even though they weren't held in change, even though they were being held by coercion, this is a form of

slavery. and people can treat other people this way. >> when did the term civil rights become into our lexicon, and prior to the era that you were talking about, when the civil rights legislation or action start to move forward? >> american history -- it means different things over different periods of time. one of the things that i discovered as i wrote this book was that during the early 20th century, civil rights largely referred to property rights and contract rights of individuals who wanted to be free to contact with employers or employees or a property owner about interference from the government. in the mid- 1930s with the new deal regulations, every individual can have a right to contract to take on dangerous work with no protections.

we have agencies now that say you can't do that. in the 1930s, civil rights comes through with a collective labor rights. and also the fair labor act tomorrow they all kind of protected, and then something interesting happens, which is in the 1940s and 1950s, civil rights becomes much more entwined with race. but that is not always the case, and that really changes. one of the other interesting things is that it is not always clear that civil rights means voting rights or that civil rights means the right to eat in a restaurant in a non-segregated basis. if you look back at the civil war, the reconstruction era, the 14th amendment, which is one of the main amendments that supports civil rights today, was ratified, people really thought that civil rights were about owning property in making contracts and sitting on a jury and being able to sue in court.

but not about what they called social rights. being able to go to a hotel or ride on a streetcar or to a restaurant or attend a school, and certainly not political rights, which were voting rights. the definition that we have of civil rights coming out of the civil rights movement in the 1960s is very different from multiple changes and definitions are that you see over the course of american history. >> where did you grow up and how did you get interested in this topic? >> i grew up in brooklyn. when i grew up, my image of what it was to be an american, based on my own family where we had a very robust family history, we come from the eastern europe, and you go through long island, and eventually live in brooklyn. i got to college, and i came across james goodman in a book he wrote called stories of scottsboro. i took a class on it.

>> have you visited? >> i had not. i have never really thought about lately different kind of america with different race relations and ethnic generations. here is generation after generation and very different racial politics. i then spent several summers in college in the south. i spent time after i graduated from college in the south and i just thought that it was a world very unlike what i have experienced great one of the things i discovered in writing the book was that we think of jim crow as a southern experience. i don't think that's true anymore. there was a lot about jim crow was certainly true of the whole nation. certain mandates, though not

entirely at all, but a lot of the more private economic forms of exploitation existed nationally. part of why i think we haven't gone as far in getting to civil rights as i would like to see us do is because we defined the problem is a southern problem of law and then we thought we fixed that southern problem of law. but it was a national problem of law and economics and culture and society and politics and we haven't actually figured out how to talk about the rest of it all that well. >> professor, why do you call it the lost promise? >> i call it that because i think lawyers in the 1940s had a sense of what it would take to undermine jim crow. but we could've had a interpretation of the constitution that would've been much more efficacious, undermining all of these things with jim crow.

instead we called it a victory. it is understandable, right? on once it wasn't a huge victory, but we like to build on victories and we don't want to go back and say oh, there was other stuff we didn't get to do and we should do it now. that is much harder, especially for lawyers like to work in defined categories. once you have new categories after brown, they want to build different categories. >> what is this photograph on the front of the book? >> it is from the 1940s and is an african american family living in a rural area. they are looking to the future. even though it is called "the lost promise of civil rights", even though that title is pessimistic, i am an optimist. and i like that she was standing very determined and optimistic and looking out and ready to take on whatever there was to take on. >> risa goluboff is a professor

here at the university of virginia. this is her book. "the lost promise of civil rights", published by harvard. book tv has over $100,000. paulo book tv to get scheduling updates and author information and talk directly with authors during our live programming. twitter.com/booktv. >> what are you reading this summer? book tv wants to know. >> i am wrapping up a book that is called citizens of london. it is a history of london during the war and includes very prominent people, edward r. murrell, who was reporting in the united states with healthy issues that we should get into the war on england's side. and a gentleman that was sent over by president roosevelt to

deal with the land lease program which was our foreign land program. and a fellow named weinman who has replaced joseph kennedy, president kennedy's father, joseph kennedy, of course, was partial to the germans. i suspect the reason why roosevelt brought him home. it is marvelous about the three of them and the interaction and their advocacy of the united states breaking out of its isolation and getting into the war on england's path. the author had previously written a wonderful book, which i highly recommend. called troublesome young men. it is about the members of parliament who rallied behind winston churchill who opposed -- orchestrated his rise or in the

'30s. these two books, if you're interested in reading them back to back, it's a great look at in the early stages of world war ii and i highly recommend them. >> for more information, visit booktv.org. >> many of you might not have even been born in 1973 and 1974 when this took place. but richard nixon, in one of the biggest landslides in the united states, which meant most americans who voted in that election voted for him. yet, when facts came out, suggesting that laws were violated, the american people, and including the overwhelming majority that had supported richard nixon said congress, you have to investigate and you have to have a special prosecutor. the laws have to be enforced no matter what. in the end, when they asked him on a bipartisan basis to go for

the impeachment of richard nixon, the company overwhelmingly supported a 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 any ideology, it was the bedrock principle of the rule of law and the preservation of our constitution. and americans united on that theme, regardless that they had voted just about a year and a half before that. people put behind them their own partisan views and send what is good for the country and the rule of law and one standard of law was critical. i said, that is really important principle, and i believed in it, too. then we got to the bush years. the accountability principles

pretty much worked. i don't want to say they were perfect. hardly. government doesn't operate in a perfect world end in itself is rarely perfect. but then we got to the bush years and things changed. there was a book written on it, there were terms in the impeachment proceeding that work, that what we saw and we wrote a book and we saw him however, that there was no accountability through the impeachment process. then we said well, let's look at what else can be done but it was clear in the debates. he or she can be prosecuted.

there was nothing in the famous debate but said oh, you've been president? you get a forever free from jail card. nonsense. it was understood that presidents can do very bad things. they were human. they created checks and balances, and because they did that, they understood that congress could do bad things as well. they were not the idealistic about people. they were very practical and they were very pragmatic. so he said okay. let's do this book about what kind of accountability can exist. to our surprise, as we begin to look at what the criminal statutes were, what we saw was not just the possibility of accountability, but that the bush team was excruciatingly

sensitive to the possibility of prosecution and had tried to arrest bares in a variety of ways, including slicing and dicing and rewriting criminal laws to protect themselves from accountability and protect themselves specifically compatible liability. you can watch this and other programs online at booktv.org. next, in his new book, rodney king recounts his life following the video recording of his beating by los angeles police on march 3, 1991. mr. rodney king talks about his old legal problems and alcohol addiction since then, as well as the acquittal of four of the officers in the case. it led to writing in l.a. this is about an hour and 15 minutes.