everybody coming. i want to direct you right out the door so you can purchase these gentlemen's books and get their signatures. please head out to the activity building. we appreciate it. thank you so much. >> booktv is on twitter. follow us to get schedule updates and talk to us. twitter.com/booktv. >> this is booktv on c-span2 and we want to know what is on your

summer reading list. send us your choices on twitter or you can also post it on our facebook page or you can send an e-mail to us. whauz on your summer reader list? -- what is? -- booktv wants to know. >> we talked to amy force, whose print profiles mildrid brown, founder of omaha star, the oldest running paper ran by a black person. >> she was a woman who cared and from north omaha. she was the omaha star. you would ask and they would say synonymous with the newspaper. it as a black newspaper pitched

toward the black community but a lot of people pick it up. is the longest running black newspaper founded by a black woman in the united states. brown's background started as an elementary school teacher in birmingham alabama and she had second graders, third graders and fourth graders. her husband was a pharmacist, one of the few who had a doctorate and they got married and moved to chicago and she started going to classes and they went to des moines and she went to more college classes and they ended up in sioux city and she was the superintendant of the church she was attending. and her minister came to her saying there is a newspaper in town and i think you could do a better job. she said i know nothing about newspapers. neither my husband or i.

and he said i think you can do it. so she did. it was a two-page broad shoot, nothing exciting. but someone in omaha heard about it, cici galloway and came up to sioux city and asked if she and her husband would relocate and he would give them jobs and they would work there. after about a year and a half they opened up the omaha star. it was july 9th, 1938 and omaha was a pretty racist town. less than one year before they moved there they actually got there in 1937 there was a really brutal lynching found at our court house. and oddly enough the victim's last name was brown, no relationship. he knew it was a racist town and

the city was racist. her husband was the first black pharmacist in sioux city. she knew what she would be faces. she wasn't the advertising woman. her strength was to fulfill. she sold all of the adds. she left it to him to write the stories at the beginning and he was radical. the fbi was watching him. they were not sure what kind of elements were going into the this newspaper. and so they were very political. there wasn't a lot of family outreach and positive news. it was very much this is what is going on nationally. they didn't have as much omaha coverage. but when she and her husband divorced in 1943 and she took over the newspaper and he left the city she put her mark on it. it became about the family and

making people in the black community prominent. it wasn't news that was reported in the mainstream newspaper which unfortunately if you didn't know better you would not realize there was a black community other than the omaha star reporting about it. she had a lot of things going on in omaha to address. in the '30s housing was probably the biggest thing. the government came in during the great depression and built projects. her husband was one of the people actually registering people for apartments in those projects. and at first she was excited and in the newspaper she said we need to move on this this is fantastic, the black community is going to be equal to the white community for housing. and her main goal in the newspaper, even today, she has been gone for over 20 years but to always write positive news. she said i want to present the positive side of the black

community. instead of focusing on, say, desegregate desegregateion and there was a lot in there talking about various things they were doing to change discrimination in the city she would end with something positive. she would say let's focus on this family's celebration of something else. so she always was good at sandwiching the news. and very forward thinking. she thought it was important to also show the positive aspects of the community because it was the way of uplifting. it was the way of showing people reading the newspaper this isn't the way it is always going to be. you hear a lot of negative in the media but that is not who we

are. she was validating the community was worth her living there and worth everybody else living there. she wanted to show we are really important here. she did that numerous times in various events that she organized. she told people if you are unhappy with discrimination such as unemployment and businesses that refuse to hire someone of color she said don't buy anything there. she ran a huge campaign in her newspaper for years and she had a list of companies she boldly put them out there in the front page saying these people are not hiring people of color do not buy anyway of their products and tell your friends not to go there. that is nervy. she had to juggle things a little bit to make sure the next

copy of the newspaper came out because there were times you know, i am sure we was digging into what is left of her savings trying to make sure it continued. and one thing she was super proud of was that she never missed an issue in over 50 years. she started the newspaper on january 9th, 1938 at the tail end of the great depression and ended being the person in charge of the newspaper on november 2nd, 1989 because she passed away. you know true business woman, true newspaper woman at heart. she had just signed off on the copy because they said it would come out a certain day of the week. it was a weekly newspaper. she signed off on it and a few hours later she passed away. her legacy is like throwing a rock into a lake and all of the

ripples keep coming jowyou think you have seen them all but they are still coming. to start with the newspaper that is still being printed right now. and so many people have been reading that newspaper since 1938. that made a huge impression and huge legacy. i could say maybe it was all of the people she affected in the community; the white and black community who desegregated and understood what she was doing to improve the community. but i think the biggest legacy is almost invisible because it is all of the people she touched. i never met her but kind of feel like i did with all of the research. but i would have really liked to have spent five minutes with her. she was that kind of person. >> more for information on booktv's recent video to omaha

and the many other cities vised visited by our local content vehicles go to cspan.org/ cspan.org/localcontent. and for a list of books we have talked about, a book about the wright brayerothers and a book looking at the lives of american people in the west. willie nelson book is on the list. eric larson's dead wig is next on the list and recounts the sinking of an ocean liner by a german boat in 1915.

senior chair in history.