justice for all," and "power in words". discipline mary frances berry coming in your book you write that most black americans have always been more american than white americans. sb two it is sort of like being more catholic than the pope. believing more in the values and principles that are laid out in the declaration of independence and in the preamble to the constitution . and the american ethos, and believing it fundamentally and using those principles as a way to try and ask for the progress on equality for them. that is what i mean. >> host: what is approved?

>> guest: every time there is some type of protest movement organized a mass civil disobedience, other kinds on the part of african americans by people in coalition with them all is what they asked for are the principles, pristina american values. and martin luther king asked for justice he spoke in the tops of the language of the declaration of independence and the constitution. it was not the tones of some alien philosophy that exists in some other country. >> host: in that book you recount some of the black resistance movement over the years. when did it for storage? >> guest: there has been a resistance movement since the beginning of the republic. in the colonials we have documented movements of people trying to escape slavery, trying to resist their oppression. not as many as one might

hope. a lot of discipline. loss of movement. i wrote a book once called black resistance wedlock. a couple of chapters on the war, the black resistance movement. blacks and some models or a live together in florida and fighting to maintain their autonomy. so in one way or another, different modes of resistance, there has been some kind of resistance. tampa port an article years ago which i used. day to day resistance to slavery. what they meant by that is the little things that a person can do day-by-day,

breaking toes were saying that the animals would not plow or wherever it was. some way to resist. there are many differ ways to resist. >> host: if you have to make a general statement about what life was like for southern blacks into to not last very long. excitement. eventually black man get the right to vote. and we know that there was great excitement about that, including women who could not book but he wears the men on and would tell them how embarrassed there would be if they did not even though it was risky. so there was great excitement about the prospect that would take place, and these were dashed . was a great change be ample left wherever they were wandering all over the place looking for other families

to put them back together. kids to have been sold away, all kinds of problems and a they were trying to reconstruct. it was excitement. >> host: white is reconstruction of last iraq's bid to it did not last because once the war was over the area soldiers wanted to go home. that was one thing. and no one was when in a position in the north to permanently occupy the south panera the south was not about to give in to the chains that had taken place without resistance. a lot of violence when these groups like the knights of what can million, we talk of a terrorist groups in our country. that existed. there is resistance and the desire to end the war the

blacks were left on their own pretty much. >> host: when did the state's rights movement began? >> guest: states' rights started way before the civil war. there were -- from the beginning of the republic when we got the 2-party system which was never envisioned, a thing abcafive and, we then did people arguing of of the meeting of the constitution panera some people taking the stance that the tenth amendment have more privacy than the rest of the end of the people feeling that we should have a strong national government. this discussion animated the debate over slavery in the south end it animated the debate over the tariff and then puts coming into the country. who benefited and he did not some of the great statesmen of that time by john calhoun and others work, and fact, states' righters.

happened before the solar. some people think it is something that happened way after and that we talk about it now, but it is of long standing and, in fact, debates about it at the constitutional convention the privacy of states' rights. >> host: waited the term jim-crow come from? >> guest: there was a move according to people who researched this. i am not. my colleague with whom i wrote long memory wrote about some of this. they would dance. the dance was called dancing some crowberry it was a man struck kind of black face, the way that blacks were supposedly. >> host: when did that movement in? >> guest: after reconstruction and the ending of reconstruction.

we actually get laws passed the segregate on the basis of race. those a formal, legal structure to place gradually and was in place by the end of the 19th century as we go into the next century, in fact, it was in place in reality in many places. all that was was a different way to control black people below full control by slavery. and now to control them by segregation which would also mean that they were inferior >> host: back to your book many blacks felt better about the certainty of discrimination in the south and the bewildering twists and turns and the color line in the north primitive was not that the south was a land of opportunity or that race relations are better there than in the north.

on the contrary, blacks prefer the soft because of a mason-dixon line in new what to expect. in the north discrimination appeared in the most unexpected places. apec was never sure of how tax. >> guest: right. you might assume that every where everything would be desegregated and ella would never say anything racist or do anything that was a solution very panel but it might have been carried it might happen dividend they were, in fact, places where interracial marriage was illegal. there was some segregation that you would encounter. whereas a number you knew that there was legal segregation and that you would be segregated. he did not have to worry of of whether that would happen perry that was the way things work spent let's go to your book, but.

>> guest: i mentioned it earlier. >> guest: white oppression and black resistance has been a part of the american scene since the colonial. the response of the government in its efforts to suppress racial disorder has reflected the tension between the lofty ideals expressed on which constitutional government is based in the tendency of the white majority to desires of a predisposition. the collection of the white majority to suppress the first african-americans to acquire real freedom and equality in the u.s. as a group even when white oppression means resorting to an illegal violence and brutality is added to that tension. >> guest: right pyramid that is a truism about the long sweep of american history. i began writing at polk when i was in law school at michigan. i began writing it the night

martin luther king was assassinated by was angry and upset i had been asked by one of my professors, when did the president start using executive power to suppress resistance movements? and i had not thought about the question in quite the wave of food. and so i started clarice search in that book which eventually get published. but i think that statement is a truism about the country reenforce something you said earlier about blacks embracing american values and then fighting. i told you about resistance movements reaching out to those values prejudices' a goal and this is will we want prevent description is the way the system worked.

but within the description is the dichotomy between the values and the reality and will blacks are always seeking is to achieve that reality. it is, in fact, we are still seeking. >> guest: originally written in 1971, 1994. >> guest: published in 94. does that still holds true today? >> guest: bring the book up to 90 floor. the changes that took place over the years. a closer approximation we came to achieving those goals while there is still a lot left to be done. let's talk about the various resistance movements and how they were suppressed.

>> host: ferguson, how does that fit into your book ? >> guest: i would have to take into account what i know based upon the hearings that ended at the civil rights commission based upon police community relations in my own experience with these matters panetta would have to write. while we have made great progress which is, again, a truism, sense the time that the book was begun and since the beginning of the republic will we still have not quite done it right. some proposal have not clicked and the message. a lot more needs to be done. >> host: when did he served as chair of the sole rights movement? >> guest: i was appointed nominated in 1980 and confirmed by the senate parent i had run federal

education programs. but with that -- when i left the apartment he appointed me to the commission. i stayed on the commission. when bill clinton was president he made me chair. >> host: when the distillers commission began? >> guest: 1957. dwight eisenhower as president who had it propose to him by his attorney general at a meeting. one of the things that motivated it was the protests among blacks and the road but that had been done during the truman administration. the beginning of desegregation in the armed forces, the continued complaints about race relations and racism in the united states making it hard for the united states to stand up and compete in the

world the underdeveloped world, asia, africa, and more and more attention was for the minds and hearts of men. i guess women, the appellate panel were always pointing out cannonades i'm anything happened permitted it just made it really, really difficult. all of that was one reason why his attorney general said to him, you know, maybe we should do is set up a commission. in the united states government sets up commissions from time to time. your listeners notice printed whenever there is some problem that seems in solvable, we get a commission. they make an investigation. usually then make it and go away.

the books, you know, on the shelves and that is the end of that at seven next cyber. john eisenhower in suddenness that, if you're going to do this they're going to need subpoena power and people are scared to come and so congress has to pass it agreed to subpoenas somebody need the authority of statutory law the first alights act passed since reconstruction, and it was set up, supposed to be one year palin and manitoba people who were there that he pounded the table. have to put the facts on top of the table. i don't know whether he actually did, but that is the story. in any case they went out and started doing hearings.

they were to be independent and given independent you to the public and the president and to what is going on in race relations and how they would go unsolved and his problems. i left the commission in 2004. i resigned right after george bush that sarah and the commission i resigned from it because i knew we would not -- we had not had a majority in favor of doing something positive and civil rights in my opinion i had struggled and done everything possible to try to get something done bush would continue after he was reelected with the same

policies he had before priscilla thought that i have served my time so this week committed the. >> host: is the commission different than other agencies might whoever's in power in the white house is the majority? he served as chair. >> guest: when the commission was set up by eisenhower -- and i explained this in the book when it was renewed after the first year and kept on being renewed and is still around it was pylos an independent agency independent from the president, everybody. and it was to have balanced. at first the people were nominated by the president and confirmed by the senate. was to be bipartisan.

the idea was that no one would influence what they did. when they had reports have ready they would release of. that was the idea abuse. >> host: in that book the u.s. commission on civil rights and the struggle for freedom in america, you write that the civil rights commission betrayed the nation for which the agency was founded and headed did not address flooding of the need to find ways to achieve diversity spells jury did not do any of that that is true. not even so much that they might have different opinions printed is okay to have different opinions panelled but when a major episodes and events will occur will investigate and

made the commission would go and investigate the causes of things they seem to be oblivious or has some reason i don't know about for not investigating any of these things. >> host: one of the things you write about was the 2000 presidential election. >> guest: i was chairman. he got all of these complaints from about problems they were having ended they wanted the commission today something and with the law says john -- and the commission had been very visible for a long time. and the law required us to do something. it said that when people complained, voting rights shove investigated.

the staff collected all of this information. and a couple of them went down to florida where all this was coming from to see what was going on, talk to various we all agree, republicans and democrats, that we had been busted. we waited until the election was over. we were not trying to interfere with the election. and he did want to find a with the problems orbitz. we did hearings in florida which were televised. in fact, there were televised almost everywhere in the world that had televisions. subpoenaed people. the governor, katherine harris to my secretary of state, also on the bush campaign committee and so on

as well as the people who has complained about what had happened to them people who were told they were felons when they had never been arrested. even one of them was the county clerk in charge of elections and the they told her she was a felon. listed unless the fellows that they had permitted then we discover through the testimony that the company that did upwards of the list, but the right list, katherine harris, secretary of state and her staff and that the list would erroneous because of the way that it was done. they went ahead and did it anyway. report finally focused on something that none of the media really talk much about. the media was consumed.

what we talked about mainly was then no count, and he went to try to vote. there's so did not leaving it included. people are quite upset. i mean to my elderly people who were told that the polling place was upstairs in a building. when they came from the senior citizens center, no elevator the people who are disabled, i remember this. he could not get to the polling place because they moved it and there was a big ditch in front of the polling place. start yelling that he wanted to go into the polling place privately told him he had to get someone to carry him across the ditch to get into

the polling place and the one where people found out that they're calling place was inside the gated community and read when they drove there to go inside to vote it was after work and there was nobody on the gate and they did not live there. they could not kid in the gate. sitting out there blowing horns. the plan side did not know how to open the gate because nobody told them carried by the time the state troopers came and all this stuff happened it was too late to vote peso they're all these examples of people who felt that the right to vote had been taken away the minute we made some recommendations to congress and the public which ended up in something called the help america vote act passed by the congress permitted did not take all the recommendations, but it took a lot of them and sends of having a provisional

ballot. you think a person as phelan -- california had provisional pilots. you could let them vote and check it out later middle lot of other arab governments that needed to take place and money for the states to use to clean up the voting system. has not solve all the content of wrigley still the boss of a couple of voter suppression and voter fraud in, but that was one of the reports that i think did some good. >> host: one of the issues we're discussing today his voter ideologue. >> guest: voter i.d. laws conceptually makes sense. we have to have idea to get on a plane, for anything. i can't even go to my doctor's office unless i have an idea a gun the building which i find curious. the problem is when aid is

used in situations where a client don't have access or can't get the propriety or turned away all it does is serving as a device to keep it from voting. one of the books i will start writing when i finished the show, voters depression and drug. my preliminary research, people who don't want to increase the number of voters engage in a voter suppression. that means the package choice but both parties probably have officials who do a little fraud every now and then spending and in this is book tv in-depth, a monthly program with one

offer, his/her body of work. this month it is dr. mary frances berry, former chair of the organization of american historians. here are written current books beginning with black resistance wedlock, a history of constitutional racism in america, military necessity and civil rights policy for black citizens to ban the constitution. 1861-1868 panera stability, security, continuity about justice carol burton. along memory, the black experience in america cannot in 1982. the politics of 1993 the performers daughter.

my face is black in. from 2005 damage justice for all. the u.s. commission on civil rights, the struggle for freedom the leader most recent published book pelerine words, the story behind barack obama speeches from the state house to the white house. if you would like to participate the numbers are up in the screen. five william burrows 3881. for those of you in the mountain and pacific time zone we are taking comments finally we're worried born and raised?

>> guest: as well, tennessee's. >> host: why? >> guest: why was i born in asheville? to in must be where my parents were. >> host: what was your carries like? >> guest: we one of my high-school teachers to me was that i should not tell people that i grew up "where that i was in an orphanage was not part of the upwardly mobile middle-class. i never took her advice. i will explore my mother raised us. my father left tibia and she raised me and my brother under very difficult circumstances. alice thought that if the circumstances have not been so difficult and we have more jeter would be tall.

sp one windy believe? >> guest: i left to go to college. i went to howard university. i went to an -- in washington d.c. nelson went to the university of michigan graduate school and to law school. >> host: when did you become chair? >> guest: i was elected in 1990 by my peers. >> host: when did you decide you're interested? >> guest: when i was at howard and had some wonderful teachers. they taught me at howard. i had been interested before . she was one of my best friends. but our first thought that i would be a scientist. so i was majoring in

chemistry and biology. i am glad. it gives me an understanding of science and humanities. then when i ha these teachers of history and became interested and deciddo graduate work spin when you open your book talking about an experience at age. >> guest: that is the one, i think my mommy working at this house taking care of the white families little kid. .. did

she looked at me with an icy stare and said, well who told you you could play back music? that is not for you. don't play that music. i was very upset because i didn't know what they'd done wrong. and so, when i got home, i didn't tell my mother because i knew she would be angry with me. i did tell my favorite hands and she said to me, girl, you stay out of those white folk studies. because she was worried if i got in trouble that i wouldn't be

about to get a job, all kinds of things would happen to me. and i say in the book that bad experience forever clouded my enjoyment of beethoven's symphony and was actually number nine that i liked very much at that time. i liked all the symphonies. so every time i hear beethoven's symphonies and not one in particular, i think about what happened in that particular situation. but i also say in the book, which is true that from then on i did when they had told me. i stayed out of white folks things and if i didn't, i just didn't tell them. >> host: was that woman upset because you touched her things are because you are listening to music it wasn't appropriate for you? >> guest: well, at 12 but wasn't entirely clear to me why

she was so upset. as i thought about it later, i decided one, she didn't understand why it would be listening to this classical music and telling her how great it was, that was somehow offend this. i'm touching her things and she didn't tell me to. and two, i am listening to classical music, which i didn't know was classical music. i just know his music. and i am telling her how great it is. and how could i., given who i was and where i come from like that and tell her it was just like incomprehensible to her in so out of place. it is what in the sense they used to call it the uppity. reviewer acted like something you're not. i think that probably was the case. >> host: let's take some calls. we will begin with person boston. you are on ways mary frances berry. >> caller: hello, dr. berry. i'm a big fan of yours.

i watched it on c-span since the 1980s. >> guest: file. >> caller: my question is could you talk about the black community and why the government credit berti, especially the congressional black caucus is more indicating policies for illegal immigrants and blacks. can you talk about the way black youths being raised is leading to these of these negative interactions with police? >> guest: first of all, i don't think i've written anything about illegal immigrants and black workers. i do believe that immigration, people who come here as immigrants by a march, wherever they come from should be let into the country and into the

body politic as it is part of again, the dichotomy between american values on the one hand and what really happens in the united states on the other. i also do think there are economists who believe there is a negative impact on jobs for workers in this country. not just black workers, workers generally, especially in jobs that are killed by having more immigrants come into the country. that has happened in every. in our history and there is always an adjustment and unbounded if this worked out. but i am aware of these tensions. as far as black family is a concern, i don't believe that what happened to michael brown happened either because he didn't have a father, because he does, or what happened to someone march in because he

didn't have a father because he did. they both have fathers and i don't believe it had anything to do with the black family structure. because if it did come a young black man who come from intact families or who have no family structure problems that we know about wouldn't be killed in these altercations. i did several months ago she was announced that the commission starting with the mod dorado shooting in new york in the apartment building where he lived. there wasn't any family structure problem in that case or sean bell and the uric in so far as i know. people over the years -- there may be white people, black people, people of any color who have family structure problems and they may end up having some and happen to them, but i don't think that has any relationship

to what is happening with the police. >> host: mary frances berry, when it comes to ferguson we have heard from the civil rights commission, help with? >> guest: we haven't heard for the civil rights commission. it's another example of what i see in this boat. i actually think the civil rights commission should be abolished and there should be a law passed, which creates a new civil and human rights commission, human rights of all people, that has independence on and it and starts over a get with the mandate to do something. what happens in the various fights announced that the commission and the desire to use it for political purposes as it has made it ineffective. so it needs to be changed. at the civil rights commission has no interest or nothing to say about what happened in ferguson or with trayvon or any of these episodes as well as

what is happening with the immigrants and the refugees across the border, all of these issues they don't understand why we need one. >> host: bruce in boston also mentioned black families. this is your book, "the politics of parenthood" child care, women's rights in the myth of a good mother. here is a quote from that the weird for divorced women, most african-american women in large numbers of women from other racial minority groups have always had to balance jobs and children. the passage of a child care bill with even minimal services came about because the white middle-class women and not because of poor women's needs. >> guest: that is exactly right. it's one of the frustrating things about the history of african-american women on this continent from the days of slavery. large numbers of black women have worked. women of other racial minority

groups have worked. whether they get it alongside there has been stores or wherever they were, people worked. but when the debate takes place about childcare and balancing work and jobs and all the rest of it, one thing that happens is white middle-class women, when they express their turns, it seems to be more of a response. this is just a start. it has to do with the racial aspect of what goes on in american society. there's another thing that happens. poor black women who work and take care of families like my mother took care of us are demeaned in conversations and society because the ideas you should be married to someone and if you are married to someone that would solve all your problems and all of your children's problems. well, if they marry someone in the person didn't have a job,

which if it is a black male in today's society with the unemployment rate where it is and has been for black men are quite a long time coming you would be more likely to end up taking care of them than having them take care of the family. i give two cheers always for the single headed household in which a woman is working, and balancing jobs and children and trying to take care of a family. >> host: leo is in the bronx. go ahead, leo. >> caller: hi, c-span. thank you for taking my phone call. my question is for professor berry. can you describe your relationship with clarence thomas when i believe he was on the staff of the civil rights commission and also the charge also the charges that soak sure harassment which came out during his hearings for social justice. did you see this coming or were you surprised? >> guest: clarence thomas

fangio when he was at the department of education and when he was chair of the eeoc. we were never friends, but i knew him and i knew him well enough from observations and conversations with other people to understand he saw himself on a career trajectory and i remember he was sometimes beyond tv together talking about issues and he would make a point to a point of either not seen anything at all, like he does on the supreme court bench where he almost never says anything or didn't say anything that could possibly be controversial. i did not see coming the nea charges against him, also based on what she said and the

evidence they cannot at that time, i was a surprise. from our face the age, this is william woodford. ms. berry is extreme left. sample quote. the legal system supports our capitalist economic system because capitalism requires inequality. the only real question was who will be the repositories that he and equality. is that a quote from you? >> guest: i don't know whether it is or not, but it's true. if you take economics 101 as a course in college, one of the things they will teach you is capitalism by definition requires inequality. that's the whole definition of the economic capitalist system. the only question is who will be up in who will be down in who will be in the middle.

that is not a pejorative and it's not an assessment one way or the other as to how it should be, but it's just true. if you don't understand that, you will spend her whole life trying to figure out why there's inequality in the society. that is all. >> host: brohm is calling from philadelphia. you are on booktv on c-span2 with mary frances berry. >> caller: hi, peter. thank you to c-span2 booktv for seeing the value of mary frances berry. after berry, thank you so much for allowing me to interview you in february 2011 on community radio about your very important book that peter quoted from and he talked about of the civil rights commission and justice for all. just wanted to get your opinion on two things. first, obama's use of executive power is specially regarding the

civil rights commission number one. number two, your opinion of his administration is siding with royal dutch shell in the key of g-golf versus royal dutch shell decision. wondering if you knew about that. if you did, your opinion. >> host: but if that case? tesco coat the case of kyl bell versus royal dutch shell was a case where plaintiffs related and 96 who was murdered by the nigerian military and basically in his memoir he talked about the role of shell and basically keeping up, propping up the same military government ruling out nigeria that exists today, that basically strengthens a vocal of iran. this is something talked about in his new memoir. he passed last year called there was a country. i was wondering if dr. berry had an opinion about how the obama

administration cited the show completely to totally dismiss the case said the plaintiffs in nigeria who were fighting for right to prevent shell from exploiting oil as they've been doing for decades since the 60s in nigeria. >> guest: i had forgotten what his first question was. >> host: is about executive power, and use of executive power. >> guest: that means is that you want first and then i go back to that one. what i know about the situation in nigeria, if only some of the degradation that has taken place there. i am not sure what obama did or what position he took on the case. the exploitation that goes on there is not did. that is what happens with oil companies in all these different places in the world. i know little about the other details on a side not going to

comment. as far as obama's use of executive power, i don't know if you mean obama as executive and what do i think about all the things he is doing or whether he's talking about using executive orders, using his pen to achieve certain goals. if the latter is what you mean, i am ambivalent about executive orders. on one hand, and present issues an executive order to do something i like, i think that's terrific. the president issues an executive order to do something i don't like, i think it's awful. and in fact, i know president has the authority to issue executive orders, but i think on matters of great public consequence, they have to be very careful how far they go and how quickly they go when they do it. so it depends. >> host: your most recent

book, "power in words" the story behind president obama speeches from the status to the white house. how do you approach the writing of that book? historian, political scientist? >> guest: well, josh got heimer who was one of my students at penn and then worked in the clinton white house as a speechwriter and i wrote the book together. and josh knew the intricacies of speechwriting and knew john favreau who was president obama speechwriter. well. and so, we had a lot of inside stories on what they thought they were doing with this speech when they wrote it, which was a whole purpose of the book. you can get the speeches that the internet. but what you can't get is the back story on how and why certain things were put in and how they were done and how they've not and to get the impression from it. what i did is josh brought to

the project his knowledge of the back stories and i brought my history of presidents in speechwriting and such things as the way woodrow wilson in fact was a scholar and has been president of princeton is the one, how he taught himself consciously to speak to the public so he could speak their language and how the president did it and assessing obama in what he did in light of the history. >> host: in this book, you write to crack the write to crack the big speeches, sat together for hours deep into the evening drinking red bull, one line after another, calling out ideas and language as they sat in front of their own laptops typing up remarks as they went along. many of obama's most famous speeches such as the one he gave the night of the iowa caucus and

his 2008 address to the democratic convention with great lines crafted a speechwriter's and by the candidate, there were exceptions to the process, but this is the usual way candidate obama worked with the speechwriters and they work with each other. >> guest: yes, it is not fascinating? that is a wonderful way to work. some presidents let speechwriters and listen to the candidates and then they go off and write some and. then they come back and pass it around or share with the candidate and then they figure out whether this is the thing to say in the candidate tells them something and they finish it. it is much like some supreme court justices write opinions and others the clerks write. this is an interactive process that obama engaged in.

it is unique in a lot of ways. you put the full text of the speeches as well. one of the speeches you call his best interview and i may be putting words in your mouth. let me know. call to renewal keynote address to 28, 2006 in washington d.c. >> guest: you have to tell me which one it is. >> host: the one where he was at a church and he talks about religion and reconciliation on issues such as this one where he talks about the fact he changed his website on abortion. he changed the language on its website on abortion because it was in a sense victory alex. does that ring a bell?

>> guest: yes, it does. what church was that? postcode national city church here in washington. get go the purpose of that was to engage with people coming in so far as i can tell, religious motivation. but at the same time, not to offend those who were not turned about it and to deal the issues and now. talk about the need for people to come together. that was the whole purpose of the speech and he did it beautifully. >> host: speechmaking different when you're president and campaigning? >> guest: absolutely. mary cuomo used to talk about you campaigned in poetry. some people have been shot since obama became president because his speeches don't seem to them to be as inspiring as they were when he was on the campaign

trail. or when you are president, you have so many things you have to take into account. when you are a candidate, what you're doing is making promises and reassuring and inspiring people. that is what you're doing. people who listen to a candidate, whether it's obama or anybody else and believe what he's saying is exactly what he's going to do if he is elected, they are crazy. that's just not true. it has never been true. what he is telling you is his overall vision he wants to convey to you about where he stands and he will convey what he feels at that time. first of all, he doesn't know what he has on his plate. it is true for every president. i don't remember -- i remember seeing it was jimmy carter and his administration. when you come in come you don't have any idea what is on your plate. and when you get there, and his leg while, if i had of known.

and then the constraints on what you do in every word and every action. you get that either the low-level officials who are in politics who come in as political appointees. you think you're going to do this, change the world and you come in and find out what is on your desk is not what you thought was fair. so, obama was conveying his feeling that what he thought would connect with the public when he was talking on the campaign trail. and he is very good at that. in the vision for people. but once he got to be president, every word that he says has to be tested for how does that they did with what policy is or where we think we are going order was offended by that. he has spoken at times without thinking about it, he's gotten

into trouble. if you remember the incident at the summit and the white house and his comments before that about what it happening. people said why did he say that? is right in the middle of some other user cannot and it's gotten off message and sameness and it hasn't been tested through by everybody. he was speaking this early. the window rock and they named a new got the talent he has, you want people to feel like they should vote for you and that there is a future and that it's going to be bright. that's what he did. >> host: are there too many constraints when you get into government? >> guest: the constraints that they are because you have a responsibility and the responsibility is to not screw it up. and to go, you know, make some progress, however incremental on

whatever is there before you. and you are always in danger of screwing in a period and so, you have to be too careful. you have to tread carefully all the time. the constraints are there because we don't want you to go into wild flights of imagination and go off and do all sorts of things and never think about the consequences because there are always consequences. postcode consequences. postcode dennis' conference alabaster, alabama. please go ahead. >> good morning. in light of the militarization of the police department can do think it's possible and necessary for s.w.a.t teams to be declared totally unconstitutional and illegal and a worthwhile thing to pursue? thank you. >> guest: now, i don't think s.w.a.t team should be declared unconstitutional. that depends on what they're used for. i think that s.w.a.t teams, when there is a problem that requires a s.w.a.t team out to be used.

but when there is an issue or a problem, which does not require militarized police, then all they do is irritate people, upset people, create more problems. it is not what you do, but it is how you do it. >> host: chris, baltimore. good afternoon. >> caller: good afternoon, professor berry. two quick questions. there has been a lot of talk about revising history within the public school system. i think i'm reading here an article from "the new york times" magazines concerning how bill gates wants to have ideas about implementing certain application initiatives and referendums to revising history and making it more inclusive for

science in than a couple other disciplines. that's the first question. how do you feel about that? the second per question, what is the role of the historian in the 26 century. i love you. we all love you. thank you. >> guest: i'm not sure you while thea, but i'm sure you do with it or he appreciated by this. since i as i said earlier on the show was a science major before i was a history major and train a philosophy major, which is in a sense science, i am very aware of the role that this one's play. but i think the purpose of the historian is different from that of the scientists and i think one of the things historians have to do is to bring in contending views and get people to think and argue about them, about the past and come up with the best they can do with what the past tells us about our lives and the people who live

them. perhaps a little bit about what we can do. so i think they are two different things. but i am not opposed to his idea, bill gates, if history. he can get it implemented. the role the 21st century is the same as the historian in every other history. that is to inform us about the past and find out enough as we can. history doesn't repeat itself. even though exactly there are certain human characteristics that exist for all time. things like read an entry and jealousy and love in all the scare or six. and so, we can get some clear idea about what might happen to less than what we might do from studying the past. >> host: mary frances berry, you write in your book, the pink

farmer's daughter and other tales of american justice, the stories of the powerful are the only ones that can't and accounting further enhances the power of the tellers in the economic and political arena. >> guest: absolutely. victors always try to determine what the narrative is. and the powerful are the one -- the very definition of being powerful is that you get to exercise some control. and so, the stories -- there are lots of stories about what happened in the past and what is happening now. but the stories that have more power will be the ones that are dominated the future as they've been in the past. >> host: who is the pink farmer's daughter? >> guest: the farmer's daughter is not me. i gave a copy of this book to somebody.

i think it was hillary clinton one day in the administration and i think somebody in there and to me we didn't know you were a pig farmer's daughter. no, not me. the pig farmer daughter was how race, class and gender have influence decisions made from an 18th century to the time i wrote the book in the 20th century. what the pig farmer daughter shows was the black guy was accused of raping her on the side of the road. you would think he was lynched or something, but that isn't what happened. what happened was he was convicted by a local jury. no one lynched him. hugh was put in jail and he

wasn't dragged out of jail. this was in texas. he went before the jury of 12 wightman good and true local people and they convicted him. he had an appeal and he had an appeal because someone paid to hire lawyers for his appeal. you have to pay to hire a lawyer in very few cases were appeal. on appeal the state supreme court justices agree to overturn the verdict. when they wrote the opinion, they said well, this man was defended by testimony by her brother at moyer, big plantation owner down there. he said he's a good boy and he hopes of people and he doesn't create any trouble for anybody. and then they noted some other person and said he worked for me and so on. then somebody said this girl who says he raping hurt is nothing but the farmer's daughter, which

shows how class overturns weeds and gender in the particular case of the example he used there. though this doesn't mean when she didn't happen. some people jump to the conclusion maybe there weren't any lynchings, was lynchings, was in a new racism the point. the point is there are exceptions but a lot of it has to do with who you know in who you are related to. i tell a story of the pig farmer's daughter about my uncle linking. i say he was this camp because my uncle linking a wonderful man, i loved him and when we were kids he would come to the house and you pick you up and were you in the air catch you. if you would give you candy and all kinds of stuff. but he would get drunk every now and then according to my mother that he would underpin jail, and

would be looking for him and she was caught on to the jail because she figured he was there macias who's in here. you stronger mr. so-and-so who he worked for, the white man he worked for his worked for us are recalled will let them out in the morning when he wakes up. well, they didn't let going to have because they loved this man on the link in. they loved his boss. that gives you another example about how the pig farmer daughter does too. are you open that up to page mr. monday. >> guest: thursday are at alongside the house of one of my aunts and my cousins and all the kids, all of us who play out there in the summertime. it looks huge to me when i was four. it not that huge. older cousins would take care of

as the movie out there playing. one day we were there this motorcycle came up and the motorcycle rammed through a common making all this noise and we were scared and we all ran like little chickens. i was crying. the guy said to somebody and they said, you mr. bundy then he raced off on his motorcycle. i asked my cousin what this was than what was going on. and he said that if a police man. that is what that is. a police man. so is my first site a police man was a guy who runs a free bunch of kids who are playing on a motorcycle and yells at them and scares them and then ask them what day it is. when someone says monday, call me mr. bundy.

he went away and i found out after a corrupt back i was well known in the neighborhood were going around scaring people. you'd be sitting on the stoop say what dave says whatever you said, you didn't say mr. bundy, so you were in trouble. so that made me a little fearful and how this negative reaction to police just viscerally. not anything consciously thought out because police to me what mr. friendly with the ice cream, but two q. and when you went away, but a guy who did all that. >> host: has that start with you? it was more subdued, but it's still in my head. >> host: when you see something like ferguson with the militarization of the police. >> guest: well, i just hope it is not mr. bundy. >> host: john is coming out

from upper marlboro. you are on with mary frances berry. >> caller: i have two quick questions. one of them as i'd done some research and found that there were 16 countries in the world to support homosexuality. i noticed there is a trend in the black community promoting young males, black males to assume the role of the females. within that context. and so i am wondering, would you have any views on not in one impact you think it may have on the black community for the family structure in the black community and whether you think it's a negative or positive. >> guest: i haven't the foggiest notion of what you're talking about. i've never heard of such a thing and i have no reason to believe that it exists. >> host: june, alexandria, louisiana.

hi, jan. june, are you with this? please go ahead. >> caller: i am with you. can you hear me? >> host: we are listening. >> caller: i am in a southern state, louisiana. i wonder what is dr. berry's observation of the voting in the south now and what it has evolved to now and how she sees certain parts of the united states were voting oppression is more prevalent than in other areas. >> host: june, what is your take on it? >> guest: been in louisiana in the southern state, we have evolved somewhat. however, we can get into rural areas and given our history of political leaders and corruption in louisiana, we still have

problems. it is just upgraded. so, i do believe there is still some forms of oppression. it has a different face now. >> host: dr. berry. >> guest: well, i think there is probably a voter suppression and intimidation in many out-of-the-way communities. but there's something else going on, too, which is exploiting poor people in areas where their votes are viewed through using absentee ballots and pay and poor people stuff minimal amounts of money to vote a certain way for assuming they will vote a certain way and some of them don't know that if they want to they can vote however they want to do. some of that goes on in some of these areas there have been studies that show it.

i don't doubt there would be fearfulness about who to vote for in an area where people feel isolated and don't feel they have any power. >> host: turn of the 19th and 20th centuries. wpb deployed, booker t. washington, a lot of social movements during that time, wasn't there? on the african-american side? >> guest: well, usually when people talk about the turn-of-the-century, 19th and 20th century, the usually talk about booker t. washington and i was on the board of trustees for tcp, which booker t. washington found it. and it's a wonderful and the tuition and not was a great contribution that he made and he was an important person and there is nobody wakes up to as a

public intellectual. there are people who walk right today calling themselves public intellectuals. who would not only wrote great thoughts, but also connected clearly with the massive of people in the country. and articulated the concerns of the masses. but there. but the results with reparations movement which i write about in my book on my face is black is true. it gets overlooked entirely. some people think reparations is something african-americans just started talking about. but that movement, which she is a woman at a time when women did not leave any movement that had men and women in them. and she was a washerwoman with an eighth-grade education who led this movement. they wanted reparations, but not

in the sense people talk about them today, general reparations for everybody and his tanisha coates has written this wonderful article in the atlantic about. but she thought the people we've been slaves like she had been a slave who had worked hard deserve to have something. they were getting old in the 1880s and 90s and some of them had no resources are not going to take care of them and no social security in those days. in fact there are to be some kind of recompense that they could get, even in small amounts. so she had this movement were organized in towns all over the country where there were black people living and there are records of the movement and people signed petitions and if they couldn't write, they got somebody to sign their name. it does do a plantation thereon, who owned them and all the rest of it. there's records of one

particular chapter we've got this 9-year-old woman working for the people who had addressed a slave and she is still working, has nobody to take care of her. so they were trying to get reparations for those sinners the largest social movement of why people that have been recorded after slavery. the federal government said they have 300,000 dues paying members. these were very high, but there were. they hired lawyers to get a bill passed and all that. all i'm saying is why w.e.b. dubois and booker at the heart talked about and something about club women in the suffrages and all those aspirations if there were these other grassroots people throughout the country in who thought there had to be some kind of recompense for those folks who have been slaves. >> host: i think he told the producer of this program, tonya davis, that my face is black is

your favorite of all 10 of the books. >> guest: i like it -- the reason i like my face is black is true is actually fell in love with kelley alice paul was writing about. i like it because how extraordinary that somebody without the level of education and a woman in the 19th century, late 19th century, a black woman who is watching people's clothes and ironing man and has kids shared five children. and she went on the road long enough to take care of the others, how she was able to do that. she ended up getting put in jail because federal government said she was misleading blacks by telling them it was possible to get reparations intentions they called it. and that she should have known

that they would never get them. so therefore she was engaged in fraud. since you knew they would never get them, it was wrong to be organized enough to try to get them. i told a friend of mine i do that all the time. i'm always taking money to get something. i'm not sure they're going to get it. so anyway, i just found her to be a fascinating personality. and so she ended up in prison and so on and as for all her life, that she was wonderful. now, why it failed. that book is about constitutional amendments and why they pass them why they failed. it looks that the income tax amendment and prohibition in various amendments of the constitution and the women's suffrage amendment and then talks about why era failed.

it failed primarily because the people who organize around it didn't take into account that their opponents only needed urging states to stop them, stop era concentrated on her teen states while they were trying to get all these other states and why they wanted the bill passed in congress and they went about it a little backwards. there were a lot of reasons in the debate and arguments against women's equality that influence the outcome, but there was a technical aspect and now not to be kept in mind because today people talk about the amendment to the constitution on citizens united problem and all the rest of it and getting a bill passed in congress. you need to organize at the grassroots and you need to let the grassroots think about it in their turn thing you need to get enough people in enough states of the grassroots that you know

that you may be able to get it passed and it takes a long time to educate people about an amendment. that is the other part. but i like that the. i like all my books actually. they are not orphans. so in your era book, white era failed for me talk about for constitutional amendments been introduced rescheduling equal rights amendment. way before the 1960s, make and 70s. >> guest: yes, starting way back with the 14th amendment and after that and all the way through is always someone. there should be an equal rights amendment. now women are more equal in gender equality is more reality than it was at any other time and some people think it would just be symbolic to have an equal right to amendment. but if the equal rights amendment is interpreted to

apply to issues that have arisen today, like equality and other kinds of issues, sexual orientation, all of these things, then marriage equality, all the rest of it, then there is a more than symbolic role that it could play if it's thought of in those terms. >> roger treats him, do you support fiscal reparations? >> guest: fiscal reparations? to wonder what that means. money? do i support many? yes, i think the people who are descended from the folks that kelley how scott and his petitions who are actually slaves and who have the courage to sign up into work for this at a time when conditions were terrible, but they are descended out to be given some kind of recompense for the slave labor that these identifiable people

were engaged in. >> host: wanda, north hollywood, california. things are holding. ui booktv. call coke at morning. good afternoon. i am on booktv. ms. berry, you are at the savings bank at 48 [inaudible] in manhattan. i have to tell you i still remember that day. i can still say your face. by the time you left, you told me, be great. and i thought those words and i appreciate your existence in what you have to say. my question to you this morning, what do you feel and how can we address a modern day jim crow behaviors and attitudes towards african-african- americans in regards to mortgage disparity,

employment shut out, poverty, education, the whole nine. all of this is still happening in this century and it behooves me as to how it is still going on. can you address that for me? again, thank you so much. i bow to you, c-span. thank you. >> guest: thank you for calling him and your comments. when i went around talking about the 50th anniversary of the civil rights movement and the commemoration, having all these commemorations going on, that the unemployment rate for blacks is the same this year as it was at the time of the civil rights movement. one of the most disturbing rings i just noticed was that in july the unemployment rate for black women has gone up while everybody else's was going down and black women have always been

the backbone of the community, even when the men -- the fourth men weren't working. that is disturbing. there's been a study done, i think it was at ucla about empathy in american society and that you can't appeal to empathy to get people to do things in the interest of social justice. we somehow lost a lot of its somewhere along the way, so that is not going to work. there also is more of an emphasis on individualism and a sense of community increasingly in our society. this has been a tension throughout american history, going back to the colonial period. the role of the individual, protection of the individual, individual aspirations and what the community needs. now those studies show we have even greater in the says on the individual. forget about community.

just the individual. so that's a problem. the other is what i call historical myopia forgetting about the history of slavery, forgetting about the history of jim crow. forgetting about the present reality is that the mortgage foreclosure crisis, the criminal justice disparities. school problems, all of these issues that still are problems. a lot of racial minorities have problems. but with blacks, you know, it's the americans original sin and doesn't seem to go away. what we have to do is restore historical when i was talking about slavery. you must mean trafficking because that is slavery.

i said no, talking about the slavery of african-americans. they said that's old school. now slavery is trafficking. so when you start even using the words and ways that undermine the meaning and the historicity of the words and the impact they have. so i don't know how we restore it, but we have to restore a sense of empathy, a sense of focusing on community and an understanding of the history of how we got to where we are and how we are just perpetuating a lot of it. >> host: barry gibbons e-mails into you, mary frances berry, i teach a course in law and politics of race relations to police officers. he is a segment of the eyes on the prize in which you discuss affirmative action in the bakke case. how have your views in this area evolved and what are your thoughts on the direction the supreme court appears to be

taking in limiting such programs? >> guest: thank you for your question because it relates to the question i just had an answer i just gave. i think the baci case when it was decided was a watershed in many ways. at the time, the universities promoted what what we call diversity nowadays because they thought they were going to lose. we had spent 10 years fighting complaints of reverse discrimination and all sorts of things. and i was involved in a lot of back, which had eroded support for affirmative action, which started out as a way to remedy the effects of slavery and jim crow is so far as blacks were earned as recompense instead of reparation to solve these problems and it had gotten so

redefined and we knew that there were cases that we probably lose in the bakke case. that diversity was the way to keep from losing. the opinion established the principle that race could be taken into account and not the other factor we talk about. what worried me about the baci case and now i've become even more worried with a historical myopia that i talked about is by moving to a definition of diversity and getting away from slavery, jim crow and all the horrors that attend to be an african-american in the united states and the perpetuation of those, we are undermining the rationale for affirmative action. and we have so undermined it that now the chorus with

different personnel and different political trends that have taken place in changes that have taken place are now saying that we don't need it and then some people say well, diversity means everybody. we lost the rationale for it and now we are in danger of losing it altogether. >> host: stephen, pawtucket, rhode island. go ahead with your comment or question for mary frances berry. >> host: hi, professor berry. how are you today? thank you for your effort along with other civil rights leaders in the apartheid. however, the silence in an area in west africa were three blacks went in occupied and legitimized the natives. in fact, according to the league

of nations -- [inaudible] it seems like the little country that has meaning like virginia, louisiana have gotten totally forgotten to see the plaque of what happened to the people. can you comment on not for me? >> guest: guess, thank you for calling. just, and the area where the history of liberia and i am very opposed to people who go to the country to find freedom from themselves, who end up mistreating the people who are indigenous to the region. attacked into many places in this world. and so, i am very aware of the crisis in liberia. i think that this country, our country, owes a special responsibility to liberia for us trying to solve one of our 19th century problems by

creating another problem for the people are to bear. >> host: mcpherson, face the period he writes, it was the democrats who created the slavery conditions that led up to the civil war, destroyed the rising middle class and black leadership after the civil war. yes, there are blackbeard cressida democrats destroyed and even the was started and funded by the democrats until they created the civil rights movement that they could vote -- that they voted against a master generated the welfare state is a new form of slavery to the very party that changed them and to get, et cetera, et cetera. >> guest: right, i am very familiar with this description used most often as a way to tell blacks that they ought to be supporters of two parties rather than supporting democrats. i've heard this repeated and discussions in these talking

points over and over again. it is true that parties have different names in the period before the civil war. the republican party at one time set for the freedom of african-americans and stood on the side of civil rights, but then changed its mind and the party of lincoln is no longer in existence. that's one of the unfortunate things that have been with the switch back-and-forth between the parties. i still believe and hope that someday we can have the ability to vote for two parties. it is wrong to put all your eggs in one basket. if the republicans would become more attended to the needs of black people, i think there'd be more than voting. >> host: what is the a professor of social thought the university of pennsylvania

teaches? >> guest: well, i'm a professor of history and american thought. at the end out chair i hold, but geraldine segal professor of american social thought and 90 the sequels. you don't often know people who sat in the chairs use it in. one of the reasons i went to penn. i have no idea thinking about going there is after i was recruited, i had lunch with geraldine segal was now past unfortunately. ernie segal was one of the great civil rights guys. he was a boy or. he advised jfk to set up the lawyers committee for civil rights, which still exists in a lot of good games for civil rights. a nonzero great story. and she said to me, you know, you need to come to penn because i want to stress somebody who was a scholar and who isn't not

do this and who is an example and will inspire you. you may argue with them or whatever you want to do with the students here. but i teach courses in history of american law is one of my courses. and i teach to undergraduates. graduates, law students, anybody. i also teach a course called history of law and social change in which we talk about how changes made, what role does law play? what role do social movements play in which i figure out the problems that exist and i do that mainly to be true to what jerry said to me in to try to convey to students that these things are worth studying and maybe we can all learn a lot from. >> host: adam, staten island. hi, adam. >> caller: hi, good afternoon, dr. berry and of course c-span.

thank you so much for calling. dr. berry, was trying my best. i've been rewriting the question because you've given me so much to work with. you're absolutely wonderful. i request one process, first of all, please. first i should say i'm an african-american man in my 60s, so historically there's some relevance here to my question. i would ask that you concentrate regarding my question. the question is why african-americans are compelled to aggressively in public places use the. i'm talking of course current trends. the second part to my question is why african-american public officials in my mind seemed to avoid discussion of this phenomenon. thank you so much. >> guest: well, i don't know why people use it in public

escutcheon and it's one of those unfortunate things among another million unfortunate things that go on in society. and i suspect that public officials don't say much about it because they know a lot of people do it in the public officials never want to offend anybody. so that is probably why they continue to do it. >> host: if you can't get through on the phone lines, you can get through via social media. at ein buch tv is our twitter handle. make a comment on facebook.com/booktv. and finally, send an e-mail, booktv@c-span.com. c-span visited you at drop is at the university of pennsylvania, learned about your writing style, find out your favorite books and authors and influences are. here is our trip to the university of pennsylvania.

.. reason why i do that is because a colleague of mine who for years tried to write a second

book never did and he was a brilliant guy and that was because he wanted every line to be perfect before he went on to the next line. and i said you're not writing fiction. if you can get it down on paper maybe you will be able to go back and he had it and maybe, helps me to clarify my thinking when i write things out. and i may he had it a million times and go over it and add stuff and revise. you have to get something down so you can think it through. that is the way my mind works. and he never did finish his second book because he kept trying to get perfection and every single line. i said, boy, that way lies death. and so i write it all through. and then i put it away and think about it. and then i have, i write it through again. i don't have the students and anybody read it until after i written it through, say two or three times. and then we talk, talk about.

i want whatever i write to inform people and educate them. they don't have to agree with me, i wish to make them thing. i wish to be provocative if nothing else. ♪

♪ ♪

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>> host: mary francis berry, you are currently reading a book called, "section workers unite, history of the movement from stonewall to slut walk." the note you gave tonya davis producer, beautifully written insight why con sensual prostitution is still illegal in the u.s. and why sex trafficking is not slavery. >> guest: right. and that book was enormously, enormously informative. it made me think about things i

had never thought about before. and then for example, i talked to one much our faculty members in the school that teaches about labor law, international labor law because i had not realized that prostitution was legal in many parts of the world. maybe i knew it somewhere in the back of my head but i just never thought about it. and that adult con sense a.m. prostitution is not not same thing as chide kid naping or prostitution or trafficking which everybody should be opposed to if they're not. and that there are people who actually engage in prostitution because they believe that that is the best way to make some money. and i knew there were call girls and there have been things about high level call girls from eliot spitzer problems and other kinds of things. but, what she does in this book is explain the history of women

in this country and men trying to organize who are in fact prostitution, adults. con sense ali. sex work, concerned by an act activist in california. for prostitution and how they made some gains but then they have not yet fully succeeded and it of course is still illegal. i was most interested in something else. we think about stonewall as beginning of the gay rights movements. it is one of those milestones that happened in new york but there was also the same kind of episode in california right before that. a place called compton cafeteria. where the same kind of opposition to the police and so on took place. but the most interesting part about both cases were the a lot of the people hop were involved in opposing the police were in

fact sex workers and some of them were transgendered, what we call transgendered now but a lot of them were sex workers who were there. i hadn't thought about that at all. the other thing i learned about transgendered people, more about that. and about how the people who are at most at risk for prostitution, for arrests and being mistreated on the streets are black transgendered sex workers. even in washington, d.c., a number of them have been killed in the last few years while they were out on the streets working and it doesn't get much public notice. so i think, it is a beautifully-written book and it tells you about some issues that you might not have thought about before. and it also made me even more aware that to talk about

trafficking and we have trafficking task forces, task forces all over the country now, police departments working on trafficking, that. traffic something not slavery even though on the state department website it says modern slavery is trafficking. that goes back to my point earlier about how if you undermine the definition of slavery, then it undermines the definition of the historical experience of african-americans as it relates to remedies for race discrimination. but anyway, i like the book. the book is wonderful. it is wonderfully written and i would recommend to anybody wants to read about the subject. >> host: another national conversation we're having on issues is drug laws, whether or not they should be toned down, abolished, et cetera. guest guest right. i have a student -- >> guest: i had a student that did internship at one of the

organizations that promotes legalization of marijuana and we had a paper last term, seminar on this i thought for years marijuana should be legalized. when i was in college we all smoked it and i don't remember, they always said that it was a gateway drug and you would end up on some other drug and i never did. most of the people i knew didn't. as a matter of fact, when we got out of college, we went and got jobs and did boring stuff. that was the end of that. i was never quite persuaded. what is unfortunate is, over the years, many, many blacks who are ins prison have been in prison for marijuana drug offenses, buying and selling. now we're liking it legal in all kinds of places. i think the drug problem is obviously a, drugs like cocaine and other drugs like that, are a problem but i don't think marijuana deserves all the attention it gets.

>> host: mary francis berry, before we got started you mention ad t-shirt you wear when you are out jogging. what is the back of it say? >> guest: well-based women never make history. >> host: where is that quote from? >> guest: from a professor of american history who teaches at harvard, who said that and, i don't know, somebody tells these t-shirts. and i have one. so when i go running i often put it on. >> host: have you been a well-based woman in your public career? >> guest: i think by most people's definition i have not been well-based. i've been obstreperous. i've been contentious. i've been adamant. i've been unwilling to compromise when it came to my principles. i have been all these things. i would never make a good politician because i just don't believe in that kind of

compromise. politicians have to do it but it is just not something that i have the temperment for. >> host: have you thought about running for office? >> guest: absolutely not. >> host: been approached for it? >> guest: absolutely not. people said to me you ought to run for this or that. i know i don't have the temperment. i don't have patience. i don't have any of these things, people who don't shouldn't be in office. very often you see someone who is in office who talks about the pains of the job and having to deal with people and the talk to people you don't like and all the rest of it. that goes with the territory. >> host: 202 is air code. 535-8800. if you live in eastern, central time zone would like to participate in our conversation with author and historian mary francis berry. back to your calls. colin in virginia. hi, colin. gest, yes, quite an honor to

talk with you, dr. berry. basically how can the, lottery contests, the, that for example -- [inaudible]. contest, the 2,000 election, same standards that allowed the system, allow the lottery contest to be held up to of the -- united states. george w. bush would have been disqualified and definitely not eligible to be a winner. any state in the country. how come that kind of thing can go on and we not have something done? >> guest: why was something not done by the 2000 election, bush v. gore election? >> caller: so it won't happen again, so those schtad wouldn't

happen again. >> guest: i'm not sure it wouldn't happen again tell you the truth. help america vote act has a lot of provisions in it. one of the problems we had, if you consider it a problem in our constitutional system, most of the power to control elections is in the hands of states. we talked earlier about states rights. the constitution gives power to states and so while the federal government can make certain rules about federal elections, the states determine who is an elector, that is whose vote will count in their state. and unless you change the constitution then you wouldn't have a national right to vote. there are some people who have introduced an amendment, some congresspeople into the congress to try to get a federal right to vote. you can have federal cases against race discrimination and

voting and sex discrimination or insidious discrimination, but the whole thing is basically in the hands of the states. >> host: i think australia has mandatory voting. what do you think of that idea? >> guest: well, i often thought that people ought to vote but, you know, there is something about making people do things. making the exercise of something, if you don't want to do it, then why should you do it? i mean, i suppose, there are lots of countries in which there's mandatory voting. you have to go in and vote and show on your thumb that you have this little color that shows you've been in. but i'm ambivalent bit. i haven't quite made up my mind. >> host: do you ever recall your mother voting? >> guest: yes my mother voted. not only did my mother vote but

she was a yellow dog democrat and she was a precinct captain at one time and she loved al gore's father, albert gore, sr. used to say albert gore, jr. can never be as good a man as his daddy was? ma'am marks what did you mean? his daddy you didn't know him, he was a silver tongued orator. that man could talk, she said. my mother was a yellow dog democrat. as i said i'm independent. she is voted up until the end of her life. >> host: which was when? >> guest: she died in the year that, after obama was elected. because i remember her saying she was going to stay until that man got elected. >> host: she was, was she a bit of an activist herself? >> guest: no, she was not --

well, let's put it this way. my mother when she was talking care of us and working in white folks houses to do so, one day on the bus years before rosa parks, like many black women got in an all terncation on a because she sat down in a seat and some white kids got on, coming home from school and deliberately sat behind her. the bus was practically empty. they did this deliberately to make trouble. then they yelled at the bus driver that this n word is sitting in front of us which was not per mitted in nashville. you don't sit in front of white people. the bus driver, they kept bugging my mother to get up and she was, you know, sitting in front of them. and the bus driver came back and told her she had to move and she said, well, i was sitting here and there are all these seats and they came and sat behind me? deliberately. they did it on purpose. and he said, well, i don't

really care. then one of the white decades came over to grab her and my mother said she flew into him. the last thing she remembers she flew into him. next thing she remembers the bus was stopped and a police officer was getting on the bus. it had stopped. the officer was saying to the driver, what happened? and he said she is sitting in front of these children and they were sitting behind her. and they asked my mother, and she said they got on deliberate deliberately, my mother said she thought she was going to jail. i have these two little children at home and they will be by themselves because i'm going to be in jail. finally the police officer said, well, to the bus driver, you should have toll not to sit behind her. there is somewhere else to sit. and that was the end of that. see. so there are exceptions to every rule. >> host: frank, calling in from vero beach, florida.

>> caller: tell you how much i appreciate the program. i wish more people in the country watch stuff like this. it is so informative. that being said i'm a 62-year-old white male. not the most politically correct or diplomatic person. i take on a lot of attributes mrs. berry hayes. that being said, two things i want to talk about and rather comment on out of wedlock problem, not only in the black communities but all the communities across the country but particularly the black community, and family disintegration. the question is, my wife is native-american. obviously native americans, the genocide that went on with them in this country, they were taken away from them. we all took it away from them, they seem to be able to prosper these days with a lot of hard work and with their casinos and i just like to see her comment on that. because i am absolutely

frustrated with a lot of the blacks saying that the opportunities aren't there, which i know there are not as many opportunities but right now i'm working in black neighborhoods as a concerned citizen and the polarization, not only i see with the blacks and whites but just overall is appalling to me. i like the comments. thank you. >> guest: well, first of all, on the native-american issue, i've spent a lot of time in indian country doing hearings when i was at the civil rights commission and, you know, and i know that most indians don't have casinos. it is not that all indians have casinos on their reservations and there are many poor indian communities throughout the west where people are suffering from a lack of health care and other things. and where there are no jobs. i have been on reservations in

south dakota, arizona and all around places, new mexico and the like. so there is an indian poverty problem and an indian joblessness and alcohol abuse. i went to a town in nebraska which is right across the border from the south dakota, the sioux reservation. and the town exists for the sole purpose of selling alcohol to indians where it is illegal on the rez. they come across and drive down there to get alcohol. they have a jail to throw them in there and stagger out. and some of them drive back and get into accidents. the indian problem is not all the indians are making it and everybody is in a casino and that they have lots of money. that is not the case. maybe those with a lot of money could give to the others. as far as the out of wedlock is

concerned, the number of out of wedlock pregnancies in the black community have decreased. the only point i was making earlier and that i would make now, no one likes to see dysfunctional families, no matter what families they are. and yes, there are opportunities for some jobs. for some of them the problem is wage. the wage level. we now have a living wage movement in this country, with people who are working on jobs and the other day, there was woman who has three jobs, to make enough money to make a living who ended up getting a car accident and dying that, we, people, there are opportunities but all the data showed that for some groups of workers there are not as great as they should be. >> host: next call for mary francis berry, jeffrey from johnson city, tennessee. hi, jeffrey. >> caller: thank you for having me on the show. i was calling as a history

graduate student i studied several classes during the roman empire time. i know of millions of slavs and european people, germanic people were sold into slavery for thousands of years in the mediterranean air i can't. is this a topic interests you, that you like to discuss and study slavery? is your idea of study of slavery only slavery that affected african-americans and united states. that is all i wan to ask. thank you. >> guest: thank you for the question. i am interested in slavery and you the world and read about it. the my interest of slavery and african-americans and relationship it has to the responsibility of the united states for the savory that -- slavery that existed here and its definition and remedies that are based on what happened.

that is my interest in it. >> host: mary francis berry, you have a new book coming out in a couple months? >> guest: yes, it is called "we are who we say we are." a black family's struggle, search for home across the atlantic world. and it is going to be published by oxford. . .

they are today. and i got interested in this because years ago when i was a graduate student, i a cheaper about a regiment of black soldiers during the civil war. and they had officers. they were from louisiana coming unit soldiers and they had colored officers at first. and they were all free people of color, which were quite numerous new orleans. and they were of mixed race. but in the middle of the war, the generals decided to get rid of them because white officers from the north didn't want to associate with them, didn't want to salute them, whatever. so there was racism. the documents show they got rid of them. they got rid of all the colored

officers. and i realize this one guy who had been treated among all the rest were still there and he was there until the end of the war. not only was he there, he ended up getting promoted and finally he led troops in battle throughout the war. at the end he was in a big title and he was a military hero and got cited for bravery and was provided a major on the battlefield in all this stuff. so i was puzzling when i look back on that sad how did this guy stay in the service? was it because he was fair skinned and they thought he was way? and then i found out the other officers, most of them were fair skinned and you would've thought they were white. they were white. is that i'm going to trace this guy's family and figure this guy was, why he did what he did in the third in the legislature of louisiana during reconstruction. he went from being white in the

service. they thought he was way. but they never asked him. when they set all the colored officers to overcome our going to get rid of you, he just didn't. they're not going to define me what i yam. against my principles. after that, one of his kernels thought he was colored. everybody else just assumed any went on. when the war was over, to be black was importuned during reconstruction because when black males could vote, they voted further blackmailed and so on. so he resumed his negro identity. he used to go on and live with them. it was some i.q. is separated from his family. and then, when reconstruction was over, he served in the legislature. when reconstruction was over

when jim crow started and he married a woman of mixed race, but she could pass them and they'd cave and they moved to california in the 1890s at jim crow. but other branches of the family, big family. father had two wives and so on. one of the brothers was one of the two classical composers in the 19th century louis colored. for one line of the family, people decided in the 90s, even though racism started and all that not to become color. i have pictures in the thing. you would think they were white people, too. and so, it is following searching for home as they go through all the different changes and finally end up in california. one group didn't know anything about the others.

some say toilets in mississippi. you pretend you were white if you move to a different neighborhood because nobody would ask you about anything. it is in a way typical new orleans story. but it's different from other new orleans stories. one of the things that occurred to me, the two branches of the family finally in 2003, one of the young people decided at the family reunion that she was going to find anybody who had that name and invite and then she did. some of the weight snares came. and they met each other on either picture in the book at the end of the white guy who is a great, great grandson. they're how dear you look at clear lake. for one of the things i learned from this book that i thought about before coming years ago i asked karen mccain i said why didn't you and martin stay in boston? you know come you guys were in

the north and the south is bad. she said we never thought of it. we were going home because we want to be part of what was at home. i had several other people who were leaders in the civil rights and the and so on the same kind of story asked people in my hometown of nashville who went away to school and they came back and i bet some people in new orleans who could have passed when they came back and part of the civil rights movement. one of the things that was clear to me after looking at all of these, we talk about the civil rights movement being made by people who came from the north of all kinds of things. the people who came from the north are very important, especially to the whole student movements and ministers and so on. most of the people who went to jail in the south were southerners, home grown children, families and most of the leaders of the civil rights movement were homegrown

southerners. they used to talk about outside agitators as one of the things southerners used to sail the time. think outside agitators have come here, we would have this problem. martin luther king, none of these people and the people in new orleans. the snares who stayed and he became, this is the family are right about, part of the movement went outside agitators either. the most interesting part of all of that to be, the last point i thought a is they help to change the south in ways that now people go back to the south. in other words, if all those inside agitators had all last, things would be different. the great migration is important. but they didn't leave and miss out now is important because of what they did with those inside

agitators. the family i talk about, some of those people are part of the whole movement. but i started out as a class provided lewis and one snare, that was his name, how did he stay in the service when all these other guys went now. i thought maybe he said something that was impressive. but as i can tell, he just remained silent. >> host: have you research your family? >> guest: my own family? i know some about my own family. i haven't researched it. i've got erased from my mother, but i haven't researched it. >> host: you are southern black woman. you have ancestors who were slaves >> guest: i have ancestors who were slaves. they lived on the plantation in williamson county and my

grandfather on my father's side was a creek indian descent. a lot of people think they have indian ancestry and it's usually cherokee grandmother phenomenon. so i always thought of my mother said their grandfather is indian, i figured he was cherokee. when i was looking up stuff come i did not much coming he was apparently a creek indian. in any case, we are all black, everybody was black except for my great grandmother on my father's side was the descendent of a ways slaveholder in the black woman and was of mixed race. and my mother told me, whether it's true or not, she told me the name of the family, which is

still in nashville, cheech these people belong. i always laughed and said one day i'm going to go over to their house because my mother told me whereabouts and i could they guess who's coming to dinner? i've never done it. >> host: have you ever thought about returning to nashville? >> guest: i go back to nashville all the time because my cousins and relatives and defendants on my mother's side are all they are. the berry's, a lot of them have died out. but echo.g-golf the time. >> host: if you go back and not at my door, make sure he sees being cameras with you. naomi from oakland, california. hi, naomi. >> caller: hi, dr. berry. thank you for your contributions. i have a question about the films that have been made recently in hollywood, jane go and the go and do help nbc developments in them?

i know a lot of americans in our community don't want to know about this. you see the relevance or do you think their exploitation? >> guest: i think their exploitation because exploitation by definition means profit-making and the whole point of making a film i'd been in the film business is to make some money. i'm not not surprising, but i have not seen jane go, although people tell me i should. i did see the health and i did see 12 years a slave. i thought both of those were quite useful inlet even larger audience luck in i'm getting some sense of what slavery was like, although a lot of it was somewhat senile ties. >> host: some historical accuracy is? >> guest: yes, i had read the 12 years of slave books years ago. it's one of the classics that's

been around. but i thought it was well done and i thought that help was well done in addition to being funny in a way. so it's good to let a larger audience see these things and it may help people to get some kind of understanding. >> host: martha, irvine, california. hi, martha appeared >> caller: hello peter and professor berry. i would like to refer to martin luther king jr. speech at morehouse college in 1948 where he stated the function of education is to teach intensively and critically. the most dangerous criminal may be gifted with a visa but no morals. you must run the intelligence is not enough. intelligence plus character is the goal is to education. professor berry, do you agree with this statement? what is your take of education? thank you. >> guest: i would hope that

intelligence, that education would build character. i am not sure that there is any conscious effort to do that on the part of people who are in charge of education today and i'm not sure because people's definition of character change and we don't like to be prescriptive when we are telling people what they should believe. intelligence i think we can agree about. knowledge and information. but i would hope that knowledge, information and understanding would make a person -- would improve their care at her. postcode next call for mary frances berry. you're on c-span2. >> caller: marry, you are very impressive.

i am amazed of your depth and intelligence. the black race has their future in their own hands in the fact that the boat. that is a story that you could tell. tell minorities that they are now in the majority. and if they vote, you know, they can change the whole country rather than take every little problem as it appears. just get out and vote. but i know you are a storyteller not a politician. i just thought i would be a good story you could tell because that is what is needed to solve these problems is to get minorities to vote. >> guest: well, i think voting is very important. i put a chapter and long memory

called plaques in the politics of redemption. and in that chapter, i talk about how until we got the right to vote we placed so much emphasis on it and that is important. but once we got it, we would find out certain things we could get from voting and other things we couldn't. the thing about voting is that anyone who votes, whatever color they aren't a democratic society can achieve object inspired. you can get patronage for people like you. that is jobs doing various things in the government. you may elect candidates who look like you. you may have some influence on policy. but you can't change the economic system of voting. people in south africa are finding that out. it was a struggle against the

apart night this very heroic and very important. many people in south africa who are poor, their ancestors are poor. they are poor and they will continue to be poor. so i think voting is very important, but it is not the end all and be all. you also need ocho movements. if you want social change come you have to put your body on the line. as i saw someone in a commencement speech, i think alessandro ryan the student she was talking to that talking to that but your account or facebook account is not a social movement because it is important for communication. but if your going to have social movement come you have to put your body on the line. you have to do that and you have to figure out a way to do that and you have to organize to do that. so bodine is it portends. the social movements are important to ring in force to

vote and to make social change. >> host: with supreme court such justice harold work on another book we haven't talked about. >> guest: i would've thought harold workman in this book and it's funny because some people came up to me afterward and said i didn't know there was a black supreme court justice before thurgood marshall. it shows you how we do things in america and how we knee-jerk reaction. he thought since i wrote about him he had to be black. no, he was very way. had been mayor of cleveland and senator from ohio. i wrote about harold orton has one night i was sitting at home and i read a flyer from the library of congress and they said that his papers were just been opened at the library of congress. and i had written black resistance, which is about president and what they do and i

had written about congress and what he do tonight that i need to write something about the supreme court. why not look into his papers and see if they're interesting. so i took itself to the library of congress and started reading his papers. i got very interested because he hadn't been written about and that dangerous. because most people who read about supreme court justices read about the same people over and over again. frankfurter, douglas, this one, not one. people have never heard of. all i knew about him was when i was in moscow in labor law, we read his opinion and we like them because he always told you what the holding in the case was in the first line you didn't have to read all the way through the opinion to find out what he

was doing. so i started reading and he seemed fascinating. he had taken note on everything that happened in all the various conferences while he was on supreme court and his own handwriting so you could read about what everybody else said what they did. and then i went and interviewed the law clerks and i became fond of justice burton although there were some things about him. his older kids had to make a point ends when he was mayor because he was busy. he was in the habit of wearing two hearings on a share, which i thought was fascinating and i love the notes he wrote back and forth in some of the opinions he wrote on some of the race issues. he was head of this time. so it was my effort to write something about the supreme court and how they react with

each other and he was down there when brown was decided and took copious notes. when justice rehnquist is up for confirmation in the senate, people wanted to read this and read the notes and go back and check because it had the comprehensive account of what happened at the time. >> host: appointed by truman? >> guest: yes. host who you ride in the book stability and continuity there is no conscious effort to be anti-or pro-civil libertarians, but there was another to take seriously the task of judging. >> guest: . he tried very hard as he put it to take seriously and it was critical of other justices who he thought were not as serious. i won't name names as he was about these matters. but he was a little discontented player. he said but was delayed even on

the court after being in the senate. he said it's like going to a monnot area from a circus. which is true. >> host: who is judge leon higginbotham and was dear friend? >> guest: yes, i will tell you at his first name was. he hated it. was one of the most important federal court judges and lawyers among african-americans of his time. she was as a young man was the honest appointee as a commissioner i think of as the ftc he was gone. he also was a scholar. he laid to research and write history. he wrote a wonderful book on the history of slave law in the colonial period. and i met him when i was invited

to a conference at the university of chicago that stan katz is a legal historian at princeton and from other people had organized when he was at chicago. leon came into the room while we were sitting there with his daughter and sat down and stand didn't know who he was and asked him what he wanted. leon was a tall guy with a big booming voice and stan had invited in. and he became a judge, district court judge and he wrote some marvelous opinions. i admired him for the history that. i one time told him because he beat me all the time. he said i can't find my glasses. i said i have no idea.

he said bush's plan a way. so we were to play tennis and ibm. the first time i ever beat him. so i came back to the house and i said i just don't know. i said they are over there. i had to take his glasses so i could beat him. he was a wonderful man. i persuaded him after he stepped down from the bench. if you come at a different time, he would have been on the supreme court. by the time a politician was president who could have appointed him, he was too old. so they can appoint him. that's the way things are done. after he stepped down, he became the council at a major law firm. i persuaded him to be on the u.s. civil rights commission with me. i thought that if i could get leon to be on the commission as distinguished as he was and respected and crews are now so, who was the first latino justice of the california supreme court,

that the republicans on their servers back then that they might become a little more willing to talk into try to get something positive done. didn't work. but they make great sacrifices and leon served with me on the commission until he passed. >> host: do you have in their republican friends? >> guest: yes, actually as a matter of fact quite a few. there has been republican numbers of congress who i liked. arthur flemming who is a staunch republican and sturgeon every administration since hoover and was chaired the commission, someone of whom i am very fond. i like the corn who is a congress and from california and u.s. are earlier in the commission with me. and then there are people who are republicans who aren't in any office, they just happened to be republicans who i know and i am quite willing to talk with

them, play tennis with them, do anything coming yes. >> host: mary frances berry comments you remember your first white friend? >> guest: my first white friend. that's an interesting question. no one has ever asked me that before. my first white friend would probably be one of the nurses who work with me at sibley hospital in washington when i ran the lab when i was in college at howard. i quite a few friends who are nurses. a guy named ed martin who was awake i do as a physicians assistant. he had learned in the navy had to be a physician. all of us used to go drink all the time and talk to each other. they were my friends. >> host: stacy is calling from folks though, virginia. hi, stacy. >> caller: my question is you

brought up historical mike tobey underpainting of terms like slavery from the african-american experience to the current human trafficking. what is your thought about first rate virginia schoolchildren being taken to the plantation by robert ely's family and their innocent eyes. witness to a historical plantation that held slaves that there is no slave quarters for the children to see, nor have they received an education on what the institution of slavery was in the united states. >> guest: i think that it's outrageous of accepting what you're telling me. but that's outrageous. obviously they take them to the plantation, they had to tell them that they were slaves and now is the whole idea of the plantation. and so, it does not help. i don't think education solves all problems. but a little bit of education

along those lines i think would be very helpful. so i think it's outrageous that sure. >> host: sonya is calling in from oregon. did i get that right? >> caller: hi, it is to all its hidden. hello, mary frances. thank you for letting me speak with you. i really appreciate this. i recently heard about a saint josephine the keypad. have you heard of her? >> guest: now, what did you hear? i want to now. >> caller: it is so interesting. since you are talking about slavery, at the age of nine years old, she was kidnapped near dark for sudan. and then she was taking to

venice, italy and that is where her story begins and ends and she was the catholic non. >> guest: yes, i know about her. yes, i do. one of my colleagues knows about her, yes. i've heard about it. since you mentioned it, we should mention that there's actual slavery and the classic sense of the word, meaning for life. you know, a misplayed for life and that their children become slaves. existing right now. that's an earlier time you're talking about. right now in sudan and another place is in africa, there is actual slavery that is like the real slavery. but anyway, yes -- how did you hear about it? call co-well, i just have to do here the second part of her story on television. and i was fascinated.

>> guest: i hope i can see that. call co-yes, so i'm glad you heard about her. i wish somebody -- people would know about it because she sounds very a beautiful person. >> host: sonya, what do you do with oregon? >> caller: just a grandmother. >> guest: just a grandmother. the western part or eastern part? >> host: i apologize. i've hung up on her. >> guest: i hear her. >> host: i apologize for that. in researching slaves, african-americans as the record-keeping as thorough, as perhaps it is for official white america back in the day? >> guest: demand the records of who people are? >> host: great year in what the research process? >> guest: people are not

really that good. and the senses, for example, depending what censors you look at, slaves are counted and how many slaves somebody had. numbers. but you don't have any names of people usually. in some of the louisiana records you do. in the family, they will be the names of the slaves. the reason why those petitions that callie house collected are so interesting is because they have the name of the person that tells you what plantation they were on, who owned them and what it was. that is very good information. to the records are as good as they should eat. there are as many diaries because large numbers of people couldn't write things that you have for people who are more literate. so they are not as good as they should be.

>> host: in my face is black is true, kelley haus and struggle are ex-slave reparations. you talk about 40 acres and a mule. where did that come from qwest >> guest: well, in the civil war, the union in the freedman's bureau act that was passed during civil war was called the bureau of freedman called the bureau freedman refugees refugees and abandoned lands. and in policy on the part of the army at first, the talk was that each blacks who was emancipated would be given 40 acres and a mule. and there were some people who are able to hold on to man up a cow for the confederates ran away for a while in some areas of the country is to. but it was event taken away from them. some abolitionists bought some land to give to people, but that

wasn't widespread. so black folks when they started meeting with politicians about what changes they wanted to see, a lot of them talked about the right to vote, which gets to be the dominant discussion about black history in this period. lots of them talked about wanting their 40 acres and a mule. they wanted land. and that doesn't get talked about quite as much. and that is because it challenges the whole economic data sets of what we have is a country and gets you into the question of is the vote enough and all of those unpleasant discussions. but black people went away from that and it was handed down in the war that we are supposed to give 40 acres and a mule. i often say well, if you give me 40 acres of prime real estate in manhattan, that would be cool. i'm not sure i want the mule

anymore. but the idea is reparations in a sense is based on that concept, too. but that is where the whole idea comes from. >> host: kelley, leadville, colorado. good afternoon to you. >> caller: to guess, hi, good afternoon. hi, how are you? >> guest: okay. >> caller: i wanted to thank you for all of your kurds and everything you are doing. i think i have a white woman having grown up in the south, i would have to say my hat is off to all african-americans really for their 40s. i just don't know how they do it. i have grown it. so much of their real discrimination of now against the white man and just things like this. so much that my hat is truly off to you and all the african-americans for their

struggle. i think that maybe we've lost our empathy. i know growing up i've had folks like black like me, saw the movie sounder. i think now the kids read almost nothing. when they do, they read anne frank. most of them are reading anne frank. i used. i was sitting in which language arts teacher. i don't know whether this is a good way to say -- someone a way, i thank you very much. >> guest: well, thank you for calling. and frank is good to read. the holocaust as it does of course. but it's also good for people to know about their own history for which they are responsible in this country and has some understanding and therefore of what they might do about it. postcode delivered krauter posts on our facebook page for you,

dr. berry. diversity is america is a good thing no doubt but it seems to verse that he is creating more division among each other and bringing us together. how does america survive when it has become a nation so fractured? are there still common values? >> guest: first of all, i think america will survive because it always has. god bless america, we will always survive. but i think that we have to get more expensive community, which is what i was talking about at the outset about these discussions, that there's always been that tension, but we've gone too far to the individualist side. we need to move back with a little more balance. i don't forget that. maybe if we study our history and institutions we can get some sense of it. i don't know. but i think the country will

survive. if you have somebody in the 19th century lots of immigration was coming in eastern and southern europe and other places, people might have said you could read some of the things written and people say the country is fractured and all these people coming from here in their for the irish and the annabella. or wherever you were. but the country absorbed them. the structure of our government and our institutions permit as and when we move on. so that's what i think will happen this time. postcode this facebook comment from a chante brown. if you had to recommend a quintessential academic discipline to a would-be activist, what would it be? >> guest: either history of social movement or i would have something on organizing and how to organize. debut could go and sit with

obama since he was -- no, i am teasing. in fact, i reduce in history because they say that i redo history. or i redo philosophy of words and logic because you need to analyze in order to know what to do. that's very important. in the main, i would just use common sense. i would hope. postcode besides listening to that white lady's records, when did you first agitate or become an act to this end step out of your role? >> guest: well, i never intended to be an act to this. it's not like i sat down and said one day when people say what you want to be when you grow a, i didn't say well, that of being a firefighter i want to be an act of this. but when events occur, when

something happens that a peer to be an injustice, i don't care what it is. i immediately react. i think somebody should do some team. you may not always win and you may not always get anywhere. but i believe in challenging authority, organizing faction, figured out how to do some name and the best time to do it is when nobody else is doing it. when everybody is doing it, it doesn't make you that much. but i just think that speaking out against injustice, acting against injustice, been an example although as i said i haven't sat down and thought about each time what i should do. and i've had people say to me,

why did you do whatever you did? i don't know why i did it. i just know that i thought something was wrong and i thought somebody had to do something about it. people say why did he think about the risks you are would have been to you or you could have gone a different route and you would've gotten a would've gotten a peer is supposed today are. i never thought of that event. i don't know what to tell people really. >> host: anytime during your public service did you have security quite >> guest: no, the only time i was afraid -- i didn't have security. i have security sometimes when i travel places they would have local security, when i was in the government, two different places. but i was out making a speech one time and i came back to the

hotel and someone tried to break in the room i was in. what happened is this person called on the phone over and over again. i didn't answer the phone. i answered a first amendment that stopped calling. i told them to stop the calls. the next thing i knew was a man trying to break down the door. as it turns out, they got him. the speech i'd given he didn't like something i said. he was angry about whatever was. he had also seen the end television that afternoon and i had said something that set them off and he didn't like what i was talking about. he had followed me to a hotel. when i checked in, the group was with me. the guy behind the desk called my room number, which you are not supposed to do in hotels. and i wasn't paying any

attention. he was standing there and he heard the guy give up the room number. so after that episode, for about six there was somebody who always see their wealth with me or they would be people when i got someplace, they would go and check the hotel room and they would sit outside because that was quite frightening actually. it's kind of scary. postcode and he is calling you from riverside, california. >> caller: hi, good morning. i think one of the greatest violence in history for me is one at the entrance between jesse owens and the so-called supreme rank and the whole world was watching. and i would look up to him or matter what his race was there anything for doing that and just stating that someone else is better than the so-called supreme race. and i met with frederick case

then and now currently pastor bill winston. to me, supreme creatures and all they talk and i am so sad that people who judge people by their skin because god made everybody and he sees when we get to judgment, he is going to see us by the spirit, not by the color of skin. people better wake up. god bless you in thank you. >> guest: thank you. thank you very much. >> host: this is from what had appeared in e-mail. as a graduate of an historically black college, i am a bit concerned about their ability to compete with the majority institutions for faculty, students, infrastructure, et cetera, which ultimately impacts student outcomes. what value do you believe hbcus have as institutions of higher education today?

>> guest: i think they have a lot of value and will continue to do so until we get this race problem solved. what has happened is that many of the predominantly white institutions, especially the most highly liked it once do not admit its efficient number, in my opinion, a slave descendent african-americans. that is americans who are descended, traced descended slaves. many of them admit large numbers of students from the african continent, which is fine. from the caribbean and so on, which is fine. what they do that, this other group has served us well. hbcus play a role in educating black students.

they probably do a file as the less selective predominantly white institutions to which many go. when i was in california recently, i noticed that large numbers of black students, slave descendent african students of middle class, their families send them to private colleges and universities and pay a lot of tuition for that because they can't get in the university of california system and they can't get in because the requirement there and the end of affirmative action is led to a situation where test scores discuss score hegemony that they don't get in. there is a 4% were for high school graduates at any school in the state that can get in. but that doesn't do the job

either. to these parents paid money for them to go there or send them to the historically black institutions that still exists. so the ambivalence the society has via the one hand saying we want to end hbcus and some of the safe because we don't need them because they are white colleges and universities are predominantly white one and these kids can go there and the teachers can go there when in fact they can create the problem. so what we have to do is figure out holistically how to solve that problem. until we do, and we have it, there is a need for the institution. also the institutions have a history. was that i could be said we don't need to have colleges and universities, so let's go over to notre dame. people would say what? what about the football team. no, i'm kidding. they just wrote michigan last

night. anyway, so i think is the need, a history, legacy and i don't see any reason why the schools should go out of existence. >> host: jaundice: and from the third. john, please go ahead. >> caller: hello, thanks for taking my call. hello? dr. berry? thank you very much. a few things here first of all, how do you like philadelphia in my city? i grew up there and i'd like to get your opinion on it. >> guest: i have to say i like it because you just told me. what else am i going to say? >> caller: i'm sorry. the other thing is that if you pay any chance that a book on costa greene who deals with the kind of mixed race theme that you talked about earlier. her father was richard green, the attorney that worked with

dr. to fully during the founding of the naacp. my question to you is when i see the reconstruction period, the area that most interests me is the freedman's bureau, simply because it they set up schools for african-americans coming out of slavery throughout the south and other portions of the country. as an educator, i wonder about this big gap in math now next and reading that african-americans have against the white students in america. but i feel the freedman schools have been left open for longer period of time would have been able to educate more of our people. and yet diminish the sophia friel's literacy that existed for another 100 years. what is your opinion and perhaps

you can tell the public a little bit about their purpose. thank you. >> guest: be solved in the schools and became either public schools or private schools. there were freedom schools in the 1960s, to in the south that the activist started. as far as -- and freedom schools, vp franklin who teaches at you see riverside and is an expert on black education writes about those in the role they could play today. i think as far as entrepreneurs concerned and maps for mobile the need to do is to expand the ideas and robert moses altshuler project which works very well. robert moses was one of the great leaders during the civil rights. in fact, i think you should get a presidential medal of freedom. if anybody gets wanted lots of

people have, he to be the first in line to do so. following that model would help to solve this particular problem. >> host: helen, palo alto, california. you would tv at the end too. mary frances berry is our guest. >> caller: what a treat to hear you speak so out of lee about a lot of the issues. my concern is primarily the role of the black churches in black communities taking away jobs and opportunity for their constituent service tax exemptions without regulation and faith-based funding that goes into support their own jobs and maintain it and said that money go into communities for boys and girls clubs and other civic organizing.

yet, i noticed through the black churches for reverend martin visser king, which is the site of organization for civil rights. but nevertheless, there is no american station to secularize the country or people so that we get out from under the power of the right thing political system that is behind a lot of the religious right. and so, i am trying to see everything. >> guest: i think you get your point. it's about faith-based programs in getting government money and funding it through the church and what that has to do with institutions that are not related to the church and programs that exist there that are secular. did i get your point? >> host: helen howes -- >> guest: anyway, let me say

the faith-based program, this is one of those issues like charter schools and vouchers and all of those things that start out as part of the tenants as part of the right political right and end up with the democrats embracing them and in my view with people thoughtlessly embracing them without taking about the consequences. and so, now you have and have had since bush is eighth in the white house and what it is about the balance between religion and our society and how far should go. freedom of religion and free exercise. that is a tension that has been with us since the beginning of the republic. an effort to not defend those in the faith-based idea and their fears that the best way to solve

social problems -- programs is to do it through research and on the church. you have tax money go into those programs. they're other people of course i believe it's ridiculous and the money should go to the programs. there are debates that have been lost. we have lost the faith based debate. we'll continue to have faith based programs. doesn't matter whether democrats or republicans are in office for quite some time as we continue to have charter schools and vouchers and all that. when you lose the political debate come you know you've lost them any time things will change again. but i do understand your issue. >> host: mary frances berry, with your historians had on, what has changed in the last 50 years the civil rights movement? will likely be years? we have a black president, president color which many people would not predict it would've happened as quickly.

we have lots of african-americans and other people of color whose movements have patterned themselves after the civil rights movement who are involved in all kinds of occupations and in our society and walks of life that we would not have imagined 50 years ago. we have a multiracial category of offenses that we wouldn't have imagined a few years ago. so we have more opportunity in our society and more people who have taken advantage of but opportunities were available then we had 50 years ago. people who were black people of color can do things than all the rights. we have enormous chain in society since that time.

things that haven't changed, he didn't answer asked me and things that haven't changed enough is that we haven't changed enough cover theme to it at the window of opportunity stays open for everyone and enough about mitigating the harsh edges of capitalism in a period of globalization. we haven't done that. we haven't figured out yet how to do that. we haven't figured out how to deal with this balance between liberty and authority. would love this place because we want them to protect us. on the other hand, we don't want them to abuse us. it's we don't want some people abused and not other people. we have some ambulances and desires have the balance one and another. post over at tumor calls and for a time it ended. barbara in seattle. hi, barbara. >> caller: hi, there.

earlier dr. berry is that it takes a social movement to effect real change in the country in our society. you touched on this, but we had a civil rights movement, a women's movement, a labor movement, a student movement, all of these movements. my question is what would happen if all of these moves that got together to champion the needs of the most oppressed in our society and do you think this has been a real revolutionary change? because it seems to me that is where martin luther king and malcolm max were headed. can you comment on this? >> guest: well, you mean if we had a vast social movement in the society to make the kind of economic and social change that is necessary. i think that is unlikely because

those movements were directed at goals that benefited particular groups that were left out at the time. it is hard to get groups to focus on the broader picture of an all-encompassing movement. if that happened, you would have revolutionized an. i think it would be hard to do. but if you can find one thing that all the groups would agree is where our energy should be directed, you might be able to do that and then we'd have a general strike as they've had in some countries until the change took place. >> host: robert in smirnov, georgia. hi, robert. >> caller: hi, i am a 59-year-old white yellow dot democrat and that's briefly in philadelphia. i would like to know what do you

say when you're face to the situations? my sister is not my mother because she has a racist friend, yet my sister has a great suspicion of because they think they are pedophiles. perhaps my best friend is black. he doesn't particularly care for homosexual because they rape young men. i don't feel that i neither or racist, yet when i see a black man walking with a white girl or they are together, there is something that goes off in me and i'm a little concerned about that. what do i say to my sister? what do i say to my friend? how can i change my own mind about these things. when you think these things, have you change your own mind or anybody else's mind. thank you very much. >> guest: well, that is a very good question, actually. it is a complex one. you first realize that everybody

has biases. i'm reminded that because a student in the first day of one of my classes said when another student said what you just said about this issue that you want to read about sounds like you have biases. the student responded i don't have any biases. and if i do, i can suppress them while i'm reading. and everybody else that now come you might as well face up to them. so face up to it. everyone has biases. even if you say you don't, you do. and what you do is you acknowledge them and you have other people say you have biases, acknowledge them, deal with them, try to think through them. but if you don't acknowledge them and you pretend like what you think is somehow purer and is unbiased, then you'll never get to the bottom of it. >> host: what are your biases? >> guest: what are my biases? i don't like -- what is that i

don't like? i hate watermelon. and people are always given me watermelon because they figure black people eat watermelon. i hate watermelon. i don't know why i hate it. i've hated it since i was a child. i am also biased in that i don't suffer people to engage me intellectually who haven't taught through whatever they are talking about. i mean, adults with whom i have conversations. not. they are not supposed to have. and i don't like people to make foolish remarks and then insist that they are not foolish. just fess up. i mean, confessor must move on. so i biases like that. >> host: mary frances berry is the author of 10 books. she is a new one coming out in a couple of and working on another one. after that, here are the 10 that

have been published. "black resistance/white law", america was her first, military necessity and civil rights policy black citizenship in the constitution came out second. stability security and continuity. mr. justice burton and decision-making in the supreme court 1945 to 1958. and long memory, the black experience in america when it came out in 1982. why era failed peer should mention that was her favorite. child care, women's rights in the myth of a good mother. other tales of american justice, episodes of racism and sexism in the courts came out in 1999. the other when she mentioned is a favorite of hers that she's written, my face is black is true. callie house and the struggle for x slave reparations.

and "and justice for all" came out in 2009. her most recent, "power in words," the story behind barack obama speeches. mary frances berry, thank you for spending this three hours with us on "in depth." >> guest: thank you for spending the time with me. i enjoyed it.