the united negro improvement association found fertile soil in chicago. in 1930 membership is said to have totaled 77,500 while branches flyers in st. louis, springfield, md. cairo and other localities. william wallace, later a state senator gave up a thriving bakery business to head the chicago movement. he founded the negro world's as a house organ for the you and i a which obtained a circulation of 75,000 or more. in the negro world. garvey attached prominent leaders as w. e. b. du bois and robert pitts, founder of the chicago defender. he had a potent weapon in his own newspaper and was killed in the art of ineffective and tough

internal tough and tumble journalistic warfare. garvey announced his intention of invading chicago. he rented the eighth regiment armory in a building that still exists. garvey got on the platform and denounced abbott more vigorously than before. at the close of the meeting he was arrested for selling stock in the black star steamship line in violation of the illinois. sky law, stock certificates and shares and later claimed the arrest had been engineered by abbott who he said had arranged to have a detective in the guise of a prospect of investor and insist on purchasing stock from the leader of the un i a to intimidate him. gobby departed from the city never to return. his one and only trip to chicago. lastly, therefore, final

cultural chapters to the book. is okay to read ahead. these the best chapters in the book. chapters on literature, theater, music and one called rhythm, the black jazz and blues. this one, who wrote two of the four cultural chapters outlined the old days of the stroll on state street before 47th was the hot spot in the 40s at the time they were writing. east role in the 1920s was the place to be up and down state street. this is where there were famous clubs like the pecan theater in 1905, opened in 1905 as well as the jack jones also at cafe champion on state street.

we have here a w p a worker who we know virtually nothing about. some of these people became famous. a lot of them struggled, worked on the defender, hung around the south side at the community arts center, wintertimes being unemployed, worked as a janitor. some of them never made it. this chapter rhythm about king oliver's appearance in chicago. he writes the historians of chicago jazz like to recall the arrival of king oliver, representatives from two spots on hand to greet him, the contingent was made of members of the bands of the royal gardens cafe and the dreamland cafe. both wanted oliver and were determined to get him. both did. dissolution was profoundly

simple. it was worked out over a a drink at a bar near the railroad station. joe joined both bands and left no doubt who was the king among chicago trumpeters. dropped in at the royal gardens to see how the new orchestra was getting along. there followed a bottle of coronets in which according to one reporter, quote, joe oliver beat the socks off of tepper. oliver left chicago in spring of 1927, five years after a new king had come upon the scene, shortly before his departure he wrote a song, doctor jazz which he pedaled from a cart occupied by his band played the new to wherever a crowd gathered. this is the last time a new organ band played in a wagon. he died in a small southern town. and the new king oliver brown from new orleans in 1922 and played second from the behind

the leader. and you know where the story goes from here. i am going to wrap up. looking forward to the esteemed scholars and what they said they. thank you for being here today. [applause] >> we have a two minute break. we rearranged the shop here.

[inaudible conversations] [inaudible conversations] smurfs >> could i have -- [inaudible conversations] [inaudible conversations]

>> okay. we are about ready to resume. i want to just interject a note of thanks here. there are a number of organizations and individuals that we need to acknowledge and for good reason. i thank the co-sponsors for this meeting, those who have really been with us at the resource collection and the work we do. the vivien hearst society inc. the south side community arts center and the black chicago history forum so i want to

acknowledge their co-sponsor ship and their help in spreading the word about the program. i also want to thank the funders of the processing project. these days which are hard times for many municipal institutions, more and more we need funders to assist us, and the processing project wants to acknowledge, that is me, wants to acknowledge the library foundation, the richard house foundation and the gaylord and dorothy donnelly foundation for their wonderful support of the work that they do, and very much made this program possible. the number of people who have been mentioned in the audience,

and i just wanted to do this because i am not going to recognize who everybody is out there. i see number of people who are donors -- in this room. will you all get up as i call your name and stay up, kelly turner, johnson, leonard wash, where is clarice? there are other of you who are involved in this, you see me, tucson, perkins, to sun -- please stand for the perkins family papers i apologize for

that. and tom distending over there. and many of you whose names i have not called. and without your generosity the harsh collection would not exist. thank you. now to our three distinguished panelists. when i say distinguished i don't use the term lightly. really, these are three of the finest dollars of african-american history in general and specifically chicago's black history and the whole country and to have them here to comment is a great

privilege. but first person here going left to right is doctor darlene clark hine. she earned her ph.d. from kent state university, a place that has produced many black history scholars. i first met her in the 1980s when she was working on a ground-breaking project much loved by archivists called black women in the middle west project, a project that brought out the history of the activism and achievement of so many black women all over the midwest and not only that, encouraged them many times successfully to donate their papers to archival institutions including this one. that alone earned her great love by many of us. i would also like to point out

she is the author of far more books than i could mention. the nurses in the audience have for many years since the publication of black women in white, and i would like to say that her new book -- where has it gone, thank you -- her new book which she coedited with john mccloskey jr. is called a black chicago renaissance. it is a wonderful book on all the different aspects of black chicago renaissance in the 1930-40s published by university of illinois press and you don't have one you need to. darlene clark -- darlene clark hine is a past president of the

organization of american historians. the next speaker that i want to mention is christopher reeve. christopher reeve also earned his ph.d. from kent state. he is the author of a series of books, three of which i have mentioned. the naacp and the rise of black professional leadership, black chicago's first century, metro history students have kind of got your number of copies here because if you want to write about early black chicago history of the nineteenth century, you have to start with this book and will be all the original sources beyond it. a wonderful book and the rise of

chicago's black metropolis which i believe is dr. reid's most recent book phot it is hard to keep up. the rise of chicago's black metropolis traces the period of the 1920s, and leads us to the birth of the chicago black renaissance. claims to have retired in 2009 but i suspect like me chris reed's retirement is more alleged than actual. and finally the youngest of the people on this panel and i don't know exactly how old he was when he started doing research, it was the long time ago.

we are talking about adam green. adam green earned his ph.d. from yale and is now at university of chicago where he is the associate professor of african-american history. the master of the social sciences collegiate division and the associate dean in the college. this is a man with a lot of hats but the most important for us is twofold. first of all, his magnificent research work and writing. he is the first and as far as i know still the only person to publish a scholarly work on one of the most important documents in chicago black history and that is the wonder book, negro and illinois 1779 to 1929, two

volumes. that work by adam green is absolute essentials to understanding how the chicago black renaissance kicked off and where the impetus came from. then i want to mention most of all the work for which he did a great deal of research at high school action selling the race, culture, community, black chicago, 1940-1955. a work on the period of black chicago renaissance and work which takes it into the 1950s and achievements of johnson's publishing company. adam green's work on this is absolutely i opening, discussion is different, the concept of

what he means by selling a race, to think about it. very deeply. finally i would like to say we love him most of all because he was famous as the person hardest kicked out of the manuscript's reading room. where he was doing research. it would be ten minutes to 9 and we would say adam, you have to go but he wouldn't go. having thoroughly embarrassed everyone on the panel, i would like to call first on darlene clark hine. [applause] >> first of all, i think we

would be justified in getting a round of applause to michael. [applause] >> a lot of us would not be here had it not been for michael and the kind of encouragement that he has provided researchers and students and professors and you name it, people walking off the street. he works with passion, with intelligence, he is unrelenting. i should also point out right from the outset here that i am co-editor of a series that published brian's amazing new book along with -- [applause] --

and one of the things that i want to do right now, brian mcbride is the other coeditor, i warned him that i would do this because when this book came across my desk, the manuscript, it was like a gift. i know what the publishers didn't know what to do with it. but i persuaded them that it would make an absolutely astonishing contribution to the history of black chicago. and i prevailed. and so brian, after ten years, you found a friend and i really have been so pleased with the

way that you have turned this book out. so please, in fact, that i want to read a couple of paragraphs from the afterward. after ten years of working on this project, you can imagine this author and editor was quite exhaustive. and wrote and afterward bringing all this stuff to get there, all this new knowledge. i am not going to fault him. he didn't want to do it. mclaughlin in particular, and he did and it is an amazing afterward. i want to read a lot of your words that you read so eloquently the words of others

who contributed those 29 chapters. he says here there was admittedly no apparent attempt to feel rise the chicago renaissance or advocate for unified approach by those who were involved. there was no anthology equivalent to the new negro. the few black literary magazines that were lost in chicago, lyndon johnson's favorite magazine, robert abbott and alice browning, a negro story, were short-lived. the closest thing to a manifesto is richard wright's much anthologized blueprint for negro writing but the essay is typically attributed solely to write members of the south side

writers group with whom he read the essay and members of those with whom he wrote the essay have been pushed to the background. the 1937 issue, a new challenge where the essay first appeared was, edited by mary and miners and featured poetry by frank marshall davis, robert davis and margaret walker called all founding members of the south side writers group and a final section of blueprint for negro writing, wright urged black writers to overcome their isolation and work collectively, members of this outside writers group came to get to work in a collective environment. wright learned the importance of working collectively in the

chicago chapter of the john reed club. he and others experienced it while working on the illinois writers project. i want to come down a little farther here. despite a short-lived existence, the illinois writers project played a major role in supporting black writers when there were few opportunities available to them. at that time, not the american free press, quote, remained segregated with white magazines and newspapers refusing to hire black writers. during world war ii, black war correspondents were for the first time sent to europe to cover the war but they were all reporting for black newspapers. the publishing industry, after

fulfilling a temporary apatite for books about the race problem, quote, during the war soon lost all interest in publishing black authors. finally, more than just a job, the federal writers' project gave a generation of african-american writers the hope that they could continue to follow their dreams. although they were on relief, quote, they still took pride in their work. many look back fondly on their time at the illinois writers project. they developed friendships that will last for several decades after the project ended. the contacts they made helped them to get published in journals and anthologies.

a few of them would collaborate on other peaceful ventures. the writers project sustained many who were struggling to survive during the bleak years of the depression. when jobs were scarce for most but for black writers trying to make their way in the white dominated media, the road was a weary one. the final reuniting of the 29 chapters of the negro in illinois were with the final reuniting of the 29 chapters of a negro in illinois, we now have a document that may begin to bring writers of the chicago renaissance their due credit.

amen. thank you. [applause] >> back in 1998-1999 i sat with adam green, darlene clark in indianapolis and we had a panel on black cultural development. i remember starting out talking about a negative assessment of black intellectual and cultural creativity, assessment from the distinguished sociologist charles jansen who wrote that black chicago lacked intelligence the akin 1923. i had occasion to present

opposing -- and opposing argument and i thought about that in regard to "the negro in illinois" that brian dolinar has recently retrieved from not obscurity but somewhat obscured. the public didn't know about it. when i thought about janice, a countervailing evidence to the condescending impressions appeared a decade later and that is what the work of those 100 researchers and riders that put together "the negro in illinois". the circumstances of economic depression and subsequent recovery in various areas including the arts brought forth the illinois writers project, during the late 1930s and 1940s. resulting efforts brought forth a voluminous archive compiled by

rising literary figures and was known as the "the negro in illinois" papers. i remember working with these papers when they were located at the george cleveland all library before the collection moved out here. i remember how scattered the files were, how disorganized the papers were, almost impossible to work with. than the collection was moved out here to the wouldson, and appropriately second only in importance to george cleveland homes's location. forgot your name. i know you like a brother. michael fluke, remember, the papers are out in the middle of the study area. not too far from the latter. richard hunt's jacob's ladder. assert amount of

disorganization. there were folders' there but that is the organization that was slated to result from michael fluke's laborious task completed putting things in order. thank you, michael. the final step was the work of putting everything together in print in one book. this was the final stage. this was great. so kudos to brian brian dolinar. there is a problem and i just thought about it. people use to come from all over the country and from outside the country to do work on these papers. since these papers, you know where i am going? they are available in print. why come to chicago? it is a greater problem involved. if you don't come to the heart, you lose the possibility of

collaborating with scholars who are doing work here and with the staff and important we looking at related collections. on the one hand we are blessed with this, on the other hand, brian dolinar, watch yourself when you leave especially if downtown notes a decline in people coming to chicago to sign a book saying we have come to do research in these papers. ..

>> some of this material has to be handled have cautiously, probably the strongst are the last four -- strongest are the last four. but in some of the others you'll get information, for example, dealing with dussab. we know that he probably -- well, yeah, i think we can say because relatives have come to chicago in years past to the museum. there was an attempt in the 1930s to connect him with a very wealthy canadian, french-canadian family. and we know that he was real, we know that when he got here, he lived not in a cabin -- and you mentioned this up here -- he had a homestead. if you've seen the sketches of

the area where he lived, he had several houses, and brian mentioned this, he had, what, a house for his cows and a bakery and a this and a this. he had a homestead. it just so happened i had an opportunity to inquire from the hostess at the cabin at the world's fair of 1933, asked her why people during that period decided they would accept a cabin in place of a homestead. and i was told directly that despite their efforts, they couldn't get a lot of money together, and they had to settle for what was available based on the money that was there. and it came from the city ask the state. and -- and the state. and in terms of location, everybody wanted a piece of the late, sad site. so the best they could do was the site, as i wrote in an article, in the shadow of fort dearborn. but due sal had more than a

cabin. and by the way, you may not know it, but about three years ago the chicago city council voted to celebrate dusable's birth date -- ask we don't know what year he was born -- but on the city's birthday, march 4th of every year. now, interestingly enough it was also a day to be shared with persons of hispanic descent. but that was a resolution about three years ago from the city council. moving on analyzing what's in the collection, when i heard the comment about psychiatrynies -- and i love that chapter, i think it's 14 on business -- i thought about what was missing. now, the section on jitneys is on the end of a section on

business. but in the major part of the chapter on business, there's no mention that there were black cab companies, at least two major cab companies in existence during the 1920s. and be there are -- and there are photographs of well-uniformed limos driven by these men up and down the highways and byways of the south side. one cab company was the your cab company, but there was another one. both went out of business during the depression. now, we've had other cab companies more recently like the jimmy morgan cab company and the abernathy, but there were at least two during the 1920s. i did find that chapter interesting because it mentioned bankers beyond the two we know most about, overton, anthony overton, the owner of a newspaper, a manufacturing company and an insurance company who also owned the bank called

the douglas national bank, all right? and we know of jesse bingham, that was mentioned who in 1908 opened the first of three banks. the first bank was at 36th place and state, then it moved down to the northwest corner, near the northwest corner of 35th and state. and then bigger, the man with the big big ego but also money available at that time to make a dream come true built from the ground up on the exact northwest corner of 35th and state where the iit administration building is located. he built the binga arcade. and i'm looking back at mrs. durham there, and i remember asking your brother, mr. davis, about that facility. and along with tim black, both had wonderful memories of going

into not only the bank, but into activities at the binga arcade. now, both the arcade and the bank that was next to it were torn down to make way for expansion of iit. it's quite a story, and i love that chapter. i learned a lot about it. my biggest complaint about that chapter and whoever wrote it was there was no expansion beyond mentioning a name here and there. but there was a lot to mention, so that might account for why there was short shrift beginning to certain business and entrepreneurial -- given to certain bids and entrepreneurial activities. in looking at one of my favorite chapters, and i want to conclude in a minute or so, one of my favorites was one mentioned by brian dolinar. that was the one on negro aristocrats. fenton johnson wrote that. the significance of that chapter

was it was based on his actual memories having grown up in chicago and having seen persons of high social status, it was titled "negro aristocrats." now, this takes me back years ago when i met a woman out east in boston, who was the woman who wrote about negro brammans? she's the daughter of -- what is her name? everybody knows her. of -- well, she wrote a book about blacks who were living beyond the ranks of the working class. >> [inaudible] >> no. oh, cromwell's daughter. adelaide cromwell, that's right. she wanted to let americans know all blacks, although they were hard working, doesn't live just at the working class levelment there was a class structure among blacks. so that was great knowing that

about boston. but here fenton johnson, as recovered by brian dolinar, gave us an exposition of life among those who were in the upper class. and i remember fenton johnson described one woman who visited his mother as looking somewhat like a gray-haired bertha honoree, the wife of potter palmer. that was interesting. so i used the this particular segment of this chapter to substantiate a point i had made that by a early 1900s black chicago had what i like to refer to as a normative class structure, although that term is challenged by many. but there was an upper class, a middle class, a midling class and a highly segmented laboring classes in black chicago. so i really loved that. i did have a problem, though,

with the chapter on the negro sold consumer. -- soldier. the negro soldier chapter starts out with black men after the civil war, after mentioning in the first couple of sentences that there were black men that fought in the civil war. but for states outside of illinois. we had a regiment, the 29th infantry regiment, as a part of the united states color troops that fought from the late spring of 1864 in a year-long campaign at petersburg down through richmond and, and that unit was there when robert e. lee vendorred at -- surrendered at appomattox. there were three black regiments. in fact, i went down there looking for my great grandfather's unit, the 116th, an all-slave unit from kentucky. there was the 116th, and i tipped my hat to my great

grandfather, but there next to the 116th was the 29th illinois and the 31st new york. and i said, boy, how could they miss the 29th in this chapter? especially since they were writing in the late '30s, and the last of the civil war soldiers usually referred to as old soldier or soldier, they were living as late as the 1920 -- i have papers showing them appealing pension decisions from washington. be i don't know how they missed it, but they did. everything else in the chapter is very enlightening, but this to -- omission sort of strikes hard because it was the most momentous -- >> well, christopher, are you saying that brian should have rewritten the chapters? >> no. >> well, that the chapters have to be critiqued by those of us

who use them. >> that's what i'm saying. >> okay. >> this is my buddy from kent state, by the way. [laughter] and the editor of -- i think i have three books where she was editor, co-editor. this is not attacking brian, it's the writers. that's the whole thing. i think everybody understands this is not about brian, it's caution in using what's here. this is very valuable. especially those precious last four. but you have to be careful when you use these chapters. and there's no way in the world you could have gone through every chapter -- you put footnotes in, but it behooves the researcher to, in fact -- i'm glad you mentioned it, buddy. you need to -- and you said it already, you read this first. [laughter] [applause] one last thing, yeah, you should read that. okay, met me end up.

that thing, what's missing also in the chapter, there are two chapters on ida b. wells. one talks about her at the fair. you need to read this book on blacks at the world's fair. blacks were not excluded from the world's fair. that might have been the intention of a lot of people. i don't think most people really wanted to exclude blacks because they wanted those admission prices. this is called "all the world is here." but if you contact the people here at the library, they would be able to for you about it. one last thing and that has to do with the depression. the last book, michael, was the book i wrote on black people in the south side, on the south side during the depression that talks about that don't spend your money where you can't -- [inaudible] but also goes into the streetcar riots at 51st and what is now king drive and the disastrous

1931 massacre of three black men at 50th and dearborn during an eviction riot. that was substantial. anyway, i love this. i'm going to be praising brian again at roosevelt in, what, two weeks? yeah. and i'm going to start off a little differently. i won't do as much in the way of critique, because -- [laughter] but this is very valuable. a momentous, a momentous effort has brought forth fruit. thank you, brian tole far. ms. . [applause] >> so i have a lot of praise and a lot of thanks and, i hope, some points to raise that may give a sense of a frame. but before -- or a different frame. but before i do that, i just want to observe that, you know,

it's always good to kind of go back to where it is that you had your formation intellectually, the people that you started debating with, the people that when you were young and is kind of imagining your career and in a certain is sense your work as a thinker not just your career as a scholar, but your work as a thinker sort of moving forward, the people that were there that were touching you at the start, that you argued with, that you went around with text. and i've seen this very, very good show a couple of times where professor hine and professor reed kind of go back and forth, and you can feel the presence of their mentor, augie meyer, you can feel the sort of weight of the time when they were studying which was at a very momentous time in terms of establishing the groundwork for modern african-american history. so i have no problem ceding over time. it is a pleasure always to hear the two of you talking with one another about the finer parts of

the enterprise that we care about so much, african-american history. i want to say thank you to bob miller, i want to say thank you to michael, and i want to say thank you to the harsh board for making this panel possible. i also want to add my thanks -- so you stole my thunder, professor hine -- to darlene clark hine and also to dwight mcbride for their wisdom if taking this -- in taking this book up and bringing it up to publication. we take that as a given, that books just naturally come over to presses, and presses naturally decide to publish them. and this is not true in the best of times, and the last few years at least for the academic publishing industry are far from the best of times. so rest assured that a great deal of work went into making it possible for this book to come between two covers and be

available. and to professor reed's point about the fact that this may create difficulties in terms of indiana taping traffic here -- maintaining traffic here, the i remember the total correctly, we still have about 200 manuscript collections that need to find their covers, so i think there'll be plenty of work to do even though brian dole far has taken this book and put it into publication. and, of course, i want to congratulations from dolinar. it's important to note he actually went away from the confines of the or harsh collection. so, michael, if you were clocking him in relation to the time he was putting in the time he was put anything the collection, he had to go to syracuse university and several other sites around the country to track town chapters that no -- down chapters that no longer were based here in the harsh collection. so he had to do a great deal of

work to find out where things were and then pull them back together. there's a line in brian dolinar's introduction that refers to a conversation with michael about michael saying to brian that at least a half a dozen scholars had been invited to take on the project of pulling this together. i don't know and i don't want to presume that i was one of those six, but i know that michael pflug at several points said, well, you know, in addition to getting this or that little tidbit out of this collection, there's a lot of stuff there, and it would be very, very useful, very fascinating for someone to take in this up and organize it as a volume. maybe that would make me -- i'm looking at my friend, ben net johnson, part of a new silent six in relation to chicago not being able to go forward and conserve its legacy in relation to the federal writers' project.

whether i am or am not part of that group, obviously, we all owe a great debt to brian for putting together this work. i want to recognize -- [applause] what i want to do, i think, is talk less about the content of this volume and more about its tomorrow and more about its intervention. i think it's important to think about it in the context of the black chicago renaissance as professor hine so appropriately and eloquently encouraged us to do. i think it's important to think about it in relation to how we think about chapter by chapter its capacity to represent african-american history in the form of the research that was done. but i want to talk about what it means to make a case for cure rating african-american history at the moment that this book was put together. not by brian dolinar in terms of editing it, but by the people who went out, gathered the

stories, put them together in text and attempted to put it into publication at that moment in time. before you can even start to write real stories, meaningful stories, true stories about african-american history, you have to have something of an archive. and when we think about that in terms of the ways in which much of our knowledge of black folk is based on the sources that we have access to the -- sometimes in print, sometimes put together by a federally-funded program but also oral tales, slave narratives, of course, the vast tradition of biographical literature for african-americans, autobiographical literature, realists, nationalists, poetry, popular song including, i would say, hip-hop and rap today -- each of these serves as a repository of knowledge about how to think about african-american life. now, in un remarkable times disturb unremarkable times, and

there are few periods of history we can speak of, of course, as being unremarkable for african-americans, but let's just concede the point that sometimes sort of tensions and energies and dynamics recede, and it's possible to sort of see things as being the usual data day. in unremarkable times, these archives help form, ground, corroborate and vet ways that african-american life core responds to real conditions and the sacred memories of people. but as i said before, most times african-americans remember and live within are not unremarkable times. in remarkable times these archives are ones that allow -- like legal research to a landmark case -- they allow an evidentiary base for actively working upon and transforming thinking about the world and its diverse people including, obviously, african-americans as a people. and i draw that distinction, i

draw that dis2006 because every time -- distinction because every time someone curates, draws together, conserves a repository of information they may they -- that may not be 100% accurate. but in the face of what generally stands in as representation of black life and especially black history, having something that gives some richness, some detail, some forthright appreciation of people's capacity to contribute to history is an inestimable treasure. and it's also an extraordinary tool in the struggle of overcoming to registration, overcoming oppression, overcoming the demeaning of a people. we think about the '30s because it was a period of the cultural front, because it was a period in which left energies were expansive, because it was the period of the black chicago renaissance or at least its start, we think about the '30s

as generally a good time in relation to african-americans being able to advance their intellectual position, their correspondence and their place in terms of both charting their course and helping steer the course of the nation and the world. i think it was better times, certainly, than was the case, say, during the 1890s or better times than the 19 teens. but during the 1930s into the 1940s, there was plenty of counternarrative in terms of what sense to make of the place of african-americans in the history of the nation. and in that sense, the fact that people came together in chicago as part of a larger convergence in the country under the federal rioters' project and especially under the directorship of sterling brown who was head of affairs for the writers' project to draw people together to bring stories that would give a

different basis for appreciating the the place of african-americans in national, world and human history. it was an extraordinary intervention. it was revolutionary in all sorts of different ways. and just step back and think about what some of the companion accomplishments were of this general movement in addition to the negro in illinois where a lot of hard work p went into generating those texts, but because of various conditions and factors, they were unable to see publication in their own day. the gathering of slave testimonies, 2,000 -- all of which, by the way, can be accessed through the web right now by doing to the library of congress -- 2,000 testimonies on the part of foreign former slaves were gathered as a result of the federal writers' project and as a result of sterling brown and others like him. the ways in which chronicles of all sorts of different localities and regions were launched simultaneously with the

effort that was going on in illinois, ones that had to do with virginia, georgia, new york, philadelphia, various sorts of genres of black life and black expression, 16 this -- in all that sterling brown characterized as putting people in a position in which it would be possible to talk about the african-american, the negro-american as he called it, as a participant in national history. and this is a line directly from mr. dolinar's introduction. participant rather than a problem. and what's at stake with doing that is actually work that was very, very vital in that moment of the 1930 bes. because -- 1930s. because as i'm advancing and asserting, even though there was an expansiveness in the place or the role that african-americans played in informing culture, literature, knowledge and the

like, there were many counterforces. and i would say the counterforces were stronger in the 1930s than the forces trying to advance african-americans which doesn't mean that we don't, toll those people who did that in the 1930s, but we appreciate what they were up against. everything from hollywood film to high academia to seats of of power in the federal government were very much committed to the idea that african-americans were, in fact, second class citizens, they had not contributed a great deal to the culture, they needed to mature and develop for much, much longer before they could be anything like equal contributors to the national story. and this made me think about the intervention of what was pretty much indisputably the most important and the most forthright black intellectual of that day, 1930s and 1940s. and here, of course, i'm

speaking of w.e.b. w.e.b. dubois with. w.e.b. dubois wrote many, many books. i think you still have a few more to go, dr. reed, before you get to that extent. >> [inaudible] [laughter] >> well, the two of you together will probably lap him. the let's of us can only dream. but dr. duboise wrote a book in 1935 that for many people was his most pointed and most impactful book in terms of taking on orthodox scholarship and its representation of black history, a book called "black reconstruction." and i read several passages of "black reconstruction" in order to think a little about what was at stake in relation to addressing this deficit of bringing together african-american history. and one jumped out at me in particular, and this is one that's dealing with reconstruction, but if we redact

the word "reconstruction," we could probably put any phase of history in the united states in its place, including potentially the one that we're in right now. ford to paint the south -- in order to paint the south as a martyr to inescapable fate, to make the north the magnanimous e mansion pater and to ridicule the negro as the impossible joke in the whole development, we have in 50 years -- he's talking here about orthodox scholarship, he's talking about academics working at places like columbia, harvard, university of chicago, northwestern and the like -- we have in 50 years by libel, innuendo and silence so completely misstated and obliterated the history of the negro in america in relation to its work in government that today it is almost unknown. this may be fine romance, but it is not science. it may be inspiring, but it is certainly not the truth, and beyond that it is dangerous. it is not only part foundation

for our present lawlessness and loss of democratic ideals, it has more than that led the world to embrace and worship the color bar as social salvation, and it is helping to range mankind in the ranks of mutual hatred and contempt at the summons of a cheap and false myth. so what was done in the late '30s into the early '40s in terms of drawing these various stories together was part of that tradition of working against the tide of what duboise called using propaganda in the place of history. and i would sit that it's -- submit that it's not only important to celebrate the importance of the achievement of these individuals who drew these various vignettes, these histories, these case studies, these perm sorts of narratives -- personal sorts of narratives together, but also to think about the value of having this accessible both in print

and in the manuscript form in the or archive of the harsh collection today. because the same sorts of dynamics -- even as we see great opportunities, even as we see great expansion and development of the tradition of african-american history -- there remains counternarratives, there remains history that's not based on science in relation to talking about the lives of black folk, there remains propaganda. i'm looking at stan willis in the front here and thinking about the expansion of african-americans working at the academy at the same time that torture survivors cannot have their stories heard and taken seriously as kind of con stitch bitive of history within chicago. i'm looking at my dear friend and colleague professor martha by onty who's written a wonderful book in relation to talking about the black studies movement in the united states and at the same time thinking about the ways in which black studies is often under attack

today in the various parts of the country. >> she has a lot about chicago. >> she has a lot about chicago in it. and there's a lot to say today about the course and the interest of african-american studies in relation to various forces including the forces of the administration of the city college system. so the question is not only one of understanding the content of a book like or understanding the motives who assembled the content of book like this, the question is also one of understanding the value of the form, what it means to make a case for a basis of black history at a time when so much history that referred to african-americans saw itself as having no responsibility for having a basis at all. and i think that there are parallels in relation to today that tell us that it is valuable to gather these stories to make sure that we learn them, to give credit to those that put them

together and then most importantly, to go out and use them. because there are plenty of people who are writing history that relates to black people who have no reference to those stories and no intention whatsoever to use them. with that, i want to just again express my sincere appreciation to brian for his work in terms of putting this together. [applause] >> okay. not quite sure what's going on here. which -- [inaudible] okay. we are supposed to have an opportunity for audience questions and comments. we have had a wonderful ram, and we have run -- program, and we have run out of all of our time, but we're going to have a few questions and comments anyway.

so for those of you who want to stay, and i hope you all will and go to meet with brian in the lobby and get copies of the book and get them signed, please stay. now, if i would figure out how to get a microphone here -- >> right here. >> could i -- [inaudible conversations] >> ah, thank you. thank you, thank you. okay. is that better? so i'm going to come out in the audience and -- [inaudible] be some kind of a talk show host and find someone who wants to say something. and i see mrs. perkins. >> thank you. two brief questions. one, in your collection did you find material dealing with the sports community? you had a very active sports community, the old-timers and even the globetrotters, so some

of that -- >> [inaudible] >> oh, i'll be looking forward to that. professor reed mentioned the military, what about the 8th regiment? that's already represented. okay, so i'm just asking questions that are already presented. thank you. >> by the way, but just before i do this, i want to say that there's a little misimpression that's going on, and that is that everything that's in the illinois writers' project negro illinois papers is in the book. that's not true. the actual book as it was intended to be written has now been published. but a hundred seem did research -- people did research. there are 50 boxes of research material, and much of the material that you find in those doesn't appear in the book.

so there's a wealth of knowledge that you get by still coming to the archives and using that book. [laughter] >> thank you very much. i was wondering, um, in regard to the women of the dusable memorial society, are they the ones that continued right up until this bust was placed on michigan avenue? >> [inaudible] >> because i know that about ten years ago there was such a group of women trying to get a memorial to dusable, but you didn't -- you haven't come across that? >> can i add something? i was with that group, what was the name now? friends of the parks was part of it, and mrs.-- the lady was the president of the dusable memorial, she was part of it, the haitian community was part of it. there must have been at least a dozen groups trying to get

dusable park built. and along the way they had that dusable parkway along the river named, and they put that bust out there. i can't think of the lady's name. but as of today, i don't think the memorial society is active. but at least five years ago they were somewhat active and meeting out at the atlas center on 79th center, but meeting irregularly. >> let me go to the back of the auditorium, give them a chance. okay. >> thanks so much for these presentations. i don't know if this question is for brian or for the panel, but i work at the newberry where some of these manuscripts are and, michael, you told we a very funny story about how some of the manuscripts ended up at the

newberry that might be worth repeating. you know, maybe they should come back here, i don't know, but i've looked through that material, and i'm wondering if you can tell me how it fits in the book. and p then secondly, you know, conroy and bonn temps obviously wrote they seek a the city out of the research they did for this project, and, you know, it too is a mix of history and story and narrative, and not all the facts are right, but it certainly is a compelling text. and i was wondering if you could tell me how your compiling of these 29 chapters resembles or doesn't resemble the "they seek a city" work which, of course, was published, you know, soon after they wrote it. [inaudible conversations]

>> yes. it's a great question, and i explain some of it. it was the case that in 1942, 943 they tried to find a publish for the negro in illinois, and they had no luck. after a book by roy otley called "new world a-coming" came out, compiled itself from wpa documents in new york where he was the aide of the project there, after that, there was again this kind of new interest in some black history, so bonn temp gets to work on the manuscript. a 1945 book which is fascinating, a great read about all these little mud towns as he calls them, and yet about three-quarters of the material from negro in illinois was cut to make "they seek a city" about the more general trends of the great migration and cities across the united states.

so a lot of material was dipped. and what happened -- was ditched. and what happened in the process was that between 1942 when they had finished the project and -- according to letters, they had finished the project -- and 1944, '45 when they start writing "they seek a city," the book is swapped back and forth. they give all the materials to vivian harsh, but then bonntemps moves to fisk in nashville, and conroy's still in chicago, and they're writing letters saying send me these chapters, i'm working on the chapter on churches, but i need the original material. vivian harsh has it, can you go to the library and get it and send it to me down in nashville? so you have conroy and bonn temps sending the chapters back and forth, and they became split apart, separated.

some of it ended up in conroy's papers, some of it ended up in vivian harsh's hands. so this is how it all got split up. and i had to go visit all these papers and conroy's papers at newberry are a treasure-trove themselves. thank you for the question. >> i've got another person in the back of the room who is patiently waiting. >> my question is i'm not an educator or, but my question is what are the plans for getting this information, because this room is full of adults, it's full of scholars, down to the children of chicago. of that's a main concern of mine. there also seems to be a trend lately of removing history from part of the curriculum and studying, you know, concentrating on science and math and things like that. and we all know the power of knowing your own history.

evidence mr. green, i was at a panel earlier this year when your father, one of the little rock nine, said -- i asked him what influenced him to have courage at the age of 16 to do what he did, and he said he had recently or he remembered and recalled the story of nat turner. and that's proof positive of what knowing your history, the impact of knowing your history can have. so i'm just concerned, are there plans to get this information in grammar schools and other children-age levels of history? >> thank you for the question. thank you very much for the question. i'm so glad that almost at every harsh library symposia or program that question comes up. regardless of how many seem are in the audience. i mean, the woodson audience is very, very much concerned about disseminating all of this

scholarship that we produce and labor for decades to find publishers for, and it's a constant challenge. one of the things that somebody needs to do is to examine what kinds of social studies textbooks are being used in the chicago public school system. this is a big project, right? and how much of that material is either accurate or up-to-date or reflects the black experience in this community, in this nation, in this city. secondly, we need to have a more robust enterprise of writing books for children now that we have uncovered all of this new material, the new information

correcting omissions and silences and what have you. there needs to be some kind of movement to prepare a whole range of books or other kinds of instructional projects or products so that this material can be communicated to our students and to the people who also train our students. so i can work at the college level in teaching those who come to me and who may eventually end up in classrooms, but this needs to be a multi-directed kind of project operating on many levels at once. because we can't wait with another 50 years to discover all of this material, all of this information that would have been so empowering to us if we had

had access to it in the 1950s and '60s and '70s when we were in school. so we've sort of had to invent black history. but now we have to become agents of disseminating it broadly and making it impossible for anybody to ignore black contributions to this country and to our history. because like i said before, african-americans have really americanized america. [laughter] >> can i add that -- >> ain't that -- [applause] >> can i add that chicago public television already made a major step forward three or four years ago with dusable to obama. how many saw that? the prize-winning film. the black chicago history forum is claimed to getting -- committed to getting the various local school councils, lscs to

at least view the film, and maybe those social studies teachers will talk about the films, and then you can go to curriculum change. keep in mind that it is mandated in the state of illinois that african-american history be taught. in illinois you not only have a refusal to teach african-american history, but holocaust history is not being taught. but it's for citizens and groups like this to pressure their legislators to get this thing rolling. it is mandated. it's in law. let's learn, let's have those kids learning what they should be learning starting with the film. >> the film maker who made that film, barbara allen, did much of her research here. >> [inaudible] >> there you are. much of the research was done here. it was great material, and the barbara allen papers -- which include her previous two

films -- are also here. so if you want to see all the long interviews, for example, instead of -- when you make a documentary, maybe you get three minutes on the screen. but there might have been a 90-minute interview. it's worth looking at the 90-minute interview. >> wait, michael, can i actually add two more things on this? >> yes, please. >> and i don't know whether or not brian wants to put something in, because maybe he's got plans that we don't know about in relation to can conversations here. one is that christopher spoke about the importance of the politics in relation to this, and i do think it's important to recognize that today the question of how young people, particularly young people of color, are educated in chicago is highly, highly politicized question. so it's important for adults whether or not they are teaching students directly, young students directly, it's or not

for adults -- it's important for adults to bear their civil responsibility to make sure that the best decisions are made by those in positions of political authority vis-a-vis educational policy. because that question's very much out in front right now. we have to think about that as a point of responsibility for all of us. and the second thing is i want to give a shout out to the chicago metro history fair because i see lisa in the back there. the metro history fair gathers projects by high school students across the country where they do long form, intensive, collaborative research, there's a prize at the end. but my understanding is that everybody wins in a surgeon sense in relation -- in a certain sense in relation to the experience of going through, doing that kind of work. so we do want to intervene in the schools, but we also want to think about how to encourage our young people to think about the opportunities that exist be outside of school -- exist

outside of schools or, i guess, in a co-curricular relationship with schools. perhaps there might be opportunities to speak with her later on if you know of young people that are interested in this. and one maybe quick, brief personal story. when i was coming up in high school in the 19 70s in new york city, i read maybe not the historians, you know, dunning and burgess and others that duboise was writing against, but with i recall very vividly in my social studies classes reading accounts of the civil war that basically replicated the dynamic that duboise was talking about. everything was the cause of the civil war except slavery and the circumstance of african-americans. everything else was something that drove this. that's the history that i learned in high school. but i had enough counterexamples, and so maybe this is a reversal in a way of what my father encountered in little rock, i had my father's story, i had other people, seem

like bye yard rustin a. a. philp randolph were people i knew by name, and they were able to tell me nothing that was significant in u.s. history that so concerned the welfare of african-americans could not have not only had some reference to african-american lyes, but some -- lives, but some direct impact in steering in relation to it coming from african-americans. so there are all sorts of ways in which we can touch our young people. it doesn't necessarily mean that we have to be successful in putting an entire class before them. just encouraging them to think critically about the dominant common sense is a good way to get them to appreciate what the opportunities are that are there. so keep that work up. >> can i add one more thing? brian, you read the passage that talked about billy the barber. i thought about billy when i watched this movie, this fantastic political movie "lincoln." there's a part where someone

asks lincoln, i think it's a black person, do you know any black people? and he says, no. well, he did know billy the barber, as that chapter finish. [laughter] i mean, everybody knew that he knew billy the war bear who was haitian. and then, of course, the movie missed the point that when frederick douglass came to the white house on more than one occasion, there was that occasion when lincoln beckoned him it's the guards to come up up -- him past the guards and called dough -- douglass "my friend." movies teach us as much as the print medium have to be, as he said, scrutinized, critical analysis of just about everything except god. [laughter] >> well, we're going to let that be the last word. [laughter] [applause] >> thank you all for coming.

the book's on sale in the lobby, and they can get them signed. thank you again. [inaudible conversations] >> we'd like to hear from you. tweet us your feedback, twitter.com/booktv. >> and now on your screen is the cover of a new book by john shaw, "jfk in the senate: halfway to the presidency." first of all, mr. shaw, with the 50th anniversary of the kennedy assassination, was it a benefit to publish your book at this time, or did it hurt? >> you know, i think it was a mixed, it was a mixed blessing. on the one hand there was, of course, this tidal wave of

interest in candidates that came out on the 50th anniversary, and because of that there's this avalanche of books, many of which deal with the assassination. so it's almost, a very crowded field to enter. in the perfect world i might have come out at a different time, but the book was ready to go, and my publisher wanted to go with it now, so i feel good about it comes out now. i was going to say the thing about kennedy, he seems to be interesting at all times. i mean, he's one of these characters that is just such a compelling public official, public figure that, you know, he's obviously hot now, but i think a year from now and five years from now there's so many unanswered questions about his presidency, about his political career that i think he's always going to be a popular person to write about. >> well, we don't think about him as a senator very often. give us a snapshot of his senate career. >> well, that was what drew me in, because we always think of kennedy as president kennedy. of he was in the senate for eight years, before that six years in the house, and he was an interesting and i think,

consequential senator. he was not a mast err of the -- master of the senate a la lyndon johnson, but he was very active in foreign policy debates, very active in the discussion about vietnam, algeria, the soviet union. he also did something kind of interesting, he chaired a special committee to determine the five best senators in american history. this is a committee that lyndon johnson created for himself, grew tired of it, handed it off to kennedy. and so this was really in some sense the one project kennedy was in charge of during his senate career. he took it very seriously, you know, inquired of all the great historians in the country and spent about six, seven months really digging into this. came up with a list of the five greatest senators, and it was something that became part of his identity as being a young politician but also someone very steeped in american history. so -- >> who came out on the top of that list? >> well, there was robert taft and robert -- [inaudible] were the two 20th century ones.

but the big ones were john calhoun, daniel webster, henry clay, the great triumvirate of the pre-civil or war era. so kennedy's committee quickly decided on the top three, webster, clay, calhoun. they had a longer debate on the next two, and even back at that point kennedy would prefer a gentleman by the fame of george norris -- by the name of george norris, but there were some hint that is the nebraska senators might filibuster, so he had to back off. even back then there were some subtle hints of filibusters in the senate. >> what would you say was one of president ken pity's most substantive pieces of legislation in the senate. >> well, he was very activity on labor issues, and that was the one domestic issue that he really, really dug into. it was a huge issue back at the time. it was the one maybe domestic issue he mastered, and even his

contemporaries said he understood the nuances of labor law better than anyone. it just seems he got caught in a complex kind of political battle, and the final bill didn't really resemble what he wanted. so i would say labor law but also on foreign policy. i mean, he gave, i think, some really marvelous speeches on indochina, the french involvement in indochina, on algeria, the french involvement in algeria, on the whole battle with the soviet union and how the u.s. should try to emerge in the cold war. so he was interesting. he was a more compelling person than i expected, and, of course, had some great contemporaries. he worked with people like hubert humphrey, lyndon johnson, richard russell, scoop jackson. it was a really interesting time with some great senators. >> so what was his relationship with lyndon johnson when they were both in the senate many. >> it was a very wary one.

his file is thick with letters to lyndon johnson asking for better committee assignments, because johnson was the senate democratic leader. kennedy was the more junior senator, so he was sending johnson a lot of letters asking for different committee assignments. johnson seemed to put them away. and at one point ted sorenson sent a wonderful note, johnson appointed kennedy to some third or fourth tier, you know, boston harbor dredging commission or something, so sorenson said in the letter we're making great progress, senator johnson has named you the chairman of the dredging commission. so it was a wary, competitive relationship. but in the end i think johnson came to respect kennedy as a tough, formidable old decision. didn't think he was a real heavy hitter on policy, but he thought he was a real compelling political figure. >> john shaw, did president kennedy's senate career benefit him as president? >> i think it did. i think he understood the issues, the foreign policy

issues very well. he really had a good schooling in that. i think he developed an appreciation for how congress works. he'd spent 14 years in the congress. but he was very clear that he wanted to move on to the presidency and, in fact, became only the second sitting u.s. senator to win the presidency. before him the only one who had done it was warren harding in 1920 and since kennedy the only one who's done it is barack obama in 2008. so the senate isn't really a natural jumping-off point to the presidency, yet kennedy found a way to use it to advance his political ambitions. >> the name of the book, "jfk in the senate: pathway to the presidency." the author, john shaw. >> you're watching booktv. here are some programs to look out for this weekend. at 4:30 p.m. eastern, edwin black talks about his book, "financing the flames. how tax-exempt and public money fueled a culture of

confrontation and terrorism if israel." then at 7, take a tour of the national museum of american history with richard curran, the smithsonian's undersceningty for -- undersecretary for history, art and culture. tomorrow at 3:15 p.m. eastern, former secret service agent dan bonn gene know talks about his decision to leave presidential detail and run for congress. then at 7, ann i drew graybill gives a history of the 1870 massacre. his book is "the red and the white: a family saga of the american west." for a complete schedule, visit booktv.org. >> well, scientology was really created as a religion that would use celebrities. when it was set up, it was established in los angeles in 1954, and there was a reason for that. l. ron hubbard, the founder of

scientology, realized that americans really do worship one thing for sure, and that's celebrity. and where is the capital of celebrities? hollywood. so scientology has become one of the major landlords in hollywood. and early on they set out to recruit celebrities. there was a church publication put out shortly after the founding of the church with a roster of prospective celebrities, and today included people like bob hope, walt disney, marlena dietrich, howard hughes, some of the most famous people in the world. but those are the kinds of people that they sought to use as pitch men for their new religion. and celebrities did come to the church. today built a celebrity center -- they built a celebrity center so the celebrities would feel at home there. and in some of the early people who came into the church were

rock hudson passed through, apparently he got very upset when he was in the middle of an auditing session, and he needed to go put some money in the parking meter, and they wouldn't let him out of the room. so he stormed out and never came back. [laughter] gloria swanson who was the sort of faded movie star of silent movies and, you know, later people like leonard cohen and even elvis presley made a stop. he didn't stay in the church, but his widow and daughter are still prominent members. so the idea was celebrities are useful. they become megaphones for advertising the church and its benefits. and if you look at the people that have been their spoke people like john that sol a --

travolta and tom cruise, each of these guys at one time was the number one movie star in the world. and that's a very powerful lure to young people wolf gone to hollywood -- who have gone to hollywood and are solicited by the church to come to the celebrity center to see how to get an agent or how to get ahead in the business. if they look at who's in the church, they think maybe i could be a star as well. >> you can watch this and other rams online at booktv.org. programs online at booktv.org. >> michael scharf, who served as an adviser to several war crime and genocide tribunals, looks at moments in history when international law or the interpretation of international law has evolved rapidly. he says that we are in the midst of one of those moments regarding the laws that alie to humanitarian interventions and targeted killings. this hourlong program is next on booktv.

>> all right. hello and welcome to case could downtown in the city called cleveland. my name's dan, i'm the ceo of the city club, and i'm very delighted to be here today with professor michael similar. michael is the acting dean of the law school, he's the baker hostettler professor of law, a leader in the practice and study of international criminal law and the host of the public radio program talking foreign policy, all of which is wonderful, but we're actually here to talk about something else, his new book. it is called "customary international law in times of fundamental change: recognizing grotian moments." >> wow. >> wow. which sounds like a mouthful of academic jargon, but what it's really about is how certain moments in history create the kinds of conditions for new laws to emerge as a force for good on a planetary scale which is certainly relevant today. michael, great to see you. >> and, dan, do you want to

mention who you are? >> i did, i did. okay. i'm going to assume that i'm not the only lawyer in the audience, here in the room or watching on c-span. so can we start with a couple of terms, customary international law and grotian moment. which one do you want to start with? >> we'll start with customary international law. >> all right. >> all right, so if you were in my first year international law class, the first day if class you would learn that the international law is made up of two types of law; treaty law, which is the documents the countries get together and negotiate and their parliaments ratify, and customary international law which is the unwritten law but is the actually more important and pervasive part. traditionally, customary international law is thought to grow very slowly. they use the word crystallization because it takes

decades, maybe centuries for it to harden as a custom so that the whole world recognizes this is something that they're bound to do. and what we've recently recognized is sometimes these customary rules emerge very quickly, and that wrecks the whole theory of what custom is all about. so this is the focus of the book. now, the other -- >> grotian. >> there's this guy named hugo, and he is thought to be the father of international law. >> this is a 17th century scholar. >> yes. he was the mozart of law. he was a very, very gifted young an who got his ph.d. when he was 15, wrote his first several books before he was 20, was governor of -- >> you know, the s. a.t.s were a lot easier. [laughter] >> probably so. anyway, he wrote a book called "the laws of war and peace" at a time when europe was run by

empires. there was the holy roman empire, there was the spanish empire be, the french empire, the swedish empire, and countries weren't sovereign. and his book was about how to finish and bring to a resolution the 80 years' war. there had to be a massive peace treaty, and all the little countries of europe should be southern, and they should be guided by treaties between them. so he came up with this whole paradigm. and be in 1648 at the peace of westphalia, they adopted it. and he had died during negotiations, so he didn't get to see it through. but they called this a grotian moment because it really launched the whole idea of sovereign states and modern international law. so when we're looking at moments that are like paradigm shifts where international law changes very radically and quickly, why not call them grotian moments? >> now, the original a war lasting eight decades to get to,

to actually crystallize. >> so other people have looked as these moments like radial changes like wold war ii, finish world war ii, and they say those are international constitutional moments, and they're taking a phrase from bruce ackerman, a famous constitutional law professor who looked at the new deal revolution and said that was a constitutional appropriatemoment. and so these folks are saying that happens sometimes in international law, so let's call them international constitutional moments. my problem -- >> that's sort of a little bit specific to the u.s.. >> yeah. and also even if you analogize the u.n. charter to a constitution, what we're talking about if in this book is much broader. customary international law is very broad. it's not within a constituent treaty. so we need some other title. i argue why not call it grotian moments. and there's a princeton professor who actually coined

the phrase. he didn't use it quite the way i'm using it, but he was the one who gave me the idea. >> are people thanking you? >> some people love it. others are saying if you look at him, he was a bit of a colonialist. so if you're from a developing country and you're a law professor, you really don't like to have his name tagged with things. but i've run into that a little bit. other people have this theory that grotian moments have to be huge, things like the peace of westphalia or the u.n. charter s. what i'm talking about are mini moments, transformative moments and maybe they shouldn't have the big g next to them. but a lot of people are starting to use the failed. when i wrote the book, there were only a couple of precedents of citations and law review articles. just did a recent view, you can go on wexler or google, and there are literally thousands of them now. so this word is getting out

there. it's getting to be a hot word. >> why does -- forgive this sort of vague, general question, but why does this matter? why does this matter what we call a moment of change? >> well, we have to -- >> we've got to call it something. >> you have to have a name. and part of it there's this theory called symbiotics which political scientists and others know the power of words. and how their meanings change over time. and it may be that his name and his legacy has been amplified to such an extent that it's a distortion historically, but i think everybody recognizes the tradition, the name is a powerful world. so if we're coming up with a powerful new doctrine, why not give it something that has that kind of heft? >> so let's then dig into, i mean, i've got some other kind of these sort of philosophical questions, but i'll hold off while we dig into the grotian

appointments that you identify -- >> do you want to ask why i wrote the book? >> i'm going to get there eventually. [laughter] >> okay. >> but the, what is the prototypical grotian moment in modern history ear? you've got a few that you talk about, the trial of nuremberg, the truman doctrine regarding offshore oil drilling, those are the first two. where do you want to start? >> what base law, i think let's start with nuremberg. >> okay. >> everybody's pretty familiar with nuremberg of. in fact, at our law school we had until recently one of the nuremberg prosecutors on our faculty. henry king. so let's start with nuremberg. >> okay. let's start with nuremberg and henry king. so what makes that a grotian moment? in a lot of ways, it feels obvious. but unpack it for us. >> so the history of war crimes prosecutions was pretty much

nonexistent before nuremberg. there had been an attempt in world war i to indict the kaiser, and then they decided not to. so there really wasn't any international war crimes prosecutions. in fact, international law prior to nuremberg said what a country did to its own people was its own business. so there wasn't even human rights law. you just couldn't complain about what was going on within a country's own borders. >> because it was an issue of sovereignty? >> an issue of sovereignty. so world war ii and the holocaust changes all that. it's so radical and so fundamental that the world was ready for a completely new paradigm. and the paradigm is if you're a leader and you commit genocide or war crimes, you can be prosecuted by the international community. and today this isn't so novel because we see the yugoslavia tribunal, the cambodia tribunal, we see duns prosecuting -- countries prosecuting their own leaders like saddam hussein, they're talking about prosecuting assad after the crisis -- >> judges in spain who want to

prosecute george w. bush. >> but before world war ii, nobody even thought about that. so that was the paradigm shift. and then you had the major nuremberg trial, mini trials conducted by the occupying powers, then you had the u.n. pass a resolution that universeally endorsed the principles of nuremberg. and these are principles we all sort of are familiar with. one which we're talking about is that leaders can be held responsible. just because they're the president or the king doesn't mean they can escape liability anymore. other ones is you can't use to bead yens to orders defense. others are that there's universal jurisdiction to prosecute international crimes. that's why in spain they go after george bush, for example. and then one of them is that when you prosecute people in an international tribunal, you can use a principle that is similar to the united states' conspiracy or pinkerton rule or a felony

murder rule -- i'll stop and tell you what that means. the u.s. is pretty unique in the breadth of our conspiracy rules. and so in the u.s. if you join a l criminal activity and you say, dan, you and i, we're going to go rob a bank, and i want you to be the getaway driver. i'll go in and do the bank thing. >> perfect. >> so i'm in the bank, and we thought we were just going to do a bank robbery, we weren't going to bring guns, babe just toy -- maybe just toy guns, but i brought a gun. they catch you running away, and they're going to prosecute you not just for being an accomplice, but for felony murder because you were part of this criminal enterprise. >> joint criminal enterprise. >> and so in international war crimes cases, the top people will have a plan, but the bottom people will deviate from the plan and do all sorts of other things, and this means the top people could be prosecuted for all the things if tear reasonably foreseeable. and this, for the u.s., is pretty standard stuff.

but for europe and for other countries, the civil law tradition, this is a real big expansion. and they did that at nuremberg, and then the way i got involved in this issue was in 2008 i was on my sabbatical. we get those as law professors every seven yearses, and i spent a semester as a special assistant to the chief prosecutor of the cambodia tribunal with. so i arrive at this new international tribunal set up by the u.n., and i say what do you want me to do? and he says we're going to have you write the brief in response to the defense motion to dismiss the charges of joint criminal enterprise liability. and they call this jce. we'll talk about that and those initials. the defense says it stands for just convict everyone. [laughter] once you have the standard, it's very pro-prosecution. >> ah, legal humor. [laughter] >> told you i'd make them laugh. anyway, the problem we had was this joint criminal enterprise

liability had been established in all the modern tribruins, but the cambodia tribunal goes back to eventings in the 1970s. so the only precedent they had was the nuremberg precedent. and the defense counsel argues that nuremberg is one trial, you have a general assembly resolution a year later, that's one year. that's not enough for customary international law. so they're going pack to the traditional notion that customary international law takes decades, centuries, you know, millennia to crystallize, and we're saying that it did it in one year with one trial. so i actually used this term -- >> and that was the genesis of this whole grotian moment thing? >> you know like every -- >> for you. >> -- comic book superhero has a back story? >> yeah. >> this is my origin story. so i'm in cambodia, and i stick it in the brief, and it goes to the tribunal, and the tribunal says we agree with this, and they used the term grotian

moment. and that's when people started talking about in this term, and that's when i said i've got to write a whole book about this. >> huh. so that was the moment that you identified nuremberg as, like, your prototypical grotian moment. and it seems to work because it was such a big moment for the world. >> right. >> and the universe of legal scholars. everybody was paying attention, and everybody noted, yes, this changes everything. >> right, right. except for the defense come. >> except for the defense counsel. >> who appealed and lost on appeal. [laughter] >> anyway, it made -- [inaudible] at some point. then you start looking around for other grotian moments. did you think you would find anything as significant as nuremberg? because that was kind of a big deal. >> this is where the origin story gets another interesting twist. on my 50th birthday i go to the hague, and i visit an old law professor friend of mine named chris greenwood --

>> you planned this for yourself as part of your 50th birthday? >> this is what i do. chris has to take me to lunch. the reason -- [laughter] the judge from the u.k. of the international court of justice. so my little professor friend has gone from london school of economics to being the judge of the world court. and i always like to go there because they have really good soup, as you say. [laughter] the facilities at the world court. so i go there, and he says what are you working on, mike? because he can't really tell me about the cases he's working on, so it's all about what i'm doing, and he can, like, give me his thoughts. and he is probably the most insight. law professor, now judge that anyone could know. he's very well respected on the court, and his mind is very anymoren, and he thinks very quick. i say what other grotian moments do you think there are? and he just starts going there's this, this, this, and this. he comes up with six of them. >> so it's his fault. >> it's his fault. and four of them i decide are

are legitimate moments and two i decide don't meet the criteria. and you can learn a lot by, you know, having a test case. and so the two that aren't -- which we'll talk about later -- are humanitarian intervention and targeted killing of terrorists. and so that's the most controversial part of the book. in fact, despite the wonky title, the reason the book so hot right now is because it's one of the first books to come out to talk about these two issues that are in the news like almost every day in the last year. >> uh-huh. >> the targets killings. and also -- many and whether you go into places like syria. >> exactly. >> well, let's jump into that. why not? the, i mean, i think you could run through the other case studies, and it's pretty clear why, i mean, the space -- outer space law, like, it was happening. you can't get to space without flying over everybody else's countries, so you quickly come to an agreement. >> huge technological change. it would take too long to create

treaties during the cold war, so they create customary international law through general -- >> this is like your coining of this phrase, custom pioneer, which is a really funny thing of you don't know that a you're doing it at the time necessarily -- you can only be a custom pioneer in retrospect, right? in hindsight. >> i'm actually more cynical an it. >> really? >> i think they're the major powers that want to create new customary international law like involving space law, so this would be the soviet union and the united states. they can't say they're creating new law because customary international law is basically -- >> if you say it, you actually have to do it through treaty. >> yeah, yeah. what they say is -- >> no intentions this the law we're creating right now. >> this is just a minor extension or a nuance on existing law. that's how they usually do it. but if you look at it, they're radical and fundamental changes. >> right. the continental shelf was another example, right? customary law had been that your border extends three miles or

maybe five miles into the -- >> but not 200, and now we can claim the oil and gas reserves all the way out through the gulf of mexico because president truman in 1945 said we believe that this is part of the natural prolongation of our territory. and, again, they cast it as if -- >> inevitable. everybody knows this. >> but it was really new wine in old bot be les, and it made it palatable. everybody was willing to try the new vintage. >> well, it worked out for everybody because there's no, not for everybody everybody, because if you're landlocked, it doesn't really matter that much to you. it doesn't change your world if you're andora, say. but if you are, you know, if you have a coastline, suddenly it got better. >> think about shallow in the netherlands, i don't think they would have been that excited that we were banning the gulf of mexico to their oil exploration. and, in fact, one of the ways

they got around it is when truman said that we are going to have this new authority. he said but we're going to lease it out so all the countries in the world on the same kinds of terms that we do to americans so you won't be disadvantaged. so that kind of was another political way to soften the transition. but ultimately, he had claimed the authority, and he didn't have to lease it out, and we don't have to necessarily. >> right. but what i was saying is it creates a win for australia, it creates a win for france, it creates a win for everybody that has some sort of coastline potentially where there could be resources, yet undiscovered resources. >> and like space law, or this was a technological change, and it also happened right after world war ii, so there was huge demand for oil and gas, and suddenly we had the ability to drill way out there on the con continental shelf. and still to this day most of our oil comes from that area. it's a very important resource for us in the united states. >> before we get into why the

final two case studies don't really qualify as a grotian moment, tell me generally what are the moments in your mind that disqualify it? >> let me tell you one other part of the origin story. it's sort of a three-parter. you've not the part where i go to cambodia, the hague, and then the thursday part is i get invited to go to kyoto, japan, who is the ceo of the kyocera company -- >> and the benefactor at a certain -- >> of our ethics prize for ethical leadership. so he invites the president and the trustees and is some professors to come, and i got invited to go. so i traveled to kyoto, i go to his company, and they give me a tour. and they have a museum there where they show all the different things that they've made over time. and one of the things that they're making now that is very exciting for them are recrystallized gem stones.

so you look -- >> manufactured gem stones. >> they're like manufactured diamonds and rubies and emeralds, and they are not like culturalled pearls. there's no way to distinguish them from the real thing. but the way they manufacture them is through intense heat, intense pressure and some secret ingredients that they won't tell you. and it takes months, so it's not instantaneous. and it's slightly less than the cost of the real thing, but not so much. so what they are is they're precious, they're somewhat rare, but they're quick. and they're happening fast, and it's through these external ingredients. and so what it occurred to me is happening with the grotian moment is you don't just have this thing that they call latin for a sense of legal obligation, but you also have this external factor that everybody has ignored over time that is creating the ingredients for accelerated formation of customary international law. it's an accelerant.

so that was the analogy that got me hunting. so what am i looking for? the parameters of the grotian moment concept as i've seat them is it has to be something that's emerged within ten years, because that's really fast. and several of the ones we talk about in the book emerged within just a year or two, but ten years is sort of a good way to look at it. secondly, it has to be a radical change even though the custom pioneers -- as you mentioned, say that they're not doing anything differently, you have to show that it is huge change in the law and that it's not just a continuation. and this is one of the big arguments that people have had with me even with nuremberg. they say you're just focusing on the nuremberg trial, but if you look back at all the things that went into the history that ended us up with nuremberg, it's a long continuation, and it's more like customary international law.

you can go back to the hague convention of the early 1900s, you can go back to the lever code that president lincoln had during world war ii -- or the civil war. and all these things led up to it. if that's the case, this is just regular customary international law, it took decades. so what you have to do is look at it and say was this really a radical change? was it more or less a air rah dime shift. >> >> -- paradigm shift? >> the difference, like, why does the distinction matter? if the change happens anyway, why does it matter whetherst the crystallization of decades of evolution or a rapid change? >> okay, so -- >> what's the value in the rapid change? >> for academic bs it's always important. for the real world maybe it has some importance in various unique circumstances, and be i'll explain what i mean. >> okay. >> some academic stands up and says, look, i have a new concept, a new doctrine, a paradigm shift, everybody's going to want to explore it and test it because, you know,

that's what we think of ourselves as scientists even though we're political scientists and legal scientists. and so one of the arguments is that am i talking about paradigm shifts or just tipping points, and that's the kind of stuff they talk about. in the practical world, here's why it's important. just like in the case before the cambodia tribunal where the defense said if it doesn't take decades, it's not finish it cannot be customary international law, and you cannot rely on it. what this basically says is that i can prove that customary international law can sometimes form very quickly. i have four cases that i say it has. there may be others out there. this means that in the future when a court is considering whether something is a new doctrine of customary international law, it doesn't have to have the presumption that time so important. so it gets over that more or less. and here's where -- >> like, it gives international criminal prosecutors a little bit more leverage, more

ammunition. >> but it could come up in noncriminal context. here's one i was thinking about. it's not in the book, because it's happening just as we speak. we have global warming, and all of a sudden the water levs are rising -- levels are rising, and there are countries that are literally at the eventual of losing their lands. and the estimates are that within ten years several of these countries, they're states, they're members of theup, are not going of to have land territory to. so when their citizens go to other countries, they're going to want to be refugees, climate refugees, but the refugee convention only talks about people who were fleeing political persecution. and unless there's a treaty change, which there probably won't be, it's going to be a question of did this radical change in the world -- >> external factor. >> -- create very quick changes so that people can just recognize we have a new world, we have to have new rules, we don't have time for treaties, let's just accept it, we'll have a human rights commission

resolution that gets it started, and if there's not a lot of defense, it'll just happen. and it's not just the refugee status, also do these countries get to continue their u.n. membership and their membership in the other bodies of the world if they have no land. >> can you still be a nation-state or a state actor -- >> you know, it'll be chapter one of volume two of the book. but this is the kind of thing that shows the practical importance of the concept. >> that's really interesting. >> yeah. >> is that really, i mean, are we really that close to u.n. charter nations losing -- >> the scientists say yes. >> when good god. we were talking about what disqualifies a potential -- >> right. >> a potential transformation from being a grotian moment. so what's the disqualification that sort of -- >> okay. the other thing i need to mention here is a lot of these grotian moments are capped off with a general assembly resolution from the united nations. now, most everybody knows that

the security council has the authority to have binding decisions, and the general assembly is just the big debate society of the world. it doesn't have the ability to bind countries. but often the general assembly will pass resolutions in these grotian moments that are accepted as sort of midwifing if we can use that phrase, new law. the grotian moment principle may explain sometimes general assembly resolutions should be given heightened importance. now, just like a resolution can crystallize one of these grotiam moments, so, too, can an adverse one break it, you know, stop it from blooming. and i think that's partly what happens in the two case studies. >> okay. so let's jump into 9/11. of. >> okay. >> the post-9/11 world. and you focused specifically on drone attacks and targeted killings. >> right. >> there seem to be a, i mean, there was a whole lot of new doctrine that came out of, that

came out of the white house after 9/11. >> sure, right. and that's partly the context in which we're talking about. >> absolutely. >> go ahead. >> okay. so think about in time, 9/11 happened. for the first time, a terrorist organization that is not state sponsored has the technological and organizational and financial capabilities to make a major blow at a world power. 3,000 people are killed, that's as many as died during the japanese invasion of pearl harbor. huge issues. so immediately of after that president bush announces a new bush doctrine. he says you're either with us or against us. if the terrorists are located this your country, we consider you against us, and we will attack you. and then he says that's part one of the bush doctrine. part two is we don't have to wait this -- until we are attacked, we can act preventively.

if we think -- >> preemptively. >> and preventively. of. >> yes. so the problem legally with that doctrine was that under international law if you attack nonstate actors, terrorists or rebels in another state, it is a violation of that state easter to have y'all integrity, and that's a violation of the u.n. charter and a violation of customary international law with a couple of exceptions. but one of them is the security council authorizes it. that hasn't happened with respect to al-qaeda. the second is if you say you're acting in self-defense, you have to show -- according to the international court of justice in the nicaragua case -- that the country whose territory you're attacking actually had control of the rebels or the terrorists, that the terrorists' acts are imputable to the country finish. >> not exactly state sponsored, but state sanctioned. >> well, it's more than just saying they were unable or unwilling to control the

terrorists, and that's the current standard we have. so what we were trying to do as the united states was to change the law on it. to say not just you have control if the acts are imputable, but now if you just lack control, the you're unable or unwilling to control the terrorists, we're going in, and we're going to take care of them. and that's what we've been doing. the bush team did it and then obama ramped it up with all of the predator drone strikes in pakistan, yemen, somalia and ore places as well. >> so you have the technological innovation of the predator drones, the predator drone kind of hardware, although it's really just a plane that fires missiles, and, you know, that's piloted by somebody in nevada rather than somebody in the cockpit. but it's still, i mean, it's essentially -- that technological innovation isn't really as dramatic, not as dramatic as space flight or something like that. and then you have -- but you do have ts