the late photojournalist leonard freak documented the march on washington from its preparations to the day of the proceedings and its aftermath. hundreds of photographs have been traded by his widow and accompanied by an essay to the collection by michael aradissa. they discuss the collection next. .. >> and we are a private/public

partnership with the library of congress paying our five salaries but, indeed, we have raised private money from the beginning to help support our array of programs and projects. there are center for the books now in every state, and i know we have a broad audience today, and i look -- challenge you to look up and learn about the center for the book in your state which works at state level in promoting books and reading and libraries. here at the library of congress one of our major projects is the national book festival which i hope many of you know about. it's a library of congress project involving many parts of the library. it is in its 14th year coming up, and this year it will be held on the national mall september 21st and 22nd. the center for the book also is the administrator of the first young readers center at the library of congress which is located now in the jefferson building. it's the only place that focuses

on the reading interests of young readers 16 and under as long as they're accompanied by an adult. and last year we had 40,000 visitors in the young readers center. so you can tell that we are working hard not only to raise young readers, but to celebrate reading in all ways. one of the ways we celebrate is through talks is such as this. this is in our books and beyond or authors series. it's a collaborative effort with other divisions of the library to show off books, new books that have been published based on the resources or the projects of the library of congress. and it's a special treat to be working once again with the prince and photographs division. and i'd also like to hold up for everyone to see a book that has come from the collections of the library of congress in ways that you will learn about in today's program.

today our program is being filmed not only by the library of congress for our web site, but also by c-span, and we're very pleased to be able to share this program with the entire country both through c-span and through the library of congress' web site which now hosts more than 250 of these books and beyond programs. thus, with the filming i ask you to turn off all things electronic. we will progress from the panel discussion to, if we have time, a question-and-answer session and conclude with a book signing out in the foyer of the, of this mumford room. so you will have a chance, if you don't have a chance for a discussion and a question and answer period, you certainly will have that opportunity at the end. there also will be a special display in the princeton

photographs division of these photos between 1 and 2:00, so we have to move along so we can get to all of these postevent features. and to get us started i want to introduce the mastermind of today's event, verna curtis. verna is, i learned today, one of four curators of photography in the princeton photographs division. i'm sure they are all here. but it's my pleasure now to turn the program over to verna curtis. let's give her a hand. [applause] >> thank you very much, john. i have to say that we're all in this together. i'm not the mastermind. [laughter] um, today we have bridge secret freed who is the widow of the photographer whose work is featured in the book "this is the day: the march on washington," which we are

celebrating. and we have the distinguished dr. michael eric dyson, and we have paul farber. all of them here with us for a special kind of conversation which is how we billed this. i will tell you a little bit about each individual quickly because time is of the essence, and i'd like to tell you that brigitte freed met leonard freed in rome in 1956. they married a year later in amsterdam where they lived, um, deciding to leave for life in the united states in 1963, just a few months before what would eventually occur as the march on washington. and i don't think they knew that it was about to happen when they came to the states at that time. brigitte developed and printed leonard's photographs for over 20 years including those in the his classic photo books "black and white america" and "made in

germany" and the internationally acclaimed exhibition "concerned photographer." in addition, she has had independent careers as both a clothing designer and a real estate broker. she now lives in garrison, new york, in the hudson valley and works full time on leonard's prints and his legacy. brigitte was born in germany, and after living in the united states for over 40 years, he recently became an american citizen. [applause] um, dr. dyson is one of the nation's most influential and renowned public intellectuals. he's an essay contributor to the book. um, he published over 18 works of scholarly and cultural influence including "race rules: navigating the color line from

1996," "i may not get there with you: the true martin luther king jr. in the year 2000," "debating race" in 2007 and "april 4, 1968: martin luther king's death and how it changed america" in twawt. 2008. dyson's pioneering scholarship has had a profound effect on america ideas. dr. dyson is presently professor of sociology at georgetown university and cited as one of the 150 most powerful african-americans by "ebony" magazine. dr. dyson has been called the ideal public intellectual of our time by writer naomi wolfe and a street fighter in suit and tie by author nathan mccall. pretty good names, i should say. you may know him by sight from his many guest appearances on

msnbc, as i do. um, it has been my pleasure to work with both brigitte and paul farber over the last several years to bring leonard freed's photographs into the library's collections. paul m. farber was professor dyson's student at the university of pennsylvania and later his research assistant. currently, farber is a lecturer in urban studies at the university of pennsylvania and a ph.d. candidate having just completed his dissertation in american culture at the university of michigan. farber's work on culture has appeared in the journal criticism and outlet -- and other outlets, vibe and blander, as well as on npr. he is named to bell's inaugural inspire 100 list as a world changer for his use of technology in empowering social change. he is working on a biography of leonard freed. let us welcome these

distinguished guests and learn how leonard freed's images of the historic march in august 1963 changed the ongoing, worldwide struggle for civil rights. [applause] [background sounds] >> this is the day. how did this book get started? you would ask me, and many people do. and i say it was president obama in his first term, he said: i am here because you all marched. not in america yet 50 years ago what did i think america was? it was all things to me.

my husband's home country, my new jewish family -- [inaudible] robin and benjamin, leonard's cousins, and lots of americans. we came here from amsterdam to photograph the black people. i have no photo of myself and our seven month stay in -- [inaudible] leonard was very frugal. he needed all film for his project, "black and white america." nothing but racists, he said. i wish i had a picture of myself and of leonard at the march on washington. i only had my eyes. and these eyes looked and looked and looked. i would say all these places.

and when leonard asked me how i liked the day, i would say all these faces, the day of the march was america for me. and then the speech of dr. martin king, ruth -- luther king, "i have a dream." the speech was in the air. it moved like a wave over the heads of all those people. the voice was strong, a preacher's voice. it reached everyone. i had never heard anything like this, and i know i never will. [applause] >> what a powerful testimony.

to the multiple means by which people contribute to history. there is no picture of brigitte and leonard freed because they sacrificed every moment on film for the betterment of this nation. that is more than an anecdote, that is part and parcel, perhaps even woof and warp, of the very fabric of american conscience that king wove a golden thread into. his majestic oratory that day, as ms. freed has indicated, is powerful and luminous testimony to the ability of words to move

us, of speech to redeem us, and of rhetoric to call us the higher purposes, deeds done in the name of ideals for which we are willing to sacrifice. how appropriate then that brigitte freed testifies about the magnanimity of spirit of her fallen husband whose shutterbug, whose eye, whose aesthetic glory has given us a visual testimony to the majestic sweep of the human soul when it seeks to be free. freed from its constraints. freed from the narrow obligation of hatred. freed to see. leonard freed, even in his name, gives us the powerful emblem of

freedom that we all seek at the end of the day. i'm honored to be here with ms. freed and, of course, my student, paul farber, who called me into this project because when he was my assistant, he was my boss. [laughter] and he is one of the most thoroughly organized young people i have ever met, and i am as proud as a papa to have hi jewish son -- to have my jewish son -- [laughter] work -- oy ve -- [laughter] [applause] right here. and he has sprung from not only the loins of his family, but from the powerful collective imagination of people whose love and dedication mark his life as

well. the reverend marcia dyson, my wife his mother -- is here rhetorically, and symbolically his mother. [laughter] i don't want to get into no baby mama drama -- [laughter] here today. these photographs are not only the emblem of the calm dignity and the quiet beauty of black people and their allies who were in quest for the basic, fundamental dignity of voting or existing without the artificial constraints of segregation. that day when we listened, when they listened to the majestic words of martin luther king jr. echoing from that mighty mall in washington, d.c., who knew that a scant five years later he would lose his life in memphis,

that on that day this soon-to-be martyr at the sunlit summit of hope and expectation would conjure the norms, ideals and beliefs which are the foundation of american democracy. he was reminding america of what it should be. he gave america a blueprint of what it could be. and he called into vision the sweet and powerful romance that the american people have always had with the ideals that nurture us but which we have not always perfectly obtained. and so leonard freed offers photographic testimony to these people's dignity, to their quest for decency. they were dressed in their sunday go-to-meeting best, in 1963. in a mission that frowned upon their -- in a nation that frowned upon their lack of humanity, that quarreled with

them as to the legitimacy of their claims to be fully human, these noble souls marched to washington, d.c. to tell the nation that despite the repudiation of their fundamental dignity, that they were, indeed, dignified, that they were blessed with the beauty of moral purpose that could never be exhausted by the infernal and hateful resistance of bull connor, of clark, the sheriff in alabama, those in georgia, those across the nation and, indeed, the south who did not understand that what these people possessed was mightier than money, was deep or than the rivers that flowed beneath this nation at its founding. they tapped into an eternal spirit of vigilant resistance in the name of spirit and of faith

and of family and of the quiet dignity of the american dream. martin luther king jr. colored that dream powerfully that day. his sweet cadence gave voice to a people who knew that at our best we belonged shoulder to shoulder with the great figures in american society. that despite the refusal to acknowledge who we are and, indeed, then were as people that our rhetoric would appeal to the nation, even a president -- one soon dead, another rising from the heated center of the south -- to become our advocate. because the president was not in control of providence, but there was a god who spoke from washington d.c. now for all the blather of our

christian experience, for all of the rhetoric of our religious roots when we rejected every bit of that evidence by our own behavior that shamed any god that we could claim to be our own, these people remind us that ultimately the cosmic sense of purpose into with which they tapped would be enough to see them forward, to force political and social and economic transformation. and leonard freed both in '63 and in '83 has captured that resistance, that relentless spirit, that edifying power that can never be, if you will, put out by the forces of men and women who fail to see the light. i'm proud to be associated with this project, and i'm proud to be with brigitte freed and paul farber to remind us of leonard freed who freed us from dismemory and who has now

documented with aesthetic glory the beautiful, calm dignity and the wise purpose of human beings when they are in search of freedom. [applause] >> it's as much of a challenge to be on a stage with people who you teachly respect -- deeply respect, who have been your teachers in one form of another and to be here is just that in and of itself is a great honor, and it also sets up a challenge, how do you follow freed and dyson? [laughter] and i think about at the march on washington in '63 when, um, rabbi prince of the american

jewish congress was getting up to speak, and he was following the great folk singer odetta who sang "oh, freedom," and he starts before his written remarks, he says, quite simply: i wish i could sing. [laughter] so i summon him here and say thank you deeply. good day, and i want to share a few perspectives on leonard freed's work and a bit about the history and memory of the march as we're now in the 50th anniversary year of this great gathering. and before i do, i want to make sure to extend deep gratitude to a few individuals here. absolutely to verna curtis who's been such a great supporter of this project here at the library of congress as well as her colleagues at the center for the book and the curators in the princeton photographs division. thank you so much. dinah berlin from getty publications was the editor of this book and had such a

creative and kind hand and brilliant hand in shaping this, and i want to make sure to name her. and though he's no longer with getty publications, greg britain who was there, first green-lit the project and set us on our way. so deep thank yous. and, certainly, to brigitte freed, you know, you've shared so much with me in terms of your wisdom, allowing me to try to do my part to or carry forward leonard's legacy, and i thank you deeply for this opportunity. so leonard freed's 1963 march on washington photographs are among his most elegant and animated of a large body of civil rights-era photography which fueled freed's 1967, '68 photo text "black and white america." this work as a whole captures the prevalence of racial division in america, the decade following the 1954 legal mandate to end segregation, leading up

to and through the landmark civil rights legislation of the mid '60s. four of the photographs from the march on washington were included in this book, including this one on this slide. but the march was just one story or specific photo shoot amongst dozens of others that included protests, parades, beauty pageants. to understand the underpinnings, the drive of this work is to reexplore some of its greater context. i want to draw our attention to several anchoring images to see this march for freed and for all of us as not just an isolated event. instead, we go through freed, we live through freed to understand what led him to the march and what ways it brought him forward in his work. freed was born in 1929 in brooklyn to russian-jewish immigrants. but 1960 he had been living in europe on and off for a decade,

and it was there he honed his craft as a documentary photographer and wrestled with his identity as an expatriot american jew. during the time freed was working on a book of photographs, on a book of photographs focused on jews living in germany and the traces and traumas of the holocaust. he ventured toker berlin in august of -- to berlin in august of 1961 to check out the scene where there was word that a wall was cutting through the middle of the city. with citizens of both sides fearing the brink of world war iii, freed wandered close to the boundary of the divided city. neither on assignment, nor with a predetermined vision who he ended up finding and seeing the most through his camera were american g.i.s. but here at the the wall in its nascent days, freed snapped a photograph of an unnamed black

soldier standing at the edge of the american sector. freed's contact sheets from this trip confirm that this image was powerfully a single shot. taken at a middle distance in black and white, freed stands with his subject between a set of trolley tracks that culminate into the imposed boundary of the wall behind them. this encounter haunted freed. it set him off course and beckoned his return from exile to come back to america to confront segregation and racism. image would end up being the first photograph in "black and white america," and as ap annotation in the book, freed sets this out as its point of departure. he writes: we, he and i, two americans, we meet silently, and we part silently. impregnable and as deadly as the wall behind him is another wall. it's there on the trolley tracks. it crawls across the

cobblestones reaching back home into our lives and deep into our hearts, dividing us where we meet. i am white and he is plaque. setting out -- and he is black. setting out from this point, freed aimed to represent and encroach upon america's racial buffers. because after this opening image with its multiple boundaries, freed would vary his own perspective. per spect -- perspective being that measured distance between a photographer and his subject to approach and acknowledge their humanity and their shared existence. he photographs many african-american subjects in this project and also whites, too, embedded within one interconnected system of race. and he does so by capturing and representing his subjects' fields of vision; what they see, how they see each other. to make visible the terms and conditions of a segregated,

color-line society. in the summer of '63, freed and his family ventured back to america. he photographed in the por roughs of new york city -- boroughs of new york city, and when you look back through the contact sheets of this period, the traces of the march begin to emerge, and you see the button with the hands shaking closely in there as the march's headquarters were centered in new york. leonard and brigitte freed marked off several days for the event. on august 27th they drove down and camped outside the city. on august 28th they arrived in washington, d.c. at dawn. freed began his day on the periphery of the national mall capturing scenes on his hand held like a camera. he walked from the base of the washington monument to the boundaries outside of the white house and to the streets surrounding ford's theater. several blocks from the epicenter of the march, freed captured some of the first photographs of the day under a sign that read "house where

lincoln died." freed made photographs of passers by as they crossed one another's paths. he envisioned this foot traffic as a prelude to the later gathering at the lincoln memorial. because on that day freed was tapping into the deeper currents of historical memory through on-the-spot studies of interpersonal geometry and geography. freed sought images in which he could bring the marchers and the layers of their social landscape and architecture into a shared frame. to see this day from panoramic perspective was also the ability to pay attention to a crowd of individuals with faces and really to walk alongside and amongst them. the day offered freed a spectacle not to marvel from afar or at a fixed distance, but to explore the march at its ground level. freed meandered through

multitudes on the mall, and the resulting images attest to his thoughtful photographic eye as well as his active footwork throughout the day. but if we return to thinking about the role of lincoln and how freed invoked him, a hundred years and eight months after the emancipation proclamation, we see one of the only full shots of the statue of the former president included in this work. it happens to be the same frame which is the only photograph of the day's keynote speaker, dr. martin luther king. much of the march on washington's iconography features king either up close at the podium or with a faceless crowd behind him. but here the leader and the former president from afar can both be seen in a distance atmospheric and collective shot. as king speaks, freed also pivots, capturing both front and

back shots of the crowd with thousands of marchers separating freed and king with lincoln behind him. this image serves as a complex and collective portrait of the march on washington at the lincoln memorial. within a year freed crossed paths with king as he photographed the leader in a baltimore street parade on october 31, 1964. freed had gone back to europe and then returned again, and king himself had just gotten back from europe. and on this trip it was announced that he would receive the nobel peace prize, and this was one of the first public gatherings in his honor. freed devoted a full day to photographing king in baltimore including at a parade honoring him and at a speech at a local synagogue. photograph from the parade is included in "black and white america" and has taken on prominent status in and of itself, a cropped version of

king's hand with the parade goers nearby as the cover of taylor branch's "pillars of fire." king is definitely the centerpiece of this photograph, but like with the march images, we immediate to think about how freed accounts for the crowd around the man. and again, freed's potential place within this crowd. we can consider where freed was standing. was he close enough to reach out and touch the car or touch king? or as you see an arm reaching around king touch bay yard rustin who in another frame is pictured to king's left. but when we consider the deliberate inclusion of a blurred face on the right-hand side of this image, we have to take a step back and really consider whether leonard was close, what his perspective was and if we think of him as part of this scene or being in its way. this was deliberate, of course.

freed fully believed in printing and accounting for photographs all the way to the frame with no cropping. and unlike the black soldier or in berlin, this is not a single shot, but chosen out of several frames and perspectives. freed is part of this scene, and in a way he reminds us of the photograph's power to mark social distances between freed and king, between king and the collectives around him. but to represent these divisions, to challenge them and to remind us of the persuasive power of coexistence. there's more to say about freed's approach to photographing king in 1965 as he follows him to alabama and especially after his assassination. we can think about king as being an ongoing subject of freed's work, and this is a shot included in "this is the day" of

the commemorative 20th anniversary march. and here we get a sense of a call to galvanize around king's image, but we also had his absence truly marked again. and as dr. dyson has brilliantly and powerfully written how april 4, 1968, truly changed america, we get a sense of that day cascading forward. and freed reminds us to think about king and think about his collectives. as we close, i want to think about and put forward some of my hopes for "this is the day" and to do a small part to carry forward the history and memory of the march on washington to summon a few significant names that we want present here with us. while king's dream is extensively excerpted and echoed and envisioned and properly so, it serves as the iconic memory of the march. but i also hope leonard freed's

photographs remind us to revisit the full message that king put forth and to seek out more of the stories of the 250,000-plus marchers. these veterans of the civil rights movement and all those in their hometowns who they impacted and all those inspired from that point. to fully understand the march on washington as the greatest gathering toward democracy on american soil and to understand it as a noble blue print of social change that we still have with us. in other words, to see the day of the march on washington, august 28, 1963, as the living archive and to see this book as one of many potential tools of thought. there are many names to name, more i hope as we approach the 50th anniversary this august, but i offer a few now. i say carol corson, my first and second grade teacher -- um, excuse me, in philadelphia who

attended the march on washington. ms. corson was a white quaker woman, and she shared stories with us about her time there and what she put forth to all of us had to do with understanding what your convictions are and being not present with them, but being present with other people in sharing them. of course, we say the name dr. martinnen luther king, our american genius and prophet, whose words and action deserve ongoing illumination and critical exploration and complex consideration. julian bond, a young leader and participant in the march who's carried forward the spirit of this gathering and brought forward the mantle of the civil rights movement along lines of race, class, gender, sexual orientation and stays as a moral compass and bellwether for us. though this day was triumphant, thereafter remained the reality

of systematic forms of racial hay red and violence. so this year as we happily mark the 50th anniversary of the march, a month later we'll also mourn five decades since the brutal bombing of the 16th street baptist church in birmingham where addy may collins, cynthia wesley, carol robberson and denise mcnair were murdered. they, too, deserve our commemoration this year. and our hearts are still heavy with the loss last month of hadiya pendleton, another young woman of color from chicago who was gunned down as another victim in the city's epidemic of violence just days after returning from marching here in d.c. for an inaugural parade for the inauguration of barack obama. we bring hadiya forward because even as the national mall's a space of healing, the symbolic justice granted for those of us who go to it can only be guaranteed further with greater forms of action beyond the maps,

beyond the mall's mapped boundaries. to carry us forward through tragedy and towards transformation, we say the names of dr. michael eric dyson and reverend marcia dyson. scholars and leaders like them, they have taught me and so many others so much about intellectual inquiry that flows through the head and the heart and always between peoples. to the 250,000-plus attendees of the march whose names we don't know well enough, we hope to know more of you. we want to hear your stories, and we want to be able to both record them and speak them out ourselves. as they'll nourish both our history as well as our pathways forward. and finally, leonard freed whose photographs on the march on washington affirm the profound beauty and his or to have call significance of -- historical

significance of the gathering as they frame collective action and democratic transformation. in the leonard's memory and with his photographs glimpsing the past and informing our futures, we say his name, forward freed, and express our gratitude for all of his contributions. this"this is the day." thank you. [applause] >> well, of course, i want to express our gratitude to our three speakers. this has really been a terrific program, verna. and they have made it such. we're going to continue the gathering in the foyer with both the book selling and a reception and with the display down in princeton photographs. but first, i just want to say another word about beautiful

book which will be on sale, and you can get it autographed in the back. it not only was produced by the getty museum, but it does have -- and paul spoke of julian bond who has produced the forward. dr. dyson has an essay in it, and taken by itself, you know, it is really a wonderful commemoration and event by itself that moves the thought forward as paul did at the end of his talk. the it's a truly -- it's a truly example of how a book can both be a catalyst, something beautiful in itself and a, if you will, a call to action in the spirit of the event and in the spirit of the best kind of collaborative publishing, publication event and just as this was, as verna said, a wonderful collaborative event on the part of many people at the library of congress and in the

publishing world. so before i call you out to get your book, get it signed, meet each other and go down to the princeton photographs division just between 1 and 2:00 to see some of the photos and this wonderful gift to the library of congress -- thank you so much -- let's give our speakers and verna another round of applause. [applause] >> tell us what you think about our programming this weekend. you can tweet us @booktv, comment on our facebook wall, send us an e-mail. booktv, nonfiction books every weekend on c-span2. p. >> so if you cut demand for somebody's product per day by 50% per total by 60%, you must have crushed prices. here's what actually happened. the average amount medicare reimburses per day in a hospital

has grown by 5x since 1983. so 60% decline in the number of patients, 5x increase in price. we should all be so lucky. i wallet to be in that business. -- i want to be in that business. now, another statistic which is entirely sort of irrelevant but fascinating. hospitals tell medicare what their costs are so that medicare can power the price -- can compare the price they pay to hospitals' costs. so in those 30 years that medicare increased the price paid to hospitals by five times, hospitals reported that hair costs had incleesed -- that their costs had increased by eight times. so the interesting thing is our demand collapsed. in any industry that would have been devastating, right? medicare paid five times as more, but the hospitals say they're now only getting reimbursed 40% of their costs down from 70%. and one of my most fond, you

know, you have to stand outside to see this is that medicare insists that hospitals perform medicare services at a loss, and that loss has been growing -- you can see the number. they show a gross margin number. that loss has been growing over the last decade. since medicare patients are the bulk of our hospital patients, nobody has ever successfully explained and medicare's never asked why people are still building hospitals. because you would think if you lose money on every patient, you'd want to reduce volume, not increase volume. there's a lot of ha in health care, right? there's a lot of hinges in health care that you go, wait a minute, if i get off the island and think in terms of the real world, you know, if gm's prices declined in half, they probably wouldn't be building new factories. i want to spend one more moment on prices because prices are the circulatory system of a real economy. and they're one of the things most misunderstood in health care, and it's a little wonky,

but these things actually drive the way human beings receive service. one of the things we assume is that -- the question is how do we pay for health care? one of the arguments i'm making today is the how we pay drives the type of care we're getting. >> you can watch this and other programs online at booktv.org. >> here are some of the latest head ryanlines -- headlines surrounding the publishing industry the past week. a class action lawsuit has been filed against amazon and six other publishers, simon & schuster, random house, penguin, mcmillan and harpercollins. the booksellers filing the suit, fiction addiction of greenville, south carolina, bookhouse in albany, new york, and pozen books in the new york city, all claim that amazon and the major publishers have formed confidential agreements to monopolize print and e-book sales. the the suit will concentrate on digital rights management with independent bookstores urging the court to prohibit amazon

from selling e-books that are limited to only certain devices or applications. the suit was filed in the u.s. district court for the southern district of new york. and the finalists have been announced for the 33rd los angeles times book prizes. the book prizes are broken into ten categories including biography, current interest, fiction, history and science and technology. among the finalists are jake tapper, robert caro, mate silver and national book award winner katherine boo. the winners will be announced on april 9th, that's the night before the l.a. times festival of books -- april 19th. go to l.a. times.com. stay up-to-date on breaking news about authors, books and publishing by liking us on facebook at facebook.com/booktv or follow us on twitter @booktv. you can also visit our web site, booktv.org, and click on news about books. >> jess b