>> good afternoon, everyone and welcome to this chapter of the harlem book fair which is essentially the 150th year anniversary of the emancipation proclamation. our question today what passes for freedom the 150th year of freedom. thanks to the quarterly black review and the direction and genius of its founder max

rodriguez and thanks for our panelists we will hear from shortly. ibm christopher paul moore special assistant for the schomburg center. our talk today what passes for freedom begins with the notion that african-americans have long been ambivalent about the achievement of freedom. it is a notion that perhaps comes treacly from the american paradox of the kinship between slavery and freedom for 200 years. freedom seems sometimes to be elusive and the benefit of the privileged. is the elusive mix of freedom exclusively african-american experience? what is the distinction between emancipation and freedom? freedom of movement, migration, religion, and the freedom of expression are some points we will explore. as any freedom yet to be delivered and in the freedoms run amok that can amend the right to bear arms, stop and

frisk. 12 people were killed in colorado have the perpetrator then stop or frisked based on his symbol parents he wasn't a black or brown he wouldn't have been stuffed in new york city. should the idea of freedom be redefined to the 21st century reality? what passes for freedom the 150 years of a region of freedom gives a time span for freedom based upon president lincoln's signing of the an official proclamation on january 1st, 1863. and that very emancipation letter hand written by president abraham lincoln will be here at the schomburg center in september for a visit to 28 to september 21st to september 24th. you are all invited to attend. it is called the preliminary emancipation. it was sent to confederate

states and union sleeper holders on september 22nd, 1862. it called for the end to the civil war. within 100 days were the president or your slaves coming you're 4 million slate's will be free. that remarkable letter will be here at the center coming from the new york state library and museum along with dr. martin luther king's powerful comment on the 100th anniversary of the emancipation proclamation in 1963 and documents also will come from the national archives in washington, d.c. that will be year to mark important freedom anniversary. what passes for freedom? in the interest of historical literacy, let us note that according to our historians and scientists, freedom was brought forth upon this continent by a new people thousands of years ago. 12,000 years on our island of manhattan and for a longer time elsewhere upon this continent.

the recent discovery of the universal connection to particles and mass may offer the best definition of the freedom expressed by the first american who lived in connection with the sun, the moon, stars, rocks, plants, birds, water, wind and weather. 500 years ago more people arrived and the freedom of the first ancestors changed. in 1776, freedom changed again and again the declaration of independence for more than 3 million people who fought courageously to end the tyranny and slavery they said of a foreign leader, king george. fourscore and seven years our nation lived, evolves and divided fought nearly to its death before repairing or patching itself with a proclamation for the emancipation of 4 million more

people. 150 years ago, president lincoln resolved that these dead shall not have died in vain, that this nation shall have a new birth of freedom. what passes for this new birth of freedom before we go to the panel i would like to offer a first comment from all turtle schaumburg the person whose name behind this phenomenal research collection in the new york public library. people typically called him dr. schaumburg though he didn't have an advanced academic degree. his heritage was after a latino and german. he was born in puerto ricans in 1874 just one year after slavery ended on the island. according to legend he was 10-years-old when his fifth grade teacher proclaimed black people had made no contribution to world culture or american civilization. that opinion was not acceptable or believable to arturo schomburg.

we reported he dedicated his life to protecting documents worldwide. evidence of contributions of the african diaspora over a thousand years. he emigrated to the u.s. as a teenager. some believe we have romanticized his commitment. i will offer now an account given by the fbi in 1920. the bureau was investigating marcus garvey, one of the african-americans most important leaders. and mr. schomburg was speaking on that sunday at liberty hall on 138 st in harlem april 1920, less than half -- 1920 was also midway in the jim crow era. jim crow was the national policy to destroy african american progress and the very reason for the universal windber association and the national association for the and fans and of colored people groups that reformed to eight african-american freedom during

the horrific so free era of jim crow. this is how the bureau of investigation agent heard mr. schomburg on the subject of freedom. quote, a man by the name of mr. arthur schomburg commended the universal negro improvement association of plummet's wonderful work and stated that he was quired to offer all he possessed, even his life if necessary for the success of this undertaking and for the progress of his race. again, he was glad to offer all he possessed, even his life if necessary for the progress of his race. what passes for freedom can take a lifetime, and by any means necessary. our first panel seeker on what passes for freedom, nell irvin painter is one of the leading

historians who just happens to write great books. professor emeritus from princeton university she's the author of several books including southern history across the color lines, creating black americans and the history of white people. welcome, dr. paynter. is there an aspect of freedom at which you think we should take a closer look? >> actually thank you. thank you. [applause] >> i would like to pick up on to that you didn't explicitly mention that before i do that i want to say that the ability to generalize about some 39, 40 million people so talking about black people a letter member that it's easier to look from outside of from outside

individuals what black people are, what black people do. it is a social, cultural way of defining people that can rest rather uneasily with the person who comes from within. so the person who comes from within is situated, is situated geographically, and a black americans have always been disparate initio graphic way. there's always been people in the south there is also always been people in new england and in the far west and in the far north. and personal experience is really closely related to where you live. how about whether you are a man or a woman or if you are gay or straight or intersects? you're sexual orientation and gender, all of those also

influenced how you feel, how you think and how you move in the world from within. and that can be quite different from the grand marquis' generalization about black people this or black people that or black people don't or white people do and so forth. what about class? people who were rich live differently from people who are poor. although traditionally, african-americans have been poor people we have not all been poor people and even those of us who are poor live poverty in different ways and those ways have to do with our families, with our upbringing of the youngest child or the oldest child. all of these are what makes you a person from within. so, let me put it on the table that i'm talking about in this sense that from without what gets put on you from outside.

there are two freedoms that i want to talk about. one is bodily freedom and integrity. the freedom from violence. i started my career as a historian working on the 19th century, working on migration of black southerners from mississippi and louisiana and texas and tennessee into kansas in 1879 right after the end of emancipation, and over and over and over again the documents that the people created said we are not safe. we are subject to violence. there are white writers and our neighborhoods who burn and pillage and rape and kill. so the whole question of bodily integrity, the freedom from

violence, this has been a concern from the time of indentured servitude slavery, and remember that slavery into servitude rests on a foundation of personal violence. the person who owns you and controls you can rule you because that person can hurt you so, freedom from personal violence has been a concern throughout african-american history. so that is the first thing i want to put on the table to talk about personal violence, about social violence, about racial violence, and how crucial -- what an enormous difference it would make in our personal lives and in our national lives if people who identified as black

didn't feel subject to personal violence. that is the first thing. the other has to do with stimulated. wouldn't it be nice to be free from stereotypes? negative stereotypes which makes it possible to see a criminal and a black young man or see a horrible black young woman. i am now paynter and so part of my education was studying the history of large. and if you look at the history of art separate from the history of black art, you see some very different dealings with the body one of the prime sources of subjects in long black art is new. and you very rarely see news and african-american art because of

the stereotypes and the messages and the overlays and the undertones. largely it has to do with sexuality. sometimes it has to do with violence. but the whole question of the weight of stereotypes, the weight of the negative stereotypes very much influenced what and how african-american artists work. so i'm going to stop on those two. a question about personal violence and the question about negative stereotypes and turn to my fellow panel. >> thank you. >> our next speaker, obery hendricks, jr. is a scholar at the university and religion politics and social policy in america. he's the contributing editor to the encyclopedia of politics and a commentator in the oxford bible and author of the universe bends towards justice, radical reflections on the bible from

the church and about the politics, and the politics of jesus rediscovering the true revolutionary nature of jesus teaching and how they have been corrupted. dr. hendrix. >> thank you. good to see everybody here. [applause] its my task to talk about freedom in the context of religion, and to speak about freedom of religion in the context of the emancipation proclamation, it seems to me a curious thing given that freedom of religion in america is enshrined in our constitution's of the very first amendment. so instead of the general theme, i am going to approach the topic from the vantage point of what churches have been or have not been, what they have done or have not done since the emancipation proclamation. the major focus the will be the

black christian church which is the major locus of black religionocity in america. but first, a word or two on light christianity. said the proclamation white christianity in general have become more civilized. that's to say free from racial hatred. it's very seldom almost never do the congregation's now leave sunday services well, no wonder to what congregation's leave sunday services for a fun afternoon of watching a black man, woman or child tortured to death at the church door now. a century and a half later most previously all white churches in the nominations are in varying degrees. and mostly white denominations like the episcopalians in the united church of christ are more progressively engaged in the struggles of civil rights and social justice than many black churches.

even the southern baptist convention, which was formed in opposition to the emancipation of enslaved black bodies has this year and elected a black pastor as its president. although this might not be as momentous as it seems because by most accounts numbered among those apocalyptic just leave it to jesus preachers preach internal heavily salvation while giving its short trips to engage in the structure of the social and political oppression that the block really needs salvation front. despite the progress in some churches and denominations it still seems to be an undercurrent especially in many evangelical churches. and i'm talking about those questions christians who spit on their humanity of undocumented workers, calling them the legal and such as if they are somehow lower forms of life for children

from a lesser god. and i am especially speaking of those white christians who seek every subterfuge and crackpot conspiracy they can find as reasons not to accept the first black president as their beloved brother. [applause] but my main topic of discussion is the black church. and my question is this. after the needs of pitcher proclamation, how are black churches using their relative freedom to struggle against political, social and economic structures and policies that still today keep the very sheet of their flocks from fully having life and abundance in every earthly attention or to put in this secular term tikrit savitt fully in every aspect of the american dream? as my graduate school classmate reminds us in the unfortunately titled article the black church in that article he reminds us

that there is not now and there has never been a monolithic black church which is his main point. in other words, there is no one entity we call the black church rather there are black churches and this is an important point because there is a repeat of fiction that because some black churches and ministers have been active in the freedom struggle it can be said that the black church or all black churches have always been in the forefront of the freedom struggle. that simply isn't so. of course this was much more the case the never completely the case prior to the man's opinion proclamation and in the century of the various forms of legally enforced american apartheid. yet not even martin luther king never received the support of a free black preacher. he had not even perhaps the support of most black preachers. let it not be forgotten that the progressive national baptist convention was formed to support the civil rights leadership

because the national baptist convention. but there are three dimensions in today's church though they are not unique to the black church. we have the past to which is converting and nurturing of church congress gets and aspiring and teaching them sharing accumulated weakness. and we have the prophetic which takes up the mantle of the prophetic imperative to strive for ever greater freedom, fairness and equity by doing as biblical profits like mica and amos and isaf models and proclaimed that we must do it. that is the struggle against the structure of injustice and exclusion. so in his words, justice can roll down like water in the mighty stream. then we have the performance, which is just like it sounds. the entertaining performance of religion. the reduction of religion

defined what seem to have krona to new heights and much too many black churches. so let me suggest one answer to the question that i posed in this preliminary way which i hope will engender some discussions. first has for the role of nurturing and teaching, the black church has always done well in this role and in its post emancipation freedom of mobility which it generally contains to do as well except for the prosperity church which in my opinion would lead their people than to a selfish and individualistic obsession with materialism that jesus would have never counted. as for the prophetic dimension there is no question that they are not using their freedom well. most seem to have forgotten the cry of the biblical prophet to fight for justice. apparently most have also forgotten the words of their own savior that the spirit of the lord to preach a good news to the poor people and the

liberation to the oppressed and i give him to harold changes challenges to and changes in the structures and policies and distorted relationships that may people poor and keep them poor. black churches fare worse in their growing fascination and reliance upon the performance that dimension of church and as i call them. the reformists and entertainment on the part of acquired musicians and most egregiously on the part of creatures it reduces congregations to audiences that are a little concerned with prophetic justices reduces them into excited crowds clamoring for the next reform. as a 150 years after the emancipation proclamation how? i would say not well. while they revel in their freedom, they do little to protect or expand. i'm speaking generally now. or to make our society and our body of public.

in some ways this is a freedom that in many black churches is being squandered. thank you pure [applause] churchianity. thank you. african-american studies at columbia university where she has served as director of the institute for research and african-american studies. dr. griffin is the author who sets you flowing the african-american migration mary tariffs coming and if you can't be free, the a mystery in search of billie holiday. [applause] >> if i were to have a central ever attention to any progress but freedom, i think that it would be its elusiveness on its

experience in fixing starts which has been the experience of black people in america on their kind of ongoing quest for freedom speaking of freedom as a goal to think about freedom is a process is one that often gives birth to the efforts to counter the freedoms of freedom in some ways gives birth to on freedom, and what do i mean by that? i want to talk about a particular aspect in my own early work on migration on african-american migration as a practice of freedom. sweeting to the period of enslavement, black people running away fucus slaves running to the north we expect there to be all kinds of laws and rules to keep them from having a freedom movement so that there were bill laws that

require black people who travel if they were enslaved to have passage from their masters and if they were free to have papers. with emancipation proclamation with the coming of former emancipation, we have numbers of black people, hundreds and thousands of black people leaving the plantations wondering if largely just to experience of freedom movement but also in search of their families the lost through a kind of efforts. people were very family conscious looking for their families began almost immediately i think this is very interesting. almost immediately after the end of the civil war, we get the passage of black codes to replace the slave codes in places like mississippi. they basically sought to reestablish the slavery, conditions of slavery and sought to reestablish the white supremacy and and especially sought to curved that movement,

that mobility, the vagrancy law. so if you are a wandering black person, if you are a black person who doesn't seem to belong somewhere, not only could he be arrested because this is the real purpose it wasn't just to arrest you, you could be arrested and forced to work for free. you could be free and slave. so we get the reconstruction amendments that seek to challenge that and seek to change that. but it's every step of where black people try to practice their freedom because the institution of a vision and the legislation of law that seeks to curb that and i give us that history just to say that i think we should always look at that relationship between freedom and on freedom. we took of the great migration of black people. there are actually two waves of it coming from the south to the north. black people trying to leave conditions of the freedom, disenfranchisement, dispossession, jim crow, racial

violence. racial violence is the reason that most black people gave for leading to protect their children from launching but not just launching come from race central in the reasons they left putative and coming north from coming to harlem to schaumburg where they have greater mobility. they have greater freedom, but they also are segregated. they need residential segregation, they need restrictive covenants. their children in need of redlining. their grandchildren and their great grandchildren need stop and frisk. all of these because stop and frisk is part of a long history of efforts to curb black movement and lack mobility. disenfranchisement, it happens again and again and again. so i would suggest that we think about the elusiveness of freedom, the relationship between freedom and the efforts, the immediate efforts to curb it that they've always had a kind of give-and-take sort of sit and start to the struggles and the quest for freedom. so i will stop there.

[applause] >> thank you, professor. our next speaker, tanner colby. >> i don't use that term lightly. >> author of a biography of the late john belushi and the chris farley show a biography in three acts he is also the author of some of my best friends the strange story of integration in america. [applause] >> thank you. >> so, as you can probably tell from that introduction i come from a slightly different background than the rest of the panelists. i sat down i will cut about four years ago when we first elected a black president and realized here i was enthusiastic about having a black president and i didn't have any black friends. and so i felt i was awed and i decided to write a book about it because i figured if i come out

pretty typical standard middle class american white guy i don't know any black people and we have had 40 years of school buses and affirmative action and fair housing programs to supposedly bring us together if i don't know any black people them clearly something went wrong, we took a left turn somewhere. so i set out to sort of investigate the various areas of my life and to see why they were not integrated. looking at schools and churches and other ways obviously i was going to write about the work place and my first instinct was well i will write about publishing. i work in publishing now and then wouldn't hb if i turned the lens on my own the publisher and wrote about race at viking. so i went to my editor and i said within that be a great idea to talk to all the black editors and find out about life in this industry, and her answer

editors. so i shifted my lines and look at advertising which is a place where i worked for many years and there's a very segregated industry, and as i was at a moderate devotee of the industry was being sued by the naacp were threatened with a class-action lawsuit like the month after i felt that the great narrative took. it's very for -- very fortunate. the more i delved into the lawsuit they were suing the industry or one of the premises is it is an old boys' network. you know, it's all of these agencies are billed on social networks and if you don't come from the right family, the right society, the right background, you don't have your foot in the door. and so their press was all of these, you have all of these black people in the industry who have these credentials but the are not part of the same social networks of their for that qualifies the discrimination. but the fact is advertising is a

relationship business. door social capital is your qualification of the jobs. the lawyers were looking at it backwards. they were saying credential was what matters and we need to compensate for this lack of social capital if you don't have the social capital and the degree doesn't really mean as much. i can across this quote from martin luther king he said i may do when a desegregated society but i never know my total capacity until i live in an integrated society. i cannot be freed until i've had the opportunity to fulfill my total capacity by any artificial him hindrance or barrier and so i think that goes to ray -- what you're saying at the beginning what is the difference between emancipation and freedom and the emancipation, like desegregation was simply the removal of, you know, the great barrier. emancipation is okay, what do we

do now. whereas freedom is what are we going to create. what constructive healthy environment are we going to build in the absence of this oppressive system that we have tried to dismantle. and since the end of jim-crow how we tried, the debate about the estimated integrated society where the multi-cultural pluralistic society that's what i've tried to get in the advertising chapter and there are two gentlemen here today who were generous and giving the interviews for the book and their lives sort of embodied the parallel of the traces. one is down here in the second row who many people may know is the jackie robinson of the industry, the first black man to work at a white ad agency advertising for white people when the industry was totally segregated up to that point.

and over here is another gentleman louis who, having beaten his head against the wall for many years, trying to break the color line eventually succumbing you know, i'm not going to waste my time with that anymore and he left and started the oldest continuously operating ad agency of america. [applause] >> and in both cases, they basically proved dr. king right or what he said about relationships and integration which is that he found an opportunity by making the relationships across the cover line. mr. lewis and the attending the using the relationships in the community with black politicians, black entertainers. he did the advertising campaign for shaft, many of the early advertising campaigns for black mayors in urban cities and congressional races. but they both proved the point that it is all who you know.

and so, ultimately that's why we have to in theory build an integrated society in order to have total access to all the avenues of power and opportunity because most of the doors of opportunity in this country are as a white person standing in it in many ways and so the part of freedom that i look at is where do white people and black people have constructive relationships together for all of us to have freedom and not just the extent to which white racism is an obstacle that has to be removed, but what kind of constructive society do we have to build so that we all have access to the opportunity? because speaking personally, white people are free in this country in the sense that we have access to all the socio-economic opportunity but we are limited some way we feel there's a racial thing that we are not privy to. it's not our territory.

we can't really go there so that is sort of a barrier that is on us and i found as we crossed that line in my own life, many new opportunities have opened up for me because i am basically the only white guy there most of the time. [laughter] and then the opposite is true for many young black people coming up today in order to have access to the full brunt of society what kind of relationships to the need across the color line to get access to those areas which they've not been allowed to in the past. even though the legal barriers are technically down. so that is the aspect of freedom that i think should be looked at more. [applause] i think i want to ask just one more question of the panel and i think tener wants you to be the first to answer. and it is just over all in our discussion. we basically look at what things don't work, why things don't work and we have hit on the areas such as aspects such as

violence and stereotypes and churchianity and prosperity churches and restrictive covenants and discrimination. my question is one that you pose what are we going to make, how are we going to fix this? my question would be since you are represented by think your testimony is very important here how do we get more of the guys like you? i guess the question though might be what is your sense of what you have faced and confronted and what you have overcome and how big of a load is that for the rest of america? >> well, i think that there is for me all lighted over the past four years literally was read books and talk to people. that's a really the sort of magic recipe as far as i know from what i to overcome it

didn't have any structural economic barriers standing in my way, but to me the answer of what it takes for integration specifically is to educate yourself as a human being and reach out and engage with other human beings and learn about them as people. so integration is very difficult to do that, but to me it is very straightforward. it is a very simple thing to do. it wasn't as easy for me to walk into the naacp convention. i don't know anything and i am here to learn. that isn't an easy thing to do but it's right there and anyone can do at. sweating the most important thing that i did is not just talk about race, but just to get past that and be able to engage with people and learn about them as human beings and learn about their lives and experiences and that educated me and made me a more informed and hopefully better person.

so, and every single instance what i found was it's interesting the reaction of my book has been either as the relationships that it is bleak and hopeless or it is very inspiring and hopeful. i've got in both. and to me that is something of a test of the person that is reading it which is that in each chapter whether it is the church or the workplace or schools or housing the massive institutional barriers in the way of access to good schools and good neighborhoods so if you're the kind of person that sees race as an institutional problem than you are going to read this book and think my god how are we ever going to get out of this? but if you are the kind of person that sees race as more of a personal journey, coming to a greater understanding of other people and finding that freedom for yourselves if you look at the individual point of view your like wow any of this can change tomorrow and make this journey. so, i think for me the answer i tend to look things more from the personal point of view maybe

that's because i never had the institutional barriers myself, but i think forming the constructive relationships among people and having a social contract that we all adhere to voluntarily is more the answer which is scary in that it relies on individual human beings to do the right thing which can be terrifying sometimes. but it's hopeful in the sense that anyone can do it of their own volition tomorrow. estimate anyone else? >> yeah. well, tener hit on the two, the one most important which was education, just to learn something. read something, talk to somebody. that works wonders. but i would like to add to other phenomena. one, to be avoided as much as possible especially for children especially for black children which is popular culture.

i read in the times recently that the longer that black children spend in front of the television the worse they feel about themselves. this also works for girls of any race. so what's that, like 90% of the people in the world right there. so let's be really careful with popular culture. and the second thing, this is the positive thing is grand children. now it turns out that the youth are out there having children with a lot of different people come and a lot of people who never would have felt they could have a relationship with a person from the other side of the color line or the other class or the other region or

something. their children do, and then they have grandchildren. and grandchildren break down a lot of barriers. estimate around 1800 the was the great dread that this incorporation, this black and white getting together, there was really something that wasn't wanted as a part of the integration movement. >> it's interesting now in the facebook world you see people you haven't seen in two or three generations. >> grandchildren. >> i guess we are ready for some questions from the audience. islamic i just wanted to add to that i also think we have to really ask ourselves what we mean by freedom because not everybody needs the same thing.

and we need to reinvigorate our relationship to the very word and the definition. for a long time the struggles of black people were called up the black freedom struggle. we don't hear that as much anymore. we need to reinvigorate a social movement that this is something that we didn't fight for as individuals. we fought for it in movements and when we hear the word freedom now, it's coming from free organized people on the right who have recuperated that word for their own sense of what freedom means, that the passage of the health care bill is taking away their freedom. as a wedding we need to have more public conversation about what we mean. i think that we do need to change as individuals but we also need to reinvigorate the social movement and recuperate a legacy of a freedom struggle which we have owned and claimed and so it is time for us to reclaim it and real net. [applause]

with regard to religion, you know, religion can bring people together or it can tear them apart. i think it's very important to reorient with christianity, reorient churches away from all of the sensationalism and the height of spirituality and get back to the groundwork of the biblical message is coming and that is not only love your god with all of your heart and mind and strength but love your neighbor as yourself and to make a difference in the world, and i think that would help engender a great deal more of liberty and freedom and at least focus on it and i think also it's the right wing is willing to consider

making that step, they will stop supporting policies and actions that are anathema to their own issues and that is the black folks interest so it is a reorientation. really it is calling folks back to the root of their religion what it is and what it was before it was hijacked by tv and sensationalism of the folks that want to forget the purpose of the only measure of spirituality is how you treat people in the world, the kind of world that you create and not how many times or how not to call the name of jesus or god or whoever you worship. [applause] >> is that one of the challenges, the sense of one

person's freedom just being another person's pain i'm thinking of the second amendment right to bear arms. >> you know that's not enough freedom of mind in my opinion. folks talk about bearing arms. most of them that i have seen they are not really threatened. it's like a straw man of the black criminal in mind, and it's all opposition. we want to have our guns to protect ourselves from them because when you think about it is nonsensical to just make a bunch of fuss out having access to guns all the time. so i think that has nothing to do with -- it is very little to do with being oppositional to those they see as threatening to them primarily black people to

this because every i just think if we are going to go forward we are going to actually connect with one another and we might have to acknowledge one person second amendment would go to sleep for that in this whole sense of going to a movie and opening fire on a movie with considerably be the violence we talk about the perpetuation of violence in our films it's just like it will almost like a jerusalem experience for him. >> some of the people in the theater thought at first that it was a part of the movie or part of the advertising or talking at the movie. >> absolutely. okay. >> any questions from the panel on what we have spoken about today this evening? >> what is your sense of how it would work? are there any questions?

>> yes, i think we are going to ask you to -- we need to go to the microphone. [laughter] >> this is all on c-span and they want to pick things up. no, no, no. >> actually i did think of something. >> please do. stat why don't you go. ..

the sense of the black power movement i think invigorated a lot of people, not just bought the bull but also was psychologically and organizationally important and i think that would be worth returning to as well. >> thank you. >> i am curious to no, since what i have kind of heard here is that freedom is contextual and also freedom is based on what one believes. in other words, there are some that say, they are free to commit violence. there are others that say they are free to be, to pray in the way that they wish to pray and there are others that feel that

they are free to engage folks on on a one-to-one basis. i am curious to know though, whether or not the panelists feel that freedom is in fact contextual and is it based on, on one's individual set of elites rather than you know, a larger construct? >> i would say, if i may start, that structures, political structures and economic structures really are the framework that we work with and as individuals. so, for me, it's not possible to think about either freedom or slavery for that at her, without the structures that make it possible. so when we think about desegregation and integration,

we can't think about what happens with just individuals without thinking about the laws and the lending policies and the banks and the fha and the redlining, you know, all the structures that one moves with them as an individual. so yes, for me, we need to remember that the individual -- but also the individual functions within certain structures. >> thank you. i think that is a very good question because we can approach freedom from different perspectives. there is negative freedom and positive freedom. there is freedom from and freedom to, and i think the basis of any justice system is first freedom from coercion and exploitation and mistreatment

and the next step is to talk about the freedoms to do, what should be acceptable to a just society but today it's a very important question because we have these libertarian right-wing who believe that they should have, there should be very little government oversight, maybe two or three different aspects of government and then they should be free to do whatever else they want as long as in their mind they are not causing anyone else a problem. that is diametrically opposed to other folks who say wait, we can just have an economic market their runs amok without any kind of controls and regulations. why? because it hurts the little people. so that question is very important and we have to come to a baseline of what freedom means but also what justice means in relationship. >> thank you.

>> i think my question is quite similar. i wanted to know what is freedom to all of you? what is your definition and is it obtainable especially when someone's freedom conflicts with someone else's? or examine like you mention, the freedoms to commit violence, obviously that -- on someone's freedom to live and be safe. >> i think that is one of the freedom from versus freedom to and i mean you can't live in a just society where people just have freedom to go out and commit violence. the freedom to just go out and kill people so we should all be free from violence. there are a series of questions that we can ask ourselves, what does a free society look like to us and that free society, it's not that i'm not interested in individual freedom but really what works for a society that functions and that is just? little girls and boys should be free from sexual abuse. they should be free from all kinds of violence. i think they should also be free

from poverty. that should be a freedom, that should be a light -- a right. that should be a guarantee so i think this balance of freedom from and freedom to and black when i look at migration and freedom from. so much is about freedom from, from people who feel like they have the freedom to do whatever they wanted to do to black people. i think there has to be a discussion about what that balance looks like. none of us i think up here should talk about we should be free to do whatever we want to do without any prohibition on that freedom. >> president franklin roosevelt 's speech, freedom of speech, freedom from fear and freedom from want is what i remember. freedom of speech. >> farah touched on something very important that this there must be, when we talk about

freedom, we have to also talk about justice and that must be a baseline in the course and that is how we come, come to a balance, a just balance, a balance in which people can live their lives, to have abundance or at least the opportunity for abundance. >> speaking of the historic past and leadership, sojourner truth, dr. king, justice, justice is the constant concern. >> but you don't hear that today. you don't hear the talk or could they keep talking about freedom. they never talk about democracy any more. they talk about freedom and capitalism but they never talk about what is the just thing to do. it's more like what is the justice thing to do rather than the just thing to do. [applause]

in some ways it has become christianity. >> its freedom. we talked about the context and structures that we have put in place and what are the parameters in which we have freedom from a jim crow society and now we sort of have two different structures in place. one has been aptly called the new jim crow by the school to prison pipeline and that is what the structure that the underclass is trapped in and then you also have this weird amorphous middle class structure that took me a while to get my head around, and i eventually starting calling it separate but optional. because, when he took down the laws of separate people, it is like emancipation. it's like what do we do now and unfortunately we have the great tragic misfortune of having

richard nixon in office when all that happened. he basically was like okay, well, the black nationalist move movement was on full swing and he sort of, nixon just wanted the domestic problems to go away so he could be a great band of history. he was like alright what is the quickest solution here? well, start a war on drugs and law and order and policy towards the underclass and put in place affirmative action plans in and minority business set aside. and don't do anything about enforcement powers to hud or the eoc and let everything sorted equilibrium where it is now. that is kind of where we have state because that is the incentive in the structures that were put in place in the years right after the end of jim crow. so we have stayed on the momentum and the inertia.

it's just more comfortable and easier to stay where you are. >> whether it be in the church or in the sale of guns for-profit, whether it be stereotypes, violence, the proper dispute is a link now that helps a lot of these onerous things to keep going. >> roosevelt's four freedoms. freedom of speech, freedom of worship, freedom from want, freedom from fear. >> that's great. >> hello, first of all i want to thank you for coming to the schomberg today in thank you for speaking to us all, first and foremost. we are talking today about freedom and for me you know freedom is one of those myths that america is built on but i think a lot of people confound and confuse the definition of freedom as freedom as the right

to as justice and liberty to. how do you differentiate all those words and not mix them together because i don't inc. they are anonymous and have the same meaning. a. >> situationally, yes. i also think that freedom, you know which is what i keep coming back to that freedom means different things at different times so when we were fighting against slavery, it was clear that freedom was the end of slavery, and then there was a reinstitution of slavery. there is a book called slavery by another name so we had to fight for freedom there. so i think it's a constant need for reevaluation and redefining. i'm from philadelphia and right now there's a fight with the aclu trying to fight these voter i.d. laws, 98-year-old black woman who -- obama with open

arms and rightly slow -- so. that is yet another face of freedom that they thought they would want. they thought they would want to fight against disenfranchisement and here comes another guys so situationally it requires a redefinition and a re-understanding of freedom. >> i think the word, it's like diversity. it's been so blandly overused in in so many contexts. it's almost like i think maybe in terms of a rebranding context, go back to justice. i think he's right. freedom just, you can put it in a political ad. those things change and come in and out of style. i think definitely in terms of race and integration is probably more productive to talk about justice and social mobility and

inequality rather than just throw around the word freedom. >> none of us has any chains on but even during slavery, not all the time did folks have changed but they were still in slave. >> it question for dr. hendrix. i read your book and it was very informative. talking about churchianity. i love that term. but how do we stop the economic engine behind it? so much money is generated through churches that misuse the word of god and gospel music that promotes the spectacular and promotes the craziness and the hyperspirituality. how do we stop that because a lot of money is being generated via this industry. how do we then redirect church

back to the prophetic that we saw in spiritualism and early gospel music? i am a musician and i'm very interested in doing that. how can we do that? >> one thing is to try to re-proclaim or redefine our call folks back to the basis of what they say they believe. jesus didn't say worship me and praise me. he said follow me. and what did he want folks to follow? his modeling of the ethical message, how to treat people in the world to the gospel of jesus. he talked almost nothing about what to believe that all about how people should act in the world and the ethical and moral teaching. we have to start talking about that again.

and start raising questions in churches about the things that don't seem to really be important. with that we have to ask ourselves a, when you become a minister d. become part of a privileged class? that kind of thing. you have to ask yourself, are we about trying to really grow spiritually or are we just engaged in the institutional maintenance as part of it club almost in which we come and have in at the goodtime? you have heard people come out saying, boy we sure had church. we sure had fun. is the same thing so it's a hard question that we have to start somewhere and i think looking at the basics, basics again is important. >> a quick follow up. how do we counter this because there a lot of people that make money by having a church being

fun. i don't know, i mean i think again we just have to try to get back to basics and ask some questions. there was a minister and you have all heard of him, who was in a whole lot of trouble and the questions have been asked of him long ago. maybe that might not have happened but the questions that have been asked, why are you looking like a king? why are you wearing tight clothing in front of everybody when you know that as a performance? why are you doing these things? but folks said they were being fed, which could mean a lot of things but it can also mean that they were really enjoying what they were getting and they didn't ask any questions. we need to get back to the basics. >> thank you. >> first of all i want to congratulate whoever it was -- because i think we have the core

and what you all have been writing about in the beginning of something new. they said that the age of aquarius is just now about to start. and that is a time when we can act in terms of our spiritual lives from the christ within each one of us and in terms of the need for relationship and individual responsibility. to change cannot happen in an institution unless you have fueling of that institution, individuals who see freedom as being their obligation to act

from the best parts of who they are. that is the freedom to that i think we in advertising and we in education have to engender. i have the good fortune of being at my advanced age and still having a -- 10-year-old children, twins. i got tired of waiting for grandchildren so i made my own. [laughter] so they go to a school in which a bad idea of inclusiveness, where we look at forced immigration or voluntary immigration. they interview people who have come to the country and they start establishing a wet -- was not able to do in this

lifetime. the relationship that will make the difference. until we really get to know each other from who we really are and in the spiritual sense, children of god and until we recognize that in ourselves and others and all acts from that, that is the freedom. that is the freedom that i think is the only real freedom that we can ever aspire to. and in redlining and all that other stuff, even the civil rights act accomplished nothing without that basis of each one of us seeing our relationship through the spiritual eyes of

our oneness, not our separation. >> thank you. did you have a question? [laughter] >> thank you very much. that was beautiful by the way. [applause] >> hi. as the mother of a 12-year-old and a 14-year-old, and someone who grew up with parents and they do no, black nationalist movement i was very connected to activism and i think there's a generation growing up now who, they are very disconnected from the spirit of actin is -- activism. in the framework of freedom, what kind of language -- how do we connect with a generation of 20-something teens now? how do we connect with them and

really make them understand the importance of freedom fighting, because i think now this generation, i mean, they really take a lot are granted. a lot of freedom for granted that they think they have that they don't actually have. how do we connect -- how do we make them see? what is the language? how do we reinvigorate that spirit of activism for children who may not have any connection to that legacy? >> that is a great question and it's an extraordinary question. >> that is because of your grandchildren. i do think though that, i just want to give a plug here for some organizations on the ground that work with young people i think you are doing just that, who are creating just that legacy of taking -- here at harlem there is a

wonderful institution called the brotherhood of soul that works with -- some of you may know some of them. not only speaks to empower children but it also makes them feel responsible for their community so teaches them out of the organizers. and it connects them to a legacy, not just a local legacy that is historical legacy through time and space where they are part of generations of people who up an activist but also empowering them to look at their community, not see it through the eyes of the people from the 60's but through their eyes and try to imagine it as they would like for it to be. that it empowers them where they are and tells them that they have the capacity to change things. so part of it i think, as much telling them what to do as to listen to what they think the to be changed and how they want the world to look. i think it's probably a small organization that we support all

over the country that are doing that as well. >> most of that should be done in church. [laughter] >> it think your question is the question of the decade and not the question of the century because we have seen -- we have met some of our communicators here, professional communicators and i don't think there and a are any finer, better communicators. these folks know how to communicate. how do we get them interested in history or the aspects of history that they can then communicate? they are the kings. i have been told specifically not that we are over but i got a notice two or three minutes ago that we are. unless someone comes out i want to thank you all for coming here today. for schomburg center. [applause] if you haven't heard my earlier announcement on september 21,

2012 we will have a proven maneri emancipation proclamation and it will come to the schomburg center. the 22nd was the date that president abraham lincoln sent the notice out that unless you stop the war, stop the civil war in 100 days we are going to free 4 million enslaved africans so that will be here on september 21 through the 24th. thank you all for coming today. [applause] >> every weekend booktv offers 48 hours of programming focused on nonfiction authors and books. watch it here on c-span2. >> the republican primary has caused romney to move so far to the right, he's off the board. you have ten candidates appearing in new hampshire, they

have a question. the question is, would you agree to $1 in taxes for $10 in cuts? and anybody in the civilized world -- well, now that i say that, maybe that excludes those candidates -- [laughter] would say, of course, i'll give you $1 in taxes for $10 in cuts, but not one hand went up. not huntsman, not anybody. it was a well-kept secret, but i ran for the republican follow nation in the 1996 cycle. [laughter] and i was in new hampshire. there were nine people there. the question was, how many of you prom to abolish the department -- promise to abolish the department of education? eight hands sprang up instantaneously. ridiculous question. you can't abolish the department of education. just can't do it. so here you have herman cain and

michele bachmann and one after another pushing, pushing romney so far to the right. senator santorum, a prodigious worker, covering fault counties, played right into his strength with the evangelical right. but as soon as the people of america found out about him, like the people of pennsylvania, there he went. and romney has changed positions so many times, bill maher had it right the other night when he said romney has changed positions more often than a pornographic movie queen. [laughter] and i'm asked who am i going to support in november.

and i say, well, i'm not senator arlen specter anymore, i'm citizen arlen specter. and i'm not happy with president obama, frankly. this policy in afghanistan is absurd. i spoke out on the senate floor against 30,000 additional troops there. we have no fight with the taliban. there are no al-qaeda there. i was part of the delegation that visited president karzai, and he's not somebody you can do business with. you have the tax cut, obama extended it. i spoke out against it, should never have extended the tax cut for the rich, in my opinion. then you have appointments this commission co-chaired by alan simpson on the deficit and national debt. doesn't pay any attention to that. and how about romney? well, which romney's going to appear? which etch a sketch will we