who migrated from the south. a lot of competition about whose child would go to which school, catholic school, school across the park. it has been with me all this time but i think when it comes to the actual writing of a book it probably started very likely after i had gotten out and been a reporter for "the new york times" and started to talk to people in other parts of the country. i was chicago bureau chief "the new york times." i would go to chicago. i would be in cleveland and be in detroit and i begin to hear there were similar migration experiences people had. no one talked about it as migration experience, talk about that, i can't talk with you. this weekend we have to go back to mississippi where there is family reunion or funeral to go back to. i began to connect the dots. it was big than my experience with washington or chicago or even los angeles. it was a national outpouring of people. >> just give us a brief synopsis of what the book is about.

>> the book is about the migration experiences of three people, who become representative of the larger whole, which was, essentially the defection of 60 million african-americans from the south to the north, to the midwest and the west, from 1915, world war i, until 1970, when the south began truly to change. >> i went to a movie last weekend and they handed me this as i'm going into the movie. won't tell you what it was but i want to read it to you. every day more migrants are coming into the cities to seek a better life for their children. the scale of this massive migration from the poor countryside to the burgeoning cities is unprecedented in human history. the migrants provide a constant and cheap source of labor for ex-countries booming cities and the thriving economy is built on the backs of those citizens. do you have any idea what country that is? >> well it could be almost any,

it could be any country but i'm thinking the united states and southerners. but i wrote this book with the idea that it referred to almost any immigrant whoever cross atlantic in steerage or crossed pacific ocean in order to come here oreo grand. >> it was movie, called, the last train home, about china where they have 130 million mike grants that live in the cities and go back home once a year. story of that trip. i want to read you what you have in your book up front by richard wright. i was leaving the south to fling myself into the unknown. i was taking a part of the south to transplant in alien soil to see if it could go differently. drink of cool and new rains, bend in strange winds, respond to the warmth of other suns, that is the title of your book "the warmth of artisans." perhaps the bloom of richard wright. who was he and why did you pick

him to use your title? >> richard wright was one of the greatest novelist of the 20th century. he was a migrant from mississippi to chicago. he grew up in natchez, mississippi, son of a sharecropper. always wanted to write and sent out on a journey in 1927 to get to chicago. he spent pretty much his entire career, almost everything he wrote had to do with understanding this migration experience he was part of, understanding his connection between the south and the north. >> but he moved to paris to die, gave up on united states. >> he ultimately was searching for the warmth of other suns really. he kept moving and moving, went to chicago, new york, went around the country all together -- left the country all together in search of it. >> you say you interviewed 1200 people. >> i stopped counting after that. >> where did you find them and how did you find them. >> i set out three people who

would represent each of three streams of great migration. that took me to new york, chicago and los angeles to represent those three. in all of those cities i went to senior centers, aarp meetings, quilting clubs catholic mass. had a booth at the parade in los angeles, a booth in order to collect names of people whom i would have found migrated from the south to the north. i was going to all these places where irmight find people who were now seniors and might have been participants in this migration. they were not hard to find. it is just a matter of going in and talking to them and hearing their stories. >> how did you gather the information? >> i, you know, took notes obviously. at that stage. it was essentially like an audition. it was like a casting call for these three people. >> what years were you doing that? >> this begun, took me 15 years. basically 1995. took me about 18 months of interviewing, going from city to city. going from place to place.

masons all these different places in order to find these three. one of the most interesting sources of, or of people were the state clubs that exist in all of these cities, meaning that when you go to los angeles there's a lake charles, louisiana club. there's a monroe, louisiana, club. there is multiple texas clubs, multiple new orleans clubs. you would find, i had to find a way to get access to them and then i would begin to interview then. that is where you basically hitting huge source of people who had all done exactly what you're looking for. same with chicago. greenville, mississippi, club. greenwood, mississippi, club. there is it newton, mississippi, clubs. brookhaven, mississippi, clubs. those were options. there are churches in new york where almost everybody is from south carolina. >> what decided on the three you

would focus on? >> i decided on the three in 1996. >> i have your bio. i will read a couple things. tell me when i'm wrong. levens years with "the new york times," 1984-1995. you're ad boston university teaching? >> yes. >> live in atlanta. >> i live in both cities. >> commuting back and forth. >> yes. >> taught at emory for two years. princeton two years. graduated from howard here in washington dez. taught at harvard some, lectured at northwestern. why did you leave journalism? >> i don't consider myself to have left journalism. >> why did you leave newspaper reporting? >> i wanted to write this book. i wanted to, i wanted to explore the reasons why these people left. what was the legacy of what they did. i really wanted to understand who they were, why think did what they did and capture them before it was too late. in other words, i was really feeling great sense of urgency because it began in 1915 and it

ended in 1970. talking about at least three generations that were participants in this. they were getting up in years and time was running out. so i felt this real press of time to get to them while there was still time to tell the story. >> what kind of a home did you grow up in? you say your mother from georgia, your father from virginia. what is their story? >> their story my mother came up to washington, d.c. toward the end of world war ii. she was a young girl. she found work in the government. she was, doing filing work and that sort of thing for the government. obviously there were many opportunities for people during world war ii. my father was a tuskegee airman. after the war he came up to washington as well. they would have not met otherwise had they not come up. they both enrolled at howard university where they met. they finally and vent alley realized they were the right people for one another, married

then came me. >> brothers and sisters. >> i'm only child my mother ever gave birth to because i was very late in her life. >> parents alive? >> father died, unfortunately before the book came out and my mother is alive and has basically a shrine to the book in her home. >> in her home here in washington? >> no. she is in atlanta now. >> okay, so in the home what did you talk about day-to-day with the family that got you into the journalism world? >> actually they didn't talk about it. my father was a civil engineer and my mother had been a teacher. so, journalism was not, the idea of going into journalism was not anything that was ever discussed at all. i just had this affinity for writing and affinity for english and languages. i took french and german. i'm not good at them now but i was interested in them. this was always my passion and i was quite a curiosity to my

parents because there had never been any journalists in the family. i later, my mother later told me a story involving my grandfather, her father, which still gets to me about how he wanted to be a writer but essentially there had been no one actually able to go into this. so we didn't talk about. all i do remember, that my father was voracious reader of the newspaper, always had a newspaper. and, it was always important to be reading the newspaper. >> you picked three people. ida mae gladney, george swanson starling and george washington pershing foster. >> yes. >> tell us something about ida mae, where did she come from, why did you pick her. >> she was from chickasaw county, mississippi. she was the wife of a sharecropper where they were

working the land of a planter in that county. during the, just before the depression and once the depression hit they were still there. she was terrible at picking cotton. that was one of the things that was actually quite interesting to me. i never thought about a person being good or bad at it. turns out she was really bad at it and was glad to tell you that. she had a wonderful way of incorporating both the south and the north into her psyche. she never changed her accent from the moment she arrived in chicago. she spent more years in chicago, three times more years in chicago than she did in mississippi. yet when i met her i barely could understand her the first type. by the tile i spent a little time with her i could almost imitate her. >> how long did she live in mississippi and how long did she live in chicago. >> she left mississippi in the mid 20s. she left, the family left because there had been, a

beating of a cousin. a cousin of theirs, a husband was beaten nearly to death over a theft he did not commit. >> this is the turkey story. >> yes. >> tell that whole story. >> one particular night when her, before her husband had returned from hisser rand there was pounding at the door of her cabin and she had two young ones and she had a sister-in-law living with her. she was surprised to be getting this kind of noise up front. there were a posse of men at her door and they were looking for a cousin of hers named joe lee. cousin of her husband's jo lee. joe lee was not there. he had come into the house and gone through the back way to get away from the posse. she didn't know anything about what he had done. when later on when the husband got back home, she told him what had occurred and he went to find out what occurred, it was too late. joe lee was captured and he was

beaten chains, so badly that his clothes adhered to his skin and he was thrown in jail and instead of taken to a doctor. it was her husband who was one of the peep, one of the men, the male sharecroppers who went to retrieve him. after seeing what had happened to his cousin, he then went home to his wife said, this is the last crop we're making. >> what did they do then? >> they then quietly, between the two of them began to divest what little they had in wash pots and care seen lamps, the bed pallets, things they had. they then quietly went to their, her mother's house to position themselves to leave and as soon as the cotton was all picked, they got on the train, the night train out of okalona, up north to first, landing in chicago. stayed briefly in milwaukee and ultimately settling in chicago. >> what year did they actually leave mississippi? >> that was 1937.

>> by that time how many had left the south? >> there would have been, there would have been about a million people who would have left by that time because there were about a half million in the first world war i migration. there were another half million, 480,000 or so, who left during the depression years which is when she left, which is actually the smallest number for each decade. it really took off during world war ii, where that was the largest migration. each decade or each period of time during this migration people who were studying it, sociologists primarily assuming it would be over. they were looking what was the impetus for it and they were thinking the economics of the north were the main impetus. yes, that was a precipitating factor but ultimately once the door had been opened by the north because world war i was beginning of it, world war i was a time when because of the war in europe, immigration had essentially come to a halt and the, all of the workforce, the

workers that were feeding and the steel mills and foundries and all of the factories of the north then had no labor. these northern industries began looking to the south for the cheap labor. that meant they had to go to african-americans and began trying to recruit them to go north. don: >> was or ida may like for in mississippi, what things couldn't she do that white people could do? into she rarely ventured out from where she was because life was very controlled. they had so little free time working in the fields. her life was fairly isolated. but whenever she would go out there any number of things. every aspect of life was controlled then. there were, there were no, for example, the access to a physician was impossible. physicians did not come out to the country where she was. she would not have had access in

the south. overall in the south jim crow had rules and laws that seem so arcane now. in someplace it is was illegal for a black person and a white person to play checkers together. in certain places. she did not work in such a place because she worked in the field but there were, blacks and whites could not walk up the same staircase in certain places where they might have worked together. and in certain courthouses there was a black bible and a white bible to swear to tell the truth on. >> did you hear that story more than once? >> i heard that more than once. there was a case where it became an issue because in north carolina, the judge, they couldn't find the black bible. so it became front page news in one of the north caroline newspapers that i came upon. and they couldn't find the black bible. so they had to halt the court proceedings and the judge said, well, you know, we might as well

follow what the law is and find a bible. what happened the black person taken the stand and they needed to find the right bible for him to swear to tell the truth on. >> did you ever ask any of the old time white people why they had such rules? >> i didn't spend a lot of time talking to a lot of the white people about this there was a lot written about that already. my focus was trying to find people who would not talk to. in other words, much of the material about the white perspective was widely disseminated. there were many, many wonderful books about it. wilbur cash, the mind of the south. there are so many wonderful things that have been written give a wonderful sense of how people were viewing it. the newspapers wrote endlessly, editorialists wrote endlessly about it and i actually quote many of those in the chapters. >> got one here. this is an editorial from the the macon, georgia, telegraph,

1916. everybody seems to be asleep about what is going on right under our noses, everybody but those tomorrowers who awakened up on mornings recently, finding every negro over 21 on his place gone to cleveland, to pittsburgh, to chicago, to indianapolis. while our very solvency is being sucked out beneath us we go about our affairs as usual. that sounded like a liberal editorial in the deep south. why would they have that in a place like macon? >> there was great angst, if nothing was done to keep people from leaving in other words if conditions did not change to make it more possible for them to stay they would lose their great source of labor and that cheap labor was the underpinnings of the southern economy. it depended upon that. it is expensive proposition and great peril if you think about it to plant an entire field of cotton and not know what would happen to it. at a certain point with this book i was reading a book a day

in reserve. i read all about cotton production. it is extremely difficult. it is hazardous, difficult job. all kinds of things that can go wrong. requires just right amount of rain and not too much rain. requires just right number of days of sunshine but not too much sunshine. there are so many factors they were dependent upon, any farmer dependent upon, that the, margin for error was so great and they needed the hands available in order to pick the cotton once it was there, they could not afford to be losing this labor. >> did i read near the end that you and ida may went back down to mississippi to the cotton field? >> late '90s, yes. >> what were the circumstances? >> the circumstances were i wanted to go back with all of them, her family and see were game and i made arrangements for us to go back. we drove down to natchez trace parkway to get there. they flew into memphis and drove down highway 61, legendary and

made it to the natchez trace parkway. and, as we were driving and drew closer to the county where she lived, we came upon some cotton fields. i wanted to go back at the same time she would have left which would have been about now, was fall of the year which is the high picking season in mississippi, where she lived and, so we saw this cotton field wide open. there were no cars. it was still isolated land really. she wanted to get out and pick. and, she said, let's stop and pick some. i said, are you sure that we can do this? this land belongs to somebody. we're in mississippi. she said, oh, they're not going to care what little bit we want to pick. she jumped out of the car and went into the rows of cotton and started picking. i went with her, still wary. she seemed to be giddy. she hated picking cotton when

she had to, now she didn't have to, almost like you couldn't stop her. >> what was her life like in chicago? >> in chicago they had a really hard time making the adjustment. they had arrived as part of a group of people from the south of those migrants with the least education, least skills and didn't translate as we, particularly for women. the men could find work because strong backs were valued. they could find work in the slaughterhouses and foundries and steel mills. she had a much harder time because there weren't as great a need. there were many immigrant groups they were competing against. there were poles and hungarians, irish, swedes and germans newly arrived and were further along in the queue, particularly women in domestic work, clearly working in office of typing pool is not something she would be able to do. took a very long time for her to find work and took a long time for her husband to find work.

at first he was hauling ice up four and five flights of cold water flats outside of chicago. he was willing to do it, because he had to haul that much in cotton and something he did. it wasn't enough to take care of the family. they moved a lot. they moved from place to place to place to try to find the right location for them they could afford. they had a difficult time making adjustment. >> how did she feel about the move in the end? >> in the end she was kind of person to accept her lot no matter what it would have been but, for all of the people in the book, there were many mistakes they might have made in their lives but moving from the south was not one of them. . .

do few can imagine it of accepting what was and recognizing what you couldn't change and moving on and not living in the past. she was beloved by everyone who knew her. i know that is said about a lot of people but she was a special person. turning south, one thing we did was look up one of -- she was deported by two men where the book begins when it comes to her narrative and her decision of which of those two men would ultimately be the deciding point for her life, had gone with one man she end up going to chicago. she didn't know it at the time

but that is what she chose. the other man decided to stay. when we went back to mississippi we found him and he instantly recognized her. it had been 60 years and all those decades hadn't meant anything and he saw instantly, recognized her and said how are you? and he reached for her arm. it was a beautiful moment. and his wife came out. c-span: were you there? >> guest: oh yes. c-span: what was it about her when you met her and how did you meet her that made you choose carries one of 3 of 1200? >> guest: i went to many places i described, one place i went was the retiree boards or unions of various trades so i went to

the workers -- people who had been retired from the chicago transit authority, postal workers and such. when i went to the retirees meeting, i passed around the flyers that i passed, made my the statement and there was a woman who signed up, many people signed up because most of them had relatives in the south and a woman said i didn't actually make the decision to come to see -- from the south to chicago but my mother did. it was her daughter to signed her up and when i met with her she was fine. c-span: did you know she would be one of your three? >> guest: i knew i had a connection with her but i tend to be very methodical. it took awhile before -- i narrowed it down to 30. in the writing of this book which was a narrative it was

essential that the three characters be easily distinguishable, you could turn the page and know who you are reading about. also important that they be from different backgrounds. i didn't want them to all the sharecroppers or middle-class, and wanted them to be distinctive. they all become one because they complement one another. it would not be a situation, it took me some time to actually look at all three circumstances all three, where did they begin, what kinds of things did they do, what were their personalities and that is how the three came, and a board where you have all the characteristics and these other three that together will make volvo and narrative. of 61 left in the 30s, one of the 40s, one in the 50s, one went to chicago, one went to

l.a.. the second person, george swanson starling went from florida to new york. >> guest: he went when the situation became relevant to him. he had to drop out of school because at that time african-americans could not go to the state school. he couldn't go to them. one school he could go to was far from home and his family decided that they weren't going to keep sending him. his father decided not to send him and he had had enough schooling so he had to go back to the primary work for people in his part of florida which was central florida which was picking citrus. when he got out into a world in the way that he did, he began to realize they were being taken advantage of. the working conditions were poor, pay was worse. they were paid 10 to $0.12 a box

for many many dangerous work going into this 30 foot tree, sometimes people would fall in the process of trying to pick and he began to tried to organize them because this was world war ii, to make a little bit more money. he would be asking for a nickel more a box as opposed to the $0.12 or $0.15. this was a time when each of those boxes was commanding $3 or $4 on the open market once they sold but he was asking for a nickel more and he would speak on behalf of all the pictures. he had a hard time keeping them organized. while we are here why don't we pick? he would have to keep them at bay to say it worked last week so let's try it again this week. c-span: how old would have been in 1945 when he left? >> guest: he would have been 24, 25, he was born in 1918.

c-span: what was the impetus for him to leave? >> guest: they began plotting against him because they did not like unions anyway which was what this was becoming. even his relatives told him this was dangerous what he was doing and he had to flee for his life. c-span: how did he go? >> guest: he caught the train. he was careful about not making himself too visible in those hours and days before he left. c-span: did he just -- what time of day did he leave? >> guest: he left when the train would have left which was late in the afternoon. eagle ago when the trains went to wildwood, fla.. c-span: would anyone try to stop him? >> guest: they apparently did not try to stop him. he discreetly asked a friend of his if he would take him to the train station and they drove carefully so as not to attract attention. in other words he did not want to let anyone know he was preparing to leave so he was careful. c-span: where defeat of first? >> guest: he went to harlem.

he had previously tried to detroit's and found detroit was not going to work for him because he had actually -- he was there when there was a riot and that scared him off and he went to florida and this last time. c-span: along the way where were these folks getting their money? c-span: >> guest: they had been saving, they lived a meager lives. george swanson starling's father was the owner of a quarter store. didn't have lots of money but he had means of being able to save something. doris darling self was quite frugal. during the days they were winning, he was saving a lot of money. they were making so much more money than they were before. c-span: what did he do when he got to harlem? >> guest: he took the job as a rail reporter where he ended up

going right back to the south he had sworn he would never go back to. he found no trouble finding work because being mailed gave him an advantage in that year at and he also -- it was during world war ii that he left as opposed to ida mae brandon gladney who left during the depression so life was easier so he found a job as a railroad -- there are lots of stories of him going back and forth, building than hydration and running into the experience of going back south, going for a place that was free and having to adjust oneself when he went back to the south. c-span: what were the adjustments? >> guest: one of the adjustments was the conductor is often they were southerners would often mystery some if you were on the bad side -- one of the conductors, there was a perilous moment for him in which the conductor did not like what they thought -- what he sought was an

imperious dignity george swanson starling had and he thought that was not proper for an african-american male, that he should be a little bit more -- all little bit more, i guess, humble. but george swanson starling had more education than a lot of the people he would be around, he couldn't help being himself and he didn't like playing the game of the shuffling sidekick. that didn't go over well with some of the conductors. there was a moment when the 7 conductor actually pushed him while the train was moving and george accidentally -- between the train and the conductor, was hurled over an older white woman and to the startling to of both him and the woman, the woman was quite understanding. why would you do that? she spoke to the conductor and

george said to her he is southern, he does not -- he does those kinds of things. if you don't think this is a good thing on appreciate it if you would write in because there is nothing i can do. i can't do anything about it. c-span: you use language like colored people. at some point negros, blacks and then african-americans. >> guest: the approach was i wanted the reader to be in some moments whenever something was happening. if i was talking about what it meant to be picking cotton or getting on the jim crow train at wanted you to imagine yourself there. the language all around them would have been -- i thought it would be more consistent while we were in that era to be talking that way. c-span: the fine jim crow. >> guest: it was a cast system

in which african-americans were controlled, their every move was controlled. it hurts white people as well because the word cast can have multiple meanings and it means a fixed thing. a cast on your arm means you cannot move. it meant whites and the blacks could not move freely within their own society. it was perceived as something that hurt black people but i believe it hurt both. c-span: where did the come from? >> guest: and nineteenth century minstrel figure, a song called jumping jim crow and it was made popular by a minstrel performer who would go around the country, got quite rich by doing this and he had picked up on that by seeing the most common view is that he sought a slave who had been disabled at the time, who was unable to dance properly, wasn't able to walk well and he was doing this dance called

jumping jim crow and the minstrel performer who performed in black face all over the country ended up imitating him and getting quite rich over it. the interesting thing is he ended up dying quite young, in his 50s, and he had been paralyzed at the end of his life. he himself ended up being disabled. one of those odd quirks of history that he suffered from the very thing he had been making fun of all those years. c-span: a lot of different states. >> guest: each community had its own rules. six in were there jim crow laws in the north? >> guest: they were some but as the jim crow began in massachusetts, to have segregated railcars. jim crow was something that was applied more in the north. c-span: are there any general was left anywhere? >> guest: i'm not aware of anybody.

c-span: what was the year they went away? >> guest: in the 1970s, very late believe it or not. there was a sheriff in lake county where george swanson starling was from, sheriff willis mccall and he refused to take down the colored and white signs in his office in his sheriff's office until the 70s. he was actually -- he was written out of office by the people which the demographics had changed by then. many northerners had come in. c-span: is george starling still alive? where did you find him? how did you find him and what was the end of his life like? >> guest: he was a deacon in the church which is where he had found a kind of peace for a difficult life he had had. you could find him at the baptist house of prayer in harlem and instantly began to tell stories about his experiences. c-span: how did you find him?

>> guest: i found him at the church. c-span: you just showed up at the church and set here i am, i am looking for people? >> guest: i had an assistant who was working with me and was the first to make contact with him and when i told him when i heard about him i wanted to talk with him and i did. c-span: by the way there are no pictures in your book. why not? >> guest: my editor and i simultaneously agreed there should be no pictures because we wanted people to lose themselves in the narrative, to imagine themselves in the hearts and minds of these people, think about what you would have done in that situation, black or white, whatever the situation might have been. we thought the photographs by attaching a photograph to it would be something of a distraction to people as they try to absorb themselves in the narrative. c-span: can we ever see these? >> guest: on a website. c-span: i have been on the web site and i saw there was a young lady in there. so that is ida mae brandon

gladney? >> guest: that is my mother. she is standing on 16th street at meridian hill, newly arrived in washington d.c. and she sees a sign on the sidewalk and it says no standing. cheese pointing to enter head to the side and she is so happy and jubilant and free and basically pointing saying here i am standing at the no standing sign and i am not in the south, i am in washington, the capital of the union and i am free. c-span: i saw a picture of a man sitting down. who is that? >> guest: that man, there are several men, don't know which one you're speaking of but there's one man and a flight suit. is that to your speaking of? c-span: i don't think so. i couldn't find any other photos. how do you find some? >> guest: they are not all up loaded. i have uploaded them all yet but

they will all be up there. i have some great photographs of wonderful photographs. c-span: how did george swanson starling die? >> guest: he died somewhat heartbroken because his children in some ways had been swallowed up by the north he had fled to. he died heartbroken but still strong, but he had a brain -- he had a stroke. i went to see him in the hospital. he want -- he went into a coma. he was in new york. he was hooked into all kinds of machines and i went and squeezed his hand and told him i was there and he squeezed it back. never regained consciousness.

c-span: what happened to his kid? >> guest: the oldest son who had been a lost child had gone to see him in the hospital too. he was in a coma by that time and the son saw him in that state and he himself was diabetic and he was so distraught that -- he hadn't been getting the dialysis he needed. he needed all kinds of things that were wrong with him. he essentially gave up and he died before his own father died. his father didn't know it. he died week before his father died. he refused the dialysis so george swanson starling left this earth and not knowing that his son had died before him. c-span: the third person you focus on is robert joseph pershing foster. i understand pershing comes from

john j. pershing, black jack pershing. >> guest: the end of world war i when he was born, the hero of the day and his mother wanted her son, her black baby to have this important names that would be commemorated of the big hero of the day. c-span: i looked him up and saw he tossed african-americans, general pershing did before he was involved in the war. >> guest: i didn't realize that. that is amazing. c-span: and he was so tough that they used the n word to define him and that crossed over to call him black jack and they meant that. a lot of soldiers thought he was tough and that was negative. >> guest: i can't say whether his mother was aware of that. i doubt she would have been. one of the things i write about this fall hole naming of a child

was a special thing for these parents in the south because there was little else they could give their children. they didn't often have anything. they often had these imperious sounding names, queen, admiral, major, particularly militant, name them someone like ulysses from ulysses s. grant because that was a way of affixing greatness to their children. her choosing pershing had a great meaning for her because he was born toward the end of world war i. 1918. c-span: that is a point. he left louisiana, went to los angeles. >> guest: went to los angeles. c-span: i don't want to hear about him until you tell us your story about you and your parents in a car. give us that whole thing, sleeping in a car. >> guest: dr. foster told me the story about his migration which we can get into a little later. after hearing and i realized in order for me to truly understand

it i needed to recreate it myself so what i did was made arrangements to drive out there. i thought it would be a wonderful way, my parents were retired and always up for an adventure so they decided they would want to go with me and so we set out on course to recreate his journey. the journey took him from louisiana to houston and veered into mexico because he wanted tequila and that is another story about him. the trip would take him through texas, a perilous drive, texas was a country and to itself and through new mexico and on and on. what he had not anticipated was he was going to have much more trouble finding a place to rest than he anticipated. once he got out. c-span: what you did you drive? >> guest: i drove around 1999 may be. c-span: did you spend time

overnight in a car? >> guest: we drove to the letter all places, del rio in texas on to el paso, then we got to phoenix which is where he had trouble. we could not stop because i was trying to recall to the letter what he did. i ended up driving and continuing to drive. it got dark, the roads got mean, there were hairs in turns, it was getting dark. i was getting sleepy. i told my parents the ground rule where you cannot drive. my father was trying to keep the wheel from me. the rule was i had to drive the whole way. it got worse the further you drove because the settlements were farther apart. it was dark and we were now in the rocky mountains once you get to western point. when we got to cuba, arizona, and i was feeling of a full

effects of no sleep which had been from a houston essentially. your fingers begin to get swollen and your eyes get heavy and your eyelids want to close and everything in your body wants to sleep but you have to be alert for these hairpin curves around what then would have been no guardrails. when we got to you my, arizona, my parents and for all of our sakes you must stop driving. we are going to find a place to stay. we lived it, it is not necessary. we will stop. you must stop so we stopped in y yuma where we had no trouble because it was not 1953. c-span: had he become a medical doctor yet? >> guest: he had been in the army in the korean war. he outperformed surgery in austria but when he got back, up when he was discharged, he found he could not work in the

hospital in his home town. c-span: why? >> guest: because of the laws of jim crow. there were no hospitals that permit black people to be doctors, to perform any kind of medical work in a hospital. he had a brother who was a physician and his brother found a way around it. she couldn't live in the hospital either. was understood, the brother tried and couldn't, wouldn't be accepted there so he created a portable, basically a portable hospital office in a car that he would carry around with him. he had recently a kind of bet that someone could lay on. pershing did not want to that. he wanted everything he had been exposed to in the army. he had a distinguished career in

the army and wanted to live out a life as he imagined it so he set out on this journey, not anticipating running into trouble and that a certain point, the passage was so heartbreaking to me and some people who have read it. he had to question whether he made the right decision but it was too far. c-span: when did he arrive? >> guest: he found no one would allow him to stay in a hotel. he had the money to do it, the standing to do it, he was an american citizen, he was well beyond what would be viewed as the reach of the boundary of jim crow. he was in arizona in 1953. no one would take him in. did they tell him why? >> guest: the first people did not tell him why. ultimately the last place he went, the last place was

illinois, and they thought about it, the wife and seen him and it gave him hope he might be able to stay for the night. he might have finally met someone who would let him stay. ultimately she went back to talk with her husband. they talked for a long time and they said we are from a little and don't share the views of the people around here but we will be ostracized if we take you in. we can do it. c-span: were you surprised to find out west was this way? >> guest: i was surprised was as hardened as was. i thought there would be resistance in many people. people met resistance wherever they want, they were wanted by the industry but not necessarily the people they would encounter who would see them as competition, economic competition. where every these people went, he was a physician. for the most part these where workers, wherever they went there was potential for them to

drive down the wages, many would use the strike breaker so there was a lot of resistance to their rival. i was not surprise there would be resistance. i was surprised he ran into as much as they did. c-span: where did you see him, meet with him and spend time with him? >> guest: the way i met him was the most interesting of all. i spent a great deal of time in los angeles talking to any number of groups that i could find who were connected to los angeles, louisiana and texas and i ran in all these clubs, louisiana club and all the various, creel club and so many places. i went to so many places that at one point a woman came up to me and said i have seen you at far many of these places talking about this migration and i have

heard the questions you have been asking and i see is that you are still here some 80 or looking. he said i know the perfect person for you to talk to unusual when someone says that your thinking almost like someone setting you up on a blind date. you figure there's no way they could possibly know who you really want. i met with him at his home in los angeles. a lovely home which was a testament to his achievements and his success in los angeles after all that he had gone through and he had a hard time getting established. he was quite gracious, presented me with ice cream and cake which i did not want or need and watched me eat every morsel of it. it was the way he did things and he proceeded to tell me as i told him about what i was doing, he said i love to talk and i am my favorite subject. c-span: was he married? >> guest: he had been married. he was a widower as were all three of the people i ended up

talking to. c-span: how old was he? >> guest: he was in his 70s, maybe 76. c-span: what is the vegas story? when he wanted to go to vegas? they wouldn't let him, he wasn't allowed to go. >> guest: vegas was off-limits to african-americans and he was getting this needling from other doctors, at a certain point to find a job working in a hospital in los angeles, the very thing he wanted to in new orleans so the white physicians would regale one another with stories of caesar's or palm springs and always ask him had you been there yet? he said you know i can't go. of course i haven't been. don't ask me any more because it makes me feel bad and i want to go but i can't. sometimes they would forget and he would say that again but he began to make some calls and found out he heard from someone that was beginning to open up to african-americans.

this was in the mid 50s and he got the name of a connection. a man named jimmy gay who became famous for being a person who would be a go-between, an intermediary helping black people to get rooms in the hotel if they were not permitted. he heard about this man named jimmy gay and called him and said we'd like to bring the party of 12 or so. we are excited about coming to vegas, this was always his dream. he was a really big gambler. jimmy gay said sure, tell me when and where and made the arrangements for them to go to a place called the riviera hotel which was brand-new. it had all the latest conveniences. it was a big deal. there were songs about it in los angeles and he would sing the songs to himself in anticipation of going to. when they got there, they have all this luggage. the women had been packing for weeks. they got there and there was no indication there was room for

them. he began to have recollections of the experiences crossing the desert that night, not that long before. anti had to call this man and make arrangements and eventually they got him in another hotel and once he got there, he remembered finally being able to get to the roulette wheel and he had a special suit he had anted bent over to play the wheel and he was quite a character, he had a blood red lining inside of this black san suu he was wearing and he just said he essentially was in heaven. ..

making sure went to the best school she defines which was a school west of the portrait she actually made, arranged for a cab to take me there. i was five years old. she would tell the cab driver don't take anyone else up, you know, i see a cab number. i will pay you to bring the right back on. a cab was always there waiting for me. the cab was empty because she want to make sure they didn't pick up anyone else. when i got to the school i would run into all kinds of people from all over the country. often diplomats, children from san salvador are from chile or from finland, all over. even those who were

american-born were descendents of people from ireland, scotland or wherever they might have been, germany or russia. certain days, like st. patrick's day they were all stored people were telling about life in the old country, a great. i done this or that for food. i felt a at the time they didn't have any stories to tell. it turned out that actually i did, and/or many great stories that came out of the great migration trend for along the way you time to get married or have a family? >> guest: i have been married. i am not married now. c-span: any children? >> guest: no. c-span: how did you survive financially? >> guest: the random house was wonderful. i had an advance. that was help, a great hell. i also got a guggenheim the contribute to. and i taught at princeton. i taught at emory. i continued to write

periodically for the new york times is where spent most of my career. so i've done a lot of things to help. >> guesthelp. c-span: what's next? >> guest: los angeles. more talk about the book because this was a book that was written to be read. i'm happy to see people buying it and it's done really well. what i really want people to read it. we have so much more in common. and also enjoy. there are beautiful people. c-span: if we see the pictures, will we have a change of feeling about these folks? >> guest: no. it will confirm what you already know and what you already learned from having read it. c-span: isabel wilkerson, the name of the book is "the warmth of other suns." thank you very much for joining us. >> guest: thank you for having me. ♪ ♪ >> for a copy of this program

call 18 7/7 662 7/7 26. for free transcriptions or to give us your comments about this program, visit us at q-and-a.org. q&a programs are also available as c-span podcast. >> join us later today when we'll read air the q&a conversation with isabel wilkerson but it starts at 7 p.m. eastern right here on c-span2. is a great read to add to your summer reading list. c-span's latest book "sundays at eight." >> i always knew there's a risk in the beginning national and i decided to take it. because whether it's news or not, i just think it is.

it helped my concentration. it stopped me from being bored. stop other people from being bored. it would keep me awake. would make you want to go on longer to enhance the moment. if i was asked would i do it again, the answer is probably yes. i would have quit earlier possible. easy for me to say of course. not nice for my children here. not responsible if i say i would do all that the agency. i didn't know. >> soviet union and the soviet system in eastern europe contains the seeds of its own destruction. many of the problems that we saw at the end begin at the very beginning. i spoke about the attempt to control all institutions and control all parts of the economy and political life and social

life. one of the problem is that when you do that, when you try to control everything, then you create opposition and potential dissidents everywhere. if you don't all artists to paint the same way and one artist is no, i do want to think that way, i want to pu paint another way can you just make it into a political dissident if you want to subsidize housing in this country, and we want to talk about it and the populist entries is something we should subsidize, then put it on the balance sheet and make it clear and make it evident and make everybody aware of how much it is costing. but when you deliver it to the third party enterprises, then -- and and freddie mac, when you deliver the public company with private shareholders and executives who can extract a lot of subsidies for themselves, that is not a very good way of subsidizing homeownership. >> christopher hitchens and others are a few of the 41 engaging stories in c-span

"sundays at eight" now available at your favorite bookseller. >> here's what's ahead. next, all of today's "washington journal" program. after that hearing looks at the nation's school lunch programs. later a house oversight subcommittee hears testimony about the future of the u.s. postal service. >> here's some of the highlights for this weekend.