>> i you interested in being part of book tv new online book club jack each month we will discuss a different book and author. this month will be discussing michele alexander is the new jim-crow, mass incarceration in the age of color blindness. poster thoughts on twitter with the hash tag be tv book club and right on our facebook page. then on tuesday, march 26 that night p.m. eastern, join our live moderate discussion on twitter has tagged. send us your suggestions on books you would like to read as part of the book club via twitter, facebook, or e-mail

book tv at booktv.org. up next, peter dreier, politics professor at occidental college profiles the collections of americans a champion social and political reform, including w.e. dubois, gloria steinem, and billy jean king. this event from busboys and poets in washington, d.c., is just over an hour. >> hello, everybody. thank you for coming. don't shoot too loud. i appreciate being invited to busboys and poets. they have heard a lot about it over the years. it is great to be here. i have been going around the country talking about my book. i was surprised about a week and half ago when this guy named barack obama stole my scene. you probably remember in the inaugural speech a week and a half ago he talked about the

lessons we need to learn, the important milestones from seneca falls and selma and stonewall. milestones of the women's rights movement and the civil rights movement and the gay rights movement. and that was a great -- a great speech for reminding us how important it is that we stand on the shoulders of the great people who came before us and who have turned radical ideas into common sense ideas and have expanded our democracy and made our society more democratic, but one of the things that i notice in his speech, and you probably notice to yourself, there was something missing in that litany of great, great moments, great milestones the progress of history, seneca falls, selma, and stonewall. and there was really nothing about the labor movement.

and i thought to myself, why not . and why was the labor movement missing. and that i thought, well, maybe it was because there was no great milestone that began with the letter as. i was trying to think, if i was a speechwriter trying to inject a labor movement into the obama inaugural speech, what would i have advised him. i was thinking about, what are some of the great moments of labor history, some of which i talked about in my book. one of the great turning points was flint, the flint sit-down strike of 1937. the plant starts with f, so you can't do that. sit down starts with half. there's the great sit-down in seattle. there is a great general strike in san francisco in 1934. san francisco starts with an s. one of the great moments of

labor history in the united states in the most recent time was the great silliness grape boycott with scissors chavez and the farm workers. so i wish i had a chance to talk to obama's speech writer and inject at least 1s into the speech for the labor movement. other than that i felt the speech did a great job of reminding us how important it is to know our history and to know how far we've come and to know -- to learn some lessons from that history, and i'll talk a little bit about those lessons. i'm going to give some examples from my book about the people i wrote about and then because i am a college professor and because some of my former students are here, and wrong to give you a quiz at the end of tonight's presentation. so if you think about a hundred years ago and you think about if

i was standing here at busboys and poets if it existed hundred years of your or at the beginning of the 1900's and i had said what we need in this country is oldies' insurance so that all people don't have to the dye in poverty so that they can retire as a reasonable wage and not live in destitution, or vice said that what we need is woman to have the right to vote. workers should have the right to unionize. we should have a progressive income tax. maybe the government should take some responsibility for protecting consumers against dangerous medical products and medicine and unhealthy food and unsafe and unhealthy work places if i said that maybe we should have a lot protecting people from being harassed if they are

gay or lesbian. by so that we should have some kind of national health insurance system, if i said that what we need in this country is an end to lynching in the right for african-americans to have the right to vote, all of those things and many more, you would think i was a utopian. you would think of was may be somewhat crazy. i was unrealistic. i was impractical. maybe i was even a bolsheviks or communist or socialist. and everything that i just said is now taken for granted. things that our society accept as normal. one of the themes of my books is that the radical ideas of one generation are often the common sense of the next or subsequent generations. and the book is really about the hundred americans who made that happen, the people who helped to

build low labor movement and helped to build the women's suffrage in the women's rights movement, helped to build the civil rights movement, the environmental movement, a gay and lesbian rights movement, the peace movement, and to advance our society towards more justice and equality. think there is a quality that progressives have which is both a great quality and a bad quality. progresses' are never satisfied. whenever accept the status quo. sometimes that can make for kind of man irritable situation because we never think that things are good enough. if you look back 100 years and realize how far we've come and the struggles that are necessary to bring about a better society, it actually gives me hope about the future. the last chapter of the book is called the 21st century so far atomized some of the incredibly impressive changes to the last zero years that have moved our

society continually in the direction of more social justice and more democracy. as you all know, martin luther king had this great phrase that the ark of history is long and ensor's justice. what he did not say is that somebody has to bend it to. someone has to take responsibility towards moving that arc towards justice. the people that i wrote about in my book of the people that were the benders of society. i'm going to tell you about a few of them and then draw some lessons from that and give your quest. i was in milwaukee three or four months ago giving a talk at the university of wisconsin in milwaukee. one of the great heroes in our book is a guy named victor berger. victor berger was the first social congressman elected from milwaukee in 1911. while he was in milwaukee organized the late -- labor

movement as the socialist party to take over the city government they instituted some incredible changes which other cities replicated all over the country over developed by wealthy people so that they could have access to the waterfront, developing a great public education system, a republican system, and it developed in the cobol source system. there were so proud of this your system that they started calling themselves source socialists. it was very well run, very efficient. a visibly run source system. so they spend a lot of time as an austrian and rant and he built up the progress of a socialist movement in milwaukee and in 1911 was elected to congress. came here to washington and introduced a lot of very progressive legislation, most of

which did not go anywhere first. but some of those ideas later become including women's suffrage, later became law. one of the idiocy had in 1911 was something called old age insurance which today we call social security. a radical idea, so radical that he could not get any votes for it. it in the 1930's obviously franklin roosevelt, the new deal, the progress of congress, the grass roots labor movement and protest movements of the time pushed the system to be more progressive. and it passed social security. even at the time, the business community, conservatives said this is a socialist and radical idea that will ruin the economy. so it was still considered a radical idea, but it was, nevertheless, now law. about a year go the poll was done of tea party members --

about 50 percent of all the tea party members that they polled said that congress and the business community should not mess with social security. it up the social security was sacrosanct. how did this idea of social security go from being a socialist radical idea hundred years ago to something that today even right wing tea party members feel is so embedded in our society as part of our mainstream that it should not be that does not mean there are not some conservative business people that want to reduce social security benefits, but almost all americans agree that social security is something that we need. so when i was in milwaukee, i thought, everyone in milwaukee will know who victor berger is because it was such a remarkable public figure. i asked people in the audience,

are there any buildings in milwaukee named after victor berger? are there any streets named after him filmable of cards or other any monuments? and not only did hardly anybody in the audience know who it was, but they could not identify any public monuments were streets named after victor berger, except that in the back of the room there was a guy that looked like he was in his 60's two races and then said, i went to victor berger elementary school. i said, oh, great. finally. someone who knows who he is. so i asked him. where is it. he tell me where wise. i said, well, i want to go there and see it. i want to touch it. is there a plaque that says who he was? news as welcome as out of the victor berger school anymore. what happened? it changed the name to the martin luther king school.

i lifted out. and so i asked the crowd, should you do something about a? and revive his name. i had this idea that maybe you should rename that school the victor berger school again so that today's children will know who was an celebrate what a remarkable person he is. every time someone goes to one of those great parks on the waterfront it was victor berger that helped. eliminating martin luther king's name and replacing it with victor berger. i said, what if you added his name in the men after both of them. then i realized that they did that it would be called the parking school -- called the

burger king school. that was not a good idea, but i start something because i have been getting some e-mails from people in milwaukee recently saying that there is an attempt to find something they can name after victor berger again. i'm sort of proud that i have some role to play in reviving his memory. lots of other people in my book to have schools in after them, boulevards in after them. obviously more luther king, a national holiday in california. a state holiday after caesar chavez. a lot of the people are forgotten or they have things named after them but people don't really know who they are. one of my daughters goes to mckinley will school. after a couple of years ago, dm mckinley was. she had no idea. i don't really care says he was a right wing of the president, what it will be nice if she knew who president mckinley was. and so i -- one of the people in

my book is a guy named appeared ruston, probably some of you know who he is. he had four strikes against. he was born in 1919. he became an active civil rights pacifist leader. he was black. he was gay. he was a pacifist, and was a communist. so those are the four strikes that were against them. nevertheless, he made an incredible impact on our society. he was one of the early contests objectors against world war ii. he was an early freedom rider. he was one of the first freedom riders not in the 60's, 1947 he inaugurated the first free ride to integrate the interstate buses in the south. he was very active in -- with a philip randolph, his mentor, was a civil rights and labor leader,

inciting to get african-americans jobs in the defense industry before and during world war two. patrons to have a march on washington. eleanor roosevelt arranged to have a philip randolph meet with president roosevelt thing if you don't change your will have a march on washington. roosevelt caved in an integrated the defense industry. and it many years later, 1963, the organizer of the 1963 march on washington in which martin luther king gave his great i have a dream speech. he was irresponsible for making sure that the bosses got there on time to make sure they have the permits to bring the speakers. the biggest march on washington in the history of america at the time. nobody knew who he was because he was gay and therefore he was always in the shadows of the civil rights movement.

he had been a mentor to muddle it became, todd martin luther king a lot about civil disobedience and nonviolence. he was of public figures. then he died in the 1970's. he was from a small town outside of philadelphia called west chester pennsylvania. and the school district of pennsylvania was building a new school and had decided it would limit after. and so they decided to have a contest. they had people recommending. a group of people in westchester advocated that bear ruston, this black, gay, pacifist communist, although he renounced his communist beliefs but remained a socialist, get to have this school named after an. and so rustin became a public

figure again in his hometown, and they did name this -- this republican school board named their high-school after ruston. when i was writing my book back of the principle of the school and asked, does anybody in your school know who rustin is. and in his name is on the school in his been around for about ten years, but does anybody -- howdy to your students to be is. and she said, we have his picture on the entrance of the school. every year we have of week of we remember him. his hundredth anniversary.

what did you two examples. one of them is telling killer. everyone knows to helen keller is a, one of the most well-known people in the united states. but what he is well known for his being blind. what is also well known for his having been a young girl. a wild child who became blind at an early age. kind of obstreperous peter parents were kind of a loss for what to do. they brought a woman to teacher at the sign and communicate. what we know about him, about helen keller is that she was standing at a water pump. this is the great scene in the

movie. the miracle worker starring patty duke as helen keller. standing at a water pump. pumping the water. helen keller feels the water and. for the first time we make the connection between the feeling in there and of the liquid and the word water which she pronounces what wall. that scene is kind of frozen and ermines about who she was . it turns out that helen keller was more than just a seven year-old girl who learned how to say water. she was an international figure, and she became a socialist and a pacifist. she campaigned for eugene dagen when he ran for president of the socialist party ticket. she was a militant and an

outspoken feminist. she did a lot of research about the causes of blindness. she went to one of the first line -- went to radcliffe college. she connected the causes of blindness to economic and social injustice and became quite a radical and was often on picket lines during strikes. at one point because she was so well-known, a filmmaker made a silent movie about the life of helen keller, a germanic movie. she was invited to come to the opening of the movie, the opening night of the movie in new york. so she shows up at the movie theater. people are picketing outside the movie theater. she's wondering why that is. and so the teller that they are on strike. these other workers in the movie theater on strike. so she has to make a decision

compelling going to go into the movie theater and attend the premiere of the movie about me or my to stand outside on the picket line with the workers. she made the choice to stand outside with the workers, the people wanted to visit a movie. there would not go in if helen keller was outside picketing. so the owner of the movie theater settle the strike that night and there were able to go in and watch the movie and settle the strike. and so that is the story of helen keller, the struggle story of this woman who lived to a ripe old age and remainder radical all of life. but most of us know and heard about her was kind of frozen when she was seven rory years old. so she was famous, but not for politics. another person like that is dr. seuss. his real name is the door geisel. i don't know whether they sell

those books year, when i would encourage you to go read some of his books. the most popular children's author in the history of the world, ever, more popular than a sop the more popular than the grimm brothers. more of his books are sold in more different languages than any other children's author. his real name is theodore geisel he became an editorial cartoonist in the 1940's for our wrestling newspaper in new york called p.m. which was founded by marshall field, a left-wing millionaire, a traitor to his class as a talk about in my book. quite a few people in my book you were traitors to their class, upper class radicals. and so he was an editorial cartoonist to adopted the name dr. seuss, and he wrote and drew

some incredible curtains during that time when he worked for p.m. newspaper, including willie -- really, really dramatic and hard-hitting cartoons against hitler, mussolini, southern races in anti-semites. he was quite a remarkable career tennis, but he really wanted to be a children's writer. he failed at first. the first couple of books that he tried to get published, no one wanted to test them. eventually with cat in the hat he became a popular children's author. quite a few of his books reflect his underlying philosophy which he told a reporter in an interview, i don't like people that believe other people or push of the people around. he really was about -- many of his books are about teaching children about the abuse of power and to a standoff for yourself and to not allow others

to bully and abuse you. and so there are a couple of books that are my favorites. and, of course, all of the world now people are still reading dr. seuss books. they probably don't know they are indoctrinating their children with radical propaganda one of them, one of my favorites is ural the turtle. people know that story. a turtle who makes them stand on top of each other so that he consented to top elected the empire that he controls. and the turtle at the bottom is begging to let them breed because it is uncomfortable down there. and so let me read to you one of the lines in this. this is from mac. the little girl at the bottom. i'd like to complain, but down

here below we are feeling great pain. i know upon top you are seeing great sites, but down at the bottom we to should have rights. and so back to l.a. does not listen to them. and so at one. he burps. the whole pyramid comes tumbling down. indeed falls into the pond. he becomes just like all the others. the poem, the story ends, the turtles of course, all the troubles are free as turtles and maybe all creatures should be. to that is a pretty radical idea . dr. seuss. that is clearly a metaphor but hitler. that is clearly what he was writing about. he wrote another book called the

speeches which is about these weird characters that had to where these yellow stars to differentiate themselves from each other. that is truly about anti-semitism. another one of his gray books is the lord racks which was recently made it to a film about the power of big business and destroying the environment and how we have to stand up to corporations and business to stop them from destroying our pristine environment. and one of my other favorites, the better battle but which is clearly about the cold war and the arms race, these two groups of people, those dukes and the kooks who are on two sides of wall. there are exactly alike, but they hate each other because of some point in the past, no one can remember, they learned to dislike each other, so they

think they should each other. a key building bigger and bigger weapons knowing that someday they may have to use them of the fence. and at the end of the story both sides have built these incredible weapons to kill each other and destroy each other. and then the story ends. and even the and this child can figure out what dr. seuss is trying to say, which is that the arms race is a waste of money and a waste of resources and not a good way for people to learn how to live together in peace and harmony. so dr. seuss is another one of those characters in my book, one of the people in my book who is famous, but most people don't know about his politics. another theme of my book, everybody in the book, all 100 of them are heroes. they are not saints. all of them are human beings that have laws and were -- and are products of their time.

let me give you a couple of examples of that. we all know margaret sanger, right to move coined the phrase birth control. started the organization which today is planned parenthood. she was a nurse. she was a socialist to live in the early 1900's. she became a nurse during strikes in helping organize strikes in massachusetts and elsewhere. eventually she settled in new york and started a clinic and she saw lot of poor arab and women who were pregnant and having children that they did not want and would ask her as a nurse for advice about what to do about not getting pregnant, and she had nothing to say to them. she said, al find out. she went to europe. she learned about birth control. birth control ideas. she came back and started propagandizing about birth control in the call, the

socialist newspaper, her own newsletter that she started in women's magazines. she began to distribute leaflets in new york, different neighborhoods, telling women about birth control. and she was arrested many times and brought to trial. an incredibly courageous person for doing that. individually the courts sided with her, although it took quite a long time. doctors and nurses and other organizations, including the organization that became planned parenthood were allowed to distribute birth control information. and so she really was at the cutting edge of the women's rights movement. and as i said, she coined the phrase birth control. but for some part of for life she toyed with this racist idea called eugenics' which was the science of manipulating our genetic makeup in order to a create a better race.

the person most associated with genetic to sell their who would sterilize jews and gypsies and other women to try to improve the nazi race. and the united states, the eugenics movement was a racist movement and a movement against immigrants. margaret did not share those anti-immigrant and racist beliefs, but she nevertheless thought that maybe eugenics' could help improve the conditions for women, and says she started hanging out and communicating within going to meetings with some of the really ugly racists and anti-semites that were around at the time. she later recanted and thought it was a mistake, the she was a product of the time. and so that is an example of somebody being a hero, but not a saint. martin luther king who everybody admirers as the only great civil rights leader, and economic justice it toward the end of his life.

he was outspoken as a socialist. he believed in the redistribution of economic wealth and power. he also was clearly, toward the end of his life, involved in the anti-war movement. and one of his great phrases was that the bonds that we send to vietnam -- bombs that we send to the downfall of our inner cities be as a takeaway resources we need to rebuild our country. home. but martin luther king was clearly a flawed human being in many ways, at least in some ways. he cheated on his wife quite often, and that is well-known in the biographies of him. and historians have now discovered that he plagiarized his dissertation at boston university. i hate to disillusion you. i know none of my students ever pledge drives. i am pleased. and we don't know whether he did it consciously or unwittingly, but he was a human being and had

his own flaws. i don't think any of those things take away from the majesty of the wonderful activities and the wonderful progress that martin luther king was responsible for. but that was part of who he was. and one more example, that three in my book not because of their athletic prowess, but because they use their athletic fame and their celebrity to help promote social and economic justice. one of them is nominally. of the one is billie jean king who is as responsible as anybody for title mine and women's equality in sports and in creating more parity for women in college and high schools to have more activity in sports and also early on in her career. a few celebrities and the acknowledged she once had an abortion which at the time was a very controversial thing to say.

she said in an article in news magazine. she also was one of the first athletes to command of the closet as a gay person, as a lesbian. so margaret -- so billie jean king is in my book called the personal want to talk about as jackie robinson. jackie robinson was the first african-american to play professional major league baseball. he broke the color line in 1947 and became a major celebrity. he used his celebrity and was also a great baseball player, won the rookie of the year award he used his celebrity to advocate for civil rights. he became a fund-raiser for the naacp. on what to picket lines. he wrote a column in the new york post and other newspapers where he was always boys in his views about civil rights, and he was quite an outspoken athlete. and a lot of his fellow baseball players, including some of the black players that came after him to kept calling him jackie

shut up and play baseball. not your job to be an activist. he said, that's who i am. he wanted to do that. he was quite outspoken. in the early 1950's the general manager of the brooklyn dodgers asked, and that think probably more reason to to say told jackie robinson to testified before congress about the situation of african-americans. there was a hidden agenda in his testimony, and it was earlier that year the great singer in activist and actor has apparently given a speech where he said he had gone to visit russia. he thought that russia was -- did not have a lot of segregation are racist beliefs. and so he admired the tyrants

and openness of society. you probably did not a full view of what russian society was like, but that is what he believed. at one point he apparently said, although there is no evidence of his exact words, that american negro's would not fight in a war against the soviet union. this was the height of the cold war. and so when jackie robinson went to testify before congress, he was probably one of the two or three best known african americans and american at the time. part of the agenda was for him to criticize paul robeson on behalf of all african-americans for him he was allegedly speaking. terry testified before congress, and he was quite courageous and principled and made a point of saying that even though i've done well as a baseball player, american negro's today face enormous amounts of discrimination and prejudice and the condition of african-americans in america today in the early 1950's has a long ordeal.

then they asked about paul robeson, and he criticized pulsing, americans, african-americans are patriotic. we would fight any war against the soviet union. he does not speak for negro americans. the next day in all the newspapers in america jackie robinson's comments about paul robison were on the front page. none of his comments criticizing american racism natives is paper and so his criticism released on a lot of people who believe he was one of the great americans of the 20th-century. he spoke about 15 languages. he could sing in all of them. he was a great opera star, a movie star, broadway star, all-american football player. what directors, columbia law school. is resonates is remarkable. but he was a radical.

he was close to the communist party. his pass was taken away. reflecting that tendency during the cold war. later when jackie robinson, four died in the early 1970's to when he wrote his autobiography and the city made two mistakes in his life that he really regret it. these are the two want to talk about his book. one is he really regretted having endorsed richard nixon for president in 1960, which she did because he had interviewed both nixon and kennedy in doubt that nixon was more pro-civil rights and kennedy. originally endorsed hubert humphrey, but when he did not win the 1960 democratic presidential nomination he endorsed nixon. he regretted doing that. he said he regretted his criticism of paul robeson. he said, looking back and realize that he was a principled and heroic and courageous figure who basically gave up his career

and his fame for his political principles. he felt very bad about that. by then robison had died, so it could not personally tell him he was sorry. and so that is another example of somebody who was a hero, but not a saint. robinson regretted it, but he was flawed and made a big mistake, what he owes a big mistake, and i agree with him. a few other examples of some people in my book that maybe you have heard of in a you have not. but i think the plan important role in building our society. in the last ten years in america , the issue of same-sex marriage has come to the forefront. only a few years ago, to a 12 years ago, public opinion pollsters did not even ask the question, what do you think a bus in six marriage because it

was not on the agenda. no more than half of all americans and about 75 or 80 percent of americans under 40 believe that same-sex marriages and get the idea. so we have common enormous when this issue. perrier would be very excited to know what this. the founder of the gay-rights movement in america whose name is basically unknown to most people, including people in the gay-rights movement. he started the first gay-rights organization in los angeles in 1950. issues work discrimination on the job, police brutality. very secretive. 1950 committee people in america back then were considered literally defective, considered the disease to be gay. it was really an awful time to

be gay. during the cold war when people were fired if people thought that there were day from the federal government. perrier was a courageous figure. a communist organizer and actor in los angeles, kicked out of the communist party because they were among the public is well and he became the leader of the very small and quite secretive gay-rights movement. how did he come out -- how did he come to be this heroic figure? in 1948 when he was still in the communist party he went to organize homosexuals to support henry wallace who was running for president on the third party progressive party ticket. even then the vice-president under fdr. he had been kicked off the ticket in 1944 for being too

radical. and harry truman became the vice-president. a year later fdr died. i have just written an article which will be published next sunday. what what america have been like if henry wallace had stayed on the ticket and when fdr died he became the president of the united states, a guy you believe in racial integration back in 1948. racial integration, strong labor union, universal health insurance, women's rights, and end to the cold war, and into the arms race. you would have been the most radical president we ever had. you wanted to support henry wallace. he wanted to get his network of homosexuals to support and wallace. but he was not about to start an organization called homosexuals. that would not have been a very good political idea. instead they started organization called ??? for wallace -- bachelor's for

wallace. it was a code name that was never the less effective, at least effective in getting their organization together. they did not do very well because henry wallace only bound up with 2 percent of the vote. and his memory is almost erased from our national history. but having had that experience of organizing a man into this political campaign, he thought, well, maybe we can build a movement in the organization for gay-rights. so he started the society in 1950, and he later became active in the early stages of the gay-rights movement. but i have asked a lot of my friends who were involved in gay-rights issues if they know who he is, and very few know who he is. there is an autobiography about him, a biography about him, a documentary film about him. still not a very well-known figure. another person in my book will i

like to talk about who is both quite a remarkable human being but also someone who is not well known for they're politics is offered by sen. albert einstein was a socialist. albert einstein was very active when it came to this country from germany and the civil-rights movement in the 1940's and 50's's. he believed very strongly that there should be it jewish state in the middle east, but it should be a buy national state with arabs and jews joining forces in there should be a socialist culture. he was probably the first celebrity scientist. everyone in the world knew who was. very few people know about the theory of relativity but they know it's something about equals mc squared. they know w