history. do you anticipate anything like that with mrs. thatcher? did she connect with the british pluck in the same way? >> -- public in the same way? >> that's a very good question, that's very astute. because you know in a way what the answer is. she's 82. a grand old lady. she is well regarded by many people in the business, but she's not well liked. and it is the profound difference, really, between the two of them. because they both shared so much in common. belief, ideology, practice, eight years shared. but ronnie reagan was just a different character. that's why i think the republicans are barking up the wrong tree if they're trying to look for another ronald reagan. he just was a special person who comes along once every now and then. and his, it came through all sorts of things. it wasn't even hollywood which did this to him. he was already a charmer when he was a young man. and he also found that he had a

rappaport both at -- rapport. he just found it natural. he was a very funny, optimistic, likable personality who told endless anecdotes and jokes to lubricate the wheels of government and the compromises necessary in politics. mrs. thatcher was quite a different person. never knowingly telling a joke, i don't think there's one. i think they're told in here by a british ambassador to washington who sat opposite them in one of those long table state dining tables. thatcher, reagan sat next door to each other, and as the body was a able to eavesdrop on the conversation. for two hours reagan told joke after joke after joke after joke, and thatcher remained stony faced without even acknowledging he'd attempted a joke for two hours which i must say shows a sort of tin ear to that humanity, let alone to

ronnie who was a very close friend. there are other things that, this being britain, there are other things that affect mrs. thatcher, and there is a lot of snobbery both social -- she's a shopkeeper's daughter. that means she's not, you know, a horny--handed son of the soil or the stalwart member of the working class. she's a petty bourgeois who everybody has affected to dislike. she's not a grandee, she momentum own land. she borrowed everything, you know, on her way to the top. and there is, there's no doubt, class still plays an enormous part. and people think she may have done an enormous turn for our country and looking back on it, i suppose drudgingly they will admit she made changes which were for the better, but they just won't quite forgive her for being blunt and doing some, taking some very difficult

decisions and putting people's noses out of joint in order to get the change. before i came here, i went to a breakfast with nicolas sarkozy. he is in exactly the same position as margaret thatcher is. and it's very interesting because he's got a lot of the charm of reagan, but he doesn't have the steel of thatcher. then the french are not going to give up their 30-hour week, their seven weeks' paid holiday, their retirement age 55 and all the other things that have been love you shoulded on them which is bankrupt withing -- lavished on them which is bankrupting the country. so it'll be interesting to see which way he turns. but i don't think it'll be any doubt that it'll be a huge news event. but it'll be a bigger event here than britain, and we now know in advance she will not be given a state funeral. well, churchill was given a state funeral. i don't suppose anyone would argue that churchill was a savior not only of britain, but of the western world, the civilized world. so maybe she doesn't quite come

up to that, but she's pretty close in terms of postwar prime ministers. i can't think of anyone who comes close to her, and yet she will not be given, actually, the affection she deserves. >> thank you. >> thank you. >> well, since lady thatcher is a patron of the heritage foundation, i am sure it will be well recognized here, as most of her life is. one other thing, i had not realized physical you mentioned again today that she had taken the organ and could play that music. president reagan also was musicically talented. he played the harmonica. [laughter] he had to learn it for a movie, and he occasionally would still play it. so there were things. again, the book is "ronald reagan and margaret thatcher: a political marriage." we thank you for your kind attention and hope you'll be back with us again in the future. we are adjourned. [applause] >> visit booktv.org to watch any of the programs you see here

online. type the or author or book title in the search bar on the upper left side of the page and click "search." you can also share anything you see on booktv.org easily by clicking "share" on the upper left side of the page and selecting the por mat. booktv streams live online for 48 hours every weekend with top nonfiction books and authors. booktv.org. >> and now, toni morrison talks about her first children's book that introduces a younger generation to the brown v. board of education supreme court decision. this is about 45 minutes. >> i'm happy to have come here. i spent a lot of years in washington and was here, as a matter of fact, when some of these events described in the book "remember" took place. i was here as an undergraduate and later as a teacher. instructor at howard university.

every nation, of course, has noble times, times that it wants to remember, times that they want to its population to remember as a kind of ideal of itself. >> move the microphone down, pleasesome. >> -- please. >> it doesn't stay down -- [laughter] >> that's a little better, huh? [laughter] >> these times, these noble times that most nations identify are usually wars, conquests for

land, conquests for resources. they may be wars for the deposing of a king or a czar or a dictator. they may be wars defending one's self against an oppressor or an invader. but they are generally honorable and bloody. the best ones are honorable, the worst ones are like the honorable ones only in the fact that they usually swim in blood.

but here many this nation -- in this nation 50 years ago there was a fairly bloodless revolution. i say "fatherly" -- "fairly" because there was some blood, and there were instances of violence, and there were instances of torture, and there were instances of imprisonment, and there was death. but overall, it was a bloodless revolution. i like to think of it as the civil rights movement that was truly civil. because masses of people thought

carefully about what was at stake and what was right rather than what was expedient or habitual. they thought about what was elevating rather than merely power trying to reinforce itself. that movement, for it not to be understand as one of the most noble, most mature, most sweeping political changes is inconceivable to me. however, it may court the danger of not being recalled that way. and just in case it is in serious danger of drifting into

the barely mentioned in our textbooks and in our cultural history, or in case it suffers an untimely demise in its narrative because its promises are as yet incomplete, before that we should contemplate and revere that period as a powerfully moral achievement. and of the many paths that the whole movement took, none was more significant or more singular than the brown v. board of education. there's certainly many celebrations and memorials and books and essays and op-ed

pieces all in place to mark and analyze the events of 1954. the culmination of years of work on the ground and in the streets and in the houses and in the temples and be in the churches -- and in the churches and in the courts, the culmination being that supreme court decision. but as we pay tribute to those extraordinary times and the court's, the supreme court's decision that signaled a real turning point in social policy and law, it's still easy to forget one segment of the population whose future was the center of the cause. and i'm referring to the children. not just the ones, however, who walked into the schools in the '50s, but also the ones who

walked into schools now -- who walk into schools now, 50 years later. when i was approached to do a book for children about brown v. board of education, that's what i thought of, those two sets of children. of but the question for me was how to relate those events to young people who may have anything from no information at all to some vague memory of of a class lesson or some adult trying to describe the civil rights movement to them. and, of course, it may have been very much like telling them about the civil war. they may feel that didn't. so the -- that distant. so the question was how to make those days alive for them in a manner that was direct, not preachy, not patronizing and not

burdensome as a test. well, photographs were chosen that documented and dramatized the precursors to the decision, the decision and the little of its aftermath. but even the most powerful images could become merely another lesson or another collection if they were presented with captions that were limited to date, time, who, when and where. so what really attracted me to the project was the possibility of entering imagineatively into the minds of the people in the photos, what they might be thinking. or feeling. or could have thought. or felt. in language that represented the language of the people in the photographs that was also the language of the readers. i wanted to make the experience

as intimate as possible. and my skills are honed in narrative, fiction and dialogue, so i thought that i would bring those into play rather than sort of a essay-type rendering of what was going on. in doing so, in trying to invent what this person in a photograph might have been banking on to himself or saying to another person, it occurred to me that something truly unique had happened. because i can't think of any political movement so, that so demanded and so required the deliberate courage of children and their generosity. children having to behave in a

manner that was not merely to advance him or herself, but all children then and in time to come. they were at the most vulnerable age when they were asked and able to become involved in something big and much, much bigger than themselves. they did it, and it was hard. and just imagine it. imagine yourself as i imagine myself 8 years old, 12 years old, 15 years old. i'm entering a street, a neighborhood, a building where i believe i am hated. well, i know i am, because

grown-ups are screaming at me. grown-ups as well as children are calling me names. i am so not wanted, soldiers with guns have to come along to protect me. and if they have guns, maybe they need them. maybe my life is in danger. maybe somebody out there in the crowd has a gun too. and might use it. but even without those children who went to school without national guard support, they entered school all alone. sometimes with a few others of their own race, and they had to spend the day there. the anxiety of entering any new school, new neighborhood for a

child is intense. but to enter under those circumstances is more than intense. trying not to be afraid or at least not showing it. not misbehaving, not even getting angry. not making my -- any mistakes, and trying not to be hurt. trying to learn under those circumstances. waiting, really waiting for the day to end so you can go home and be with your own. knowing all the while that what you're doing is for people you will never know. i wanted today's children to think about that and know that that spirit, that nobility, that

generosity was in them too. to give up something, to be brave about something for the greater good, not just one's personal advantage. where else in their history books could they see that, imagine that kind of courage from people their own age? where else could they see adults of all races, all faiths, all classes and professions binding themselves to each other in such a righteous cause? especially a nonmilitary revolution. where else can you see that? it still is the most startling thing to me.

i am still heartened by it. and i hope -- well, i'm convinced that young readers of "remember" will be heartened too. i want to read to you now just a few words, some of the passages from the introduction to the book where i was hoping to communicate that to young people. i think i can do this without my glasses. [laughter] no.

no risks with the eyes. i had two cataract operations, you'll be happy to know. the world is blindingly beautiful. [laughter] i had no idea. what i had lost. this book is about you. even though the main event as a story took place many years ago. what happened before it and after it is now part of all our lives. because remembering is the mind's first step toward understanding. this book is designed to take you on a journey think a time in american life when there was as much hate as there was love, as much anger as there was hope, as many heroes as cowards. a time when people were overwhelmed we motion and

children -- with emotion and children discovered new kinds of friendships and a new kind of fear. as with any journey, there is often a narrow path to walk before you can see the wide road ahead. and sometimes there is a closed gate between the path and the road. to enliven the trip, i've imagined the thoughts and feelings of some of the people in the photographs chosen to help tell this story. they're all -- there are children, teenagers, adults, ordinary people leading ordinary lives all swept up in the events that would mark all our lives. the first people to step on the long path were children and their parents. the laws in many states called jim crow laws demanded separation of the races in all public places and especially the

public schools. these laws were based on the idea of separate but equal. that meant black people could enter public areas, could use public facilities such as drinking fountains in waiting rooms and train stations, be seated on public transportation, go to parks and movie theaters and attend schools but not with white people. sitting apart on a bus or not being served through the front window of a takeout restaurant was humiliating, but nothing was more painful than being refused a decent education. no matter how much they argued or how long they complained, black families had to send their children to all-black schools no matter how far away. many buildings were dilapidated,

even dangerous. textbooks were few, worn, out of date. there were no supplies, no after school programs, school lunches, sports equipment, underpaid teachers were overburdened trying to make do. then one day some parents from delaware, kansas, south carolina, virginia and washington, d.c. stepped onto the path. these african-american parents formed a group represented by lawyers for the naacp to sue school boards that required their children to travel to schools miles away from white ones closer to their homes. their case was named for one of the apartments, oliver brown, one of the parents, oliver brown, who was part of the kansas group. the closed gates were opened by the supreme court after many lawyers and thousands of people pushed against them.

on may 17, 1954, the supreme court justices announced a decision in the case of brown v. board of education. the decision which said separate schools were not equal threw many states, city, towns, neighborhoods, principals, teachers, parents and students into confusion. battles were fought to honor, ignore or overturn the decision. many battles were won, some quietly, some not. the demand to integrate public schools grew into a nationwide civil rights movement to eliminate all racist law; to have the right to vote, the right to choose the neighborhood you wanted to live in, to sit in any vacant seat in a public place, marchs, protests,

countermarches, counterprotests erupted almost everywhere. it was an extraordinary time when people of all races and all walks of life came together, when children had to be braver than their parents, when pastors, priests and rabbis left their or altars -- their altars to walk the streets with strangers, when soldiers with guns were assigned to keep the peace or to protect a young girl. days full of loud, angry, determined crowds, and days deep in loneliness. peaceful marchs were met with applause in some places, violence in others. people were hurt, and people died. students and civil rights workers were hosed, beaten, jailed. strong leaders were shot and can killed. and killed. and one day, a bomb was thrown

into a church killing four little girls attending sunday school. none of that happened to you. so why offer memories you don't have? remembering can be painful, even frightening, but it can also swell your heart and open your mind. whenever i see sheets drying on the line or smell gum bow simmering on the stove, a flood of memories comes back to me. in many 1953 -- in 1953 when i traveled in the rural south with a group of students, we received the generosity of strangers, african-americans who took us in when there were no places for non-whites to eat or sleep. they were strangers who gave up their own beds, dressed them in brilliant white linen smelling of mulberry and pine.

they fed us from their gardens and were so insistent on not being paid, we had to hide money in the pillow slips so this they would find it long -- so they would find it long after we were gone. of these were country people or city people denied a goodings, relegated to a -- a good education, relegated to a tiny balcony area in a movie theater, backs of buses, separate water fountains, menial jobs or not. like me, they were ordinary people. yet although their lives were driven by laws that said, no, not here, no, not there, no, not you, racial segregation had not marked their souls. the joy i felt in 1954 when the supreme court decided the brown v. board of education case was

connected to those generous strangers, and even now when dried sheets can summon up my memory of what that decision did and what it meant for all our futures. this book is a celebration of the power and justice of that decision. so remember, because you are part of it. the path was not entered, the gate was not opened, the road was not taken only for those brave enough to walk it. it was of for you as well. in every way, this is your story. thank you. [applause]

>> i have agreed to entertain some questions or even comments. some of the questions are long, it may help me by having some of you wrote questions down on file cards, and i've looked at them. and chosen some that i thought i could answer. [laughter] and disregarded those i couldn't. [laughter] but i did notice that about a third of the questions were really about the same subject, and i think i can read a few of them together. do you agree with some that even though it's been 50 years since

brown v. board of education, segregation has not disappeared, but has reemerged as resegregation? a lot of public schools that were all white 50 years ago were slowly evolved into all black and what should be done against that. i had a notion in the '50s that the work to be done vis-a-vis public schools and integration was not simply integration. i never went to an integrated school -- i mean, a segregated school.

i lived in a little town that was distinguished by its poverty and the people in that town were all sorts of people; immigrants, east european immigrants, mexicans, black people, you know, all sorts. and we didn't have the money to segregate ourselves. [laughter] or even the interest. because, this is in the, as they call it, the depths of the depression, so we had something else on our collective minds. there were different churches, etc., different social groups, but there was one high school, four junior high schools. and the streets were full of people from all sorts of places. in the world. i never lived on any street that was all of anything.

um, so i came to university here in washington when i graduated deliberately to be among black intellectuals. so i say that because i looked at this business a little bit differently back in the '50s. what i thought was there should be enormous fight and struggle for resources, money to go into those schools that were weak in supplies, in support, and so on, and in tax money. i thought that no child should have to walk or drive 10 miles away to go to a black school when they lived, when one was closer. but i didn't think of it as either/or. i thought of it as both. you should have both things. i knew that black schools,

undergraduate schools, graduate schools had been splendid. i had attended one that in those days was as good a school as you could have found anywhere. and the people who were handling the cases for integration had all gone to those scales. schools. those lawyers. that's where they came from. the educational criteria at those schools was as high and higher than any i have been to since, and i've been to some. what happened to those schools, of course, is a different story, it's a consequence of so-called integration. nevertheless, i say that to say that i am still not certain vis-a-vis this question that now what used to be all white may be predominantly black and something that used to be, i don't know, whatever other ethnic group is now that -- i'm not sure that we're seeing

racial segregation so much as class and money segregation. when it became possible for african-americans to go to any school in certain numbers at any rate or to move into other neighborhoods, they made those choices in many instances and left behind those who had no economic choices. so there's the benefit, and then there's the consequence, the loss. the best teachers of some of the best black schools were drained away into other schools, white schools for better money, better pay, better benefits, what have you. there was no ray son debt refor many black schools in many instances. in other words, apartheid had

created its own blossoming professions. there were black law schools, black schools in architecture, black medical schools, you know, etc., and black undergraduate school, black private schools, etc. because -- and black entrepreneurs had a closed and captured audience, the black doctor, the black -- and they all lived together in one neighborhood, forced by apartheid and segregation. but the doctor lived next door to the carpenter who lived next door to the whatever. and that was the cohesion of the neighborhood. now, when that was over, it was over. and it's a beautiful thing to have more choices. and, of course, some of those choices left behind a different kind of neighborhood that was bound there by class. inability to move out. now, some of that is changing

rapidly now. i mean, enterprise zones and people moving back into neighborhoods, tons and tons of people moving away from urban areas back into the south. so it's changing, it's fluid. that, i think, is better. obviously, than the forced separation. but in this route to this sort of completely diversified world that we seem to need and desire, there are moments when you will find certain schools that are 80, 90% black. some parts of the country they're 80, 90% latin. i'm not disturbed by that. provided that all students in the all schools have a relationship or a familiarity with other people in their life

outside of school. but the question becomes what they are taught, how well they are taught, the quality of the teaching and the money. i keep saying the money, because somehow we get this notion that it doesn't really matter simply because so many people were taught in living rooms and logs, but it does matter. and the resources have got to go into those schools. anyway, that's a very, very long sort of teacherly answer. [laughter] to the question about, you know, is it awful now that there's still some kind of reintegration? you know, my feeling is that all of these struggles were for more choices rather than fewer ones. i think there should be girls' schools. and i think there should be religious schools. and i think there should be all sorts of places where you can go and learn and feel comfortable.

but not be forced. and, of course, i think the major thrust of the government and the state should be the absolute support as its prime budgetary requirements and interests is in the public schools. now, let me see if there's anything else that i haven't covered in that long answer. [laughter] there's one here that's a little tiny off the wall, but it sort of interests me a little bit. what advice would you give to graduating college seniors that are considering pursuing a career in print journalism. [laughter] it's a noble calling, i suppose, but -- [laughter] you will have to change it.

in many instances. because of the huge melding and corporatization of all media including the press where the independents and the aggravation and the sort of provocateur role that journalists used to play is rapidly disa peering -- disappearing. you know, when i was a girl, and maybe some of you also, journalists, you know, had eighth grade, ninth grade, maybe 12th grade educations. so hay thought they were the people -- they thought they were the people. and when they said "we," they meant all of us. and now that they all go to graduate school and get honorary degrees and have huge salaries, when they say "we," they mean them. [laughter] somebody, i was listening to something last night, matt edwards has written a book about edward r. murrow, his idol, and i was amazed to learn that he

didn't go to stanford the way he cede -- said, he didn't have a degree the way he said. he was a nice working class boy from seattle or what have you and felt that he didn't have the credits, so he invented them. and then when he no longer had to, i mean, after the war report, he changed it and came clean. but in the beginning he felt in order to be in that crowd he had to, you know, give himself some false props, as hay say. -- as they say. but, and he was, you know, a stellar reporter who subsequently, i think, left rather disappointed the way journalism was changing. but anyway, if you have a tough of, tough heart and a very sharp mind, just go in it and see what happens. but it's a dangerous field now. for independent thinking, i mean.

do you think the supreme court should have been more specific in the implementation of its order rather than all deliberate speed? i suppose, but it wasn't going to happen, so it might as well have said all deliberate speed. that's one of the ways they got through. i mean, it was a long, long time. it was not overnight. you know, there were whole counties who closed their schools for years, five, six, seven years. they just closed down the public schools, and everybody had to go somewhere else. they provide for the white children to go to certain schools, little black children had to go to, you know, detroit and those places. i mean, can you believe that? they just shut them down, they weren't going to have it. there's a question here, and i think a couple of other ones about the achievement gap. do you believe it's useful breaking down success or failure along color lines?

what do you believe can be done to close this gap? can the schools do it, or must it come from the community? that's a very entangled, you know, question and problem about "the gap." you know, i have a -- those tests test class. that's what they test. you know that. they don't test black people doing better than or worse than or asian -- they test a certain kind of culture and a certain kind of class. i think i can distribute plame in a number of places -- blame in a number of places. and i feel very comfortable doing that. [laughter] but in my own heart of hearts, i think the changes come from

parents. i really do. and i hate to say that so blatantly, because i am aware of the fact that more and more schools are dumping the teaching job onto parents. and they spend hours and hours and hours doing homework with hair children in school -- with their children in school, and it's more and more burdensome not because there's more and more knowledge, but because less and less is being done in many of the classrooms. so i'm very mindful of that. on the other hand, i get a lot of questions about how can i help my children or my child read better or read? or why -- what do you suggest we do to make children read? and i always ask them, do you read? do your children see you sitting somewhere oblivious to everything because you're reading a book?

do they see you really excited about going to a bookstore? or going into the library? do you salivate or pant when you get this book, and you can't wait to get home and read it? [laughter] i mean, do you? i mean, i say to this hypothetical parent. because, you know, whether they do it or not, they will see what is interesting to you and what is fascinating to you and where your pleasure lies. that helps. not just having books lying around, but by being active participants in the process, sharing stories that you've read with your children. what do you think this means? what does this mean? so it's, we are as adults, as parents i'm not sure how much of what we say matters to children, but i do though that what we