and regarding the facility. we usually have a lot of response that way. >> and every year when we have the book selected to be updated, here's a link to the other stages. what they're planning on doing. and the ads are small but they had the websites on our home page. >> the ultimate goal is really to get as many people to read the same book and come together, and a great book or article but don't have anybody to talk to about it and bounce ideas off of each other and find out what other people thought of that and that is part of that event that is interesting when people ask

questions and inevitably used all my question. i was going to ask that too so people come together and talk about what they interpret from a book and what the author's intentions were. >> share of book for next year. >> it is still logan. if you have any suggestions send them my way. >> for more information on booktv's recent visit to yuma, arizona and the many other cities visited by local content vehicles go to c-span.org/localcontent. up next on booktv jonathan rieder recounts dr. martin luther king jr.'s letter from birmingham jail. jonathan rieder report on the effect the letter and the civil-rights movement and dr. king's believe in the urgency of the movement. this is an hour and 15 minutes. >> good evening.

welcome. we are pleased you have joined us this evening. also want to welcome our good friends from c-span who are kidding tonight's program. it will be broadcast on booktv at a future time. also please note we have books for sale in the back and i am sure our authors will be happy to sign those for you. the doors are locked. you cannot leave until all the books have been sold. martin luther king often quoted the nineteenth century abolitionist thomas parker who said the arc of the universe is long but bends toward justice. i was thinking about that today as we set up and prepared for this program because today is april 9th. on april 9th, 1963, 50 years ago this very day, four young black college students walked in the front door of this building down

stairs, went over to a table and sat down and started to read. one of them described to me later he was scared he was about to be arrested. birmingham's libraries in those days were segregated. there were black libraries for african-americans but this building was close to blacks. they did not enter the building or use the corrections here. those four students came in that day, as they sat down and did what you do it all library. they read for a while but also knocked on a wall. the next day more students from miles college came, they sat down, they read. one of them went to a desk and asked for a library card. the next day, april 11th, the library board somewhat reluctantly voted bending to the arc of justice the library board voted to desegregate birmingham public library one day before

martin luther king was arrested and began writing his "letter from birmingham jail". think about the fact that this building, 50 years ago tonight was closed to african-americans now houses one of the finest research collections in existence on the civil-rights movement and the african-american experience. and it is out of that collection in part the book was going to celebrate tonight has been researched and written. we are pleased to have two authors with us tonight. first we have jonathan rieder, professor of sociology at columbia university. he is the author of the word of the lord is upon become other righteous performance of martin luther king jr. and has the regular commentator on tv and radio and contributed to the new york times book review and conviction beating editor to the new republic. also with us is diane mcwhorter

who is a pulitzer author of "carry me home: birmingham, alabama--the climactic battle of the civil rights revolution". which has just been released in a new updated paperback edition. she is the author of a train for freedom, a history of the civil-rights movement for young readers and she writes regularly for the new york times, usa today. everyone please join me in welcoming jonathan rieder. [applause] >> not to add luster to my resume but to reassure i am not a self righteous northerner that i have also written about white racism in brooklyn as well.

so the jews and italians of brooklyn against liberalism. let me say for soft, certain humility is in order. for one thing, it is a tremendous delight to be here with diane mcwhorter is telling of "carry me home: birmingham, alabama--the climactic battle of the civil rights revolution" is as epic and unsurpassed allege the events in birmingham themselves or has the epic quality what people did in this town deserve and i can tell you -- don't want to be too gracious, buy my book first but there's plenty of new stuff in the new editions of by that too. there's another reason for in a bloody. i couldn't have done gospel of freedom . i couldn't have done gospel of freedom without two special people. are those for the evening, jim baguette who many years ago first prepared my way and you had no idea of how long it took

me to get used to a bill connor collection. and the things this library has done in making this history alive and another give the archivist, warren anderson of the birmingham civil rights institute, for similar kinds, my dependence on must say, she was the one who first connected me to some of the relatively unknown tapes of dr. king, some of which the sound system doesn't fail us tonight i will play a little bit and if i have had any ability in my book to bring alive the meetings with the sound of king, king in pathos, king in majesty, king in bitterness and resentment, all the different sides of caned i owe those recordings and the man who donated them to the b.c. are

i, reverend oliver who fought racism in 1978. i want to say jim and laura and their institutions are not just a statistical -- logistical and practical. the words make it possible for us never to forget the carnage and the blood and the sacrifice out of which america was born as a democracy. there is that sacred and a logistical aspects in which these two research institutions do because as we know from a lot of other settings if you are going to avoid and understand something like never again you have to know how to remember and you can't remember sentimentally or dishonestly. jim and laura make that possible. most importantly if there's any humility here, i am going to think of dr. king here in

birmingham, in a mass meeting and i'm paraphrasing and taking liberties that that was his creative use of language in keeping with him, that i have only written about his disease -- history. the people of birmingham made history. in rising to 50 years ago, they, i really should for some of the people in the room, you didn't only make history in birmingham but helps make the nation and do. i will come back to that because that ultimately is the meaning of the 50th year and we don't want to give in to some notion that that history was easy. we can be proud and america but we don't honor whatever the values of the constitution and declaration are by pretending that was a time of not freedom in order to congratulate ourselves that we have gotten to the promised land. i should add part of the other

-- i will lead quickly, in my other work on king i spent time with foot soldiers. we know the famous people but all those amazing colleagues of dr. king and went in to a dozen places, like reverend willie golden and j.p. johnson, never got it chance to meet james orange but i had the privilege of interviewing andrew some years ago, the man of general they finance who reminds us was the young people on the street of birmingham who gave, who made flesh the theory is dr. king put forward in a letter from birmingham jail. when he talked about love and justice, all the people in the alabama christian movement for human rights, james orange and meatball and all those young

people, we can't forget, let history forget what they did as well. in this audience and won't spend a lot of time rehashing the dramatic details of the freedom struggle but i need to search the context before i get to the letter and i will try to do this quickly because when i am done i will make up with questions with jim and diane but also want to get to those of you who are in the audience. what is that history? the legendary french shuttles worth, the mass meeting vibrating with the sound of cayman land, the defiant young people who stared down the diabolical bull connor. conner finally losing it on may 3rd and the world owes him greatly as president kennedy once said, bobby kennedy said it too, the movement mode conner for finally losing it and

becoming a profit in the movement and the clergymen may not have liked tension but the very next morning after that dog was biting that black young man, it was on the paper, front page of the new york times kennedy was sending burke marshall, assistant u.s. attorney for justice to birmingham and within days they rethinking we may not be able to avoid this as a moral issue. we may need to think about a civil rights bill. and golf that begins again. american democracy wasn't vanquished, wasn't vindicated in birmingham but started a movement that has changed the world we live in. i will say one sentence. king in the letter is talking about the gospel of freedom.

i applaud the gospel of freedom like the eighth century, called going throughout the greco roman world and answering the macedonian call. not just for the home town. he is going out to preach that and preaching the gospel of freedom but dr. king always knew there was a gospel of freedom for blacks and mass meetings were about his convincing them that you must deliver yourself. god will not take you there simply because you pray and king back in march before the demonstrations got going, ebenezer, you hear the voice of god saying to moses tells the children of israel to go forward. why are they wind? go forward and king said i can't do it all myself so that is the other drama of black awakening within the meetings and i will say less about that in the questions we can come back to

that. so we have after much in decision the movement is not going well in those days of april 3rd through april 8, 9, 10, 11. on good friday in the early morning of april 12th, king decides to violate the injunction and go to jail. he will suffer with his savior on the cross. how many times did he preached taken put you in jail and transport you to glory but once in jail the jail became a dungeon of despondency. king spiraled down into depression and lost his spirit as a freedom warrior and everything change. he read the statement of eight white alabama clergymen criticizing him for being an extremist and this is an untimely. the new mayor is going to measure in a new day, why didn't

you wait? suddenly king is propelling himself up out of the valley, up the mountain on a tide of indignation. when we think about the letter and where we get it wrong, it is about injustice, i am here because injustice is here. it is universal and the treatise on civil disobedience but it begins as a black man's cry of black king in black anger. ..

>> and that man in the letter has a glorious complexity. let's think about it. the letter is hard to get a handle on because it's not one thing. academics try to figure, you know, they classify it, is it a public letter, is it this, is it that, is it formal rhetoric? there are those constant displays of these incredible, exquisite manners. we know how furious king is at those ministers for criticizing -- they call me an extremist? but he starts off, my dear fellow clergymen. precious gentility. when he's mad, he says, i'm disappointed. i hope you can now see this patient man. why is he wasting his time with white preachers, is what wyatt walker told me he was thinking. we have an insurgency to run. we've got the mass meetings.

king is in a snit over these white clergy who in a different way they said to me it's what we expected, because they were doing evil or compromising with evil. so we have that patient, mannerly king. we have the professor king who lectures on the meaning of a moral law. we have the tour guide king who takes white into the intimate recesses of black vulnerability. when you have been humiliated, when your black brothers and sisters are lynched, when you have to explain to a 6-year-old girl that's his daughter, that's yoki yolanda, why she can't go to fun town, when you live with the debilitating sense of nobodiness. and just when you're going to think king is going to explode in anger because it's a black you, it's the collective people -- when you, when you, when you.

whenever king gets into that rhythm, a 276-word sentence, he suddenly pulls out of it like an airplane in a swoon, and he says now turning back to the "you" of the clergymen, he says maybe you will understand why we wait. into the depths of the white christian soul. he mentions rabbi graftman, but he's focused really on his christian clergy. and he says i have gone through the wonderful spires of the white churches and wondered who worships there, who is their god? sounds like so cerebral and ruminating. but there is cold distance like an anthropologist looking at a different tribe who doesn't even share, perhaps, the same god as king. who is their god? there's coldness there masquerading the anger. there's that staccato embrace of extremism after he spent

paragraphs to say, no, we're not reckless, i'm not an extremist. finally, he said, the more i thought about it, i am an extremist. jesus was an extremist. let justice roll down like water. and king uses the words of these indisputable authorities like a boxer smacking his opponents. boom, boom, boom. and he ends up saying i don't really care how you label me or about white opinion. i've tried to say i'm not an extremist, but, no, i'm done trying to convince you of that. more than anything else the letter becomes a relentless smackdown of ordinary white people. we need to understand the radicalism of king's disappointment. ordinary white people who consider themself decent but never burn with indignation over the fact of jim crow. and we know some of the white clergy and their children to

this day found wounded. we're not racist. king never accused them of being racist. their sin was appalling silence, and not coming out and saying love your brother, love the negro. obey the law not because it's the law, not because law and order is good, but because he and she are your brothers and sisters. and when king preaches that elsewhere, of course, he's the voice of st. paul saying, oh, this is blasphemy. it's a smackdown of ordinary white people which really includes the kennedy administration that keeps saying wait as well. so these eight clergymen, it's not that he's not answering them, it's not that he has not exasperated them, but they perfectly distill all of this reluctance and diffidence of a white nation that cannot -- and

i'm quoting king -- he says i should have realized that the oppressed cannot understanding the yearnings and longings of the oppressed. very powerful. we don't think of this king when we celebrate the dreamer as a tough chastiser. as this furious truth-telling suggests, in "the gospel of freedom," i troy to show the transition, the diplomat trying to persuade whites, appealing to their humanity, trying intellect, trying manners. but halfway through it changes, and he said i must confess aye been disappointed -- i've been disappointed. and the whole second half is the prophet, old testament prophet chastising, first, white moderates and then the white church. it's as if we are meeting king ai in. anew. we're not really. it's the king who many african-americans who knew him from the mass meetings and preaching knew.

the ambassador of brotherhood turns out to be not just a dreamer, but a christian warrior. he did not think that many whites had much empathy or willingness to act on that empathy for black people. he wasn't naive about the power of moral appeal to change white hearts without protest, without nonviolent demonstrations, without pressure. i should have realized, he says -- i'm quoting begun, because it's so important -- again, because it's so important to understand that few members of the the oppressive race can understand the deep groans. there's a sociological language of presser and oppressed, but exodus looms here. you can sense the controlled anger roiling close to the surface. he says for years now i have

heard the word "wait," it rings in the ear of every negro with piercing familiarity. king is now speaking not under, as a universal mankind, but as a black man. it rings in his ear. it's every negro. it includes him. it pierces him as well. so i want to start moving towards the end, and we can develop some of these themes and others wherever diane and jim want to take it. but i want to mention some amazing things that happened towards the end. at the end of the letter, king observes: even if the white church does not come to our aid, i have no fear about the outcome of our struggle in birmingham. now, let's think about that. many of you know this history. he's still in jail. there's a little debate of did he finish it and do some editing a few days after he was out. it's irrelevant. most of it was done.

we all edit our stuff anyway, most of us do. it was there substantially. so we're now two weeks before d-day. why is he confident? blacks had not risen up after he went to jail to say we're going to jail too. where was his confidence? we know the answer to this. it's king's faith in god, what he almost always says to black and white audiences. he doesn't say it at the end of the letter from birmingham jail. he doesn't say my god is able. there is a balm in gilead. the resurrection follows the crucifixion. all the tenets of his faith he -- in a sermon or his quasisermon addressed to fellow clergymen, he refuses to share a spiritual thought with hem. with them. i think it's because he has disdain and anger for them. he's not going to go there.

it's so rare that he doesn't go, a man who's a practitioner of theology. nor does he say i have an american dream of black and white kids holding hands together. he doesn't quote the exceptional american nation, that democracy is destined for america. so there's a mystery here. and as i said, we can go into it more if you're interested or diane or yup is. i -- or jim is. i hope we'll have a chance to explore it. unraveling is key to understanding king in the letter in a new way. i'll simply say that years before the flowering of black pride, king was finding faith in his love of his people. not just man kind, but his people and the memory of the slave an zesters -- an ancestors. and the defiant race and what he calls in the letter -- he shares

this with white people. he doesn't safe it just for black audiences. the bottomless vitality of our slave fore bearers. if we were able to survive the inexcusable cruelties of slavery , the setbacks in birmingham will not keep us back. and so i'll leave it at that for now. now, it's easy to see this lurch forward in birmingham as inevitable, as if we were a fallible nation that was just automatically becoming perfect, the perfectible nation. but as king saw it, america was a nation in need of redemption, not a redeemer nation. it's there in his mass meetings, it's there when he's preaching. that becomes clear from one of the most dramatic discoveries in gospel of freedom. there was an alternative version of the letter. nobody knows about that king

preached about in baptist church two days after he gets out of jail. he repeats many of the lines of the letter, but this is for a black audience, so he's not trying to persuade them, he's using it to goad them on. but it allows us to add the sound back to the written text. and by adding the sound back, we add the emotion that's there. you can hear the angry tremor in king's voice as he declares, and we are through with segregation now, henceforth and forever. it's the same voice you hear on may 3rd, the day after -- hours after connors used the hoses and the dogs. and king says, our black faces will stand up to connor's white tank. it's a defiant christian king, but a defiant king. bear with me, we'll see if this works. if it does, i'll do it.

but he's better than i am, so i'd rather he do it. >> [inaudible] there comes a time when people get tired of being pushed out -- [inaudible] [cheers and applause] will have to be -- [inaudible] it may be true that the -- [inaudible] is more gentle and -- [inaudible] [cheers and applause]

[inaudible] thousand and forever. [cheers and applause] [inaudible] >> at the close of that spoken black version of the letter, king imagines freedom bells ringing from every mountain in the united states. there red mountain in alabama, and he imagines the day that blacks would be able to sing "my country tis of thee, sweet land of liberty." and i'll just close with this

thought. was this a celebration of the american nation? after all, as in a few months later he repeats in this. this is in anticipation of "i have a dream" when he sings, "my country tis of thee." hardly. his pronouncement in that church, that great, sacred church, 16th street baptist church, if america is to be a great land was a taunt. it wasn't yet a great land. if blacks would be able to sing with new meaning "my country tis of thee," if they were singing, able to sing at all, king lists a series of ifs. if we will protest together, if we will go to jail together, then we will be able to sing. in short, the nation most white americans thought they lived in wouldn't exist until black people and especially the black people of birmingham helped

create it. thank you. [applause] >> thank you, john. welcome back, i should say. i want to just recognize a few people who are here who are freedom -- were and/or are freedom riders. one of them is katherine burke brooks who was part of the second leg in 1961, she was part of the national student movement and is now a local eye cop. akon. can you stand up -- icon. can you stand up? katherine brooks. [applause] and is doug john still here? >> i'm right here. >> doug jones was the u.s. attorney here in birmingham who

prosecuted the bomber of the 16th street baptist church in 2001 and 2002. we think they're the last -- [applause] so i guess it seems to be my lot in life to establish the birmingham narrative of great events, and so i'm going to give a little context about the letter from the birmingham standpoint, because it sort of feeds into this ism that we're all in the midst of, especially in this year of reconciliationism cans to try to -- in this yearning that this country feels toward what a friend of mine and activist poet calls the affirmative interracial handshake. and when we look back on the grand narrative king, he's kind of emerging as this explainer and this human resources facilitator. and probably if you don't know anything about the birmingham story, you might think that king wrote the letter from birmingham

jail, people read it and said, oh, yeah, that's great. why didn't you say so? now i understand everything. but what actually happened at the time was that the letter which king's chief of staff wyatt t. walker had seen as a propaganda opportunity, actually, he couldn't get anybody interested in it. he, after the letter was typed up and sent around, there's also a copy in jim's archives in the birmingham police surveillance files, nobody was really interested in it. "the new york times" magazine had earlier assigned, approached king about writing a letter from the albany jail which was the previous campaign in albany, georgia, but he'd gotten out of jail too fast, so he couldn't do it. so at this point today couldn't get king -- the new york times magazine, you know, they couldn't -- the assigning editor, arkansas i have shapiro, who was a poet who died recently couldn't get it past the top

editors. so, basically, in this volume you see here which covered everything and their mother-in-law, i, there's only one page in here on the letter from birmingham jail. and the reason is it made not one bit of difference at the time. and the way i sort of look at it is that birmingham kind of redeemed, anointed the letter and makes it -- it's because of birmingham that it's now this sacred text in our democracy. and i was interested in, i sort of tease john about how we, you know, historians have to write about something that's been the off-tread story that you say, oh, god, how am i going to come up with something new. and i think the letter itself as well as the "i have a dream" speech has become part of this reconciliation myth. so i'm reading jon's book, and i'm thinking this -- jon that is

really carved out his own angle on this, and he's got to be the first commentator in history to refer to dr. king as bad ass. [laughter] so i have to give it to you, jon. [laughter] but tell me about how you, was it -- it's, you know, i read the letter as sort of a seething document. but still fundamentally diplomatic. so can you talk a little bit about how -- was it partly listening to the recordings and hearing him cut loose before the black church? >> the recording is a matter of great deal, and when i found this unknown alternative -- [inaudible] it wasn't the fact that nobody -- nobody knew about it. and the fact that even though you sense the seething on, in the word of the letter, it's just unmistakeable when you hear

it. but the other thing is in my last book i had spent more than a decade tracking down recordings of dr. king and realized how much richness there was to the man that was in all the official narratives. so i had been discovering these other sides of king from talking to his colleagues and tracking, again, the ordinary sermons. i had a sense of, i had already discovered how important black pride. and while he budget a black nationalist -- he wasn't black nationalist, he wasn't so far away from the things radical people were arguing. so hearing king both this preached version of the letter, but also more generally really changed my idea of what king, the man, was about. and the other part just briefly

is i taught the letter for 20 years, and, like, i kept -- it's such a complicated document, i thought i knew it. and every few years i kept seeing things that i had not seen that are right in front of my eyes. so it's only in the last couple years that i thought what is the meaning of the fact that he doesn't address the clergymen at the end spiritually? i can't find almost any ore moment in which -- other moment in which king doesn't end like that. and, so there's detective work involved that involved both, again, those recordings of c. herbert oliver gave to the birmingham civil rights institute, but also my reacquaintance with king. and that's how i put it. if you know how to hear and read the letter from birmingham jail, it's all there. it's like meeting dr. king anew. >> so, listen, you a professor of sociology at barnard. so how did you teach the letter during those 20 years of teaching it?

>> you know, i didn't, i didn't teach that in a sociology course. i love writing, and i teach a first year writing seminar. and i just thought this is a great work of just for the about the substance for the minute. it is an amazing kind of artistic accomplishment. and so we did a lot of looking at the text. and even as i was starting to get into king, i kind of took it out of its historical context, out of, you know, the anthropologists have a way of making everything proprietary. so as an ethiopian once referred to my study of white racial backlash in brooklyn, he says, now, tell me about your jews and italians. well, i think of your birmingham. you had to take the letter and not see it as an intellectual document, but as something that comes out of those points, the faltering movement, the president and the awakening. so it was by own evolution in many ways. >> uh-huh. >> what's the reaction you're

getting? you know, we're, as you said, we're more often exposed to the "i have a dream" king, ther is upon on the mount sort of prophet, and you're talking about this seething, angry king. how do your students respond to that if you've taught that, and how is the response to the book? >> where el, i think -- well, i think the response has been really extraordinary so far. and it comes on a number of levels. last week i was on tavis smiley, and he was saying, you know, you've got the tough king. but, of course, that's the letter king, not the dream king. and i said, no, no, no, wait. if you listen to "i have a dream," the tough king is there. so then tavis said, well, but that's in the first half. i said, well, to, no, it's in the second half, too, if you know how to hear it. king was a genius at hiding and insinuating. so he tones down the anger in

the second part, but look at the substance. he repeats in "i have a dream" the same phrase that is even more explicit from the preached version at 16th street baptist church. at the end of "dream," he says i will, we will be able to sing "my country tis of thee" if we work together, if we protest together. so with king the substance never varies, but it's sometimes there in an insinuation, in a hint. and he's a genius of sort of adapting the tone to his intentions. and at the march on washington, he wasn't yelling at these eight clergymen who had made, as wyatt walker said to me, his cup of endurance run over, he he wanted a civil rights bill. he didn't want to sort of chastise america mainly because suddenly interracial groups were meeting that summer as a result of birmingham. there were big demonstrations that were a run-up to the march

on in los angeles and detroit and chicago. so the clergy, not the eight clergy here although one or two of them were perhaps over time responded, but there were rabbis and catholic priests and protestant ministers who were joining in. so king didn't want to kind of get in their face because he was welcoming those allies. but, still, the toughnesses is very much there. >> yes, i guess what you're saying, jon, is that you haven't gotten any pushback for turning king into jeremiah wright. i'm just kidding. >> well, no, no, a great question. because people, you know, when my last book came out, e.j. dion wrote a column about jeff maya wright, and he said jeremiah wright isn't martin luther king, we're not turning him into that. and neither is rieder. but there's more in king that resonates with jeremiah wright

if you read most of wright's speeches which is something tavis smiley also said. so, yes, i know -- see, diane can be a bad ass as well, so you're pushing me. but it's a good point that there is a long tradition in african-american theology, in preaching that has prophetic chastisement, and there is the loving grace of the savior, and they're all part of king. they're all there. the rebuke and the love. and that's why c.t. said to me, he said, look, he's telling them of their evil because that's what a preacher does and a prophet does because they can be redeemed. and one way to think about it is, you know, that's why that transition at the midpoint when king is basically done explaining x. that, to me, is the most significant part. he gets all that reasonable part under the way, and if you just read from where he says i must

confess, my jewish and christian brothers, and then, boom, it reminds you how complicated king's relationship to manners was. because he was so mannerly and refined that never kept him from being tough. didn't come out tough. joseph lowery once put it to me this way. he said he was a gentle spirit with a tough message. and vincent hart's old line that most of us know, king was an inconvenient hero. he meant to be inconvenient. but america wants a convenient king who makes us feel good. >> so let's transition into a more convenient season right now. i think we should read a little bit of his address to the moderates, right? because i think most of the white people, the single page in my book about the letter pretty much deals with his chastising

of the moderates. i guess my biggest fear in terms of looking, asking myself what i would have done back then is would i have been a moderate? because the moderates do not do well this history. even the brave moderates who would become liberal back then, someone like david van who really put a lot on the line, but if you read -- who, you know, went on to become may may, if you read his quotes now from back then, he doesn't look good. and yet he was really brave and really progressive. and so, i mean, i think i always wonder how if you're a decent -- you know, we all know that we wouldn't have been in the klan or the white citizens' council probably, but i always ask myself would i have had the courage to act on a conviction that's only going to hurt me in

order to maybe help somebody else? and then be marginalized because there was a word for people and white people in the south who did speak out, and it was called the aristocracy of the damn fools. so if you are going to put yourself on the line, you're endangering yourself, and you're putting yourself in the aristocracy of the damned fools. maybe that's why his address to the moderates really got me. do you want to read a little bit of that? >> i do, but i want to underline your point, because i think it's essential. there's a tradition in white liberalism, not even liberalism, the enlightened folk to define themselves in p opposition to the redneck, to the primitives -- and this is true in brooklyn, in manhattan or down here. and, you know, there's that great statement that ralph mcgill has always said, made which is i've always had great sympathy for the redneck and the

wool hat. it is true they carry out the bombings, they do terrible things, but almost always at the beck and call of others of more respectability. and the second point that really, i think, diane makes -- and it's a prophetic point -- which is none of us can be smug or self-righteous. when rabbi graphman was mad because the northern liberal rabbis arrive on may 7th or 8th and walk down, you know, the 16th street baptist church, maybe st. john's -- i can't remember which of the church, and he's saying, you know, you're here for two days, and then you're going back to long island, and you will be acclaimed as wonderful people, but we're stuck here in birmingham. so even though grafman i don't think got many things about king, he had a point there. we don't know what we would do. many of us wish we had more courage.

so that's part, i think, of one of king's most important critiques. it's why he's not critiquing the violent ones. and can it's why fred shuttles worth who hears grafman complaining about how tough it is, and the jews don't want to become visible in birmingham because of the klan, they don't want to get into this black/white fight, and here's a man who's willing to risk death taking way more risks, and these people are complaining he's supposed to sympathize with the whites who say go slow? so these things are complicated, and we want to be careful. that's why i think going back to the text here, and as many of you know, jim baguette has sponsored a reading that's spread across the country and the world which you should make sure you say something about. pretty extraordinary. i mean, the far reaches of the world. i don't mean just like in europe, it's everywhere.

as andrew young said to me, king preferred to speak rather than write, and we all know that. so if he could have delivered this, he probably would have delivered it. you know, after all that, where is hi -- ah, here we go. okay. this follows a section in which he's -- i'm going to focus on his criticism, first, to to have the white moderate. he hasn't gotten to the white church. listen to the portrait of the white moderates. and he says: lukewarm acceptance is harder than outright hatred. i've almost reached the conclusion that the negro's

great stumbling block is not the white citizens' council or the ku klux klan, and now here's the little portrait who's more devoted to order than to justice, who prefers a negative peace which is the absence of tension to a positive peace which is the presence of justice, who constantly says i agree with you in the goal you seek, but i cannot agree with your methods, who paternal listically believes he can set the timetable for another man's freedom, who lives by a mythical concept of time and constantly advises the negro to wait for a more convenient season. and listen to the passive aggressive. i had hoped the white moderate would understand all this. tsa like when you tell your -- that's like when you tell your kid, i'm very disappointed in you, right? i had hoped you'd understand, but, oh, no, you didn't. and look what happens after e does that. the voice of the prophet

insinuates itself, because not long after it he says: we will have to repent in this generation not merely for the hateful words and actions of bad people, but for the appalling silence of the good people. human progress never rolls in on wheels of inevitability. now, again, we know what he said in 16th street baptist church on april 22. we can add the sound back. he didn't say he'll always tell you to wait for a more convenient season. he says, wait, wait for a more convenient season. that's all we've ever heard. so that's the critique of the white moderate. and, finally, the white church that hides behind stained glass windows. he's now got through this great trip, right? i've traveled -- listen, it's the genteel precious king. i've traveled the length and breadth of alabama, mississippi and all the other southern states on sweltering summer days

and crisp autumn mornings. i've looked at the south's beautiful churches with their lofty spires pointing heavenward. over and over i've found myself asking what kind of people worship? who is their god? what were their voices when the words of inner position and nullification. where were they when governor wallace gave a clarion call for hatred? whatwhere were their voices of support when bruised and weary men and women chose to rise from the bright hills of protest. and he's contrasted that church with the early christians. and when he describes the christians, they sound like the foot soldiers. they went into town and were called outside agitators and extremists because they were intoxicated by god. and i'll just read you one other aspect of the critique, because

now the preacher is back. he writes: -- can i've lost that great line. but i'll tell you what he says. but, oh, how he's blemished the body of christ. and king is saying maybe i have to give with up on the white e close ya. pretty fancy talk. he's talking that talk. but what he's saying is when he writes, oh, if you've heard king as i have when he preaches it once again, it's, oh, how we have blemished the church of christ, the body of christ. so that's what he says. they've been conformist and not courageous. and, therefore, tear really guilty of spiritual -- they're really guilty of spiritual malpractice. one other thing he says in criticizing the white christian,

i have longed to hear them. right here is where he said i have longed to hear them say love the negro because he is your brother. ouch. it's tough. no matter -- calling somebody lacking in e close ya may not be ip subtling their mama -- [laughter] but it's pretty tough. it's pretty tough when you're talking to your fellow christians. >> well, he -- oh, go ahead. >> well, i would just say, and i think you make an important point in the book that when these moderates are appealing to the better nature of the south, it's not from a standpoint of justice, it's from a standpoint of law and order. >> that's what i was going to say. >> that we should follow court orders because that's what a decent society does. not that we should treat our brothers as equals because that's what a decent society does. and i think that's a very important distinction. >> really important. and i think you said it well. king is contrasting that in his

mind when he's on the conference on race and religion in chicago in january of that year. where he repeats much of the lines that will stream into letter from birmingham jail. and there are 7 or 800 white clergy mainly from the north from every denomination, and what they are starting to say is racism is a sin. and when christian century publishes the letter from birmingham jail on june 12th, the day after kennedy's race speech, they remove the names of the eight clergymen because they realize this isn't just for the. they're just the ones who put king over the edge. this is of us. they're including themselves that the white church has -- cannot afford to be smug, and we need to think what is our faith -- what does our faith really mean. >> well, that's exactly what i was going to bring up, jim.

it's kind of a some kind of weird fluke or weird consistency, i guess i should say, of human nature that people, it's really hard for people to do something for the right reason. and you see it, you know, even in the debate about torture now. it's like we have to prove that it doesn't work, you know, in order to make your argument. you can't just say it's wrong, we don't to that. we don't do that. and what was kind of interesting with the eight clergymen, one of the reasons that they were so shocked that king had gone after them was that they had published a statement in january in protest of george wallace's segregation now, segregation forever inaugural address. and for the first time, they had gone -- they had said, it's wrong. and that was a really, that was a really notable departure for somebody to make a public

statement. so we listen to that now, and that just seems so trivial for somebody to say that. but at the time they were really going out on a limb. and so then when king, when they get this back from king, they, you know, they go, oh, we're so misunderstood. and rabbi grafman, when i interviewed him in the '80s, he was still complaining about how king had made him out to be a bigot. that's what he had taken away -- >> what did you say? i missed some of that. >> rabbi graf match was still complaining in the '80s when i talked to him that king had made them out to be bigots, and he was still really sore about that. >> i wanted to -- >> oh, i'm sorry. i'm just, if we could collect the written questions now, and can we'll continue. but go ahead and do that. >> historical note about -- [inaudible] you may want to research this later. i'm roman catholic. bishop -- [inaudible] one of the signers, but with i

would remind you of this, and -- [inaudible] bring it up later. when the priests -- [inaudible] who had been archbishop for many, many years, bishop perry was sort of like his assistant. and he criticized the priests and nuns. he criticized the priests and nun who poured into selma to support the demonstrators. but study, if you will, what bishop perry did when he went to nashville. he was under the influence of archbishop -- [inaudible] who was with saturating is regaitionist views even though he opened many -- [inaudible] okay? but study the archbishop when he went to -- [inaudible]

he was -- >> right. i want to, i'll just say a quick word because i know jim wants to follow the order of the questions. but i do give a great deal of respect to dorrick, because he ended up understanding -- that's, it is true, the eight clergy were not all the same. and, you know, there was the callous bishop carpenter whose response was inexcusable, and there was dorrick who became -- he understood. he said i was against segregation, but i didn't understand it the way dr. king meant it. and he went on to really embody the prophetic ministry of king. and at his, after king was killed, he preached the words, the create tyke teak of moderates -- the critique of moderates at the commemoration. and because king loved to sample other people's language, he would always quote people and imagine them quoting him. he would have loved the fact that dorrics was quoting his own

words back to him. it would have given him such pleasure that he just streamed that in, and dorrick became king in some sense. so you make a lovely point be, very lovely point. >> thank you very much. >> did y'all write any books about the anger of the klan in -- [inaudible] >> i did not, but, you know, diane -- i mean, i have a little bit of bull connor. it's really diane's book is just, "carry me home" is just an extraordinary voyage into that world. so, absolutely. and if, it's terrifying and really puts you back in that time. but, again, a very good point to keep in mind there. >> jon, let me ask you if you grew up, as i did, under segregation, you heard, always heard the expression extremists on both sides. and what that meant was that the civil rights activists were considered to be the moral

equivalent to have ku klux klan. those were considered, you know, comparable. and one of the brilliant passages in the letter from birmingham jail, you can tell that it's when he's being called extreme by the, by the clergy that the nerve on his temple starts, you know, going craze i. and talk -- crazy. and talk a little bit about how he embraces that, that label. >> well, you know, before that, again, the very affable king is trying to say, see? i'm not an extremist. and he does it in a number of ways. and he talks about, you know, he reminds you of the conservativism of, you know, the boston tea party and everything the nazis did in germany was legal, and i hope i would have been there for my jewish brothers and sisters if i was, you know, in nazi germany. and in hungary, he puts himself with the freedom fighters who violated the law to fight communist oppression. so he's still trying to sell

he's not really an extremist. and he even says, look, there are these two strains within the african-american community. there are blacks who have become awe justed to segregation or have got a little bit of privilege because they're in the middle and upper middle class, and they don't want to rock the boat. and then there are these voices of hate. who are black nationalists, who sometimes border on hatred of the white man. so king, think what he's doing there in this kind of sociological portrait. he said, see? you thought i was an extremist, but i'm a moderate like you. i have my george wallaces and these other people. he's now tried to do that, and that's when he finally stops. and this is how you know that king is being affable and being friendly and being nice to the white man, but then he turns on a dime. and the way to think a letter from birmingham jail is, it's a series of swerves. he'll be mannerly, and he takes

the manners right back and becomes as rude as can be. he says i beg you to forgive me if i have shown an unreasonable patient. who was going around begging and apologizing to the white man in 1963? not very many people in sclc would have done that. so you think, oh, that's interesting. and he immediately says in the same pairly, but if i -- parallel, basically says with injustice, i beg god to forgive me. what he basically does is he's taken the apology back because what really matters is what god thinks, not the white people he just apologized to. so once he finally embraces extremism, it has that same quality. it looks like he's still acting diplomatically, but he takes it back and says because ultimately what defines justice is my god, it's amos, and he says in the quaker edition he left this more

explicitly. you know, the differences among the versions are minuscule. some scholars make a big deal of it, but one of the things he took out between may and june was the -- well, actually, let me make sure i've got this exactly -- no, i may be with confusing it. but in any case, there is the importance always of this embrace of extremism. oh, i know, yes. he does leave it in. in the earlier version he said think about it, there were three extremists on calvary. two were extremists for injustice, and one was an extremist for love and justice. well, king always identified with jesus more than moses. he used exodus often. but if you listen to his weekly sermons over years, exodus isn't that important most of the time. it's jesus is his savior and the sacrificial endeavor. and so he says jesus was an extremist.

love those who hate you. bless those who despise you. so, again, to really appreciate the power of this letter you've got to see this is a little bit of the bad ass king. he first says, see, i'm going to show you i'm okay with you. i want you to approve of me. i'm going to show you i'm not what you think i am. and then the proud, defiant, cocky man turns it around and says, i'm proud to be an extremist. he says, i took pleasure the more i thought about it. >> yeah. that's great. >> there's such richness in that. >> well, jon, as the attorneys on "law and order" say, since you opened the door -- [laughter] and as a way of asking the question i want to ask, we are, what jon mentioned, the birmingham public library is sponsoring next tuesday, april 16th, a reading of the letter from birmingham jail. and what we did, a very simple

idea, we decided that we would have people here at the library read the letter allowed to whomever shows up and wants to hear it. and we decided that we would issue an invitation to anyone anywhere who wanted to also do the same thing anytime on that day. and i'm not someone who understands social media, so i don't quite understand how these things happen. but through the hard work of a number of people here and then through this magic of this social media thing -- [laughter] it just took off. and we have on our web site where we're asking everyone to just let us know that you're going to be doing a reading and where and how you might do it. when i left my office to come up here, we had 176 locations signed up so far. they're all over the world. we have locations -- [applause]

thank you, john. [laughter] we have locations in 28 states, we have people who will be reading the letter, and the wonderful thing is it's going to go on all day, because it's going to start in stale ya, and it's going -- australia, and it's going to come around the world. we have people if south africa, somalia, cameroon, israel, england, northern ireland, germ, thailand -- germany, thailand. we have a teacher in taiwan who is teaching her elementary students about the letter. they are going to read the letter on the 16th, and then the students are going to write letters back to dr. king which we'll be receiving. so i said all of that to ask you to talk about it, because you conclude the book talking about the place that the letter has not just in birmingham history or american history, but in world history and in freedom

fighting all over the world. >> there are two complimentary impulses at work in the letter. one, the man who's a fighter for his people. at birmingham he says i'm here because injustice is here, but he's here because fred shuttlesworth is here and black people are suffering. but he never forgets that he's here because universal humanity suffers. so there's nothing that he's doing in birmingham, and in particular -- or not in particular, but also in the letter from birmingham jail that's not in his sermons on lazarus. because this sin is he was a rich man, but it wasn't his riches that makes him a sinner. he's a sinner because he did not recognize the gimpy beggar covered with sores at his door. he walked past him as if he

didn't exist. so in a sense for king his preaching is we have an obligation to respond to anybody, not just our own people. white people on the sidelines, that's the critique of the moderates. they have to respond, black people have to liberate themselves. so it is utterly sensible that over time this document has been read not only as a civil rights in barreling am document -- birmingham document, but as it ascends iconically to its status, takes a while to grow, it goes to the nobel prize and the head of it describes, quote, words spoken to mankind. it's such a powerful document that it resonates at that very occasion. the freedom fighters in polish solidarity understand this speaks to our vision of christian militants. when he comes to america he

sends people to talk to andrew young and to tell them thank you for teaching us to always give our opponents a face-saving way out. it goes to south africa and apartheid and against communism, and eventually it leaves the european and christian and black world and goes to iran, in tahrir square, in tiananmen square. so i think the greatness of the document is, as wyatt walker felt and andrew young put it this way, it's a philosophic document that summarizes the christian strain within the civil rights movement. it may not capture snic, but it captures an important part of the movement. but it's been read by people around the world who see in king's critique of moderation and silence and civil

disobedience, in his affirmation of proest -- protest kind of a reflection of his own struggles. and as all great documents are, they use it in their own world. if you look at the gay moment, there is a very well known lesbian, gay transsexual and bisexual web site which basically translates the letter from birmingham jail into what it means for gay people addressing white moderates. so the answer is part of it's power is its artistry, part of its power is a statement of black defiance and christian forbearance, and the other part is that group versal word spoken to mankind. >> i think we'll have time for one or two questions from our audience, and this one is touching on something i was wondering as well in terms of,

you know, i think about president obama and the fine line he walks and not being the angry black man. because that so quickly, you know, turns on you. do you as a sociologist realize that king's main foe was the apathy of the come play sent, and when he returned he had to change his strategy? he had to push people out of their comfort zone toss succeed. >> you know, i've talked plenty tonight, so i don't think i need to go on too long. i said, yes. i think the question answers itself. and, remember, he wanted to push blacks out of their comfort zone as well as whites out of their comfort zone. the gospel of freedom, there are versions for both the oppressed and the oppressor. >> i think this is a good question to end with here for

both of our authors. my question today which so many people of color in prison and ever greater disparity between rich and poor, do we need to do -- what do we need to do today to fulfill the promise of 1963? >> i think it, that we need to use 1963 to learn, teach ourselves how to recognize -- as king said, inevitability, progress, human progress does not come on wheels of inevitability. and i kind of thought that maybe when i was younger, that i do think there was this arc that was getting better. i don't really believe that anymore. i think things keep coming around, and that it's really important to be able to break the cold and figure out -- the code and figure out when these

injustices are coming around again. because they always come under a different disgiewz. and so now, you know, we've used some of the tools of 1963 now to fight back against the immigration law that was passed in the state. that, to me, was reinventing jim crow as juan crow. we couldn't quite, you know, the legislature couldn't quite recognize, didn't -- it wasn't quite -- [inaudible] that we'd been there before. but the resistance was ready. and the resistance hasn't succeeded. so that a's kind of, you know? but the resistance is there, and it knows what to do now. the clergy was the first out of the gate on that, and they, you know, they were ready to protest this immigration law. and then, you know, a lot of people joined in as well. so, including the newspapers who were king's enemy here. so, you know, it's just maybe you get a little bit better as you, as you go on down into

history. but it's the same issues that keep recurring. >> you know, i end "gospel of freedom" by saying we misunderstood what king meant when he said the arc of justice. and it's what king imagines god telling moses to tell the children of israel. the arc -- and i'm really repeating what diane just said in a somewhat different image. king did not believe the arc of the universe bent toward justice without men and women doing the bending, which is her point about cowokes for god. coworkers if for god. and i hate to use a fancy word, and i i don't usually like them, but king's version of deliver advance was quite different from iowa lee that franklin' father, one of the great preachers of

the 0th century. he says, oh, wait on him, he will part the waters. and, you know, kings view was god wants you to deliver yourself, and the bending of the universe requires that actual people bend it. so the faith that the arc of justice works out is because god's on your side, but that doesn't mean you still don't have to do it, and that really brings us back to criminal justice and a whole lot of other things. i think king would say today our work is not done. he wasn't a glass is half full guy. not in a bitter, pessimistic way. just because all black people do not suffer from jim crow doesn't mean that there are not plenty of other suffering people who require the intervention of coworkers for good or coworkers for whoever is your spiritual guidance. the coworkers of active human

being to minister to their pain and bring justice. so the answer is exodus repeats itself in every time and every place, it just looks different in every time. and, therefore, the obligation on people never ceases. >> well, you know, i've always thought, too, the ultimate lesson of birmingham is and one that, as diane pointed out, we see playing out in our own time with questions over immigrant rights, gay and lesbian rights, i think the lesson is when you come down on the wrong side of justice, that history does not judge you well. and you live with the consequences. and birmingham is doing that. i will say that i've opinion an archivist and historian here for 20 years, and i'm encouraged in that i see more and more people who are open to seeing story in its complexity. and to seeing this not only as a

tragic story and fewer people who see this as something we immediate to just stop talking about -- we need to just stop talking about and people who want to know and understand why this happened and why this does keep happening. and i know you've pointed out many times birmingham can serve the world as a great example. and as a starting place. for a lot of these conversations that we need to have. >> absolutely. >> will you all please join me again if thanking both of -- in thanking both of our guests tonight? [applause] >> we'd like to hear from you. tweet us your feedback. twitter.com/booktv. >> while we were in yuma, ads, booktv with the help of our local cable partner time warner cable, took a tour of the corner book shop, and we talked with the owner, jean chism.

she describes the difficulties of keeping a bookstore open in a struggling economy. yuma, arizona, has the nation's highest unemployment rate sitting at about 26%. >> my name is jean chism, i'm the owner of the corner book shop in yuma, arizona. i've always liked to read, ever since i was a child. and i like to talk to people about it, and they all ask my opinion. and i -- not all of them, but, you know, a lot of them that need a new author. so i read a lot so i can say, well, tony hillerman is like doss, james doss or, you know, like that. so i have to read a lot so i can, because they'll say, well, who writes like them? well, then i know. >> what are some of the challenges to open ago bookstore? -- owning a bookstore? >> well, trying to keep the stock moving, trying to make a

buck. [laughter] but mostly it's trying to keep everything easy to find, you know, and trying to keep up with what's new and what, you know, what everybody is reading right now. and mostly trying to get my store out there to the public so they'll know i'm here and, you know, even though i've been open 18 years. i have people that come in all the time and say i didn't know you were there. this year has been our worst year. we've done probably half what we did last year in sales. so it's really a struggle. you know? and i know one of the other used bookstores here in town, they're closing because they couldn't make it. one downtown closed because they couldn't make it. and i'm really not making it, but i, you know, i might move to a smaller place, but i won't close. but that's a struggle right now.

>> do you have a plan if place if -- >> no. [laughter] not really, you know? i have lots of loyal customers, so i don't want to just close and leave them out there. you know? but if i move into a smaller place, i might be able to maintain it, you know in i've had a lot of winter visitors come in and say, oh, our local from where we're from, our local book shop had to close. and i've had two or three that live in san diego, and they come all the way here from san diego because they don't have anything in san diego anymore, they said. i'm sure there are, but they don't know where they're at probably. but i have, you know, the e-readers are so new, and they're so, you know, oh, wow, a new gadget, you know? new gadgets are always popular. but i have had a couple of people say that, you know, i can come here and get 'em cheaper than i can buy one online. you know, on the e-reader.

and they can't always find the series that they're reading and, you know. so, hopefully, some of the e-readers will become disenchanted and come back. >> our programming from yuma, arizona, continues now with an interview on the process of government procurement and its effects on taxpayers. booktv sat down with lloyd rain, author of "purchasing wars," during our recent visit to the area. >> government procurement is the broad name that we give to everything that's purchased with public funds. public funds are essentially taxpayer money. so as soon as taxpayer money becomes involved in any kind of purchase, that spire activity -- that entire activity becomes subject to a series of rules and

regulations which i certainly won't go deeply into, but enough to make life difficult for many of the people participating in it. so in many cases you have private agencies, for example, agencies that assist the homeless or agencies that may be making senior centers and so on and so forth, and they apply for grants. as soon as public funds are granted to that agency, everything changes and everything they purchase becomes governmental or public procurement. and then, of course, there are the regular ones that are 100% financed with taxpayers' money like cities and counties and police departments and services for the ohmless and for the -- for the homeless and for the aging and every kind of public service you can think of that are also entirely public funds

and then, because of that, subject to all these governmental procurement regulations. and invariably, they stem from one of two sources; the federal government which has a number of very stringent rules depending on which department you're dealing with, and state governments. and almost all state governments have very specific statutes dedicated to the definitions of what you may do and may not be permitted to do when you're buying stuff from public funds. the nigp has put out numerous papers on why it's improper and poor government policy to have what's called preferences. preferences are essentially the

process of awarding a contract to a proposer or a bidder who is not the top scorer or the top price that you're looking for. many states do that. many cities do that. new york has done it, saying you must award a contract to a resident new york company in certain areas. the entire state of kentucky says that if you're going to award a contract for the purchase of coal, c-o-a-l, coal, you must award it to a kentucky company. okay. that's really, really bad business. and i'll give you the very short version on why. if everybody did that, we would stop all commerce in america. it would be as if we had 10,000

little fiefdoms, each arguing for its own little position and excluding everybody else. and furthermore, you don't get good competition. your prices go down the toilet as soon as you start having preferences. never the less, citizens -- nevertheless, citizens want preferences, and some places have acceded to those demands. others haven't. state of oregon gives a 5% preference to companies that recycle a certain amount of things. and they have what's called a recycling preference. and so if you're purchasing office supplies or specifically, let's say, paper, paper is a biggie. agencies use $5, $10 million worth of paper every year.

a local company will get a 5% preference. that means -- in a state. within a state. what that means is if a company from california bid let's say $10 million for a certain paper project and an oregon company bid $10 million, or even $10.1 million, the oregon company would still win because you add 5%. there was considerable consternation here in the city of yuma over preferences for local bidders not just on one type of commodity which is far more common, you know, new york wants pop to be bought in all of

new york. all government printing has to be done by an oregon-based company. so yuma had no preferences, and as far as i know there are no preferences in the arizona statutes until last year when there was almost a year's worth of argument in the city council about having preferences. and i was sorely tempted to stand up in front of them and tell them what a bunch of idiots they really are. but i was actually afraid to do that because i was afraid i might lose my temper, and i would say something really stupid. and besides, at my age i'm getting more --

[laughter] it's easier for me to let things go and see where they come out. after considerable argument for providing what are called local preferences -- that is, a preference of some kind for all commodities, whatever's being purchased for people within a certain boundary or companies within a certain boundary -- they decided to awe ward a preference of -- award a preference of 5% for all bidders of commodities only, that's my understanding. for example, not construction and not services. within the city of yuma. now, finally that settled down, and i think that's where it came to rest. but even that is a big problem. other that way -- over that way just 60 miles over the

california border we have another fairly large city called el centro, and they compete regularly in our, in our purchases. south down to the border which is only 5 miles away, the border with mexico i'm pointing at, we have a town called san louis. so even here in this little area you find that when you start giving preferences to somebody be, you open a can of works which is once it's opened, you can never get it closed again. >> for more information on booktv's recent visit to yuma, arizona, and the many other cities visited by our local content vehicle, go to c-span.org/localcontent. >> you're watching booktv. coming up next, edward j.

epstein, author of "the annals of unsolved crime," and err roll morris, author of "a wilderness of error," they talk about crimes that were never solved or partially solved. this is about an hour and a half. >> well, one of the best things that ever happened to me was receiving your book on jeffrey mcdonald to review from "the wall street journal." it opened my eyes to how counternarratives have a taxonomy, how you can follow them from case to case. i don't know if you're still pursuing that case or -- >> i am pursuing it in the sense that my publishers have asked me to do another edition of the book. so