associating the way slavery kind of creates, you know, a stream of associations and, you know, and-s structure consciousness. and what's fascinating about that is that statue was put up by a committee of system of the best liverpool, you know, men and merchants, and they were mostly, they were all slavers including the slave john bolton who was responsible for, who owned the ship that had been, that had been seized by the french pirate in 1804. so in other words, the statue, the statue that provoked, prompted melville to think about slavery in the first place was raised by one, by man most immediately responsible for bringing the west africans to the americas that would inspire melville years later to write this masterpiece. ..

just like these unbelievable connections. >> for more information visit the author's web site. >> welcome to salem, ore. booktv. located along the willamette

river the city is home to the state's government, is known for its cherry industry and vineyards and is also home to the oldest university in the western united states. >> the funding of primarily catholic education in 1961, it was so crucial to head to maine. it was called the school question and everyone knew what it meant and the question about how religious should public information be and whether we should be funding non protestant alternatives to public education. not that i set out on a mission to explore the deep dark unknown corners of florida history but as i encountered these stories about slavery in oregon and the massacre and mistreatment of the chinese these are not in oregon history books but are an important part of history. >> with the help of comcast cable partners for the next 90 minutes we bring you to this capital city to learn about its history and talk with local

authors about their books. we begin with william that limited-willamette university professor ellen eisenberg with japanese internment in world war ii. >> pearl harbor in december of 41 and people start talking about what is to be done with the enemy alien population which includes german and japanese and foreign nationals, there is an internment program that starts with them. what happens to japanese-americans is different. most historians talk about it as remove land incarceration. japanese-american population in general on the west coast, two thirds of the population were not enemy aliens. they had to leave their homes in

the western defense zone. and for putting camps surrounded by barbed wire range interior and not charged with anything in particular. when i read an article about african-american and jewish civil rights organizations, an article by cheryl greenberg talking about the issue had passed unnoticed to them. i was curious what the reaction would be here and i expected to find that the jewish community in civil rights issues would have spoken out here because unlike the jewish community in new york for -- japanese-americans were not an abstraction, they were their neighbors and were familiar with them. the community had a commitment, a public commitment, speaking out against what they call prejudice. it was a non reaction and in

order to understand the significance of it you have to understand the content. the first thing to understand is as policy started to take shape and it took shape in february and march of 1940 through the spring, japanese-americans living in that area were rounded up and put in temporary camps near large cities and force subsequently moved to the camps. in general, and west coast non-japanese americans, most politicians strongly supported the removal of japanese-americans, it was a popular policy. that is one piece of the context. the other piece of the context and what got me interested was the civil rights organizations which were largely based back east didn't pay much attention. what i found was for the most part there was very little said

about this so i started by looking at community newspapers in each of those major cities and there was almost nothing but when you started to read between the lines of there with these awkward mentions of japanese americans. right after the executive order, that kind of launched this policy, in all of the major jewish ms. papers on the west coast, there were weeklies and they had editorials talking about how the rights of all have to be protected and we should fight prejudice in all of its forms and so on and so forth without ever saying the word japanese specifically so almost as if they wanted to say something but were nervous about actually doing so. there was awkward silence, uncomfortable silence around this issue about i started to investigate more. to speak out about it was to

stick your neck out and the jewish populations were already nervous about anti-semitism so that was one piece of it. the other piece that is interesting is if you look get these newspapers you see these communities had two main agenda items at this moment in time. one was an agenda fighting prejudice in all of its forms because they believe only when all prejudice was eliminated with anti-semitism eliminated. you had to fight it together. the other priority was to support the war effort in order to save european jews so this policy put those two goals right into conflict with one another so the war department and the president himself were saying japanese americans had to be removed for the war effort, they were a threat to the war effort so you would think the inclination would be the jewish community would support that. on the other hand those few people who speak out against

those policies say it is a policy based on racial identity so if you are against prejudice you should be speaking out against it so i think this policy brought those goals in direct conflict which produced this kind of silence around the issue. some of those -- to depend a little bit on the community were threatened in various ways. you have to remit fred this time there were blackout in coastal cities, fear on the west coast that the west coast would be attacked. tensions were quite high but community relations committees where an arm of the jewish community that emphasize what was at the time called intergroup relations. work with other ethnic and racial minority groups against prejudice in all of its forms and so i knew that the group in l.a. had emerged during world war ii. as a force in the community and

is often held in several accounts held up as one of the major organizations behind civil rights activity in los angeles so i went to their archives expecting that they would be a group that spoke up. what i found was really quite different from that and it goes back to their history. they were founded under different name, there were called the jewish community committee of los angeles. they were founded in 1934 at a time when anti-semitism was increasing very rapidly in the los angeles area, setting california in general and so they made it their mission to document that anti-semitic activity some of which was coming in the form of pro nazi groups. there was a group called the silver shirts for example and there were various pro german groups that wanted to document what was going gone. one of the people who came to

work for that organization, joseph. was originally from austria and he and his wife and several other austrian and doing a german shell and a grays went out and insults the nation full traded these meetings of pro nazi groups and would take notes, they had codename, they would take notes on what was going on and wanted to get the word out and the message they wanted to get out rich these groups were anti-american and anti-semitic. however, they felt if it was a jewish group getting the word out that would be perceived as self-serving so they wanted to find a way to get the word out in a more neutral way so the solution that they found was in 1939, they started an organization called the news research service which doesn't say jewish in the name and the news research service, published in a weekly called the newsletter went to important

decisionsmakers so they sent it to all the major newspapers across the country to many members of congress to the president himself to people in the justice department and so on and it began to have a reputation as a good source of news about these kinds of fascist groups. when japan joined germany and italy in the triple alliance the group started publishing things about imperial japan as well and in the end they published several pieces in the 30s and 1939 about japanese-americans, clearly they were not going -- they were not passing in the same way they passed among the austrians but they were clearly getting information from somewhere else and a lot of things they circulated had been circulated by the many anti-japanese forces. there was a lot of anti-japanese

tension in the west and had been for some time. so there was a report the japanese american textbooks used in after-school programs cultivated loyalty to the emperor and entire anti-democratic, that kind of thing. san once pearl harbor happened those reports were picked up even further so the news research service information they had gathered ended up being used in various government reports of for example of the house and american affairs committee, the earlier version of that, it was chaired by congressman martin guys call the guys committee and there was a lot of contact between the dies committee and this group, the research service that was part of the l a j c c. and their information goes into some of the testimony that helped justify the removal of japanese americans.

it was a rather unexpected finding. both at the time and in the years since there was knowledge that the news research service applied part of the information but was not known that that was a jewish organization until i found disinformation in the archives much to my surprise. very odd to read that organization's materials because that same time this is going on and they were expanding its huge amount of effort working on anti prejudice campaigns. i think what happened was it is very useful for them to have these contacts in the government, the dies committee, they were aware, had some issues with access, it was not only going after fascists but also after communists. but it got the word out so affectively about the dangers of not deism and that was really their primary concern. the vast majority of their

material was really about fascism and primarily pro german groups. the japanese american stuff was not great in volume and was sort of incidental. it was secondary. it was something that they did because the guys committee and others asked them for information and they got the information from elsewhere and it funneled to them but it did end up having an impact. there was a report from the guys committee about the dangers of the japanese-american community. it had a more formal name became known as the yellow paper. that walked out of the news research service said they end up doing a lot of damage. even during the war there was a coalition of pro civil rights groups that came together and one of the things they do is try to work to enable japanese americans to come back to their homes and that work starts as early as 33-34 trying to get the

government to distinguish between those people for whom there might be an individual suspicion as opposed to the community in general and allow them to come home and this group was involved in that work. and there is no indication that anyone -- that they don't acknowledge though there are histories written of this group this was never mentioned. there was an interview done years ago, an oral history, and when they get to this part of the history of the organization he asks them to turn the tape recorder off. saw wasn't able to hear what his comments where but they do work very hard to support the japanese-american community afterwards and someone has to think that they realized that they had done wrong in this case. these are people who spent their

lives working on civil rights issues and that they participated in this was really shocking. people have a difficult time hearing it. jewish-american stood up just as there were other americans who oppose these policies. they were in the minority. they were very much on the minority on the west coast but people don't expect to hear the story and unfortunately it is a story of getting in bed with the wrong people so they got in bed and with people, and should bear a campaign against anti-semitism and they do damage to another. many people read history looking for good guys and bad guys and here it is a case, to go back to

this organization in los angeles, like i said these are people who dedicated their lives to civil rights and even they got caught up in this, sort of a wartime hysteria and expediency and so on so it is not so simple as good guys and bad guys and as we saw at the time of 9/11, in times of war when people were vulnerable, and what they might be. and i would hope that would be the message. i'm not trying to vilify the community, certainly if you looked at the jewish community overall, they maintain silence for the most part, officials silence. i saw it as a failing and expected them to speak out. and the japanese community should be taken away by not

something on that. and webern not going to get on them. it is not quite what i expected to find and not the lesson people expect to hear especially when i talked to community groups, people will come to the book or my lecture. and people who stood up. there is some of that in the book. it is a more mixed bag. >> up next, r. gregory nokes, author of "breaking chains: slavery on trial in the oregon territory" describes the only slavery case to be adjudicated in morgan courts. he spoke with us during booktv's recent trip to salem, ore.. >> we are in north korea in polk county and on property that was

once owned by nathaniel ford, nathaniel ford was a slaveholder, landholder in missouri who came to this area in 1844 and he brought with him six slaves who helped him define this property. the fact there were slaves in oregon was always a surprise to me and he brought out more than any other did and that was part of the story. this area was part of the valley, this is land that was very much of interest to farmers in missouri and elsewhere because they could get up to a square mile of free land and this is what drew the early settlers to oregon, the opportunity to get free land. there were a few people here, native americans, tribes, fur trappers, missionaries, hudson bay company had a fur trapping of operation on the columbia river. it was very un populated.

by settlers and whites that were native american tribes and so it was under joint occupation of the british and the americans, both at a claim to the land but no government out here. the u.s. congress, they wanted to bring this under the ground, so they began to develop legislation to provide free square of land to american settlers. this coincided with the time in missouri in particular, the economy in the tank, missouri settlers, ford was a big deal, a

member of the missouri legislature, four time county sheriff of howard county in central missouri, crowing hand and tobacco on major land holdings and 13 slaves. when the economy wanted to taint he organized it in a wagon train and brought them out here and settles. most of the early settlers that came out from missouri were talking about the missouri settlers who made a proportion of early settlers were both anti slavery and anti-black. many of them never had slaves and found it difficult to compete in a slave culture against slave holders who had slaves. they were fleeing slavery in a way, at the same time they identified african-americans with slavery. the idea was we don't want african-americans here anyway, not as slaves, not as people who would compete for our jobs.

so what was behind what was one of three exclusion laws in oregon history which banned african americans from living here. it turned out the law wasn't enforced. some of the early settlers did bring slaves and also got huge farms started. some of them set them free right away like nathaniel ford. paul the holes were in a family that had been with the fords in missouri. they were owned by other owners and ford brought them probably 1831, had several children, and in the record, slave record in missouri in the buying and trading. and three family children to settle from that. i brought out six slaves in the holmes family, robin and paul.

six adult slave names. scott. so he made a deal, he came to oregon. and they came out in 1844, to develop this land all around here, growing wheat and cattle and all the things, corn and things farmers had in those days. by 1850, six years after they came out here, robin knew slavery was supposed to be illegal so he was agitating support for an abolitionist, and ford made another deal with him. and buying gold for me, those are much days and we come back and i will give you your freedom. made the same deal with scott. who was the sixth wave that came out, robin and scott went to california and mined gold and on the return trip scott

unfortunately drowned at sea in a shipping accident. robin came back and ford did give them their freedom. but kept their children. there are four children. one of the children died and robyn holmes was concerned about the safety of the children, he hadn't been able to see them for a couple years but filed suit against nathaniel ford for freedom of children. the provisional government had declared slavery illegal. so apparently, we don't know this for sure. most of those who brought slaves made that kind of deal with their slaves assuming they couldn't keep their slaves here because it was illegal. the one with chains in 1844, not a lot of people know this but nathaniel ford did which allowed

slaveholders, the 43 law was no slavery period. in 1844 because of the work of a fellow named peter burnett who later became governor of california, the law was changed so male slaves, you could keep your mail slaves for two years and your female slaves for three years and freed them. that law also had an exclusion clause which provided for lashing. that slave was freed and didn't leave within a certain amount of time they could be subject to whipping, 39 lashes. is not clear that was ever executed. this is the only slavery case ever adjudicated in oregon courts and i can -- he is one of the unsung heroes in oregon for several reasons. when you think about it he was illiterate. slaves had private education and all those who came through the rest of the country, most of them knew nothing about oregon

law, how would he know? pretty much isolated. there were very few, racially isolated. this area around here was known as dixie during the civil war which gives you some idea of the sentiments in this community. co-manage to get help from a prosecuting attorney who came from massachusetts, abolitionist state so big dallas county court house where the trial was adjudicated about ten miles in a little town in dallas so rubin took robert holmes's case and helped him with it. it was not a jury trial. was judged before a judge, it dragged on for 15 months, i found the original trial record in the polk county courthouse in dallas which is very near by, very interesting, they copied it

for me from microfilm. it is all handwritten by different people, all these editings, scratchings, words crossed out, new words inserted, changes made and you can imagine these transcripts were made since robyn holmes was giving his testimony orally to a clerk or an attorney, we were writing it down and reading get back to him. these were changes and that could be not right. this is what we need to say. very different judges, none of them wanted to decide it and they were in a dilemma. nathaniel ford had been elected to the oregon territory legislature, he was a big man, nominated or appointed chief judge. in an area that was ostensibly

proslavery. boys took on this case and it dragged on for 15 months and a new judge was appointed chief justice of the territorial supreme court, george williams, never been in oregon before, or originally from new york, anti slavery became out and within weeks decided the case for robert holmes. for one thing there was not a lot of reporting of the case at the time. not many newspapers in oregon, not newspapers needed in taps or interpreted coverage. a local salem newspaper did carry a few paragraphs on the ruling but in later years williams himself commented on it. he had hoped to be one of morgan's first senators and he said this kept me from being a senator. there are many virulent pro slave people in the territory and this was very unpopular.

we can only imagine what the reaction was. in this community it would have been very negative because of the attitude in this community. elsewhere in benton county which named their school union during the civil war, sentiments were significantly different. so you had different reactions in different communities. robin went on to be -- operated after he was freed in 1850, he worked nearby. was working at the time of the trial, and he moved with some of the children to sell near salem where the nursery was operated and apparently successful. according to what we know about it and he bought a plot of land for a cemetery plot in what is now the salem pioneer cemetery and he was buried with a lot of other african-americans, some of

them children and we know he broth the plot. we don't know exactly where he was buried and there's no gravestone for him but in 2007 the organization called oregon black pioneers, black settlers erected a monument, not a monument but a grave marker for all of this who were buried in the cemetery and african-americans and his name was there. he apparently ended up in an institution. apparently has a mental problem. we don't know when she passed away. we had written in an earlier book called massacre for gold about the chinese massacre published by oregon state press and was well received. i had several ideas to do a book and i balanced with my brother bill one day. said why don't you write about reuben shipley i and i said who is reuben shipley?

said he was a slave brought to oregon by one of their ancestors from missouri in 1853. i was dismayed for a couple of reasons. i had no idea there was any slave history in the background of the family. most came through iowa. i had no idea there were slaves in oregon. i wanted to address my own family issues. i can't say i failed -- there was an ancestor in the background to own the slave. it is something. i don't like hearing it. i wanted to know about it. there's a certain smugness, and with people in the south,

liberal culture, kind of a dark secret in oregon's past and not much when you come down to it, something people needed to know. that became my book. >> booktv is in salem, ore. with our local cable partner comcast. >> we bring in the salem public library which is salem city center. the ben maxwell connection is the primary election that was donated to the library. the copyright of this

collection. born and raised in salem, it comes to a family of old people, and he got this job with the local paper. he became a journalist for that and ended up with a weekly column, he always photographed and he would carry his camera with him wherever he went on whenever mission he has to be. 20 or 30 years or something like that. and a mass this humongous collection that we now have. one of ben's interests were

covered bridges and this is a book that shows all kinds of covered bridges, mostly taken in a late 30s. and a lot of those bridges and not extend today but we have a great photographic history of them here. he was interested in buildings as well as covered bridges and covered transportation. this is a photograph of the marion county court house which was demolished in the mid 50s. at one time there are a lot of riverboats. steamers came down from oregon city. and 3800 articles about local history. and there are many articles,

most of the articles were from the capitol journal which is the salem paper, but he was published in other papers and his photographs were actually published nationally, and some of them were in better homes and gardens, sunset magazine and the new york times. this is a really interesting article. it talks about salem's congregational church, the most interesting part for me anyway was called a little bit of information about dickenson, a distant cousin of emily dickinson. what makes him unique was he came in the 1850s and founded the congregational church in salem. it happened to be the first church in this area that was a mixed race congregation. i am not sure everyone knows one flew over the coup's nest was filmed in salem but it was

filmed at our state hospital. here is an article by ben in 1958. then put together books of photographs, put together by county, some examples of books from marion county and photographs of st. paul's catholic church and photographs of old pioneer homes and photographs of these tamale indian school located to the north of salem. we are really fortunate to have the collection of ben maxwell. currently -- a library director from 1935 to 1972 and a personal friend of ben maxwell. what makes ben maxwell's work so

unique is not only technically was he a journalist and photographer but then's work as a historian brings a lot of the history. not only the contemporary things he experienced. but his experience with things in salem and bring them to us, and understand how life was. >> while visiting salem, oregon with the help of our local cable partner comcast booktv talks to steven green about "the bible, school, and the constitution". >> the battle between church and state first started probably on day 1 of the british colonization of north america. there is a long history of interaction between the religious and temporal realm with in our history and it has continued to this very day.

there were two church-state cases before the united states supreme court. those matters are litigated quite frequently and our constant issue in american history. what i study in this book is about prayer and bible in public schools and a complementary issue about the funding of religious education. today we see these as two distinct issues and when the united states supreme court has dealt with these cases since the 1940s they dealt with him in two separate categories that historically they were closely interrelated. i look at both of those and those are by far the dominant church/state issues in the nineteenth century even accepting battles over the mormon church in utah were very prominent issues. and catholic education in 1960 was the issue. it was so crucial that it had its own name. people call it the school

question and everybody knew what that meant, the question about how religious should public education be and whether we should be funding non protestant alternatives to public education. it came to a head in a constitutional amendment after the civil war. there were battles in the streets over this issue. there were two riots in philadelphia. it was a highly contentious issue. the practice of france and bible reading and into the common schools and the first part of the nineteenth century. initially it was highly religious, highly protestant. over time, due to a variety of pressures within the nation, immigration being the primary pressure, and internal pressures, it became less and less religious, more and more

trying to justify nonreligious grounds and greater opposition was revising not just from catholics about prayer and bible reading in schools but a growing number of secularists, jews, even moderate to liberal protestants were seeing prayer and bible reading in school was not consistent with constitutional principles. there was a very strong debate going on about this in the nineteenth century. kind of mirrored by what is today about this issue. it wasn't a consensus. there was some attention on what catholics and other groups wanted to see. initially catholics and jews and religious minorities initially objected to the very highly protestant oriented bible reading and religious exercises in public schools so as a result

many public schools predominately in urban areas, the school board made the decision, usually first to water them down. they would get rid of catechism and get rid of the highly sectarian nature of some of the readings and fall back on what they thought were more consensus readings, readings from psalms, proverbs or whatever. books of the bible they thought everyone would agree to. to their surprise most of them were not that aware of catholic theology. the catholic church believed children needed to be directed in what they were reading. they needed the intermediation of a priest when it came to bible reading and so they disagreed with any type of religious exercise in public schools that didn't involve a priest. that of course won't the current public-school because they were seeing the incursion of catholics within americans being threatened on so many medals at the idea of bringing a priest in

to public schools to do prayer and bible readings for catholic kids, was going to go crazy. what happened is like ships passing in the night. they need to understand the other side's argument. the evangelical protestants told a non to france and bible reading, king james bible was their last gasp. the liberal and moderates saying we could accommodate catholics, tell you what you want, we will water them down a little bit more. many school districts that we will get rid of them. catholics were saying religion has to be crucial for education. can't separate these two so consequently our response is we need to have the readings of the catholic bible under the direction of priests in public-school score give us money to fund our own parochial schools so we can have an integrated religious education and neither side could actually

see the merits of the other side in this debate. it was highly contentious and tore apart communities throughout the nineteenth century on how to resolve this issue. supreme court for standard this debate about school prayer in 1948 in a case dealing with relief time. relief time was actually an interesting modification to respond to complaints about school sponsored prayer and bible reading in public schools as a way of accommodating all groups from ministers in gary, indiana in the 20th century, let's not have the schools be responsible for religious education, let's put aside a time during the day, and allow each religious community to bring in teachers or ministers to the children of that faith. and religious education on site. and in the first part of the

twenty-first century, did not replace prayer and bible reading, prayer and bible reading are active in the south and the northwest that became a common industry release time. and in 1948 the first true modern supreme court case decision, and they found that to be unconstitutional because it was too close a relationship between the schools, the schools were promoting release time and in some communities it became indistinguishable from the public schools promoting religion. four years later the supreme court reversed itself and said we could have released time which takes place off campus like in a church across the street and that steel a lot today. you can actually have children released from public education to go off campus to receive religious instruction. it is optional. that was the first case. a similar case in 1962-1963 which addressed the core issue which was a nonsectarian and

relatively nondescript prayer that would be read over the public address system or reading of the bible without note or comment was the way it was called, no commentary, just read the bible and maybe have the lord's prayer or something like that. the feeling is these are universal aspects of religion that all christians can agree with but the supreme court very definitively, 8-one decision said no, that is unconstitutional because his school sponsored, school directed religious exercise. >> the question president kennedy's news conference deals with the supreme court decision that new york school prayer violates constitutional separation of church and state. the president's statement is in the nature of a letter to calm the storm over the decision. >> i haven't seen in congress, you have to make a determination

of the language, the effect it would have on the first amendment. the supreme court has made its judgment, a good many people obviously will disagree with it. others will agree with it. i think it is important for us if we are going to maintain our constitutional principle that we support the supreme court decision even when we may not agree with them. in addition we have in this case of very easy remedy and that is to pray ourselves. i would think that it would be a welcome reminder to every american family that we can pray a good deal more, we can attend our churches with more fidelity and we can make the true meaning of prayer more important allies of our children and that is very much open to us. >> that continues to be contentious today. i actually grew up in texas, 12 to 15 years after the school prayer decision. my high school was still having

prayer and bible readings on the public address system and so many states and school districts resisted that because they saw this as being so cruel at least to teaching a limited 3 of religion to children and more important character education. i think this issue has lasted so long because we do still have some relatively religious, homey genius communities but not less and less. to a degree, we like to see our government represent our values particularly on a community level, a local level. the school board is in fact your neighbors, your friends and they are reflecting the values of the community and many communities wish to have public schools do more, they want them to teach morals, a character education. many well-meaning people of

faith you can't teach character education without teaching the religious origins of it, religious aspects of it. that makes character and moral implications matter. a lot of people see it as causing no harm in to a fair amount of good. they also do see many times that it is kind of the greater society imposing its values on the local community. i litigated these cases for ten years and i remember several times talking to school boards telling them they couldn't continue with the practice involved in lawsuits. people in the community would say why are you doing this? everybody likes this practice and thinks it is a good idea. no one has ever complained before it you start peeling back the onion and look a little closer and find people have been objecting to this for many years in the past, they have always been marginalized by the majority of people in the

community. in that sense a combination of this need to reaffirm community values but also many times things like the evil supreme court is doing up in washington is imposing its values on our community. there has been an argument that some people are overly sensitive to any manifestation of religiosity in the culture and that argument has some merit to it. conversely many parts of the country, outside the capital beltway, outside major cities, a large number of churches, many signs, billboards with religious messaging which occurs quite frequently. and so there is that presence of religion that already exists in public life. except the hard line extreme atheists' on one extreme to say we don't want to see any of

that. the vast majority of people have no problem with that. basically becomes a question whether there is a dumb minimus rule when it comes to constitutional violations. whether some things should be seen as just not that crucial to ensure that we maintain a healthy separation of church and state. there are some practices, as litigators, a lawyer first, not worth litigating. some people go overboard in their offense to a degree of religious yossi. and people presuppose just because something that is religiously acceptable and not -- is not for somebody else in our community. justice sandra day o'connor in 2005-2006, one of the most important principles she

advocated in advance and known for this long after she dies is she basically said one thing the first amendment entitles directed to this, to make sure people don't feel like they are outsiders in the political community because of their religious beliefs. we need to ensure we don't endorse religion in ways that make some people feel you are favoring someone else's religion over my religion. chris and this is a 0 sum game. if the government isn't celebrating recognizing legion at all then you are denigrating religion. i tend to disagree with that. i think actually there is a middle ground where the government can be neutral about religious issues, not disparaging religion on one side but also not promoting religion on the other side. one thing we have to keep in mind as we are the most religiously diverse nation on

earth. as many as 1600 different faith groups and religious traditions within the united states. more muslims in america than presbyterians, episcopalians, baptists, catholics and methodists. they are right there. we are seeing of great religious diversity within this nation and we need to ensure that no one feels they are not a full participant for citizen because of their religious beliefs. that is quite easy for me as a protestant to say. no one should be offended by certain representations of my face because to me it is normal and so accepted but there are many people out there who may see it very differently and we have to be sensitive to that. i would like people to take away from this book that they understand these debates about church and state are complex, they have a long history, there

has never been a consensus view about the proper relationship between church and state. and when they see people either objecting to sing manifestations of government involvement with religion, that they need to realize no one has the right to claim a prior advantage on matters of religion. that there should be no default out there of one religious preference over another religious preference. the battle over prayer and bible reading in the schools is the best example we have of how we have fought through that principle and worked through that principle, trying to understand because this is one of the things of the nineteenth century, the public school educators can never understand the catholic place. why would you find this

objectionable? it is something all protestants agree on and the catholics say that is the point, we are not promising, this is not something we find a common ground on. so we need to realize we have growing religious diversity. far exceeds what happens in the nineteenth century. we need to be sensitive to the minority religious communities and some people may say that is disparaging protestants or evangelicals in america. but at least in my study of church and state, american religious history and constitutional law and in my practice those are not the groups that need the protection of the constitution. it is the religious outsiders and the need the protection of the constitution and that is where the constitution needs to be sensitive. >> up next from booktv's trip to salem, ore. ron miner details the experiences of his father,

howard minor, a black cat pilot during world war ii. >> one of my earliest memories is a moment where he had taken me to a file cabinet and inside of it he had a manila folder full of these exciting sketches of planes and the jungles and soldiers and all this kind of thing and they were tattered and worn pages and exciting stuff for a kid. i used to sneak down there with friends and show these pictures and we would imagine what the stories were. and one day i went down there and it was locked. he must have been on to me and i never saw them again as a young man. when he passed away a couple years ago in 1992, i found the sketches again. we found them as we were going through his things and we were relieved to see all this world war ii art. it dates back to the 1940s and he had done it on his down time

between missions. my father was one of the navy black cats that was a group of navy military guys that fought in the south pacific during world war ii and they flew in these lumbering planes called p b ys and the black cats distinctive in that the planes were not terribly well suited for almost obsolete and as a matter of fact not well-suited for combat. they were not well armed and were not particularly elusive, very slow. and so they had to come up with ways to protect themselves from attacking aircraft and so that is what the black cats were. they were an ingenious bunch that figured out ways of taking

what is normally the most difficult part for the plain, the most hazardous part which is going at night and using it to their advantage. initially their roles were more patrol and search and like harassment activities. as time wore on they became more adept at flying at night. the planes were painted black, didn't use any lights, had flame arresters on their engines and so as they began to become more or less in visible at night they were able to extend what they did and become more effective and not only searching for things but attacking them, bombing them, straighten them, and this general harassment activity. in that first for he was the co-pilot/navigator, just an instant. so they did fly in the typical

black cat fashion. they did a lot of search and harassment missions and even try to keep japanese troops up over night, just flying around making noise, throwing bottles out, anything they could think of but certainly a big part of it was during these light bombing runs, just searching for contact and radioing that information to the proper places so he was involved heavily in that in his first tour. his second tour he became what they call up patrol plane commander and had his own plane and crew at that point. the allied forces pushed north to the philippines get, more and more they flew in the daylight ended more rescue missions because so many of our planes were being shot down and these guys were in life rafts and needed to cut.

the p b y was a totally amphibious airplane at this point so it could land both on runways and in the water. and their nickname was flying boats. and they would land as near to an island as they could get frequently, islanders would visit with these rescued flyers in their canoes or whatever they had. ..

>> so he always had a knack for it. he was of particularly good at drawing things like trains and planes and different buildings, things like that. so he was, he was a natural, for sure. but he kind of took it to another level when he got into the military k and he designed the squadron low duo, for instance, he -- logo, for instance, he painted art on his plane. scantily-clad lady, as you might imagine, front or the back view depending on which side you approached and did the water colors and sketches of just things that they saw. one in particular that really caught my attention was a time where he had on a rescue he had managed to locate and pick up five survivors on an island, and they had been through so much, and their stories were so poignant on how they managed to even find the puck-up location -- pick-up location and managed the stages, they had the

japanese pursuing them x they were so happy to see this plane, this pby. and they got back, and two of them actually developed malaria and got quite sick and were not able to fly back home, and the other three boarded a big transport plane, and all the guys from the pby went up into the sea plane tender where they were staying and were all excited to wave good-bye to them. and the plane was just leaving the runway when somebody on a joyride clipped the tail of the plane, and it pin wheeled up and killed everybody on it. so after all this, they perished anyway. so it turned out that the two guys that had the malaria were actually the lucky ones because they weren't on that plane. he didn't talk that much about the war, and pretty typical of world world war ii vets, they just didn't do that much generally. they just felt that it was a job that needed to be done, and it was over, and they kind of saved their stories for each other at reunions and things like that. so we didn't talk much about it

until the last few years of his life. my dad passed away in 2011. when we went through his things and found this artwork, we were really surprised to see how much other writing and photographs and keepsakes, memorabilia that he had kept for nearly 70 years. and inside of this was a variety of notebooks, flight logs, ledgers, even my grandmother's scrapbook that had all this newspaper clippings and photos. and a lot of the firsthand accounts that he had kept on old envelopes and manila pages were still intact and still in there. very difficult to read at this point, but they were fascinating and after struggling through them to try to figure out exactly what they were saying, i was able to kind of piece together a story over some time. and it took me a lot of research

with navy records of the black cats to kind of jive what he had written and, with the real war diary was. and finally managed to put the timeline together through the use of all these, you know, various pieces. i was surprised. i had no idea he'd been through so much, and i was also surprised to find out as much as i had about the black cats in general. it was a remarkable group and really one of the least-told stories of world world war ii, t their significance to the whole thing. everything from rescues to just becoming this stealth aircraft that nobody had seen the likes of before. one of the first to use radar, for instance, one of the first to have an altimeter so they could fly low over the water and be virtually invisible. fascinating stuff, and i didn't know any of that. i feel like it's a tribute to the black catses and to dad, first of all -- cats and to dad,

first of all. they both deserve it. and any opportunity you have to tell a story like this, it's just an important opportunity. and i also feel like it's been a great opportunity to meet veterans, world world war ii ves in particular, and i've met four black cats now, three and about to meet the fourth. one who actually knew and flew with my dad. let me correct that, two who actually knew and flew with my dad. and they found out about it, more or less, from the book. so that's been a real important, you know, side effect of the whole thing. but one of the most satisfying things is just meeting other people and maybe even the book has inspired them to go ahead and talk to their own parents or loved one who may have served and kind of capture that narrative and have an opportunity to save a legacy

before it's gone forever. and if i can inspire some of these people through this book to do that, that's been worth it all by itself. >> up next from booktv's recent trip to salem, oregon, learn about the massacre of over 30 chinese miners in 1887 from r. gregory nokes. >> i heard about this story when i read in a local newspaper in northeastern oregon that a county clerk had found records of an old murder trial in a safe, and out had to do with a group of whites who were accused of massacring, murdering a group of chinese. and they were found innocent and let go. now, i'm born and educated for the most part in oregon, had at least a modest interest in history, knew nothing about this crime. this was one of the worst crimes ever committed against anybody in oregon i'm not -- besides

native americans, of course. so i decided we needed to do it for our paper, so as part of the investigation, i needed to learn about the chinese. i had the most brief knowledge of why the chinese were here and what they were doing, so i i did a lot of investigation about who they were, what they did, how they were treated, so became kind of self-education in that process. chinese arrived in the pacific northwest in the late 1850s. they started in southern oregon when gold was found around jacksonville, and they moved to northeastern oregon around baker city in that area for new gold strikes and then on up to lewiston, idaho, when gold was discovered i think in 1861. of after a few years there were more chinese miners in the northwest than there were

caucasian miners. during this period it's important to know that while chinese usually were discriminated against and not accepted, the often employers preferred to hire the chinese for several good reasons. from the employer's point of view, one, they worked harder than whites, two, they worked for less, usually significantly less and, three, and importantly, they didn't want to unionize. they didn't go out on strike. and this period in the 1860s and 1870s, this was a period of of a great deal of labor agitation particularly in washington. white miners didn't like the idea of chinese taking any of the gold. many of the caucasian mining camps passed laws that barred the chinese from mining gold at all. but the chinese had already had the experience in california that the white miners soon tired of mining gold, and after they took the easiest gold, then they were anxious to sell their mines or leave them.

so chinese ostensibly weren't allowed to buy property or allowed to mine in oregon or other areas. they were able to buy mines from whites who wanted to sell out. and the chinese very often got push more gold from the -- much more gold from the abandoned gold than the whites did original hi. in 1887 there were a group of miners that had come down into the oregon side of hills canyon from lewiston, idaho, to mine gold along the river. and this was a very difficult journey for the miners because the snake river is a north-flowing live at point through hell's canyon, and so it's a rough, wild river. and so the miners would have had to pull their won'ts and poled them along through the rapids to get to this mining site. i don't know if viewers are aware of it, but hell's cap onis a deeper canyon than grand

canyon. it lacks some of the grandeur, but it's significantly deeper with high walls that don't allow easy access into it. so the chinese had been mining there at this site called deep creek for, oh, probably about four or phi months -- five to months. there were a band of white horse thieves operating in northeastern oregon, and they observed the chinese mining in the canyon and decided to plot, they plotted to take their gold and which they did. it was never understandable to me and one of the reasons i wrote this particular book is why did they have to kill them? because they could easily have just talkin' the gold from the chinese -- taken the gold from the chinese and let them go. but the fact that they killed, it was clearly a savage act of racial hatred. well, the killers threw the bodies of the chinese into the river, snake river, and the

crime wasn't discovered for, oh, a couple of weeks. some of the bodies flowed all the way to lewiston, idaho, where the crime was discovered. other bodies may have floated clear out into the pacific and were never found at all. there were nearly three dozen who were killed, the fact number wasn't known. there were a lot of chinese mining in the canyon, you know, at various locations. and the area was so remote that no sheriff really wanted to go in there to investigate the crime. there were seven in the gang, and the young man who turned state's evidence named frank vaughn which is a very well known name even today and in the testimony before the grand jury, he'd implicated all of the others for the crime. but by the time the matter came to a trial, then he'd changed his testimony, and he blamed just the, those -- well, i should go back just a little bit. of the six killers, three of them were caught, three others

escaped including the ringleaders. and so frank vaughn during the trial pinned the crime on those who had escaped and said the three others who were caught were not innocent, had nothing at all to do with it. one was just a 15-year-old boy, as a matter of fact, so the jury let them go. i don't know of any attempt ever made to catch the three who escaped. his weak explanation was that they wanted to borrow a boat, the gang wanted to borrow a boat from the chinese to take some of their stolen horses across the river into what is now idaho to sell them. and this is what the killers were doing, they were stealing cattle and horses in oregon and taking them on into idaho and montana where they were selling them. so he said they couldn't get the horses across the river without the poet, so they wanted to borrow the boat, and the chinese wouldn't let them have the boat. so the ringleader then, blue evans, got furious and ordered

them to kill all the chinese. well, that was pretty weak. i think the reason for that is they didn't want to talk about gold during the trial, because that was a real issue. quite a bit of gold was involved and taken. but once they mentioned the word gold, that would open up a whole new area of investigation which was what happened to the gold. so there was a trial in 1888, and there was an indictment against six white members of this horse-thieving gang. but a white jury found them innocent. now, in my research i discovered there are many crimes against the chinese. this happens to be probably the worst of all of them committed by whites against chinese who were in this country. but i'd never found a single case where a white jury found a white man guilty of killing or injuring a chinese. they were let go. the chinese, of course, they were appalled at the massacre

and the loss of life. they also had had a lot of experience before this time with crimes against the chinese particularly in california. now, the chinese were talking about in this period probably as many as 150,000 at any one time primarily in california and then they filtered up into oregon and the res of the northwest in -- the rest of the northwest in smaller numbers. the reaction was -- well, i need to go back just a little bit. because of the crimes that occurred in california, and these occurred in san francisco, in happening rest, chinese were burped out of their homes in -- burned out of their homes the in northern california. and the chinese complained. and as i mentioned earlier, no white map was put behind bars for one of these crimes against the chinese. but what did happen in this period was trade with china was very valuable to the united states then as it is now. and so the chinese began making

monetary claims to the united states, and i think the figure was $2,000 for each individual loss of life and then they'd claim damages for loss of property as well. so congress was approving fairly significant sums of money for the chinese to compensate for the loss of life. so the letters that the chinese legation did get involved in the investigation of the murder, and then the national archives in silver spring, maryland, where i did a lot of my research you will find many these letters the chinese being appalled at the crime. and the deaths. and the fact that nobody was investigating. and, indeed, nobody was investigating. but saying, you know, you need to compensate us more this loss -- for this loss. and, indeed, chinese were compensated in most instances for other crimes. but in this one for a peculiar reason, they never actually made a monetary claim for what happened in hell's canyon. the previous claims that had

been paid to the chinese, apparently the money did not always get back to the families of victims, and the people who lost property. suggesting there might have been a fair amount of corruption, you know, involved in this period. and so the heads of legation in washington, d.c. was called back to china, and in a period of years he was beheaded. so my interpretation of that, this was not an incentive for his people who replaced him to really pursue these investigations. and, in fact, all this happened about the time of the trial. the chinese were informed by the u.s. government there was going to be a trial. to the best of my knowledge, they were never informed and never asked what the results of the trial were. and i think they were just concerned, the officials involved were just concerned what had happened to their predecessors. they just considered this a hot

potato and didn't want to get into it. so the matter was dropped and covered up in oregon for more than a century until, like i say, this county clerk found the old records in an old safe. there's a chapter mt. book called the -- in the book called the secret keep kerrs about two elderly women in the county who i was told early on knew about this crime as much as anybody did. one was this wonderful woman, grace bartlett, who was a county historian for many years, and the other was marjorie martin who was a county clerk for many years, both of them now deceased. and at first they didn't want to talk to me at all, but i just kind of kept up my contacts, and eventually they did. and marjorie martin later acknowledged she was the county clerk who hid the records in an old safe. by the time she was talking to we, she was not always as clear as one would hope that she would be, but the explanations i got is she didn't want people to see the records, one. and then, two, she -- one of her

friends in the county was a granddaughter of the leader of the killers. blue evans. when blue evans fled the county, the ringleader, when he left, he left behind a wife and two children. and so a grand child of one of those children was a good friend of marjorie martin's. and so she told me now that her friend had died was the way she put it, i can now talk to you. that's the way she put it. there were two things going on. the county is one of those places where there's not a lot of population turnover and is where people who love there today are descendants of the people who first went in there. so that seemed to be a mote i, well, we don't -- motive, well, we don't want to resurrect this sell top in the closet. and the other one was protecting the um imagine of the county which will always be tarred by the fact that they kicked out the nez perce tribe in 1877.

even though the nez perce had claim to the land and had treaty rights to the land. it was a fraudulent treaty that was developed and forced the nez perce out. so this has been, to me, a black mark on the county's history. and they've tried to come to terms with that over the years. well, when i finally did a book launch up in the county, i was joking to my wife candace that i might be tarred and feathered, you know, i don't know what i'll look like when i come home. but i did a talk there what is called the fish trap house, and there's a writers' group called fish trap, fairly well known. they had a packed house of probably 40 to 350 people -- 50 people there, and i did my presentation. i had misspelled the necessary purse name, but other than that i didn't get any criticism which i was amazed about. rater i talked -- later i talked

to a friend and he said i think we're just ready to hear about what happened up here. you know, it's not that i've set out on a mission to explore the deep, dark, unknown corners of oregon history, but as i've encountered these stories about slavery in oregon and the massacre and mistreatment of the chinese, i know these are not in oregon's history books, but they're an important part of our history. and i think that they need to be known. for example, we don't know, it's not generally known how much the chinese contributed to the development of the northwest. they built the railroads, thaw mined the gold, they cleared the land, they dug the ditches. and that was a huge help. hay did work that white people didn't want to do, you know, similarities to what's going on with his pap you cans. the networks -- hispanics. they led some of the wagon trains out here, they were fur trap orers in the region and some came as slaves. we've already talked earlier about a former slave, robin

holmes, who i think was an heroic figure in oregon. he helped to clear the ports and clear the -- make clear that slavery was illegal here through a complaint that he brought to free his children. he and some other former slaves helped integrate a white church this salem, and we know nothing about them. nobody was keeping their history. they're just a word or two in a history book, and i think that's tragic. so if i've helped to bring some of that into our public awareness and keep some of that, put some of that history where it belongs, that's satisfying to me. >> for more information on booktv's recent visit to salem, oregon, and the many other cities visited by our local content vehicles, go to c-span.org/localcontent. >> the new c-span.org web site makes it easier than ever for you to keep tabs on washington, d.c. and share your finds via facebook, twitter and other

social networks. easy search functions let t you access our daily coverage of events. new tools make it simple the create short video clips and share them with your friends via facebook, prettier and other social networks -- twitter and other social networks. or links via e-mail, look for the green icon links throughout our site. watch washington on the new c-span.org, and if you see something of interest it, clip it and shower it with your friends. -- share it with your friends. >> robert edsel s there a dollar figure that you can put on the art that was stolen by the nazis? >> it's as high as you want to make it. we really get into an exercise of futility trying to put numbers on it. you know, do we approach a trillion? we might. when we think about paintings today, some paintings selling for $150 million, $200 million, we have to ask what would happen

if "lady with an ermine" had come on to the market and could be sold? i'm sure 250, 300 million dollar range. you can get to a billion very, very quickly with a couple of paintings, and you start to think that this in some of these salt mines these monuments officers were finding 20,000 paintings, 10,000 paintings, hundreds of thousands of ancient library books and libraries s so the numbers just get to be staggering. >> host: how much is still missing? >> guest: here again this becomes an exercise in numbers. a lot of people like to, i think, deal with numbers that are just so large i think it makes it harder for the public to understand. a number that i use is hundreds of thousands of cultural objects including works of art. but, you know, the nazis stole newing that had any value to it, tapestries, paintingsing, drawings, important books, documents. in poland alone they have some 60,000 specific works of art that are on their missing

database. so when we say a few hundred thousand cultural objects, that's not a random number that is just picked out of the sky, but some people use in millions of numbers. and it's just hard to tell. >> you can watch this and other programs online at booktv.org. >> here's a look at some of the the pest-selling non-- best-selling nonfiction e-books according to "the wall street journal."

>> these are some of the current best-selling nonfiction e-books according to "the wall street journal." >> i would say that i'm working from 9 to 3. most writers who say that they write for seven or eight hours a day are exaggerating. you just can't. you sort of lose it after a while. you certainly lose it when you're working on a novel. because the edges of your imagination start to blur after, i would say, best case about three hours. but even went you're writing a nonfiction book, you know, you maybe put in three good hours of pounding away, and the rest of it's research, looking at e-mail, making another cup of coffee, that sort of thing. fiction usually begins with a

theme for me. you know, identity, redemption, art, fame, things like that. but the whole process really picks up steam when i start to ground some of my thoughts in a character who will become the protagonist, and that character becomes sharper and sharper to me. i think all writing is awe firmtively good -- affirmatively good if only because it leaves a piece of yourself behind. i mean, let's say you're blogging all through your 20s, and let's say almost no one reads your blog. but 20 years from then you will have children, and you can show them what you wrote, and they will understand things about you that they might not understand otherwise. i mean, what i always say is writing even in its most basic form, a letter, a poem, a note to someone, it confers a kind of

immortality. we've all had that experience of loving someone, of losing them, of opening a drawer and finding a card that they've signed or a letter they wrote and thinking, ah, still alive, still alive in some way. so i think, i think the more writing the better t. >> any regrets about anything that you've written? >> you know, i think regrets are things that a good columnist -- and i like to think i was a good columnist -- gets out before she publish ares. in other words, you -- or publishes. in other words, you spend a fair amount of time at the computer backstopping yourself. when you're writing about your family constantly and even when you're writing about events, part of your brain is thinking how will this feel be ten years -- feel if ten years, how unequivocal do i want to be

about certain things. so i think you do a lot of, i wouldn't at all call it censoring, it's more talking the long view. and because of that i don't really have any reyets about anything -- regrets about anything i've written. >> any advice for writers? >> yeah, i mean, don't wait for inspiration. i don't know where she is, but she's not coming. or at least she's never coming here. i never see her. occasionally there's like a fleeting fly-by, and then she's gone again and then it's all just about hard work. the hard work part does not largely consist of thinking about it. i mean, people say to me all the part-time i'm talking about writing -- all the time i'm thinking about writing a book. at a certain point you just have to sit down, and you have to sit down whether you feel like it or not. and i think too often people

think that if you're going to write well, out must be because you wake up in the morning and your heart sings. my heart doesn't sing because i constantly think it's not going to be any good. and it takes at least an hour of pounding it out before i think, ah, here we go. and so if you, if you wait for that moment to come before you sit down, you won't do it. >> what we're told both as students and as a nation in terms of the popular imagination is that there's all kinds of sit-ins and marches and demonstrations that occur, but they're really done by these famous, iconic people. basically it's rosa parks who just was so tired that she refused to get up from the bus in montgomery, alabama, and sparked the bus boycott and, basically, a young preacher who