applicable now before the fcc has even taken final action. >> you're referring to the nprm. >> guest: correct. which applied the elimination of the uhf discount to any transaction that was pending as of the day the fcc adopted the nprm. i think the better course would be at least not to apply it until the final report and order has been adopted. >> if a vhf discount is enacted by the ownership cap isn't moved, does that address your concerns about getting rid of the uhf discount? could it be a perfect replacement? >> guest: without a firm record on that question, i really wouldn't want to prejudge, you know, what the appropriate course would be. >> host: commissioner pai, three consumer issues i want to ask you about. sports blackouts, are we going to see any more? >> guest: i certainly hope not, as a diehard nfl fan. i know it causes a lot of aggravation to consumers, and i

hope that the fcc moves with dispatch in the proceeding that you've mentioned where we've proposed to get rid of the sports blackout rule. >> host: does that have to go through congress, or can you do that administratively? >> guest: oh, there's steps the fcc can take administratively. we've already started the process of doing that, and we're getting comments from the public about that proposal. >> host: you recently made a proposal about 9/11 calls from hotels. why? >> guest: it really struck me that this was a gap in our public safety communications that was screaming out for some kind of public awareness. i saw the story on twitter, actually, of someone gave me notice about the issue on twitter, and i read the story, and i couldn't believe that this poor little girl, 9 years old, had to watch her mother get stabbed in a texas hotel, dial 911 four times and wasn't able to reach anybody and ultimately, as you might know, her mother died. and it just brought home to me the fact that public safety

communications are critical. so it got me wondering how common is this problem. so i brought in one of the preeminent public safety experts on this issue, and he told me a large number of hotels and motels across this country use the pbx or private branch exchange, it simply isn't programmed to recognize when someone dials 911, they're trying to reach emergency personnel. that's a situation that needs to change. and it can be changed in most cases, i think, simply by reprogramming the telephone system. i had the opportunity to speak with the grandfather of the girl who called 91. 911. i spoke to him last night. and he never expected this issue to become the national issue it has. but he's grateful for the attention that everyone is bringing to it, because if one life can be saved by tweaking the existing technology, that's a good thing. and so i support his efforts, and i'm determined to do

whatever i can to raise awareness. >> host: have you heard back from the hotel chains? >> guest: i have not yet, but i'm hopeful i'll hear back from them and others about -- >> host: and finally, why were you not supportive of commissioner clyburn's push to lower prison call rates? >> guest: i was very much in support of the fcc taking action. i thought the position shouldn't have been sitting around the agency for over a decade, and i did put a proposal on the table that would have reduced these exorbitant rates, would have cut them significantly in 36 states and would have sustained legal criticism. but as i pointed out in my separate statement, there are, the order that was ultimately adopted was on a very shaky legal foundation, and i'm sad to report that the d.c. circuit this past monday agreed with me. >> host: as always, commissioner pai, we appreciate you coming over to our c-span set and spending a half hour with us on "the communicators." monty talo of "communications daily," thank you as well.

>> thank you. >> guest: thank you both. >> c-span, created by america's cable companies in 1979, brought to you as a public service by your television provider. >> gary younge is next on booktv. he examines martin luther king jr.'s "i have a dream" speech delivered during the march on washington on august 28, 1963. this is about an hour and a half. >> good evening. thank you so much for coming. we have a number of thank yous, a lot of people worked to put this program on. executive dean david scoby at the new school for public engagement, the nays institute, nation books and magazine, haymarket weeks, "the guardian" all really worked to make tonight possible.

we, obviously, have a special thank you both to all of you who came out tonight and all of the people who are watching this event which is being live streamed, and it is also being taped by booktv for booktv and free sweep tv. so i would -- free speech tv. so i would ask everybody to check their cell phones just to make sure that your cell phone is off. and also just so you know that it is being filmed tonight. we will be taking questions later and passing around notecards and then reading the questions from up here so that they can also be part of the live stream and the booktv. and there will be a book signing afterwards. haymarket books has a table, and gary will be signing books, so please join us afterwards. so this weekend i went to d.c. s and i had a couple of exhours, and so is -- extra hours, and so i went to see the king memorial. how many people have seen the king memorial? it's exceedingly depressing.

the original plans for the monument included alcoves to honor other civil rights martyrs, but those were scrapped for insufficient funds. king towers over us. the sculpture is flanked by a granite wall. fourteen quotes are on that wall, not one uses the word "racism" or "segregation" or "racial injustice" or "apartheid." not one. they're arranged like crossstitches, 196 be, 1967, 1955, 1963, 1964, completely out of context of movements and mobilizations in which king spoke them. the monument was made in china to save money. a man who excoriated the triple evils of materialism, militarism and racism, who risked his life and went to jail 30 times to challenge the courage of american -- the scourge of american racism, who was quick to point out the racism of the

north as well as the south, who wrote from jail in 1963 that the biggest problem was not the klan, but the white moderate. that man of god and courage is now honored with a memorial that refuses to speak the problem of racism. it is into this moment, this moment when the history of the civil rights movement is regularly invoked and distorted and used to celebrate the greatness of the united states that we turn to our speakers tonight. both of tonight's speakers write eloquently to help us make sense of this paradox, of these perilous times we live in where the history of one of the greatest social movements of the 20th century is used to talk of the peril of the task today. indeed, to cover up, at times, the continuing scourge of materialism, militarism and racism. and yet of the visions we can gain from a fuller and much richer sense of that history, to help us see and work for justice

in our time. michael denzel smith is a blogger at the nation.com and a knobler fellow at the nation institute, also a freelance writer and social commentator, and his work has appeared in places such as the guardian, ebony and the huffington post. gary younge is author, broadcaster and award-winning columnist at the guardian, a monthly columnist at the nation and a knobler fellow with the nation institute. he has written four books. his fourth book, "the speech: the story behind martin luther king's dream," is why we are here tonight as gary gives us a bit of the fuller his rhode island of the march -- history of the march on washington and reflects on the current politics of this civil rights history. so i'm going to turn it over to gary to kind of give us some introductory remarks and then michael, and then we'll have some conversation up here, and then we'll open it up to questions and conversation with you. thank you.

>> so thanks very much for coming. for those who have never seen me before, i'm gary younge. for those who have seen me before, i'm gary young this a suit. [laughter] because this is not a particularly familiar sight unless you see me at a wedding or a funeral. so the book is called "the speech," and it's about king's famous speech at the march on washington. and it's left there as an idea that you have a great man and a great talk. but king could not do that on its own. the speech and the march came from somewhere, and i want to start by giving some context to that text. because in the absence of that, there would have been no march, and there would have been no speech. and so i start with some of the people whose names perhaps we

don't know but who paid for that speech in a range of ways. and i begin with franklin mccain who was a 17-year-old in greensboro, north carolina, who made his stand by taking a seat at the woolworth's town town on february the 1st, 1960. and when i interviewed franklin mccain, he said that up until that time as a young man in north carolina he felt that his life was worthless and that his parents had lied to him. and the lies that they had told him was the great american lie that you can be anything you want to be. and he said as he grew through adolescence, he knew that wasn't true as a 17-year-old black male in north carolina. he knew that that wasn't true. and just as a symbol of how untrue that was, a completely different story that i was doing several years later, i interviewed a guy called buford posey from mississippi. a white guy who became an anti-racist who told me quite

kind of mart of factually d matter-of-factly, he said i never knew it was illegal to kill a black man until i joined the army. i knew it was wrong, but i didn't know it was illegal. and true enough, in mississippi the people who were as likely as not to be killing black people were actually the law enforcement agencies. so it was not an entirely incredible thing for him to think. so we go back to franklin mccain, he knows this as well as buford posey does. and he says he was angry at his parents for this lie. so they sat up, him and his friends, late into the night january the 31st before they talked themselves into the actions they took the following day. not knowing when they showed up at woolworth's in greensboro whether any of the others would be there. he says, we wanted to go beyond what our parents had done, and the worst thing that could happen was that the klan could kill us, but i had no concern for my personal safety. the day i sat at that counter, i

had the most tremendous feeling of celebration. i felt that in this life nothing else mattered. if there's a heaven, i got there for a few minutes. i just felt you can't touch me, you can't hurt me. there's no other experience like it, not even the birth of my first child. a few years later, in may '963, in birmingham, alabama, a police officer attempted to intimidate some black school children to keep them from growing the anti-segregation protests. they assured him they knew what they were doing and continued their march towards the park where they were arrested. a reporter asked one of them her age. 6, she said, as she climbed into the paddy wagon. the following month in mississippi stalwart civil rights campaigner fannie lou hamer overheard a fellow activist being beaten. can you say yes, sir, nigger, the policeman demanded? yes, i can. so say it. i don't know you well enough,

said ponder. and then hamer heard her head hit floor again. the polish journalist once wrote all books about all revolutions begin with a chapter that describes the decay of tottering authority or the misery and sufferings of the people. but they should begin with a psychological chapter, one that shows how a terrified man suddenly breaks his terror and stops being afraid. this process, man gets rid of fear and and feels free. the period preceding king's speech at the march on washington was one such chapter. until that point there had, of course, been many fearless acts, but in that moment the number who were prepared to commit them reached a critical mass. in may '63 "the new york times" published more stories about civil rights in two weeks than it had in the previous two years. during a ten week period following kennedy's address on civil rights in june that year, there were 758 demonstrations in

186 cities resulting in 14,733 arrests. such were the conditions that made the march on washington possible and king's speech so resonant. and this context was global. two days after mccain made his protest in greensboro, the british prime minister, harold mcmillan, addressed the south african parliament in cape town with an ominous warning: the wind of change is blowing through this continent, he said, and whether we like it or not, this is a political fact. some, including his immediate audience, apartheid parliament, didn't like it at all. but as the decade wore on, that wind game a gale. in the three years between the speech and the march on washington, the following countries became independent: togo, mali, senegal, zaire, somalia, niger, chad, central african republic, congo, nigeria, mauritania, sierra leone and jamaica.

internationally, nonracial democrat and the black enfranchisement that came with it were the order of the day. the longer america practiced legal segregation, the more it looked like a slum on the wrong side of history than a shining city on a hill. now, the story of that year in particular is a story of the base, the grassroots continually running ahead of the leadership. king spoke in harlem just a few months before the march and was heckled by protesters shouting we want malcolm. when the naacp hold their conference in chicago, they invite mayor daley to give introductory remarks, and he is heckled from the floor. when their leaders go to speak to kennedy about holding the march, kennedy says to them we have legislation that's currently going through congress. we would rather have new laws than have the negroes out on the

streets. and a. philip randolph, the trade union organizer who's primarily responsible for calling the march, tells kennedy, the negroes are already in the streets, mr. president, and i doubt if you called them, that they would come back. that is the mood of the moment. that the patience has worn out, the forbearance, the ability to withstand the clubs and the hoses, hoses that can fire so strong they can knock the bark off a tree at 30 feet being fired at children and dogs. it's become too much. and so african-americans who are always fighting back start to resist like with like. in birmingham there is eventually they respond to the bombings of the klan with violence. and there's a fear both among the civil rights leadership and among the kennedy administration that black people will resist and will meet like with like.

that is the mood that creates a necessity for a march which is called at the beginning of the year but very few people want. the polls show most americans don't want it, kennedy doesn't want it. it's insufficiently radical for many of the youth and the too radical for many of the more conservative leadership. but by the time it happens, there is a sense that if they don't do this, then what are they going to do to channel this frustration, this mass frustration? and so the march happens. now, the key fear primarily of the state is that there will be violence. this is peculiar because most of the violence in the south has come from the white segregationists, not from african-americans. but nonetheless, the fears that there will be violence, so it is literally policed as a military operation. it's called operation steep hill. 82nd airborne ready to fly up from north carolina at a

moment's notice and drop 19,000 troops on d.c. a thousand troops in d.c. deployed, 6,000 police working, all leave canceled, all elective surgery canceled, baseball game canceled, alcoholic sales are made illegal, and even on the mic, the mic that king speaks from, there is a kill switch that the justice department put in surreptitiously. the idea is that if anybody calls for insurrection from the stage, that they will flip the switch and play "he's got the whole world in his hands." that's their response. and so it is into that, into that atmosphere that king plans his address. now, king gave around 50 speech -- 350 speeches that year. you take time off for holidays,

that's about a speech a day. and generally he's not giving up a speech, he's an african-american baptist preacher, and in that tradition he drafts his sermon or, but then he crafts it in response to how the audience is taking to what he's saying. and he has a number of arsenal, a kind of a series of weapons that he can use, rhetorical weapons. and, but i the difference is that this speech, unlike other speeches, is going to be televised. if you're in the black church or the civil rights movement, you had heard king speak before. but if you weren't, this was his oratorical introduction to the speech. ken kennedy had never heard him before, and at the end of the speech he turns to one of his aides in the oval office and says, damn, he's good. so king wants something on a par with gettysburg. we know a lot of these details because the fbi were kind enough

to record them for us. [laughter] he wants something on a par with gettysburg. and so his, one of his main aides, wyatt t. walker, says to king don't do the i have a dream thing. it's trite, it's a cliche. you've used it too many times before. and that's the first line of the book. and, indeed, king had used it many times before. he first recorded using it in '62. it's thought that he probably used it in '61, a couple of years before. he'd used it in june at a rally in detroit and even a week earlier at a fundraiser for black insurance executives in chicago. so this was not the first time that, by a long stretch, that he had used the "i have a dream" refrain. and king worries away at this speech. he seeks counsel, he has a lot of input, much more than he would generally. and what we know is that when he goes to bed at 4:00 in the morning the morning of the march, "i have a dream" is not in the text of the speech.

that we know. and according to clarence jones, his lawyer and his speech writer, it was not in king's mind to do that. the next day. so the next day there is a series of meetings they have with congress. there's a funny kind of moment at the beginning of the day where they're in meeting congress, and they come out, and the march has started without them. very symbolically, given what i've said earlier, bayard rustin, the gay ex-communist conscientious objector and that's before you get to the fact he's black, he's the organizer of this march. and he runs out of congress, sees the march leaving and says we are supposed to be leading them. they jump into their limousines and try to catch up with the march but are blocked by the traffic, the traffic caused by the martha they -- martha they themselves have called. so they jump out of the limousines and run to catch up

with the march. and if you look at the pictures of the leaders of the march, in a kind of fred flintstone version of photoshopping, they basically cleared people out of the way so it looks as though they are at the front of the march but, actually, they're in the middle. and throughout that day king is worrying away at this text, scrawling all over it. if you look at the actual what he ends up with, you know, what's left on the podium when he finishes speaking, there's a -- it's full of doodles and scrolls and so on. it was a hot day, 87 degrees at noon, and king is the 16th on a agenda of 18. he's the tenth speaker. there's been the anthem, the invocation the prayer, there have been a range of, a number of singers including mihalia jackson, peter, paul and mary, bob dylan. a range of people have sung. and he takes to the podium about

2:30. and according to clarence jones who drafted much of the text, king keeps closer to this text than he would regularly keep. those who wrote speeches for king said they were always king's speeches, basically, but you would be -- in clarence jones' words -- a very crude architect. you'd set up the four walls, and then king, like a beautiful interior designer, would come and make it his own. and king speaks very faithfully to the main text. but then as -- and if you listen to the speech, and i would advise you to listen to it, it's the most popular, least well known speech i've heard of. when i told my brother i was typing this book he said i love -- i was doing this book, he said i love that speech. that thing about been to the mountaintop, and i've seen the promised land. great sweep, but it's not that speech. [laughter] and he's winding up. he says, go back to mississippi,

go back to louisiana, go back to south carolina, go back to alabama, go back to your northern homes and ghettos knowing that somehow this situation will be resolved. behind him is sitting mihalia jackson, a very, very close and special friend. when king was on the road, he would often call her for what they termed retail -- gospel therapy. he would call her, and he would ask her to sing to him down the phone to soothe his spirit when he was down. and so he knew her well. he knew her voice well. he's winding down, go back to your northern homes and ghettos knowing somehow the situation will be resolved. and she shouts, tell them about the dream, martin, tell them about the dream. she had heard him deliver the dream segment in june in detroit. king continues: for though we -- let us not wallow in the valley of -- i say to you, my friends, let us not wallow in the valley of despair. and then she shouts again, tell us about the dream, martin, tell

us about the dream. >> and then in the words of clarence jones, king puts his text to the left of the podium, and in his body language changes from a lecturer to a preacher. and jones turns to the person next to him and says those people don't know it, but they're about to go to church. and then king says for though we face the difficulties of today and tomorrow, i still have a dream. at which point wyatt t. walker, the man who had advised him not to do it, turns to the person next to him and says, oh, shit, he's doing the dream. [laughter] so that's how we got there. and what's interesting is that when you ask people who were there at the time and who knew king well, to a person they will tell you that they did not -- of all the speeches that he made, this was not particularly one that they thought we would be talking about in 50 years' time. it was a great speech.

none of them, you know, deny that. but many of them have different speeches that they thought were better, and ask either way they said great speeches was what king did. ask so i spend a fair amount of time looking at why that is, and i want to really kind of suggest two things here. the first is that there is something for pretty much everybody in this speech. if you are an african-american, part of a community who's told that you are genetically stupid, that you're poor because you're stupid, that your stupidity is your responsibility and that your, the failings in your community have nothing to do with history and everything to do with you, then to know that the best speech, america's favorite speech was delivered by an african-american in the black vernacular as an indictment of american racism is something to be very proud of. if you are a patriot, there is nothing in this speech that you need worry about. this is a dream deeply rooted in

the american dream, literally and metaphorically delivered in the shadow of lincoln that pays homage to the founding fathers, the constitution and the declaration of independence. it's an american speech. couldn't have come from anywhere else. if you are progressive, this speech comes on this day. there have been few days like for american progressives. fair enough, only 20% of the crowd was white which was less than what they were expecting, but nonetheless, this was the first march of its kind in washington. now marches in washington are two to a penny, but this mass demonstration. they hoped for 100,000, they got 250,000. never been, had never been done before. and it comes -- and this is the way i describe it in the book -- it is the most eloquent around the ticklation of the last great -- articulation of the last great moral act america can claim, and that is the end of american apartheid.

that whatever people say now or feel able to say, nobody who wants to be taken seriously is calling for those signs to go back up. nobody is calling for a return to formal, codified segregation. and however small that may seem when we see the amount of racism that can still spew from the mouths of those who are elected or unelected, that is no small thing. the end of apartheid is a big thing. and it's, i believe it's the last great moral thing that america can really claim to have done as a country. so there is that. a number of people have something to claim, but there's also something else. king, when he delivers that speech, there is an even number of americans with a favorable and unfavorable view of him. by '66, twice as many americans have an unfavorable view than a favorable view. and then he's ted in '68 -- dead in '68, assassinated.

by 1999 when americans are polled on who are their favorite characters of the 20th century, king comes second only to mother teresa. something happens between when he's assassinated as a somewhat marginal and polarized figure in 1999 -- and 1999. and this is what i think has happened. first of all, why does he become unpopular? well, when the speech is delivered, the year after comes the civil rights act. the year after that comes the voting rights act. legislation begins to kick in, and king understands that the end of segregation is not the same as the beginning of equality. as he says, i have given people -- we have won right to eat in any restaurant of our choice, but we do not have the ability to eat everything that's on the menu, because we can't afford it. and so he starts talking about what else is necessary, and i want to read you this bit from where do we go from here.

you get a sense of why he might become unpopular. he says, there are 40 million people, poor people here, and one day we must ask the question why are there 40 million poor people in america. and when you begin to ask that question, you are raising questions about the economic system, about a broader distribution of wealth. when you ask that question, you begin to question the capitalistic economy. and i'm simply saying that more and more we've got to begin to ask questions about the whole society. we are called upon to help the discouraged beggars in life's marketplace, but one day we must come to see that an edifice which produces beggars needs restructuring. it means that questions must be raised. you see, my friends, when you deal with this, you begin to ask the question who owns the oil. you given to ask the question -- begin to ask the question, who owns the iron ore. you begin to ask the question, why is it that people have to pay water bills in a world that is two-thirds water?

thousand, that kind of talk in america in 1967 -- now, that kind of talk in america in 1967 will get you killed, and sure enough, a year later he is killed. so he started talking about capitalism. a year after that, in '67, he starts at the riverside church, he calls america the great itself purveyor of military violence this the world today and takes a stand against the vietnam war. now, how is america then going to remember king? well, it can't remember him if it's going to raise him to iconic status. if it's going the put him on the mall, then it has to sanitize him for public consumption. it has to make him the kind of person who could come second to mother teresa. and you can't do that with a man in america who questions capitalism. because to remember king in that way would not raise him above the fray, it would enter him

into it. that's what the shutdown was all about. that's what cuts people food stamps today. you can't remember king as a man who criticized capitalism and still hold him up as an american icon. that doesn't work unless what it takes to be an american icon changes. you can't remember him, america can't remember him. the powers that be is the man who called america is greatest purveyor of military violence today because arguably it still is. and it was notable on the 50th anniversary of the speech be, it took place literally on a split screen. on one screen there was obama, clinton, carter carrying king's mantle, cloaking themselves in his legacy, and on the other screen will we bomb syria, when will we bomb syria, why wouldn't we bomb syria. you can't remember king as that, have him on the mall and still claim him to be an american icon when he's speaking about america

being the greatest purveyor of military violence. but you can remember him as a man who got rid of american apartheid. not american racism, because that would involve a whole different set of conversations about why plaque men in -- black men in d.c. have a lower life expectancy rate than men on the gaza strip. you can't have that conversation. but you can have the conversation about why or how he got rid of american apartheid. and so that's the way that they choose to remember him. and so i end with just one paragraph where i talk about the process by which king and through him the speech can be sanitized, and i say: white america, most of it, came to embrace king in the same way most white south africans came to accept nelson mandela, grudgingly and gratefully, retrospectically, selectively, without grace but with considerable gilens. by the time they realized their

dislike of him was spent and futile, he'd created a world in which admiring him was in their own self-interest. because, in short, they had no choice. when it comes to king and his speech, one of the central arguments in this book is it's not just about what you remember, it's also about what you forget. thank you. [applause] >> good evening. before i get started, i want to spend -- send a special shout out to the second u.s. circuit court of appeals for reminding us all that the work ain't over. but i would like them to know we will win. i grew up in a malcolm x household. my introduction to malcolm x was probably, i was like 4 or 5, and

my father who kind of favors malcolm x portrayed him in a black history month special, a play of some sort. there was malcolm x literature all over the household. i still have on my night stand right now a copy of the autobiography that my father had, the broken and tattered one. i grew up post-public enemy and spike lee resurrecting malcolm x in his iconography. my father had several x hats and t-shirts. i say all that to say that dr. king is not a part of my foundation. i don't have any particular attachment or reverence or didn't have because i rejected him. i accepted the binary idea that you either choose malcolm, or

you choose martin. i mean, i just don't have much contact with martin luther king jr. i mean, we had a picture of him in our house, like most black americans do. you will find malcolm x, martin luther king and jesus and now barack obama -- [laughter] actually, the barbershop i used to go to, there are only three pictures of martin luther king jr., malcolm x and barack obama. [laughter] but the picture in our household was malcolm x in the center, the honorable elijah muhammad to his right and then martin luther king. so i just don't have a whole lot of, you know, emotional pull to the legacy of dr. king. but i realize that's not entirely my fault, you know? i didn't even grow up celebrating martin luther king jr. holiday because i grew up in

virginia. and in virginia we had lee jackson king day. where we celebrated robert e. lee, stonewall jackson and martin luther king jr. on the same today. on the same day. >> that's a big day. [laughter] >> right. >> that's like a week. >> that lasted until the year 2000. like, this is very -- they celebrated lee, jackson, king day until the year 2000. and, you know, this goes to what gary was just speaking about. how can you do that? how can you lump martin luther king jr. with robert e. lee and stonewall jackson? well, you depoliticize him. you rob him of his actual legacy. you rob him of the words that he spoke and wrote and the fight that he fought during his lifetime. and you can do whatever you want with him. but, i mean, martin luther king is not alone in this, right?

we depoliticize everyone. we depoliticize american history. when you're a country as arrogant as the united states to claim that you are the greatest nation on the face of the earth, in history, you need a history -- a narrative of history to match that claim. and so everything becomes depoliticized, and everything becomes a symbol of american exceptionalism. so this is why you can have people on both the right if the left -- and the left praising both fdr and ronald reagan and not see the inconsistencies of, you know, of that. because they're not political figures anymore. they are symbols. they represent the greatness of the united states of america. and so that's what king has come to represent even as he was fighting against pretty much everything that hurricane stands for -- that america stands for. but, i mean, we can look at the march on washington itself that

brought us the dream speech. we know the full name of the march on washington. it's not -- it's the march on washington for jobs and freedom. you can't talk about and commemorate the march on washington for jobs and freedom right now if you don't want the talk about what freedom means when you're in a country that incarcerates more than two million people. but you can if it's just the march on washington. so you can't talk, you can't commemorate a man who, as gary was saying, talked about america as the greatest purveyor of violence internationally and wage perpetual war. you can't do that. you can't talk about martin luther king jr. and erect a statue in his memory, and this man stood against police brutality, and every 28 hours in this country a black person is shot and killed by police or security or some vigilante. you can't do it. but you can if you reduce the

man to a dream. and if that dream is such a blank slate that you can project on it whatever you want to, and that's not the fault -- that's not king's fault. he was delivering a speech that he needed to deliver at the time, but the problem with our understanding of race and racism this america being confined to that one moment and being confined to that one idea of having a dream, that little black boys and little white boys will hold hands together, means that we don't deal with what racism actually is. we don't deal with the fact that the governing philosophy for the united states of america since its inception has been white supremacy. we don't have to deal with it because, you know, all we had was a dream that we would be nice to one another. so what i appreciate about gary's book and, you know, also

jeanne's book about rosa parks is that we are rescuing these figures and their legacies from this narrative of american exceptionalism. [applause] >> so i guess one place i thought we could start and that both of you touched on was the kind of, you know, what we saw in august around the 50th anniversary commemoration. both of you have written about this. and i think both of you just touched on what became a kind of a national self-congratulations that i think we saw in august. and if you could kind of tease that out a little bit more. >> yeah. i mean, it was a show really. and that's part of me that thinks, okay, i mean, a 50th anniversary. there should be some kind of show. i mean, there should be a commemoration. but then that show has to mean something. and what that show cannot do is

bastardize and reduce the original meaning of what happened. and so, i mean, interestingly in the run-up to the march, bayard rustin and the organizers made a whole lot of con accesses. -- concessions. there was going to be an unemployed speaker, they were going to march around the white house, and the young people in the office would go sellout, sellout every time they did. they aid, look, we have -- said, look, we have this coalition to keep together. and so those concessions are important. but the one concession he would not make was that politicians should not speak from the platform. he said they are there to listen to us, not to lecture us. and what was telling at the, you know, at the -- i went to one of them -- was, you know, hearing nancy pelosi and, i mean, eric

holder got 20 minutes. he's america's chief cop. he gets 20 minutes. and julian bond gets his mic cut off at two. and that is not symbolic, it is a real. that's kind of -- and it tells you something about, about priorities and about trajectory. so there was, so there was, there was that. and then the other thing that i found -- there were lots of things i found curious including there was a mcdonald's, you know, sponsored by mcdonald's stand. the msnbc, they did a lot of stuff on the speech, and that was sponsored by bank of america which has been, you know, kicking people -- kicking black people out of their homes since 1933, you know? [laughter] kind of looking forward to that kind of being on their, on their rider. and was that they kept saying again and again, you know, we've come a long way, but we have

further to go. and you'd think, well, who should we look to for that? i mean, you are the -- you're the president. you're the leaders. do something about it. i mean, there was this sense of, like, huh, you know? who'd have thought. [laughter] fifty years, fifty years after the march on washington, the discrepancy between black and white unemployment is the same, the discrepancy of incarceration has grown. there are more people in prison now than when the soviet gulag at its height, and these people are like, what are you going to do? what are you going to do? i would like to know what you're going to do. so the degree to which there is this sense of kind of powerlessness among the powerful i found quite objectionable. one interesting thing i saw just pictorially or visually was the number of the main not poster, but t-shirt or whatever that you

saw in that march was trayvon martin. and there was an interesting variation on that which was obama in a hoodie which was the sense i got of, like, look, you know? i don't think when george zimmerman saw trayvon martin walking down the road he thought there goes the future president of america, you know? and i found that interesting, that that was where people -- i saw more pictures of trayvon martin than i did of martin luther king. >> yeah. we had two. of we had two -- >> yeah. i only went to one. >> we had two commemorations, and the one led by the reverend al sharpton who i have immense respect for, i do, but it was telling to me that a young iowa shawn johnson from -- asean johnson was taken off the stage. it's telling because as much as

we talk about youth and as much as we want our youth involved and we want to see youth movements, we're taking the mic away from them. we're taking them -- we're taking them out of the fight. and that, to me, was the theme of al sharptop's marcor -- sharpton's ma, essentially, was that, you know, it was his asense. it was -- his ascension. it was his coronation as the single most powerful civil rights leader this the united states at the moment -- in the united states at the moment. and that you, you know, you essentially go through him. and it was, it's kiss heartening to watch -- disheartening to watch. but at the very least phillip ago knew of the dream defenders did get to speak at that commemoration which he did not at the official one. he and sophia campos were told that they were not going to get their two minutes apiece because

they rap out of time -- they ran out of time. and that, this was the real farce on washington, as malcolm x called the original march. this was not about movement, this was not about the actual lived experiences of black and brown, oppressed people in this country. this is not about finding solutions. this is about america patting itself on back for how far we've come. and if we look at the statistics that gary younge has rattled off, like how far have we come? like tell me, leads, i would like to know -- please, i would like to know. if you'll indulge my michael eric dyson moment, we start keeping pace, you start changing up the tempo. what exactly are we supposed to do when at every turn you introduce new norms of racism? you change the game up completely? and it doesn't look anymore like whites-only signs, but, you know, it looks like being locked

up for a dime bag of weed,? i mean, this is the new fight. this is the new way that they've chosen to oppress. so what are the solutions? we don't get any at, you know, commemoration because it's not about movement, and i don't have time for that. >> right. i mean, i want us to talk a little bit more about the image of the split screen, right? and just to bring in my -- i always like to bring everything back to rosa parks, right? in the end of february, right? we got the statue. pleasure and you may remember it's like a odd moment of bipartisanship, right? it's mcconnell can, you know, it's boehner, it's nancy pelosi and the president, right? come to the capitol, to, you know, honor the very first statue of a black person in the capitol. and barack obama, when parks dies, says, you know, we need more than lofty words, right? so here we are, barack obama's the president. it's 203.

we -- 2013. we need more than lofty words. literally across town that day as they're honoring that statute, as they're talking about what a great nation, what a vision, what a people, what a country, across town the supreme court is hearing the voting rights act to challenge, literally across town, and president obama ends the day, and he talks about her singular act of courage. the president of the united states, who could do more than lofty words, who had said that was what it meant to honor rosa parks when she died, has that opportunity and, again, gives us lofty words. and so i guess i wanted us to talk more about the split screen. >> i think that there is, america has this ability far, far more potent ability than, say, britain which is where i'm from if you hadn't guessed to

discharge the past and to travel light from its, from its history. britain kind of slips into its past like an old man in a warm bath, you know? it kind of surrounds itself with it, and it likes the idea of it, and it's, you know, and it kind of like a, you know, warm bath after while, it's kind of pretty the disgusting. [laughter] and people are very comfortable with it, you know? some people would say like, you know -- what is it people say? they say like this is great, you know, putting the great back into great britain. and you're like, well, how did the great get into great britain? whole lot of genocide, a whole lot of war -- stop bringing up old stuff, you know? we don't want to talk about that, you know? god save the queen. [laughter] look at those lovely castles. [laughter] and whereas america has this ability to kind of -- even as the march on washington was

taking place, america was reinventing itself and saying there was a group from the, whatever the prop began that agency -- propaganda agency is that works with the state department, and they were filming the marches to make a little program to send to africa about american democracy at work. using the march on washington, a march for democracy, a march by people who had just been horse whipped and beaten and hosed to say what a great country this is. so that's kind of like rewriting history while the ink is still drying, it is not yet dry on the first draft. and so there is this uncanny ability here in way that i haven't seen this other places though i don't doubt it exists to kind of deny what is right, what is on the other screen. to kind of, to have a sort of

bipartisan -- bipolar sense of what's going on. so to say that you can see from barack obama's election that african-americans are getting on. and then you just quote almost any statistic that shows that, actually, his ascent has coincided with the descent of a large part of african-americans. but it's like, yeah, but isn't this wonderful? yeah, okay, yeah. and you barely ever get to the end of the sentence. and what that means with racism is a desire which was explicitly stated in the arguments either that day or before or after where the person arguing to gut the voting rights act said this is for a problem that has been solved. the problem's been solved. and that racism becomes signs,

becomes only the systematic that you need jim crow sr. with a pointy hat and a berlin cross and a billy club. that's racism. whereas jim crow jr. who, you know, they denied all paternity, but he's still there, and he doesn't use cuss words, he dresses very politely, and he works within a system that keeps white supremacy going by pushing paper around in a certain way and by locking people up in a certain way and saying, well, these are the rules. and so there is this sense that the systematic is a lot easier to understand and to see and a lot easier to portray, and people are more comfortable with it. whereas the systemic once you pull it there, you have to all at class, at capitalism, you're pulling at the entire way in which, as michael said, america has been structured and at the

way in which it owners. and -- operates. and i was going to say no one, i actually think that's not true. those who wants -- who own the screens don't want to show the screen. that's not in their interest to show the screen. >> what gary said. [laughter] >> i think we're going to take some questions. i guess before we take a question, so, gary, i've hard you talk about this, and to think about what if we remember that speech not as the "i have a dream" speech but the bad check speech. so i think part of this is also what would it mean to remember king, right, through sort of different things that were as important to his rhetorical presence -- >> yeah. and i want to back up also on something that michael said,

because i didn't grow up in malcolm x household largely because i grew up in england, caribbean family. but i did grow up with more affinity towards what i thought malcolm x was than what i thought king was. and it was partly in the same way -- if this sounds trite, then i'm sorry. when i -- i grew up with bob marley, and when i started seeing white people whose racial politics i distrusted kind of rocking out to bob marley, i don't really like bob marley anymore. [laughter] it's kind of you ruined it for me. and it took me to be outside of that context, actually, you know, that he can sing, and he's good. and you can't blame him, you can't blame him for that. and that does speak to the speech, because one of the ways -- and a few people said this -- why don't we know it as the bad check speech. there's quite a long moment where king talks about america

has issued the knee grow a bad check -- negro a bad check, and we have come to cash this check that was marked ip sufficient funds -- instuff funds. and if you understand it as the bad check speech, then it does bring the issues up-to-date in this a way that the dream, which is a vision, a utopian vision -- and i like it because it's a utopian vision -- does not. then he says where's ours? when are you going to to come good on check? no one can walk around the jails and the schools and say america has honored that check. and the metaphor is that with the declaration of independence can, i think, or the constitution, americans said that all men, yes, black men and white men, were created equal. that's the check that was written, and it keeps bouncing. and when one understands america's racial history that way, it does do different things to what the, how that speech can be remembered. not just as "kumbaya", you know,

can't we all get along, but there has to be -- and i'm specifically talking about reparations here -- but, like, there has to be a redistribution of wealth. you have to make good on what you say it means to be american, because you have not done that yet. and that is a very different way of understanding that speech. also he starts by saying 200 years ago in this, in the shadow of the man in which we stand. and he talks about the legacy of slavery and segregation in a way that makes it very, very clear that there is more to freedom than the breaking of chains, that there is more to equality than simply the end of segregation. and so when people take the judged by the content of their character not the color of their skin and they use that as a flight from history, that's the only line conservatives know from that whole speech. and they use that to oppose affirmative action and all the

rest of it. it ignores the fact that he says racism has a legacy, and the present has consequences, and we are living with that legacy. and what conservatives particularly but i think quite often america as a fairly conservative country likes to do is to pretend that the past has no legacy. is even to -- so even to take a different example but it makes the point somewhat clearer, when you talk about the bombing of syria and you say, well, what about the bombing of iraq, and people are like why are you bringing up old stuff? [laughter] it's not old stuff, it's still going on. or why, you know, you talk about the failures in afghanistan, and they say just because we've, you know, just because the last war didn't work doesn't mean this one can't. and you're like that war's not over. you're still fighting that war, you know? you can't finished your -- you haven't finished your main course, and you're already on dessert. like show down and think about what you're doing. and so there are a range of ways in which that speech is even on

its own terms. and on its own terms it was not a radical speech, even on its own terms it's reduced. >> yeah. i was going to ask if we start a thing where we get this to be called the bad check speech, does that mean i finally get my reparations? [laughter] >> you've seen the dave chapelle -- >> yes. [laughter] you can have it, don't go to kfc. >> oh, no. no. >> and then, of course, my fantasy is it would be called the white moderate speech because my favorite passage from king is that passage in letter from birmingham jail where he talks about the greatest stumbling block to freedom is not the klan, but the white moderate who prefers order to justice, who feels he can set a timetable for another man's freedom, who paternal listically says to wait, right? for a more convenient season. and if we have that king, right?

the work is not done, right? >> i mean, there is -- i mean, related to that there is this interesting, i think, way of understanding it. if you think how unpopular king was when he died and then you look at other people who were unpopular and other things that are unpopular now and how king shifts from being second only to mother teresa to being deeply unpopular, then it's a kind of useful way of understanding, well, who are we excluding at this moment? ..

only 25% agree with the king after that speech. that doesn't even get us to white americans. so that, like, the degree of unpopular we forget. like kerry saying, right, the need for us to reflect on who is unpopular and what that message may mean for where we need to go. >> we can reflect on who is popular in the same way. what's going to happen with barack obama? what is going to happen with the way we remember his legacy? we're going to ca gain congratue ourselves for electing the first black president and then reelecting him but were not going to remember his legacy in any way that i feel is accurate

as to what he has accomplished. what has he accomplished? we're talking about health care, a republican idea, that will be a boon to insurance companies. we are talking about the continuation of the wars that were started during the bush years, and in greening again this mindset of perpetual war and using drones and expanding that warfare. i mean, we are talking about, you know, again, mass incarceration. we are talking about that, his administration has fought the war, continues to fight the war on drugs in much the same way that other administrations have fought it even though they don't call it the war on drugs. are we going to remember these things? are we going to begin exalt someone because of what we can

find to further the narrative of american exceptionalism and not reckon with their actual legacy? >> what i think particularly, what i hope my book is about is trying to, i think those are always open contests that we are involved in, and we should be involved in. it's never too late and never too early to challenge the dominant narrative. and that there is a dialectic between the dominant thesis and the range of antithesis. it's just very important to be in that struggle because it's not just -- intention of writing this book isn't just about understanding the historical moment. it's about challenging how we understand history, how we understand history has a direct relation to how we understand where we are now. so i consider that an open

fight, and a fight kind of worth waging. there was a funny thing, i was in belfast last week at a festival and i was being interviewed on the radio. a very quick interview. i got my kind of 45 seconds of talking, and then the woman is wrapping up and she just says, barack obama is now, now lives under the legacy of dr. martin luther king, thank you very much. it's effortless. it's like african war supply. you never going to get it all, but you have to try. >> let me read our first question. this person writes, if the dream was an attractive metaphor for the end of apartheid, what would constitute a useful metaphor for the end of contemporary white

supremacy quacks and then a second question, what is today's hopeful revolutionary statement commensurate with i have a dream? >> wow. so the question is, can i come up with a metaphor that can last for 50 years? >> get to it. >> i'm so slack. i mean, one of the things that's worth questioning actually is, given the way this book was misappropriated, was that the great metaphor? it wasn't the only metaphor used. it was a metaphor that was remembered, and i do think that the stage that we are in now, neal globalization and all of its forms, systemic as opposed

to systematic, more systemic as opposed to systematic form of racism doesn't lend itself easily to metaphors. and that's kind of been one of our challenges. the 1%, 99% was used for framing i thought for a while but it wasn't about race but it had captured the sense, a framing of the problem that people do kind of go back to. but even that, it wasn't entirely adequate. but yeah, i can't match the dream. if i could i probably wouldn't be sitting here right now. >> and none of us will be around for the end of white supremacy site don't even think we should bother trying to rack our brains for a metaphor to sum it up.

>> it will be -- >> right. but as far as catchy slogans go, the only one that i will endorse, and i'm going back to the dream defenders again, i just love the work they are doing, they choose it over and over again, i believe that we will win, and that's it. >> which is a version of the amcs slogan, one of their slogans was a victory, which was a very powerful -- given how unlikely it was of so many points. but i think the point you make their which is it's very difficult to imagine what the end of white supremacy would look like actually, and that doesn't mean that it's not worth trying. what i like about the dream speech, the utopian nature,

within 10 days, four little girls were being killed in earning him in sunday school and yet there's this guy, he didn't get up and sit i had a 10-point plan. it was like, we can do better, we can do better. this is not all we have to be, but we are not even -- we haven't even reached the point of history and yet. so kind of going on to like what the next dream will be, let's wake up from a nightmare we are in now and get to the end of that one first. >> i think king over and over again, and the "letter from birmingham jail" jail and many of his later speeches talks about the myth of time and really talks against this idea, things get better and better and progress and progress. i think we forget this part of came that says -- part of dr. king, part-time, for things to get better it requires us to act

keep. and this idea that if we just be patient and be quiet, that america or the world is just getting better. teams has opened over again it's a myth in it's a myth and the effects as the voices of opposition i better at using time. i was reading the letter again this week. struck by that. we have a question here that says, are there any other famous historical figures were critical of capitalism and have been depoliticized? >> must be. in american? >> it doesn't say so but i think that's the implication. i don't know. >> i would look for somebody in the audience actually. can i phone a friend? >> i mean, i do think that's the

theme in the civil rights movement, is taken out of how we talk about the movement, yeah ask. [inaudible] >> no, no, no. go ahead. you are my friend. [inaudible] >> it's for the tv. >> maybe you w.e.b. dubois. him not being talked about possibly through the mainstream, the figures and whatnot. >> yes, w.e.b. dubois actually indirectly dies on the day of the march. and so for those of you don't know, he dies on the day of the march and roy wilkins who is the head of the naacp is asked -- a.

philip randolph asked him what he read out, commemorate, and wilkins says no, because w.e.b. dubois as a communist. the only way randall says if you don't do it, i'm going to do it. i'll take up your time. then wilkins kind of does agree. i do think that -- there are people who are forgotten. bayard rustin is forgotten. rosa parks is certainly misremembered. i don't know what her -- position on capitalism is but i do know that she was not, when asked about her position, in relation to malcolm, i could never get -- i was much more believer in malcolm's strategy than 10 ones, or at least she

could not -- she was never, she could never quite devote herself emotional of nonviolence, really. >> yeah, i don't know if there are in other figures that are critical of capitalism and depoliticized. >> muhammad ali would be a good example. malcolm x. >> also gloria richardson. one of the things we haven't mentioned yet tonight is sort of how much, sort of both women participated and organized the march and then were in many ways shunted aside. one of the people is on the dais that day was gloria richardson, who was waging the struggle in cambridge, maryland, and gives a struggle that was very much linking racial injustice on the eastern shore of maryland with economic justice.

and richardson, like the other women on the dais that day, did not get to speak. there's an amazing interview that democracy did that with gloria richardson the week of the march commemoration, sort of where she talks about both what they were doing in cambridge but also, literally, sort of thing recognize that day on the dais answered getting to say hello, and the microphone being taken away from her. but i do think sort of richardson is emblematic of a think many local, like what we might face of the right leaders are black freedom struggle leaders who were always come who always had a kind of core of economic justice. and i think what we tend to remember is the public desegregation and that was certainly part of that struggle, but that the were all these other economic struggles woven sort of through that, and so, but again, gloria richardson,

that would be one that would i -- that i would put out there. >> mandela. mandela had a critique of capitalism to he didn't implement it once he was in power, unfortunately. a big mistake and also a different world. i would not like to have taken that on at that moment, nor would anybody else. you know, the freedom charter was the call for mass nationalization, a whole range of things. and while mandela said his favorite form of democracy was british parliamentary democracy, economically, he was -- he was a socialist. i don't think we will be seeing much of that when he passes, and

one of the things that kept him in prison for an awful long time was that he refused to denounce any association with the communist party. so mandela would be another one who understood who did the right thing. >> i agree that malcolm x had a critique of capitalism but they have to want to remember you to depoliticized you. >> we've got a live stream question, so this person asks, is there still a generation remembers the fight of all these leaders? how can we instill interest for them? >> how do you instill interest in young people who want to learn history? i think you have to relate it to them. it has to be tangible and has to mean something to your present.

and i think that's what you find with a lot of youth activism today is they are tied to and understand history and that's why they are out in the street. because they understand that for them to have what freedom they have now, someone struggle for it. but they also understand that fight didn't complete the struggle, that they have a responsibility to take up that mantle now. and it's simply because someone along the way expressed that to them, and someone, when they put that copy of the biography in their hands, they were like, this is your history, this is a you are, this is how you got here are you simply, i mean, every time you want -- people are like, how do we do this with the youth?

have you ever just try talking to them? they are not aliens that don't understand the way that you speak or that don't understand words. they are intelligent beings. you can talk to young people. i employer, talk to young peop people. >> yet. i mean, i actually find young people very receptive. first of all a lot of people are still alive because it wasn't that long ago. it's one of the very important things to remember, 50 years is not that long actually. my century-old son wants to know about segregation and science and whatnot, he's around the age, i can point to his grandfather and his grandmother. his grandmother saw king's speech in philadelphia. his grandfather grew up in atlanta. both grew up in the south. this is living history. and really, young people are not kind of -- i think they have a very keen sense in history and there are two reasons i think why, the way in which it is

presented to them can be a turn off. one is, these people did all this, what are you doing? useless bunch of people. you know? where's your rosa parks? where's your i marched? you have your pants hanging down and listen to rap music. >> we get arrested when we buy belts. [laughter] [applause] >> and so there is this sense that history being used as a stick to beat young people with. that in a sense they are not worthy of the history that they have bequeathed. and secondly, that if you tell history as a series of stories about great men and very occasionally great women, and you put people up on pedestals, you can't reach them. and so it becomes just kind of another version of the world that you're not part of, which

was the point of that first bit i read. these are ordinary people, six-year-old kids, people whose names you don't know who were -- people, in order working to deliver that speech, there have to be a march but in order for there to be a march that had to be 14,000 arrests in 10 weeks. that's a lot of people. that person could be you. you to be part of what makes that speech. and if it's an ego thing and you want to give the speech, that's a different thing but if you want to understand how that speech happened, it happened because people made it happen, and your people. and so it does depend on how you tell history. and the most revolution, social and political revolution, are actually led by the young. and so there are very few stories, regardless of where it

is, cuba or russia, germany or wherever, where young people -- including this story, where birmingham changes everything, and birmingham is young people. and so, making history accessible, not an easy words just, but as something that you can take ownership of. i think it's also very important. otherwise it just becomes one more thing you have to learn about kind of clever people that you're never going to be like. who wants to learn that? >> right. owner who seems so much more regal, unified. i mean, gary starts with one of young people in greensboro, and there are for young people who started, right? and so i think to go back and to

think, okay, i have three friends, right? what could i do with three friends? that's what they are, they are for friends. >> right. go back to rosa parks this story, kicked off the bus before rosa parks who pleads not guilty, who is charged and do they start to go with, but came from wrong side down, then she gets pregnant. 15 euros girl, and they dropped it. they just drop it. they just don't drop her from their protest, which is a strategic question, also a moral question also. was our task is going to be. they drop out of history altogether. she is just let go. when you reinserted back into history, what you are saying is you're a single mom. well look, this is what happen. you're a 15 year old girl.

this is not just what can happen to you in terms of what all the bad things they do, look, she may disdain. she is part of that story. when they distribute the flyers about rosa parks, they say another woman has been kicked off the bus. there's another persons name. >> mary louise smith was a king. when it actually filed the federal case, right, that he segregates montgomery buses, it's called in, smith and two of the women. parks is not on the case because they are worried that it's going to muddy the waters to have her because her case is still in state court also because parks has its longest with the naacp and their worried. the case that he segregates montgomery's buses is filed by four women, two of which are teenagers. >> and if that, if rosa parks is understood as part of the

collective action where she makes a protest, and then for 13 months, people want to work, black people from montgomery walked to work, without which didn't mean much beyond her own protest, then you're involving large numbers of young people, lots of single mothers, lots of working-class people like you who made that stand. whereas if you only understand there was this lady, she got tired, jaded want to stand up, so she sat down. and that's the story of rosa parks. then you get the sense like festivals, while not, what an individual person. secondly, maybe the course of history would be different if she just had a better pair of shoes. she would have been so tired. but this sense that it's just one person in one moment and not a massive collective protest that involves people like you. >> and what happens when you

reimagine this story and not tell it through the lens of the male protagonists and you resent to the women in this fight and you start talking about how, what helped launch this bus boycott is the sexual violence that these black women were experiencing on the buses. what happens and you tell the girls that and you to little boys that? what happens? i mean, you shift the whole narrative and they think that's, when we're talking about how do you relate history to young people, you tell them the story, and detail than the actual story. you don't give them platitudes. you talk to them as human beings and to give them the truth. >> and i think you talk about how hard it is. to me, again, every school child learns t the rosa parks is courageous, right? but what makes it courageous is she and other people have done these things before over and over and over and it didn't work. there's nothing to believe that

night when she makes that decision that this is going to work, and she doesn't believe it, right? she talks about it as her a rest being irritating and annoying. like, she doesn't see this as a new chapter. when we tell the story of like one tired lady sitting down and everybody stands up, nobody stands up wind an injustice -- it feels like, we're not unified today, we sucked today, and when we tell it as she had done this over and over and over, people she knew had done this over and over and over. and that's what it required, right? it requires long seasons of where it doesn't look like anything is changing. >> and where it's not records, where you're not doing for the camera or for show. you are doing it. the facts of history as such. the facts that we choose to present that great year, kind of

like seizure -- caesar crossing the river god, the river. and caesar crossed many rivers. what made that fact history. so lots of people protest and rosa parks made lots of protests. and it's about what happens in that moment that makes that fact of history opposed to other range of other things. teen give the "i have a dream" speech many times, and yet somehow we don't know about detroit or chicago. so why do understand his speech in that way? that does open things up i think in terms of expectations, to the expectation is then i made my protest and the world didn't change. i made my individual protest and the world didn't change, as

opposed to the were many of us, i made my protest and we did this, event you things happen, maybe didn't work the first time. maybe we need to do it didn't. >> we will take one question and did i think we'll wrap up and there will be time for signing and more informal. this said would martin luther king still be marching to speak was absolutely. john lewis estill after getting arrested, so why wouldn't king? >> yeah, i always, generally wanted to these events there's always some desire to get you to talk for him. you know what i think was like what would he say about this? i mean, given everything we know, about his trajectory, it would be incredible if he -- he died in a garbage workers strike. there had been violence and he felt the urgent need to go back and make it work. i think, i'm likely, deeply

unlikely that king would return today, look at the jails and the schools and the mental institutions and the food banks and the unemployment lines and think my work here was done. you know? hallelujah. i think the question is less would he be marching today that he would be marching with them, it would be marching against them and would anyone even notice? >> right, right, right. so eight days after 9/11, rosa parks, a number of other civil rights leaders put out a statement basically calling for the united states not to retaliate, right? sort of work through the international kinard divine justice after 9/11, right? one of the great things about rosa parks is she lives to the present and we know what should be doing because she was, in fact, doing it. but i think gary's point, how

many of us knew that? where was that covered? we can again have rosa parks have a state dinner, for -- first civilian to get a state funeral. that person had four years earlier said this is what the united states should do and not do, right? that part of it somehow falls out. i don't know, comments? >> well, i mean, let's say history is not an objective process. it works with great prejudice, and in order to craft certain kinds of memory, and those memories are never settled, which is kind of why we are here. and so if they can't forget you, and god knows they try, and income it's not like it was a

foregone conclusion that we would still be talking about this even. if they can't forget you, then they will kill you with the kinds of remember and you in a certain way. they can kill you twice. yet, they will give you a stamp, they will deify you in a way that extracts all of the meaning that made you meaningful. and this, because it's an ongoing process, then that means it's an ongoing challenge. and it's not a challenge that i feel is a foregone conclusion. i think that these are struggles that we can actually -- i don't know if you ever quite wind them, but that have traction.