woolf, it just amazing to think that in the late 1970's i had not read virginia woolf. i was teaching at wesley, undergraduate came to me and ask me to do a tutorial with her reading through the whole of virginia woolf. at the was a great deal. i was completely blown away. what i was blown away by more than anything, and this goes to what jeff was talking about this morning, was the novel's. a kind of understand what they're about. about women in fiction and why women did not have the authority to be writers, and that address very directly an issue that i

had. deeply personal, deeply inspiring, and in the light of that as a taking seriously her feminism because it was, i thought, very important to her. i read the novels and read them in what turned up to be as slightly different way from other people because i was interested in this issue of her being a woman and take that seriously. so i started writing essays about the books can then threaded them together. to my amazement this was considered a biography. i moved backwards into biography , not forwards. that did not know what i did not intend to write a biography. i backed into a. i have to say in my own praise the ones i saw what i had done i

thought, this is a really good idea. i continued. i continue doing it. i saw the virtues of the biography as a way of addressing very personal issues. maybe we will talk about josephine baker later because i don't want to -- >> you don't have to cover the waterfront. >> let me say one thing about josephine baker. a dense as well as virginia woolf and that i am as impressive and intellectual as josephine baker. but they are both very meaningful to me commando think you can probably immediately see why a very funny dancer is to

somebody who it is me. can you dislike me and said? >> when i was 12 years old i started to read the latter fee of peter the great because i was absolutely power mad as a child and wanted to be a general. the military academy which absolutely hated and immediately quit. that was the end of my power madness. anyway, i got a chance for a biography, but i could see how hard it was to write. years went by, and my favorite editor, bill white it, who is related to the white heads of key west, anyway, he asked me if i would -- if i knew anyone who could write a biography about ginnie. i said, well, you mean to say there isn't a put it?

oh, i'll do it. and i thought it would take like three years to do. it took seven. i think a lot of people have talked about different kinds of backer fees, but i think when you write the first biography for somebody you are obliged not to be terribly interpret if or the way you could be with of virginia woolf because they have already been submitting come up with the first qaddafi is the document for the future. who cares about your interpretations. what you're really doing is interviewing all the -- only died in 1986, and i began my book in 87. i felt that was important to get all their witnessing of his life whereas with my little book,

people criticized it for being too much of a gay version. entirely gay, and that's all he ever did. [laughter] anyway, people think i emphasize that too much, but i felt because there had been -- that is probably a whole room full of books about pros, but i have a right to do a gapers deal. i thought so. yap. >> would lead to set about writing the first ever biography of someone is actually very interesting. i had this experience. my first book was a biography who have been the past correspondent for the new yorker 50 years. kent in my book came out around the same time to make before. i think the same time. as i recall -- and don't correct

me if i'm wrong, your book won a national book award. my mother turned to me. about understand how a bookman the genet when the national book award i came to write that particular book not because i was interested in by roofie. i was not all. and around the age villus is talking about i started a novel and was very proud of it. he read it. and said there's no plot here. that was the end of my novel writing career because i realized i had no plot. i wanted to write a story of a woman. i went down to the library of congress. it had been suggested that delicate the papers janet planet that had just been opened.

when i read through these letters, start talking about the excitement of being in an archive for the first time. i had done that. i read the letters. it was really among the group of very articulate, strong women who were supportive of one another and to a certain extent self sustaining. i thought, how can i do this story just as? and the only way i could figure out to do, wanted to tell the story of these women. i recited to do the trick biography. i felt that was a way to use her as a means to get to the way french and groups of women have a certain time in paris in ourself supportive, self sustaining and extremely important to one another through there lifetime and through old age which i also found very moving. while i was working hard toward

the end of working on that book and i was interviewing people. a few people would mention the relationship -- sorry, jen and planned a new cartridge time, and when i would talk about that relationship some people whisper to me, well, you can never mention leo stein in front of gertrude. that is the strangest thing i had ever heard because these were very close. a close family. occur trued leo stein inaugurated the salon with which we are all very enamored today. so the fact, what is the story between those two people? what happened to that particular relationship? that launched the second book. and then hawthorne, which is completely other, would relate

that to the panel earlier this morning. welcome i like this. i want to write about a person because their is a way. on the fringes people really dislike for power in many ways. became less and less known. i thought i would like to write about a man, a male writer, and i knew a lot about massachusetts, where i'm from, salem, where he is from, so that is in some sense how much as hawthorne. as i said yesterday, some of these choices, they seem conscious, but they're really quite unconscious. >> i just wanted to add one thing, if i could. nobody has ever come i don't believe, talked about this aspect.

in the salon. at least it contained all of the information, not just about he did this so that, but also all the various studies of him that had been done. there was no other one place where all that existed. >> there is that archival sense to it. >> i admire the people who are primary biographers really assembling the resilience of fact and putting things on the record. i don't consider myself too much in that category. sort of a secondary biographer. i don't mean that necessarily self deprecatory. i simply mean that there are those people then go out and really know my colleagues here. they really go out and interview everybody and look at all the letters and journals. i'm sort of coming after word often and correcting another earlier biographer already in

preference really, novel version which is really my fantasy version of the life of walter benjamin. and it's really my fantasy. i try to -- and the passages i really said to myself, and every other chapter, and i'm just making that up because nothing is known about her. i got to inventor. or in the longer chapters where i said to myself, let's imagine i can tell the life of herman melville, but i don't have to really do any research or know anything. i can go anywhere. i can actually save what he was thinking when he meets the handsome young sailor. you know, for me it is that imaginative freedom was seeking. and so even in my straight biography said try to really imagine the life.

what did it smell like, feel like to be in that life? have really done original research except for my new biography of jesus while i interviewed everybody. [laughter] that was a lot of fun. mark was a real bitch. matthew i could sort of take. lucas week. john was really crazy. >> we will was pilot light? >> pilot, oh god. it was the dress i could not take. i also think going back to the original topic, of our free to mention interesting how the genre's cross. years ago sitting with two friends of mine we read some seminar and austria having lunch , so what are you working on now, my dear. she said, oh, i'm writing my

memoirs. he said, at last you're turning your hand to fiction. [laughter] i mentioned earlier, i was friends with as a a berlin who wrote a great essay on tall store which influenced me hugely called hedgehog. the hedgehog has one big area. the fox has many ideas. i'm a fox. but as a fox we always love the other, and i'm in love with hedge talks. i only write about monsters and head towards. jesus is a bitch hag -- bighead charred. the only has one idea. we know what that was. tolstoy, he was the ultimate hedgehog. faust was i had charred. remember, i made a joke yesterday about when i wrote the novel about toast -- tolstoy a.

please stop writing books about me? it seemed like a terrible joke. she was damned serious. i realized my mother is a wonderful tayra. ninety-seven, it's still going strong. she's amazing. realize certainly i learned. and when i broke my imagine my mother talking. also, the pursuit of the big white whale billing after the hedgehog. in a sense i feel like in all my books : doing is being this little fox and endlessly trying to figure out how the folks they do that. >> watcher mother going to think of this jesus book? [laughter]

>> mary mary quite contrary. i don't think i'm being facetious when i say that found the discussion in a fascinating way by talking about the difference between the distinction between writing a fictionalized biography said he do and the supposedly non fictional biography that we write. i have become fascinated by this because the more i spend time writing biography and thinking about biography -- again, i don't say this is a criticism or wish to undermine the legitimacy of the enterprise. the for their way i feel for any conflict and our confidence that we have actually gone to the heart of the matter or been

accurate in the most superfluous ways. now that we have talked about how you choose your subjects, like to go from there and ask how you think these choices are reflected in the books they you bright in a covert, i suppose -- mentioned distinction i brought up the other day, but a covert, overt way. since we are now in a stage sent to be superseded, i'm sure, by some other stage where we are suspicious of the. [indiscernible] we have left behind the city to

the 19th century biography for the post deconstruction last unstable narrator. i have always hated that term, the unstable narrator. but in any event, how do we appear in these books? >> well, i address this by going back to the distinction that somebody to my left brought out here between the definitive biography and i forget what the term was. >> secondary. >> secondary which is really interesting. to go back to the example of virginia woolf, but came out in 19 -- i think 1979. the definitive biography of virginia woolf came out almost exactly at the same time.

>> but he did not look at the work and all. >> and he did not -- you talked about her as this erotic, difficult woman who was a charming person but really kind of crazy. to our wonder had made herself famous. and it is definitive. he knew everybody. he grew up with her. he has all the facts right and he really cared about that deeply, deeply. but in some respects it is not definitive. it's lefts to me. sent airmail from england. i read it in this terror. i was going it doesn't do what i'm doing. thank goodness there is still room for my book. my point is no matter how definitive and no matter how

objectives in the book is, is still has some kind of personal bias. i don't mean to use the word bias prejudicial. there's a personality behind every book. i'm with the only kind of book about virginia woolf to the possibly could have written. there's always personality reflected in the biography. >> i think this will sound very old-fashioned a great difference between qaddafi and fiction.

the biography is full of mistakes allies. it terribly cheated. i mean, all we have to think about is a thousand little pieces or even such a minor thing has and john barry is book when he confessed that he had invented a phone call and the middle of it for dramatic purposes. everybody felt terribly cheated. i think the contract for the reader is entirely different. people ask me why you collier autobiographical novels is because once they're called novels you're free to do anything you want. change the chronology, make 200 lovers in the 20. in no, it just gives you -- and you can shape the narrative in a dramatic way.

i don't know if there is too much relationship between writing biography for me in writing fiction. in one way perhaps h'm, with the butt of the feet he had the most incredibly diverse lives that you could never in a million years predict. he began as a foster child in kentucky for america. he ended that a thin -- friend and defender of the black panthers. this is absolutely unbelievable. if it is one thing and he is for deism. somebody of these are dominated. the idea that you should find the key and some childhood trauma.

of course that is what he does in his book. he says that he was caught stealing when he was a child and he was stoned by the villagers. this is what he says. three interview 13 people. he was never caught, never stoned. c-span2 the number one price of the best written in the whole county. he was adored by his foster mother. you know, so i take their is a different between fact and fiction. i really do. i mean, i know that's primitive of me to say. the working on the biography of realize that if you took just the name and he attacked all these things on to it that it was an immense trajectory that includes some many different things the way flanders' does. i thought autobiographical

fiction. one subject, i can say the most incredibly diverse things. i don't need to worry, the two earlier books of autobiographical fiction, giving a shape. i can just let the i be a kind of hang around which she draped all the different clothes. all these things did happen to me, just as all those things did happen to her. >> in a compiler's the agree. i think that first of all the whole notion of the author, a biographer, whatever, the credibility is essential. you have to establish credibility and it's very important to do that. you have a contract with the reader. as i said, tell the truth.

but of course the truth gets into an area, a fudgy area. each age writes its own biography which is to say, of course there will be many biographies, many interpretations about virginia woolf or whomever, just even in a short time, but that doesn't mean it's fictionalized. it means that one has a different author in a different time with the different outlook. maybe even using different papers or archives are materials that became available. when i did my, which was the finer book, was very nervous because many of the trends at the time were still alive. one particular, civil bedford, a

woman i respected enormously, a fabulous writer, large and terrific human being who wrote several genres. she herself had written a biography about diplomacy. we became friends. our member before my book came out. if you don't like it mine is in yours. some said she was absolutely right. i realize i could only do what i could do. i could do the best that i could with the materials that i had and whatever abilities and that's it.

the end. >> i sort of disagree with everybody. >> you always have. >> i really especially disagree with what ed said. i'm a huge fan. set this up very well for our ongoing literary discussion here suggesting that we have to think about biography and biographical fiction, even autobiography in the wake of literary theory. and i think that philip would suggest the biography is the least theorized of all of our genres. i think that when we began to terrorize our review which i do think we need to do we start to realize we have to break away from the old of the -- objective 19th century pre literary theory idea of biography is

being objective. you have to get the truth and learn things up. i'm serving not saying make up interviews or distort quotations or get the facts from. there is such a thing called the agreed upon facts. that is of very steppingstones sort of thing, so elementary that it is almost not worth discussing it from my point of view. i think is in is anything is processed by memory it's fiction viagra fee is about the putting into words, just as fiction is about the putting into words. from my viewpoint biography is the purest form of fiction because the self is not so consciously intervening in the report. if you're writing fiction you cannot help but having this terrible thing call i which then breaks in. and so hence the joke about erica, but she writes novels.

that's fine because that's what most novelists to. acting buyer for gives us an opportunity to be selfless and yet ripe the purest kind of fiction. we have the shadow figures, you know, yours is a real. the characters are not real. they're processed by memory. they are just, you know, like dogs in the world, electrons. >> well, i completely disagree with you. >> i was hoping you would. >> when you write a primer biography you have to go away princess. living amongst the black panthers. and he said i don't want to talk about that. used to be a hero of mine. now i'm so disappointed.

i kept digging and digging. he wouldn't talk. finally he said, i saw him dancing in a pink negligee. and i said -- and he was completely stoned. i said, that's impossible. he made a radical change in his life from being a kind of feminine homosexual with long hair and was a prostitute to being this kind of macho guy. he devised this new personality for himself in prison and never would. that is impossible. and i interviewed years later in july davis. no, i love him. such a gender bender. i love the moment he danced for the panthers in his bank negligee. two sources for the story, even though it contradicts everything about him. it to fit into my scheme for him , and so if i had imposed my scheme on the facts we wouldn't

know the truth. >> i read your biography. i thought it was a great novel. that is because it has such narrative momentum. i can't really being cited the find out what would happen next. it is shaping the way like a novel. i rise and fall. very dramatic. life is not like that. >> but no one is saying that the biography is in shape and narrative. byre fees and the novel, that's your way of complementing, it's wonderful because it means, and i think that the biographer of has at his or her disposal narrative devices of the novel. there are all kinds of ways that you can use timing and pacing and characterization and setting and all of the tools. those are the things that

polling its use or you can use images. beautifully highly crafted books that you would think you're reading in some sense poetry because i think one of the major images, it goes to the book. it is actually wonderful. that's because of this talented. he is very gifted in that way. he is ready -- he has chosen nonfiction, i think -- >> it's a good example. he -- his method of writing biography is to read everything that the author had read. so we'll think we would like to read madam boveri, but he was forced to read what emerson read which was correct in, and and as a long novel. because that's all that was available to those poor people in the beginning of the 19th

century. >> i have the unpleasant task of having to bring this to a close because we're on a very tight schedule. i had hoped we would have questions, but this has been the easiest panel i have ever had to moderate. enough to talk about. we will have to resume in other ways. now what he said 45 minutes ago is, in fact, true. we are done for now. go have charter. come back. thank you. [applause] that wraps up our coverage of the 30th annual key west seminar. for more information visit the website. >> he had been talking about this dream that he had had.

he talked about for years. the american dream. it became his dream. he had been in detroit just a few months before. he had talked about i have a dream. america will someday realize these principles and the declaration of independence. so i think he was just inspired by that moment. though march on washington. prominent historian and editor. it's part of three days of book tv this weekend. monday featuring authors and books on the inauguration. president obama and martin luther king jr. >> have been trying to find a new lens, a new way of studying presidential character. about 12 years ago i wrote a book on the first lady's.

the body of knowledge on lincoln pretty much everything that could be written probably has been. the greatest historian says been years poring through the letters and the evidence to produce this book on lincoln of this book and the hundreds of books on washington. so my problem is, why not look at the person that new them the best, the first lady because historians have largely ignored the role of the first lady as the largely ignored the mistresses and shipping the man. tend to be older man, educated in a certain way. most historians, as i always say, were not educated in matters of the heart. studying the first lady, the first thing thomas jefferson did

after spending 17 days cooped up in of lost outside a philadelphia writing the declaration of independence, the first thing he did is he went shopping for market, his wife. he mr. she was pregnant. she had had a miscarriage. he bought her some gloves. then he begged off from serving for the rest of the summer so he could go home to be with his wife. every winter of the revolutionary war. suffering through the freezing weather at valley forge was martha washington right there. so by studying the first lady's we get new insights on the presidents and new insights on other things. apropos to my book washington's closest adviser was alexander hamilton. one of the chapters in the book talks about hamiltons history of womanizing. for example not the first.

there is a long long history of the. elliott spencer, arnold schwarzenegger, john edwards, these guys had nothing on alexander hamilton. and what we find is if you really -- letters written by martha washington, she was tough shouldn't complain about the weather. she did complain about the harsh conditions pitch did complain about that tomcat this be having with all the lady cats. it kept her awake at night, social nick and the tomcat alexander hamilton. all the young girls. i also did a book a few. it was about the president's at least. the hobbies that they had. the fears and hopes and over the like as fathers and husbands. another way of stressing

presidential character. we're also trying to figure out dick nixon. for example, nixon in the springtime like to boulogne and sometimes wore a black suit to do it. that begins to explain things. he does this? so i guess all books and of being trilogy's. here is the end. so the affairs of state, i try to take a different perspective on our presence. for example, we all know about george washington. who were george washington's conference? that teenage washington on more than one occasion basically goes back home because she was turned down. puts pen to paper.

roses are red, violets are blue. this is a different look to washington. during my degrees and doctoral studies by professors did not tell me about washington's teenage your friend. so it's kind of fun, and that think it provides us with an important lands to my new way of understanding. we all know that our country's leaders have oftentimes been shaped by the hand of a woman, often a mother and often a wife. i'm here to tell you, sometimes of a mistress as well. it's in the news today as we take this program. dominating the headlines with his alleged affair and is this behavior to be related to the book, what my first thought was during world war ii general eisenhower was having a

long-term affair with an attractive young british driver name case some speed. pant with general hires a young female model to be his aide instead of a major error captain or medal winner? imagine if his affair with kayseven speech came after world war ii. as happened with patraeus, what happened if he get rid of bike before d-day? his personal aide and secretary and cut and dresser and a dresser apparently. what if we found out about fdr and is this behavior and what if we threw him out of office and demanded his resignation as the economy was recovered? all the way back to the french and indian war, a very young george washington was riding

very romantic letters to a woman who was not mrs. washington. her name was sally terry fairfax, very attractive, older, sophisticated neighbor. what if washington's letters have become public during the for -- french and and -- ran the french and indian war. not the first and not the worst. patraeus is not the first and not the worst. been there done that. it pains me to say that even abraham lincoln visited prostitutes. say it isn't so. but it happens. now, the details on a sketchy. there are not a lot of letters written about this, but here is so we can piece together. lincoln's best friend was joshua speed. he was, perhaps, a dashing and handsome and i guess what you with the ladies as lincoln was

allegedly only an awkward and of lucky in romance. he felt sorry for lincoln. invited him to work in his general store. and he did not have a place to stay. he let him stay of stairs of the general store. during their steve was using the services of a professional woman you can imagine lincoln of stairs trying to mind is on business. in lincoln basically says, you know, have to have a woman. it's been too long. only abraham lincoln would do this. it appears that he asked for a letter of introduction a professional woman and a double in agriculture. what we have pieced together,

lincoln visit the prostitute. he had maybe $3 with him, which was a lot of money. not eliot spitzer money, but a pretty fair amount of money. the prostitute apparently charges lincoln $5 which was an enormous amount of money at the time. lincoln center, ma'am, i have to tell you, on the state, i can't afford it. i only have three. what we know is either because lincoln got embarrassed or his honor get the best of him, but when she said, you can either pay me later or maybe this one is on the house he ran out the door. they say when you visit a prostitute there should always be happy ending. what i thought i would do for my remarks today is tell you a couple of my favorite stories, not just about mistresses and

history, but more and partly in the president's character. don't worry, there are some juicy stories involved. one of them involves our 22nd and 204th president, grover cleveland. now, when grover cleveland was a young man there was a controversy because cleveland father the child out of wedlock. shimano been a prostitute. at the least she was very casual . cleveland was a bouncer. following a child out of wedlock was seen as a big to do with the time. it was such a big to do for other reasons. the republican opponents of cleveland that were backing the republican nominee and a group of very righteous preachers started a campaign that no woman

in the country is safe. lockyer doors. dracula is here or something. cleveland is prowling the streets debauching and woman. an aggressive campaign attacking him. so it became a huge story because there would not let it go. one of the things to save some is it turns out that james g. blaine likely have more affairs in cleveland and his wife miraculously gave birth about six months after they get married. so blame was keeping all this combination on to cleveland. the one thing we dislike more than a politician that makes a mistake is hypocritical politicians. severe blow back. the other thing that made this a bit of the scandal, the republicans are pushing this issue. kind of a jingle, little song. it would save, mama, mama, where is my paw?

in cleveland finally claims the presidency, the democrats complete that little song. going to the white house. ha ha ha. what made it a scandal, grover cleveland best friend and law partner. board in new jersey and spent most of his career in buffalo. became the mayor, governor of new york. a very successful lawyer, and there were law partners. the practice law together, went out together, would go out drinking and eating the other. it appears they also enjoyed the services of maria together. so when she gets pregnant she has a son, and neither knew who the father was. she complicates things by naming the child costar cleveland. oscar fulsome had been married

and had a daughter. cleveland was a battler, so cleveland kind of accepted responsibility to pay for this child to go for an orphanage. here's where the other part of the scandal comes in. oscar fulsome dies a few years later in the carriage accident. he's driving his carriage and is drawn from it. he leaves a widow and this young girl. cleveland makes an enormous amount of money as his law partner and kind of takes care of the window and the young grow. he pays for them, says the up and i some. his best friend and former law partner. become the godfather of the little girl. they're very close. she calls him uncle. he paces and a college. what happens is as francis is going up, the relationship

changes to a romantic interest. start sending her letters and poems, roses. but the full court press on her. >> you can watch this and other programs online booktv.org. >> and we want to introduce you to leave lectin tarot weaver, the author of this book, dark room, a memoir and black-and-white. first of all, tell us your story before we start in on the book. >> it's a coming-of-age story, primarily about my family's emigration to the united states in 1961. i was five years old. resettle in alabama right in the heart of some of the most dramatic events that occurred in the civil rights movement. and one of those occurred in my home town of marion alabama.

pretty dramatic. >> ready live now? >> i live in tuscaloosa, alabama , 60 miles up the road but almost in another more recent century and my small hometown. >> and dark room is a lot about the civil rights movement and some of the experiences that you had. a want to start with your father what did he do for a living and what was his experience like? >> my father was a teacher. he had a background in the ministry. he was an amateur photographer who did some free-lance work. that figures centrally in my book. >> and i wanted to ask about his ministry because he had been assigned to some churches, and you read about that in here. what was his experience? >> this was -- actually my family's first immigration before i was born, 1948 my father came to the u.s. and he studied at the seminary in new orleans.

he went around and it since peaking at various places there where he encountered institutionalized segregation even in the church. >> at one point he spoke at a black church and invited the choir to attend the service of a white church. >> that's right. >> not happy with that all. not only was the choir ejected and my father and his friend who was a seminary student and also the pastor of that little church of the white church, he was fired. my father's friend. >> your father at some point dropped out of the ministry. >> yes, he did eventually. >> why? his experience in alabama. >> no, not necessarily. the family went back to argentina. this was during the fifties. he was a pastor there in a city called. then he decided to come back to the u.s.

the opportunity to teach kind of took precedence over his ministry. >> did his experience with segregation shape his fifth? >> it is possible that it did because during the 60's, in 1965 he saw some shocking things where and the baptist church and my home town of marion there were deacons in the vestibule of the church. that was a stunning experience for him. he was marked by it. >> who was jimmy lee jackson? he figures in your book. >> twenty-six years old and an activist with the voter registration drive in my hometown of marion.

and he was shot by a state trooper on the night of february february 18th 1965. eight days later he died. it was his death that spurred the march from selma to montgomery. most people know about that march, but they don't know that it was jimmie lee jackson death the brought it about. done in graphic novel form. >> and the illustrator as well as the author. art is my first love. so this is the way to tell my story it was a way to incorporate some of the images of photography. that motif runs throughout the book. that's why it's called dark room . >> what do you do today?

over 500 illustrations. it devoted my time to book tour in speaking to classrooms, universities and otherwise. also beginning a possible second work as a novelist and fiction. >> now, when you visit argentina today, are you an argentinian or an american? >> it's a funny thing. down there i do feel somewhat like a foreigner. night to lead it. the culture is mine. i guess i feel more american down there, and here i feel maybe more especially in alabama

and don't feel as american as i do elsewhere. >> why is that? >> alabama is a very conservative state, and it's also not diverse. we still have the set up for many decades back when the rest of the country or i should say the east coast, west coast, other parts of the country were receiving a lot of immigrants, alabama did not have the influx of immigration that other places did. so we are still basically a black and white society would just a few hispanics sprinkled and. >> you mentioned that you were not necessarily discriminated against as a child or your family was and because they didn't have any terms for latinos. >> we were more or less objects of curiosity. now there are more hispanics in the region and unfortunately

there is also more. alabama has instituted one of the harshest immigration laws in the united states very similar to arizona. >> you have a chapter near a bus of young girls when schools were first integrated. who were those trust? >> i you speaking of the young african-american girls? up, the public schools in my area were integrated into steps, the first step was the freedom of choice era, what they call that when parents had the opportunity to send their children to white schools of their 12. ..