man, and what civil rights struggle actually met on a personal, familial, professional level as well. i think it's impact is he really demonstrated the humanity and the humanness of civil rights struggle, and the humanness of what it means to be a person living in a society, at whatever time and space you are in, and what your responsibilities and roles are. and so i think by looking at the life of medgar evers, you really see that in great in vivid detail, even though he was an individual who is very much a low-key, what he did spoke balkans. and people are still hearing that message today. ..

the former nfl running back is a descendent of the host former slaves. this program is about an hour. >> sucrose, "tomlinson hill," what make you want to write that go? >> well, i grew up knowing about tomlinson hill. i've never been to tomlin sandhill, the grand father would always make, you know, we had a

slave called tomlinson hill and when the slaves were freed, they loved it so much they took tomlinson as their last name. and as a seven and 8-year-old kid in dallas going through desegregation because in 1973, dallas schools were still segregated and there is a court order and so race was very much an important topic at that time in dallas. so i was aware of that as a child and the idea that there were black tomlin and that my family once held as slaves boggles my imagination. and i became an important part of my identity growing up in

white, southern culture, having a family that fought in the civil war and handhelds please were part of the antebellum plantation life is a big deal. so, i unknowingly bragged about it because that was the reviewer supposed to be proud of. it wasn't until later in life with cibecue a journalist i became educated and i went to africa they begin to realize that, you know that that shaped my life so much, no one was examining the. no one was questioning it and i witnessed of things in africa that reminded me of what i knew about the styles from learning about it as an adult. so i decided to think it is time

to examine this and this is my grandfather sold me on them so that is when i set out and decided to look for you. >> host: so how surprising was that to learn the truth about your ancestors quite >> guest: i think either time i started on the book, i knew that there was no truth to my grandfather's story. i was educated enough to know that what i was going to find was not necessarily going to be pretty. that is all i had to go on was just that one statement for my grandfather. and some old news to you for clippings of obituaries.

so what i didn't know the details. i didn't know the extent they were involved. in lynchings, and the clan. these are all to later discover. so it was kind of expected. i didn't expect to find the oral history that my great-grandfather gave in 1936 as part of the works progress administration where he bragged about his first lynching, where he bragged about how the whites in 1872% of the blacks from voting and helped from voting in help -- at the end of reconstruction and the beginning of jim crow. that kind of pride in ethnic

violence, that was really surprising. i also didn't understand the power of the kook left clan in texas politics in the 1920s or that my great-grandfather was all kidnapped political movement. you know, i wasn't really surprised to find out that they were often these things, that the details were shocking. >> host: we have been knowing each other for a little bit now. and i know you not to be a racist person at all. so i am comfortable were you learning about this about their ancestors? it had to make you uncomfortable. >> guest: it did. i remember i didn't make my first trip to tomlinson hill

until 2007. so this is the place you grew up on. you know, this is your childhood. and i have never seen it by the time i was 42 years old. i'm sorry, 47 years old. so i am standing on the hill of which my family donated 17 acres. he's a veteran association and they constructed a reunion crown and it's still standing today and now your family still holds reunions on the hill. but there is a big sign that says welcome to tomlin and hill. if enough for the first time as an adult was this sense of pride that this is where my ancestors are from. and i was excited by that.

at the same time i was kind of torn because this is also where my years committed unimaginable crimes. you know, this is where they eat people. this is where they tortured people. this is where they quite likely someone people. that was hard to get my head around. i think this gets to the challenge for southerners today, all of that, then how can we be proud of our heritage, and at the same time, recognize the crimes that are ancestors committed. and i was one of the things i was trying to get out with the book and through the examination is how do i reckon i'll. >> host: why dig up the past? what made you want to do that? >> guest: well, i think there

are two things and i've heard this argument mostly from the white family in the community around tomlinson hill. you know, that is the past. those people had nothing to do with me. i don't act like them, so why should i care about what they did? into me, that is how families like mine deny the history of families like yours. it is how we deny the reality of what it means to be white and black in america. the only way you can understand the true meaning of status to understand the history. and that is why i thought it would be compelling to tell the story of a white family and a black family with the same name

who come from the same place and followed them from slavery through the civil war, reconstruction, jim crow, civil rights movement up until today and compare and contrast. this is sound thing that your uncle charles really helped me with, that he described go into a sharecroppers elementary school in the ninth team 40s, where it is one room, two teachers, dirty kids, grades one through eight all-in-one room. you know, no bathroom, no running water, all outhouses. at the same time he was going to that goal, my father was in dallas, texas, going to rain neocon goofily built elementary school where he was learning

german and violin lessons and was the best of the best. and so you can't understand where our families are today until you understand that kind of his tree. so that's why i think it's important. >> in the book, you reveal some pretty embarrassing stuff about both families. why did you feel that was important? >> guest: i think a feature no less i have rebuilt embarrassing things about probably thousands of people. i've described the worst moment of peoples lives that they would just assume forget, but i've put them in the newspaper and made them part of history for anyone and everyone to read for as long as we have the archives.

so for me to not take this hard journalistic look at our families i think would have been dishonest. i think it was also imports and to make the story real. i mean, no one has perfect family. so with our families were perfect in the book, and then it wouldn't be real. it wouldn't be accurate. he wouldn't give the reader a chance to feel a connection. so you now, let's be honest, there were a lot of embarrassing things i discovered that aren't in the book. i try to make sure that it can remain in that parallel. so at the same time that your

family was going through the the tumultuous smith said the 60s and having a and cultural changes my family was going through this name being. and so, that was the way to show how these greater outside force is take our families just saying even though i families are also very different. >> very different. so what about the book is applicable today in society? >> i think there are a couple of things. one is that the younger generation grew up with desegregated schools and grew up post-civil rights movement. in fact, the ones coming of age with a black president, there is a gap. they are not aware of what our

family has been served. so i think it is an opportune time to revisit that. the other thing i learned as a foreign correspondent with the associated press was that working in south africa as the apartheid committed in rwanda after the genocide, working in somalia today, that whenever you have this history of ethnic violence, of communal violence, that the only way you can move forward is to have a shared understanding of the past. and so we talk about future reconciliation commission in south africa, where we have to have a common truth before we can start forward for reconciliation. i don't and we've really had in the united state, where there is

an accepted truth, the those sides can agree upon and taking not building since reconciliation. i mean coming to you feel like american hits jerry or texas history in particular, which we all had to take her in a history. do you think it's been balance? >> host: race -- racism isn't about america. we might have kidnapped elect did our first black president, but we are really long way from being where we need to be as a society. you know, that brings me to my next question for you growing up in dallas and go into the school

you went to. i remember you used to sing the dixie song. how are you able to do that growing up and still turn out to be the man you are today? >> guest: i mean, one of 15 that i think particularly during desegregation at the teachers had to struggle with was that you had white schools and blacks close. you have to solve curriculum where, you know, it was a war -- northern aggression. it wasn't about slavery. it was about states rights. we should be proud of the chivalric history of the south and how noble the cause was. you know, you can teach those things when everyone in the classroom is white and as i said in the book, we learned that

i'll have none of the republic, but we sing dixie more often. and so there was this awkward time in which suddenly you had this next classroom and suddenly you couldn't teach history the way you did before. so you know, the teachers were talking about the evils of slavery, but no one was helpers possible. it was like there were no slaveholders. there were no -- that somehow it existed and then it didn't and no one is responsible. and that is the kind of thing that frustrated me. even as a little kid i would be singing in the class, you know, singing dixie, just thinking to myself, the confederate flag is as simple as slavery.

this song is a symbol of slavery and your teaching slavery is wrong. there is some thing wrong here and this is where i get my father's a much credit is that he is the one that broke the chain in my family. you know, his grandfather was clan, his father was clan and he decided no, i am not going to be this way and i'm definitely not going to raise my kids this way. so when i came home from school singing dixie, he would sit me down and say you know what, that represents a lot of bad teams and singing it will make people feel bad. and he is explaining it to a 9-year-old, to a young child level. that's how we explain it. just don't do that.

>> host: so you had a pretty good story you told me about your dad and how his mind was changed by going to a record door. >> guest: yeah, as i set time he played violin in school and so he played broadway songs, some white classical music and he knew enough about music that in the late 50s, you know, rock 'n roll kind of bored him. he's like maybe three chords two or three times. so it goes into the records during those don't give me all this. you know, show me something that is interesting. i want to hear music. and the record shop owner, back then you've got to listen to the record before you.it and took it home. so the records are owner handed henman opperman said botrytis.

he goes in, put it on and the first thing is around midnight with miles davis playing it. and in my father's words, he had found his home and he sat there and listening to that music and there was the most amazing thing he had ever heard. he simply fell in love with it, was engaged with it and he sat at gearing up to cover and it was a black man. it was miles davis on the cover. he thought to himself, there is no way something this beautiful and this amazing could calm from someone and he realized she was being lied to and that is when he dedicated himself to not be in a recess. husk of miles that?

>> guest: miles davis did that for him. good man. so how did the research change the way you the bigger family? >> guest: well, my grandfather died when i was very young, so i didn't have the opportunity to confront him. not that i would have. he was a very angry man and he didn't have a lot of patience. and because of my father's view, he was very supportive. and one of the things he had done when i was growing up as he didn't emphasize the tom family. he emphasized his mother's family, which was swiss german and much more progressive than he was trying to instill their values than me but other than that, and values.

i kind of went on the circle. i started out thinking, you know, as a child in this family, and noble, aristocratic institution. nsa does into the research i began to realize that they're actually pretty awful and had done a lot of really bad things and most importantly in my race search i discovered that they knew better. you know, this is something when i first met your mom and charles, uncle charles and aunt thelma, they all said to me, it's okay, it's okay. your ancestors for your ancestors. they didn't know any better and i did the research i realized actually they did know better. they were being told everyday newspaper. there were ways for them to know better.

and so i couldn't give them that excuse. and then i began to realize -- i begin to accept that they were people and they were part of my hits tree and part of what put me in the position i am today. and for all of those reasons i've come to peace with it. and i accept it. and i actually feel much more secure knowing the truth. i feel better knowing the truth and believing a lie. >> host: so how did your experience as a correspondent to europe brooch during the book? >> guest: well, i learned as a journalist the importance of being as thorough as possible into making sure i got my facts straight, which is very important with this boat.

and there is no need for hyperbole, no need to the campus story a. this is a story about real people going through real things. as a journalist i cannot.those principles in line and so i tried to be unsparing, but i also try not to be, you know, go over the top with my language. i mean, you have read the book. i try to maintain this very neutral voice and let the facts speak for themselves. >> guest: you did that very well. >> guest: one of the things i try to do, which is different from being a journalist because you don't have the option of an opportunity. you let people speak for themselves in march bloc quote

because one thing i am aware of it as a white filtering this information, i needed to let people's voice no one around. and your interview i let you peek for yourself for large portions of it tell your story. and so, there is a mix of views and not recur and being a foreign correspondent of approaching it as the house later to try to make sure i get the facts straight. the tendency to, i get personally involved because it is about my family and i else though, because it is about my family, i need to give your families much voice as possible. >> right, so your area with the ap in every canal and see the

things you have seen in your life, how to haired to what you found out about your rant dusters? i mean, you have seen horrible stuff in your life. >> guest: yes, i mean i've covered time warner's over a 14 year. in most in africa and the middle east including iraq, afghanistan . i think having witnessed lynchings, having witnessed war, having witnessed violence, domestic violence as well as, as well as, you know, the traditional idea of fighting when i would read the stories of the lynching, there is an entire chapter that basically nothing but this whole series of lynching that have been in the 90s.

i could see it. i cannot ask mallette. i can feel it in his detailed descriptions about happy. so in that way it was very kind of emotional because having lived through those things, i was able to imagine them much more vividly. one of the heroes in the book, in my mind, is a newspaper man named dan caney and he was the publisher and editor of violent democrat from when it started in about 1890 tell us that in 1942. and this is where the same minute that because he was an anti-lynching crus later. every time there is a lynching, he would throw out and write the most detailed accounts of it.

and half the time he would go out of approved by the purse and who was lynched really was in his bed and every week he wrote an editorial about why lynching was un-american and how it went against the constitution and our values. his fellow editors of small-town newspapers condemned him. they wrote editorials about how awful he was and he stood up and said no, this is wrong. not only is it wrong, you are getting the wrong role. and so he can fade the gruesome nature of it. it wasn't an abstraction so it also got me excited about journalism again because in the same way when the clan again to write again around 191-07-1914 in texas, the clan in texas at

its texas at high point, half of all white men in texas were members of the clan in the team 24. throughout discounted james kennedy is out there condemning the clan, condemning politics, just laying out why they are unconstitutional and unlawful, letting everyone know that it is wrong. they did have an opportunity to know better. yeah, that was actually one of the most exciting part actually was being how, you know, it grave voice could stand up and change things. it is interesting to note that the clan began to sink away in 19:28 a.m. friday to dirty too, they elect james kennedy mayor, you know. so he went to receiving death threats to be the mayor of the

town i'd be in a strong, moral voice. so yeah, that was one of the most fun parts of the research was reading kennedys. >> i've got to take a quick break. the right tack. >> guest: so, lavar, letting us view. one of the most awkward as when i set out to write this book was i had not met you and i knew you were out there. i met your mom first.

it is a really difficult moment for me. what am i going to say quite you know, hi, my name is chris tomlinson. let's talk about why we have the same last name or yes, my great, great grandfather owned your great, great grandfather. let's talk about it. i mean, it has got to be awkward for you to have someone like me come into your life. we've never talked about this, so tell me what you're asked her if was. >> host: chris, i've got to admit it, man, when you first came around, my mom approached me and she's like there is a guy doing a book about his family history and he wants to talk to you. i was like who is a?

they're like his name is chris tomlinson. i was like okay. there were like he's a white guy. i was like okay. and she was like his family owned your family back in the slave days. i was like no, mom, no way. after she explained to me that she had mentioned the rake at guy and interview misys to her and she had given you the thumbs up, you know, i went on to get to know you and i'm glad they did. you're a pretty solid guy. and you know, it is always good to me someone in your position

that is not a racist. you know, because you run into a lot of types of those people, especially -- >> guest: you know come you grow up in marlin right outside -- you were born in marlin. your families to love the land on the hill. you know, on the plantation not far from where the slave quarters begin. so in that way, your family had a much longer continuity living on the hill to mind it because my grandfather left in 1920. but you didn't know the history that latch, right? tell me what you knew about the hill before i came along. >> guest:

>> host: i didn't know anything about the hill to be honest with you. i knew it was a slave lamentation, but wherever used to always say to ourselves, we've got a piece of land out there in texas. i was scared for us. the chickens are the bad stuff that happened on the hill. i never thought about it. reading your book, i was kind of proud of who my grandparents were and what they did as far as helping the black community there get along.

it was also kind of sad to learn this stuff, too. >> guest: to me, one of the most shocking things and i was naïve but when i got to marlin and i started doing the research, i realized the only history i was in book form in the library was written by white people, for white people about white people. and even in one of the histories that was done in 1976 made it sound like the plan was benign, that they really weren't that bad, which i found shocking as late as 1976. that's about the time you were born in that town. so why do you thing, i mean,

your father was so proud of living on the hill and it meant so much to him. why do you think he didn't want to tell you the history? >> host: may be being embarrassed, maybe a little bit. my father always had a great pride where he came from. you know, so to disclose to his children the atrocities that went on on his homeland, it probably made him uncomfortable and he didn't want to teach us about that. you know, that was always a fun guy. he was always the one to get out and run with us when he could. i thought my dad was crippled and one time i went up to a and

i kept hitting him on the leg thing you're not going to do anything. and he got up out of that chair so fast. i've never seen the old man move so fast. but that's just the type of guy that he was. he was always a fun loving and, never the one who blamed. he never was that type of person. so it was a sense of pride to be able to speak highly of the hill and not about the things that went wrong out there. >> guest: i built my book around the hill, the geographical location. and to be clear, it is not much of a hill, is that? it is a slight drive overlooking the river. the nearest town is waco.

that's 20 miles away upriver and i began the book with the first tomlinson to her drive and that was a woman named susan, and john who married the big slaveholder who bought the land in season convinced her brother to move from alabama and that was my great-grandfather. the book ends with your father who is the last tomlinson living on the hill when he died in a car act in 2007. unfortunately, i never got to meet him. he sounds so wonderful man and a very loving man. but he cared so much about that community, as did your

grandparent and your grandfather died before you were born. so i guess was my research about your family, does it make a difference in your life to know this stuff? postcode definitely, man. reading the book i got to learn that my grandfather was. he died years before i was born. so my dad never taught about him. i did get to meet my grandmother for a few years, but i don't remember her talking about him either. but being able to read her book and learning her grandfather in the community, he was amazed he. then infused me with a sense of

great pride. so you have to be proud of who you are and where eucom from and to be a black tomlinson and learning that my grandfather was this type of person and his dad was another great tomlinson, i had no choice but to be proud. it's off to the last great sin to come through. you know, we just have that sense of pride because it continues. it didn't die off when my grandfather died. the greatness didn't die with them. it is great writing. >> guest: so obviously when i got off on a journey to write this book, i kind of knew the fine generation of white, spirit

i grew up with that and i knew their names and 90 when they lived and where they were. and where they were born. your side of the family was completely new to me and they required for most research. and then to find that there were so little documented, you know, historian process, only a lot of books. i had to go to the primary sources. i had to go through the birth records and the emancipation records and land ownership records and that is probably what i am most excited about what this book is that it was a chance to really get to the history of the black families that has never been recorded and frankly how remarkable it was.

i mean, i traced her family back to africa to a slave named george who took thomas to enact his name and emancipation and then his son was milo. it was your great, great grandfather. milo was remarkable because he was the one who helped out this first church on tomlinson. and then his son peter and grandson didn't you, your grandfather were so key to building something i had never heard of before he started the book, which is freedom colony. this was how african-americans developed their own independent communities outside of jim crow.

so the usually found some friendly landowners like tom bennett jones who said okay we are never going to grow anything here. you have to build your house, build your church and they worked so hard to be self sufficient and they grew their own crops in addition to the grew sharecroppers and they send their children to school. i mean come your family also valued education so highly. there were some of the first black families to educate their children. and that helped them build these communities that were so self-sufficient and unrecognized until researching the freedom colony began in texas in the 1970s. so yeah, i thought that was a part of texas history and was unfamiliar with and to me was

one of the most exciting topics. so i am pleased to hear that you got something from it. >> host: it was great. what would you like readers to take away from "tomlinson hill" the book? >> guest: it is a larger issue than just our families. i mean, our families are a metaphor for black and white america. and the details of the lives will be interesting to an outsider, someone who is not a relative who has metaphors for a longer issue you raise. so one of the things that really shocks people is when i say, you

know, labarre's father was a cotton picking sharecropper, it was not that long ago. it was one generation removed. you know, first of all 150 years, the event to patient proclamation is 100 t. four years old. next year will be the 150th anniversary of the emancipation of the same syntax as. the last slaves in america to be freed. 150 years is not that long. it's not that long. first of all, okay, 350 years is not a long time. inspecting, next time you think,

you know, that these issues are over in unless and in the distant past, you know, when you read that book, you will be how the carpetbaggers who came from the north were really america's first to the right activists who fought so hard only to have congress pulled the rug out from under a 10 in each team 74 and abandon the farmers latest in what would become the jim crow laws. my family was part of driving out carpetbaggers. and then my family -- i had an ancestor who was in the texas legislature in 1882, passing as jim crowe laws and so they were part of that is somatic campaign if you will to make sure that

your ancestors did not have access to education, to capital, to business and job opportunities. and that continued until the sixth use. and your grandfather worked for one of my cousin until his death in 1972. the two men love each other, but they weren't equal, you know, so that's kind of what i want. if we want reckoned ilyushin, if we wanted and to our racial problems, the first would have to do with american's have an honest conversation about what really happened over the last 150 years. >> host: do you think that's possible? you think americans can move past the color of one's skin?

it has been 150 years is the end of slavery, but only 50 years the civil rights. so do you think we can? >> i think we can. i mean, the inspiration to write this book was sitting in the classroom at lake highland elementary in hearing martin luther king i have it turns beach for the first time. he says i have a dream that one day on the red hills of georgia sons of slaves and from the slaveholders come together or in brotherhood. >> host: we tested that last night. >> guest: at yesterday uni said at the lincoln memorial at that exact spot he gave that

speech. you know, to be frank, i don't need to go for your mouth, they don't disagree with me, but could we have done not if i had not but this book and been honest about where his three? >> guest: we could ask, but it would not have been so soon. i believe we would have maybe a year or so from now. because like i said, there isn't a racist bone in your body. >> host: and not yours either. >> guest: so we can sit down and have a or some thing and talk about anything and not get offended by what the other is saying he. so yeah, we could have stood up there a year from now, two years

from now. i think we could have without the help of the book. >> guest: but does that make it different if i came to you and that i want to read a book about how great my ancestors were, you know, so sit down and tell me yours tori about how great my ancestors were because when i was interviewing black people, african-americans, daly started out with i am very coming if they knew your cousin and it very polite. and it really took a while to convince them that now, i really do want to know the truth. i am really ready to talk about the truth, about what happened. i don't want the sanitized

version. but that has a big difference when someone is i'm ready to talk about the truth. or if i came up with that gap, we have a common history, the list forget about that. that is not in court. that is important, isn't it quite >> guest: you are right. it is for. with the help of the book, it like if i tell you, like he said come if you were to tell me that you want to talk about how great your ancestors were, i would laugh it you read in the face and probably walk away. but coming from knowing what kind people are out there and

for you to be able to interview them, that they are timid. you know, because of what they went through. i'm sure they were a lot older. >> guest: yeah, i was talking to people in their 80s. >> host: yeah, so they knew -- they knew a lot harder than i knew. so chris, you and the book thingy we should start a conversation about race. and we as american have been talking about that generation. why did you say that? >> guest: well, i think it is a conversation about the history

of race in america. and i think we have that, and brown. i think when you say to someone how the path doesn't matter, you know, it doesn't matter, of course it does. in your case, it matters that your father went to a substandard school, you know, in the latter's that his father before him barely went school whereas my father has a college education. my grandfather has an engineering agree. his father before him had generic. where we are today has a lot to do with where was tired.

hosts, i agree. >> guest: added some in the house white americans today are not willing to knowledge. that is the conversation i want us to have his look at history. look at the sum total of experience. before you start judging about what policy is good and what policy is bad, let's take a look at the totality of the run-up, where we got to this point. >> host: so are you hopeful about race relations? >> guest: i am. the epilogue in my book i talk about verisign of racism, of where it comes from. the immaculate, one of the

oldest part of the brain, one of the least developed parts of the brain. it is your fight or flight. and in order to know who to have a site that is not reprogrammed in ancient greece much worse desiccated and his allies because it was a question of how to digest, house desiccated and how strong was their military. did they wear clothes were today wears thin? the word slave comes to sloth

because the first were grabbed by the greeks. you look at people under 30 today about people who grew up in the segregated schools were integrated schools, testing shows they are the least racist generation of her because they were taught to think that way. i'm going to be turning 50 soon. so i have affiliates and i was one of the last generation to attend the segregated schools. remember a time when there were white only water fountain. i mean, my memories of that era are very few and very tested. but you know, so we have always

go. i think there always be these marginal groups who will choose to follow the race's ideology, just like we have people who choose to become neo.these, you know, and that is does own kind of mental health question really are behavioral health question. but i do believe that the days of children brought up relief of my races. or, that the other races are inferior and therefore i should have political, economic social control over other people just because of the color of their skin. that is an idea that is dying out. maybe i won't see it, but my

daughters will. cosco i bet they do too. i bet they will do to the. i will do it for us chris, buddy. thank you. >> guest: thank you. >> host: no problem.

the three-time presidential candidate will discuss u.s. foreign and dietary policy and the rising popularity of libertarian ideals. the host of the internet ron paul channel is the author of several books, including the revolution, a manifest though, and the fat in the school revolution. >> host: .or ron paul, in your book from 2011, liberty defines it essential issues that affect our freedom. you write the so-called modern politicians that compromises the bipartisanship are the most dangerous among the entire crew in washington. compromises too often synonymous with sally now, but it sounds a lot better. >> guest: it sure does hurt moderation sounds good and we always wanted. we are reasonable people. but there is a different between