>> it positioned a black family is traditional. they brought you inside a nuclear black family in a way that was pathology is our caricatured in american literature and popular culture but also did not show in the difficulties in dealing with the challenges of stigma inequality command race in general. >> continuing the tour. this is a kind of interesting story. currently as i mentioned a part of the collection includes amazing fine art and represents the can of like raise. aa year and a half ago from the bronx reached out to the curator and said i want to give the schaumburg. come check it out.

this was purchased by the gentleman father in1941 with the original bill of sale for $125 still on the back of this panel. whatwhat makes it even more interesting is this panel was done during the same year as the great migration series. this series is now exhibition in collaboration with the philips. new york. all 60 panels come together. jacob lawrence himself here's the thing, not only do we have an orphan panel have notpanel, have not yet. have to work on trying to match the paint, but also that jacob lawrence actually use the library in the 1930s were in jersey and men atlantic city's the study reading the books of

the collection which gave him the information that he needed to tell the great migration story. so talkso talk about the importance of boats preservation of libraries being open to all. jacob lawrence is a product of the early influence of the schaumburg collection. >> and that painting is probably worth a little more than a hundred and $25. >> definitely as is the rest. >> all of these photos on the wall. >> so one of the most prolific black photographers in the late 20th century. he worked for major publications the particular for the usia. us information agency that was part of our showers a cold war apparatus. in surveying postcolonial nations and keeping an eye on things this is the

benign side of the cia. richard saunders was a photographer. taking a picture in nigeria, 1970. he has an expensive body of work we have the entire collection. the images here meet the description of the show which is lesser-known averages across the continent it's a pretty fabulous so. elijah mohammed is rarely seen. >> you photograph here. and this is elijah mohammed at the end, correct? and there is mathematics.

this is a 1961 shot in washington dc with a church of god figure during the show debating the merits of christianity and islam. >> quite a debate. >> it must of been. >> do you think we can have that debate today? >> is taking place on a global scale. yeah. we're having it. it is not polite in front of cameras. so we're having a debate. >> often go. >> i'll show you one other fascinating image of mathematics. here he is hard to her at the museum of natural history in new york. he is essentially using the

image of africa talk about black people in a broader context to a group of young girls. and this is also fascinating because your we are talking about the boys. this is a history lesson being taught. >> negro historian. >> and sociologist. [inaudible conversations] >> and book tv live coverage of the harlem book fair we will continue in just a few minutes. [inaudible conversations]

>> greg was graduating from high school very talented basketball player. he had an offer from the university of washington they're was going to pay his way, and he had been accepted at princeton with the family would have to pay some of the bill and he would have to earn some money on the side to get together princeton. and he had a conversation with his father and his mother was washing dishes talking with his dad. well i think i might go to the university of washington his father didn't come down on him. i would be kind of disappointed if you made a decision like this. craig said, well i will think about that.

it was elated because he wanted to princeton. anyone to princeton. his parents paid the difference, sometimes the credit card. he loved actually being they're. he. felt so grateful ever sense that it is a story he does tell. >> and michelle a couple years later decides i would like to go princeton to perhaps. at the time or customer service a grade in school or 20. >> that's right. she said programs can get in the princeton, i can. and exactly the counselors said you might want to think of a more modestly about where you can go. she applied. she wrote a long essay.

she kind of torture when. >> she. >> you didn't feel she talked to weigh in. a lot of people have looked. she told the story about the grades and scores. now what she hoped to be. this is the area of affirmative action and a lot of people over to michelle saying she only get in because of affirmative action. but she had to do something to make a case. >> she argued her own case. she had done very well in school. as with so many students getting access for the 1st time she only went to princeton but did extremely well. >> you did well. wish you happy? >> it was an interesting remark she made at my answer is memorial service last year when she said looking back of her recent career he talked about what it was like to be on the campaign

trail imagine the feeling of loneliness. she had a bit of a struggle but she 1st got there. and she worked her way through. the prepend michelle obama determination. >> all of affirmative action debate affect her career at princeton. herhave princeton. her sense of herself, her sense of living in two worlds for being judged as something other than just michelle. >> right. she wrote her senior thesis that some made her more aware of my blackness the. then in chicagothen in chicago that was because of the nature of princeton at that time where black students were very much in the minority where we also should remember there were not so many women and also the class was a big

question, natural. i got to princeton and saw kids with bmws. i didn't you know adults who had bmws. it was a place for any by students felt slightly not welcomed. this was something she was very aware of and she and her friends talked about. >> in the 1st days on campus dormitory for the 1st roommate. >> it's a remarkable story that has to do with the mother of her freshman roommate. the student -- and this is a story she herself tells us some chagrin. she is in a dorm room. everyone is moving in. robinson shows up and says is my sister around. she wasn't. catherine went to see her mother and her mother went

ballistic and tried to get her daughter pulled out of that room. she complainedshe complained to the authorities it's about time did not come to princeton to endure the black student. princeton did number for. later the semester she did move out but it was a dramatic side of the time. >> you can watch this and other programs online. >> booktv.org recently visited capitol hill to ask members of congress. >> looking for in a few weeks. the harper lee put. she wrote to kill a mockingbird: my all-time favorite books. it was a weird career and is such a wonderful novel

wasn't followed up by anything. recently this manuscript was found which before to kill a mockingbird. i'm sure it will live up to that but i'm looking forward to it. right now i'm rereading his 1st one was set some sort of nostalgic. new orleans i grew up in. in the greater new orleans area. >> book tv wants to no what your reading this summer.

>> and next up-harlem book fair. >> good afternoon and welcome to the 2nd or 3rd panel for the day. good afternoon. >> good afternoon. >> much better. i am from columbia university school of the arts partnering. before i introduce a colleague who introduce a moderator want to say a bit about how the devil proceed. go to barnes & noble 10th with a look at get your book

and come back and have it signed in the auditorium. i'll be right here. then we have it on sale in the bookshop. you can purchase that there. we're looking forward to that. our next panel is called the image and black race and politics a time of crisis. at 5:00 o'clock mayor david dinkins we will be here and we will pause that panel to have him way and a bit. with thatwith that said there going to buy books outsider upstairs the tobacco have the time please look. we have the founder of the african-american children's book project it is amazing moderator.

and as well. >> thank you very much, and i am happy to be in harlem because there's a lot of exciting things happening here at the harlem book fair and eternally grateful for makes rodriguez for continuing the tradition. my name is vanessa. many years ago i was a fashion journalist in rome italy. i worked for daily newspaper and i was coming out in after on platform shoes and as my editor with the uniform was. covering her money to our stretching. the coverage versus the town

some ideas. if you don't have expensive jewelry invested in a set of rules but also sensible shoes. always where black. you don't no how expensive for how cheap that article of clothing is. asas you can see and you watch television, his around in black. but today the woman on this panel are going to tackle the topic of fashioning the self the image of black. we continue to judge a book by its cover. the man walks in the room and his pants or datasets the automatically say when

not be ready for prime time. again woman comes in with a paira pair of hypocrites for stomach out, she might not be ready for prime time. i hope the panel discussion of us to better understand african-american studies program. in his 1st book she has written a number of books the politics and culture the sounding board for journal a

former professional dancer member to company in the repertory ensemble and a young woman of color access are produced based projects in detroit, newark in new york city. >> good afternoon. welcome to the harlem book for his family and just acknowledge what they already no. the things that we think about happening community. we often think about the scholarly writing.

so we write and speaking communities with you. i also want to turn to is amazing what if it's okay having the way we should proceed today i like to offer some i truncated bio so you are speaking with. i would like to offer an additional frame to this conversation that is rooted in your. his depression talked about in the way that we are able to stay alive and i. i want to think about fashioning beyond the individual body is i hope you can do that today.

we have to my far right now is in newark, new jersey has an author historian and edwards professor of american history america princeton university and author of seven books including the history of white people, creating black americans, african-american history and its meaning, 1690 to the present in my favorite. as a painter work digitally and manually on honest books most recently on art history .27. now she received her phd in history from harvard and are nsa and painting from the rhode island school of design. please give a hand to her. next line her an interdisciplinary scholar's

work explores how the aesthetics of race and gender they're with fashion impact and are impacted by popular culture social history, and political life. currently an associate professor at cornell university where she is also the director grassroots studies and africana studies the author of three books command raising beauty culture, and african-american women. the choice for outstanding academic book and the public library association 1997 award for outstanding university press book. written ladies pages, african-american represent african-american studies. [applause]

>> last but not least michelle gainer who is the author of the beautiful vintage by clamor. butbut that oprah magazine named one of the ten best books to give and get. regarding the. lives in harlem and is currently completing vintage black grammar gentleman's quarters, men's edition. [applause] okay. i want to say a few words. i want to get into a conversation but it's important offer different frame the title of this

panel is fashioning the self each word offer so much for us to consider and we consider. what do we mean? where the possible ways we can allow ourselves to see and imagine knew ways of creatively making ourselves. and then the word image. image is formed in our minds materialized in countless ways including the visual arts consumer and the rituals, representations of people so fees, academic research and our own everyday ways of being in the world that are publicly viewed and privately experienced. solidifying the stories we tell about ourselves and each other and played out in the actions we take the images produced social and legal outcomes that reach

far beyond the space bar imagination. of course, blackness or black identity. the panel can deal with that. will be thinking about how they. what that means picture again. all of your work and across to the disciplinary practices employs a variety of methods to get us to think about fashion particularly as it relates to black women. how that relates to black women beyond this gender notion of fashion is simply about choices we make in the realm of how we dress ourselves adornment, beauty practices an individual body

if i could ever like to start us off by thinking about this contemporary moment. i mean, this moment on the stage right now the possibilities. ii want it to be about this moment and the larger context of the threat of black life. what we can do to think about the question of beauty, adornment, and fashion within that larger context. that's a good place trust to start. i'm thinking about black women long before it was media attention was is returned to what they do on the frontlines of protest. involved in a political

fashioning a political refashioning. i'm also thinking about how in one weekly new cycle we can witness a 14 -year-old micro code by a hyper aggressive police officer. serena williams, misty copeland command michelle obama valorize been demonized for the physical bodies in the same spaces and a white woman taking claim for black womanhood in the strategic choices she makes about her hair clothing, speech patterns. even with all of us. while all this is happening behind the cover of these replay narratives black women his face is we don't see televised have to contend with the residue from these overly mediated images. how do we think about fashioning this context? i want to open with that.

what is this moment this time we're speaking into it against and what do things like fashion and beauty and adornment, how you move through the world, how you make yourself has to do with these larger questions. so i turned to the panelists there is a lot for us to think about, but i'm hoping we can down the conversation my specific question is how would you define this moment command how does the work that you specifically write about, the work that you are engaged in providing intervention in this moment or speak to the importance of where we are now when we speak about race and body and fashion? >> well, in this moment now as far as how we present ourselves the context of black lives and the danger wherein. i don't think there is

safety. i don't see any way that you can dress yourself as a black person, as a black man or woman and be safe. .. >> that's my thought initially yeah. >> [inaudible] >> a lot of the work that i did in my first two books the second one is about black women's magazines. and let me say the first black

women's magazine is from 1897. it is not "essence" magazine in 1970, it is african-american fashion, and it's a combination of essence and vogue for black women in the 19th century. very often people will say you know how essence got its start. there's five other magazines before we get to essence. we have a long history in figuring out how to represent gender and fashion in ourselves. a lot of the work that i do in those first two books i talk about as figuring out what it means to wear your race right or wrong. like the things that i do about aesthetics in fashion and hair have as much to do with the playful kinds of choices that black folks make, that all people make about our bodies about how we want to represent ourselves. we just say it feels good, it looks good it's soul satisfying. but depending on who's looking

at your choices, depending on the space that you're in, people make determinations about if you're wearing your race in a way that's disturbing, that's upsetting around gender politics around sexuality politics, around being too political, too radical about not fitting. and the responses. so the thing that i think it's always important to think about is it's not just how you are representing yourself, it has to do with the sense that people make of that self when they look at you. and very often we want to say that a being free means we don't have to pay attention we don't have to be mindful. that being human of being adult means we get to make choices about who we are and move through the world. and in all kinds of ways that are often chilling, often tragic it's just not true. it can be true. it is often true. but those moments where those

choices cost you because people understand your self to be different than what you understand it to be is still something that happens. it happens regularly. >> yeah. well i am sort of working on an artist book called the truth about beauty. noel by and i have been colleagues since the 20th century. [laughter] and together we did a conference on beauty that halle berry keynoted. and i talked about some of that work. at that point it was not. arthel:tist book -- artist book but that was before i went to art school. and i think about the truth about beauty and about the truth about saving your life as a woman, as a black woman as a dark-skinned black woman, i've come across one truth.

and it's not a new one. actually duboise in talking about the twoness talked about seeing yourself from inside and seeing yourself from outside. and he was probably thinking about educated black men like himself at the time. but still there was the sense that there's a pitying bemused gaze out there. and then you struggled with that as a black person because you know yourself as a full-fledged person. and he said that that struggle is absolutely exhausting. >> uh-huh. >> yeah. >> that's the part i remember, because people ask me, you know, now that i am a person of a certain age with a great dial of wisdom -- deal of wisdom -- [laughter] they say oh, were you ever

discriminated against? well, you know not big discrimination. did you ever struggle? i've been a very lucky woman. but it's been exhausting. and i think about this time when i -- my public face isn't facebook, so i'm getting it all through facebook. people are exhausted by every week having another atrocity to worry about. and i think that that almost is a conspiracy against black people to keep us from doing our work and to keep us from fashioning ourselves as individuals. it's almost as if to be an individual is to turn against your race standing. this is a very difficult proposition because it means you

don't do your work, and you don't love yourself as an individual. so what i would like to say about the truth about beauty for us here the four of us, those of you who are here and the people you talk to, is to find a means of shutting down that gaze from outside to stop the barrage. because we live in a capitalist society in which most of the images you see are marketing. and marketing means i want you to feel bad about yourself so you'll buy my stuff. >> exactly. [applause] >> all right. so shut that down, see yourself from inside and do not hear or see the images that your society

sends back to you. that's what i want to say about self fashion. >> yes. it's interesting, what you say because that happened yesterday i had the honor of meeting a legendary dancer. there was a panel last night moderated by an author, and it was another dance legend and missy copeland. and she said the same thing you just said, that focusing on all this, you know the race and the different things that's happening around us, it's keeping many of us from our work, from focusing. and it's a distraction. and after a while there's something every day there's a new atrocity a new hashtag. and it's taking us from our work. and so she said it doesn't mean that you ignore it or that you don't have a conscious about it. but at some point you have to kind of take it in and make sure you're focused on your work and

let it go. because that's going to affect our history in generations going forward. >> that's right, yeah. i just want to carry that over and think about this more in terms of how we make ourselves in beauty and the ideas that we have around beauty. so often even in the ways that we think about these daily atrocities and we're always in this reactionary mode, even the way we think and talk about our icons, beyonce or serena williams and this idea whether we're celebrity or just your everyday young woman on the bus through brooklyn, that the way you fashion yourself or carry yourself seems to always be talked about in reaction to some larger narrative usually a white narrative. and i wonder of danger of that, too, when we think about the fact that our beauty is an inheritance from our ancestors. this is in us. it's not developed as a response to something else. so i wonder if we could think about how those processes independent of reacting to something happen, what are the

ways that people, everyday folks from your experience and the work that you do, find ways to show themselves and represent themselves that are not about resisting something or fighting back against it, but just really about the idea of the playfulness that you bring up. playfulness and pleasure and experiencing your beauty and sharing that. >> but here's the thing, i don't think we have we have a problem talking about the playfulness around beauty and that we should be playful and that hair styles don't mean anything -- [laughter] well no right. it's all just hair and anybody can wear it, and we need to let some things go, or that black people as black people we are all united in actual literal levels of melanin in your skin is not something that we should talk about or be mindful of.

and i actually find myself very often wanting people to be mindful of that so that we can move through it. like you can't -- the difference between a kylie jenner wearing cornrows it's just hair and the numbers of black children who are constantly sent home from school in tears from wearing their hair in cornrows has got to tell us -- and, again, i want to push back on the playful. we're good with the it's playful, it's fun. no, i have not heard of any white people being thrown out of school consistently for wearing a hair style a particular hair style that, like cornrows, that is really common for many. for many. not all little black girls grow up with cornrows. but it's hardly some sort of strange thing. so there's a dangerous in who's play -- a difference in who's

playing. at the same time, i will tell you one of my favorite quotes by zora neale hurston, he's talking about the characteristics of negro expression, and she says the first one is the will to adorn. the will that -- what we do with our hair and our bodies in fashion and with a little bit of nothing and how we make something that is soul satisfying out of that. what she says is the number one exing presentation of. and -- can expression of. and we can see of all the ways that hair, for example. you know baltimore hair when you see it right? if you've been to baltimore, you know -- [laughter] when someone is southern rocking a certain kind of hair style versus somebody who's from brooklyn. you might all have twists. they don't all necessarily look exactly the same. there are all kinds of ways that we make choices within our

communities and the ways that we understand what we're doing that are affirming, that are soul satisfying. that we absolutely should be able to do. but at the same time, we also have to be able to say if every -- if lupita is the only standard of black girl beauty, that does not look ethnically vague, right? black skin comes in such a wide spectrum of color we claim it all. you know we claim it, we recognize it, we celebrate it all. but on a larger kind of cultural stage what is celebrated is a certain little subset of that spectrum that i call ethnically vague. you could say, you know, people are from the middle east, they could be from central america they could be -- >> look like they could be sisters or cousins. >> right. so to not even have a space where you can actually talk about, it matters.

the amount of melanin in your skin can dark skin, dark girls, it matters. black people and how much money you get paid and the kinds of jobs that you have, in the amount of times you get arrested, in the levels of sentencing you have. the people who do that -- [inaudible] and there's not that many people who want to actually break things down to that level. but they will tell you those kinds of things matter. and at some point if we're not going to have those conversations, at least notice it and own it. not to be swept away by it or made necessaried or, you know turn on each other and, you know take to beating each other. that's not the point. but to at least notice it because you can't fix what you don't see. i don't know about the whole place, that's my thing. >> that's what i was getting at, right? like who can play and who can't. the fact that we don't always act in reaction to, but there are clear cons intentions that -- consequences that lay differently depending on how dark your skin is, whether

you're considered a man or a woman, which is what i wanted to get to while you were speaking. i'm wondering and maybe this is a question for you nichelle since you are work on the gentlemen's quarterly -- >> quarters. >> quarters version how does this -- can we talk about what this means in a gendered way? in the ways that we talk about playfulness and the repercussions for how you present yourself. is there a way you can get us to think about the gender dimensions of that and what we should be thinking about when we think about this idea of fashioning the self and beauty as it plays out in gender terms. >> i think it depends because in my book, in the first one the women's book, and the forthcoming book for the men vintage black glamour gentlemen's quarters, the book is focusing on individuals. it's not really, you know, black people all of us as a whole. i'm really talking about people who have made impact in history

in our cultural history. so it tends to be, you know, entertainers, some artists activists, actors, photographers, writers. so, and it's a different -- as far as i'm not sure about the playfulness part especially with the men because they, a lot of it was just about they wanted to look sharp. i mean, duke hellington, they -- elington they named him that in high school. some people just have that aesthetic about them. that's just who they are. some people, you know, some women are just never going to go to the corner store without lipstick and powder. i'm not one of those women but -- [laughter] again, that's an individual thing, that's a personal thing. i don't know that my, in my particular books have anything to do with that particular question. yeah. >> yeah. i want to say something about

blackness. [laughter] there are a lot of really good things. one is that it's easier for us to feel a sense of solidarity with one another and to feel linked in, to feel a sense of community. that's really important for keeping sane. you mentioned about adornment yes. and, you know, in a sense i'm not worried about black people being kept down in terms of appearance, you know? what i see is much more playfulness, much more adventure and a kind of happiness with the body that seems almost un-american, you know? people, black people are wearing great things and showing great bodies and showing all kinds of bodies, you know in a way that

nonblack people sometimes hesitate to do. so there are a lot of really good things about blackness, and that's just to scratch the surface. one bad thing -- and here i speak as a former historian -- is history. and i think that too great a knowledge of history is not good for you if you're black. i think that immigrants among us are going to save us through not carrying our history so heavily. i think if you remember our history, if you remember the trauma part without remembering the creation part, i called my book "creating black americans." and the inside of it is about trauma, but it's also about creation. we have to remember the creation

part. if you focus too heavily on the trauma, you can't do anything. you're stopped because you automatically feel they're going to cut me off they won't let me do it the police will get me. if you only focus on the numbers and the statistics it's so dismal. you would just stay home in bed. so let us respectfully not keep our history and not keep our social statistics foremost in mind as educated, thoughtful people. you need to know. but as a sane person in the united states of america, you need to forget. >> thank you for that. [applause] >> remember the well, i guess

maybe i can tack onto my answer, because part of what i do is not to ignore the trauma but to let people know within our history it's not all trauma. >> that's right. >> there's creation. this is, you know, my book celebrates or artists, you know? lena honor, you know the cab callaways and the things you have not heard about them. to give you not just another story about them having to go through the back door in a white hotel, but the story of them writing a song or painting a painting or studying their lines. in my book there's a picture of dorothy -- [inaudible] taking a dance class. young people today love beyonce and talk about her work ethic a lot, and i always like to bring that up in that context for something you can understand. the thing you admire beyonce for or janet jackson always seen rehearsing, that's not new. they're from a long tradition of

artists who were hard workers and loved art of every type. lenalena hornewas a big reader. >> that's right. i'm so glad you said that, because i hear a lot of especially undergrads who say to me all i'm learning and whether it's an ethnic studies class or african-american history is how bad it is. so the history piece is one thing, but also even in this moment. that's how i started off right? in this moment it's all a about how we are diagnose, right? slow death -- dying right? at what point do i have any agency to do anything -- >> you know, there's a distinction in the world between optimists and pessimists. turns out that optimists get things done. optimists succeed. it turns out that pessimists are right about the world. >> right. [laughter] >> right right right right.

>> and i just want to, i want to introduce a term. this is not an academic term, but it's a term that i got from some of the black women that i worked with in detroit who were around 16 years old. and they said there's a difference between a struggle, the struggle and struggley with an ly, and they say a struggle is what we go through as human beings on this planet. the struggle they define as specific to the african-american experience in this country. and they said but struggley is when -- and they named this through what they saw happening to their grandmothers and their aunties, struggling is when you are constantly battling and fighting with no prospects of anything getting better, with no prospect of joy. and no one, no human being should live in that space. and so they, their counteraction to that or the way they thought about this had a lot to do with

how they carried themselves, their ability to be creative not just in fashion, but to write poetry, to dance in ways that were in defiance of this idea of being struggley. we understand that there is a history for all of us, right, of working through and coming through. they even understood the history particular toy(e

>> in the midst of the trauma, the narrative that you have can be all about the trauma for a variety of reasons. but that's not necessarily the narrative that i have about black people. and it's not one that i teach my students. like, you need to understand the conditions that were pressing down at any moment. like again you can't just be like and they were play -- i had somebody say somewhere that we need to get beyond this trauma/pleasure thing, because even on -- during the middle passage, black women were having orgasms. i'm like, now you've gone far right? [laughter] now you've gone far with your dichotomy. yes, they may have been, but you know, it wasn't the pleasure cruise. [laughter] so we can talk about how we're

not all just damaged. black women, there's stuff to talk about, you know? >> dr. painter, i think in your book am i correct in that you were saying we see the slave initially in upstate new york and that her first language was dutch. >> yes. >> not english. and i think when people bring out that trope of sojourner truth, they hear that southern accent. [laughter] so whether she says -- [inaudible conversations] >> but that's the point i'm making. the point i'm making is that people not only trot that out as saying that, but also they hear it in that southern black voice and that had nothing to do with -- when i read that in your book -- >> people are carrying on about sojourner truth without even knowing anything about her. [inaudible conversations] >> can you please -- i would love -- [inaudible conversations] >> could you talk about just

that, where you're going with this, but also i would love if you could talk about the moment of the photographs -- >> yes. >> and the importance of -- >> yes yes. i want to say three things. let me try to remember the three things. the first thing is so sojourner truth didn't say ain't i a woman, any of that, the people who put that in her mouth don't even take step one to find out about her. i wrote a scholarly book on sojourner truth. there were two others that came out, and there's one since then, and we all say look she didn't say that. she said things that meant that that working class women need their rights. women need their rights and women work hard. she said that she didn't say ain't, aren't, etc. okay, that's the first thing. let's just career -- clear that up. i don't want any of you --

[laughter] okay. the second thing you've taken black americans and kind of shifted it over a little bit to playfulness. playfulness is good for fashion, maybe, but my book is called "creating black americans: african-american history and its meaning, 1619-present." and the themes are creation and trauma. so each chapter starts with a full-page image from black fine art. so if you can get a hard copy, you have a coffee table book with. if you can only get the soft copy, you have a textbook. [laughter] but they all they both have a lot of black fine art in it because artists can deal with the past in a way that scholars can't. and as we know, just look at me,

i'm getting all worked up. [laughter] >> i was excited to read your book that's why i wanted to ask you -- [inaudible] >> yeah, yeah. so we, we need to keep the creation in mind. for me, it was fine art. but it can be entertainment, it can be a lot of other things. and what was the third thing i wanted to -- >> [inaudible] >> no, i'm not going to talk about -- no, no. that's for you, that's for you. [laughter] you asked about the photographs. the way i really started drifting toward the way that i ended up going to art school was through working on sojourner truth's photographs. sojourner truth did not read and write, but she had her pictures taken. and i started because i was really fascinated by you know that photograph of sojourner truth that you see a lot where she's sitting like this?

you know what i'm talking about? she's very prim, right? you know that photo? i mean, there are several of them but, you know, she's never, she's never doing any of that. [laughter] she's sitting very nicely. and then before i knew anything there was this verbal so journaller truth who was -- sojourner truth who was ripping open her bodice and ain't i a woman and all that sort of thing which was a very fierce kind of person. so in order to find out what was going on here, i started -- it ended up a book. but the photographs were sojourner truth's controlled self-fashioning. and she showed herself as a respectable, well dressed matron. she didn't show herself as an angry black woman or a freedom fighter. she was a person of the mid 19th century, and i'm going to stop

with this last bit saying that part of our self-fashioning all of our self-fashioning most of our self-fashioning is as individuals. and i think we should be proud of ourselves as individuals. this is very hard to do in our society which only wants to make us units of race or units of sex or units of sexuality. but each of us is an individual with a particular past a particular family, particular tastes particular body. and we do with it and we should own doing it as ourselves. [applause] >> i wanted to add -- >> one of the, i love this sojourner truth book.

it was revelatory to me. and one of the things that i was most revelatory was not that she wasn't busy opening her breasts in front of people and talking about ain't i a woman -- [laughter] that never happened either the whole ripping of the breast in the middle of a meeting. also fiction. but the thing that i like the most is for a while she was part of this utopian community that had all this, like, free love going on -- interracial. >> it was interracial but it was not free love. >> okay, so i made that part up. [laughter] but i like -- [inaudible conversations] >> so that she was a part of creating this utopian kind of idyllic community. and, again it's not how sojourner truth has been given to us -- >> and this is why my book is called "sojourner truth: a life, a symbol." two different things. >> yeah. >> speaking of individuality and this is a very selfish

question because i admire all of your work so much and have read and used it in so many different ways. and i think it would be helpful hopefully not just for me, but if you could talk about the individual journey that brought you to the work. not just wanting to uncover the trauma but the joy and the creation in the collective community creation. i think it would be helpful if you could speak to how you see your research, your writing as part of these creative, self-making projects and especially now with how you shifted -- or maybe it wasn't a shift -- from a historian to creating the archives, to creating with challenge and digital art. i think your individual stories of creation and fashioning are really important for all of us to understand and hear. >> go ahead. >> nichelle, do you want to start in. in -- start? >> well, like i said earlier it

came from a desire to share a part of history that i didn't think people were aware of enough people didn't know. i love history different books from, you know, different areas. but i find a lot of people avoid it because it is traumatic and it can be exhausting be all you're hearing is terrible things. so i found a lot of -- as a writer i admire other artists in different disciplines so i always an interest in singers and actresses and models and how they came to their art. because a lot of them are different, very individual people and often not -- just like we were just talking about sojourner truth -- their journey is not the stereotypical journey that people tend to think. there was a dancer that i featured in my book, she was famous for a while her name was margo webb. and she only died maybe ten years ago. she lived to be over 100. but she was in a dance team called norton and webb and her dance partner was harold norton. and, you know, after their -- they had a short career of --

but after her dance career was over, she didn't just go in a corner and die somewhere. she went back to college to hunter college here in new york. she was born in harlem. she finished her degree, and she taught school for 40 years. she had a nice life with a family and, you know she taught dance in many ways. i think people have this idea of people as artists if they don't become famous, they aren't successful in their art, or they're not a successful person. and that's not always the case. a lot of artists have had different journeys or they've inspired other artists. she is the one who kind of sent diane carroll on the right path. ms. carroll celebrated her 80th birthday yesterday. 80 years. [applause] but she's, you know, josephine was the p friend to her who said oh, girl, you can't wear that. [laughter] so, i mean i just like the little stories like that, you know the little the little

tidbits in history the dorothy dandridge and nat king cole going around hollywood pitching a tv series for them to star in. turned down. can you imagine if we could watch that on youtube today? i love that. i didn't see a lot of that in history. i saw a lot of dr. king and rosa parks. which is fine, we need to know our history but we need to know all aspects of our history. >> i want to say it was clearly so important to everybody else, because the book started from the tumbler and the images online that got such an overwhelming response. i think someone called it a bomb to the soul, to see those images. >> thank you. i had the idea for the book years ago but, you know, turned down like many writers are. it's expensive to produce, we're not sure there's an audience for it -- >> an audience rose up, right? >> they didn't believe it, so social media was a way to engage

that audience and to kind of show, you know, expose people to a picture of err that kit not in a cat woman suit. sammy davis can -- jr. put his money into the 1959 film they starred in. there's a lot of things i would like people to think about when they think of these people. not just the one-note thing. lena horne pinned to the pillar, you know in i want them to think of other things, you know? that's where that came from, from the tumblr page and my publisher actually approached me from that. so i was fortunate in that aspect. >> thank you for that. it's a beautiful book. >> thank you. >> let's see my -- honestly, i remember i sat in on a grad seminar that nell was teaching after i'd already published my first book. and one of the things she would always say to the graduate

students was there's so many questions that have yet to be asked, right? if you wonder why isn't anybody talking about this, it's because no one ever asked the question. yo i need to ask the -- you need to ask the question. if you don't ask the question it's not happening. that, for me, helped make sense of the work that i had done up until that point which the very first thing that i wrote was a journal article while i was still an undergraduate at spelman that was called writing themselves into existence. and it was about black women who had been freedom fighters and what it meant when they started to speak and write their experience over and against the history that i learned. so again, i was an undergraduate, so fannie lou hamer was this revelation for me. but so much of the history that i was learning even about the civil rights movement was still very male and it would just say and then there was fannie lou

hamer, right? >> right. >> but to really -- it hit me, her absence, the absence of her voice was as an undergraduate. so that piece in a way the first two books that i did have to do with writing other pieces of black women's history back into existence. so the first book about hair literally was because i understood the complexity of hair for black women as central to citizenship and femininity. partly because i grew up in the south and in san francisco california. my parents are divorced, so i split years. when i with -- when i was in florida, what hair meant my grandmother was all about me and miss bess city and getting my hair straightened. she was not ashamed of being black, she was a part of a very specific be kind of black

community. but hair for her meant one thing, and it couldn't -- and it would cause trouble. in a segregated -- florida is no joke around race really. florida has got a whole reconstructed thing going on. for a segregated black community, she would like while you cause that trouble on yourself? that right there of all the fights that we have, why that one? when i was with my mother in the late '60s, really '70s, you know, we were running around at the mar run county -- marilyn county courthouse. the differences of what hair could mean to black people in the same decade in different regions of the country and for different general rations -- generations, there were nuances there that were beyond politics and asimilar -- assimilation that spoke to the complexity of our experience, and i simply

didn't see it when i was in graduate school. i simply didn't see black women -- i write about black communities, but my point of entry is often black women. i did not see the complex communities that a i recognize. and so hair, for me, became the first kind of thing. and while i was doing the hair book i stumbled across this group of hair dressers that madam c.j. walker friended a publication called women's voice, and that was published for 20 years. these hairdressers all over the country basically like, wrote about the stuff they were interested in. if it was politics, they were not writing about how to get a man. politics economics. again, talking about black women as business people in ways i had not seen. and its publishers we -- as publishers, we publish that? and the hairdressers, this is what they were doing with their

money? and i could not find this publication anywhere. and this is a period where all you hear about is black women as maids and black women as escaping the south from sexual abuse and black women is the underbelly of -- they created a magazine. and then i found out they created another magazine. [laughter] and the way that i found that magazine, and i'll stop, the way that i found women's voice having gone to black college i was looking for this magazine everywhere. i knew it existed, because people would mention it in various places. but none of the places that should have it the library of congress, none of the black press, i couldn't find it anywhere. i just, i would keep finding just little scraps of mention about it. and finally i called -- because i went to black college no disrespect to spelman whose library was actually one central library, but i knew that things were not always preserved and

written down collected in a certain kind of way. so i literally called up fisk university. i started calling black colleges and saying can you look in the places -- i'll pay you to get an undergraduate to look in those boxes that i know that exist and just see fisk university had the whole run. >> wow. >> yeah. and they sent it to me. [laughter] /. [applause] but that has to do with knowing -- i knew enough to start calling howard. i knew enough to call the au center. i knew enough to call -- you have to know certain things about black people and black culture that a you won't necessarily learn necessarily outside of it to figure out how to research it. so that's, that's my -- >> thank you for that. >> yeah. >> well, i have to say that her first book was what got her to princeton. >> she sent me an e-mail -- nell

painter sent me an e-mail -- >> from paris she sent you an e-mail. >> you did. >> i sent her an e-mail from paris. [laughter] i've done a lot of books and you know, they start in different ways. the first one was a dissertation. you write a dissertation, it becomes a book. right, cheryl hicks? yes. and the next book was narrative of jose hudson which is an autobiography of a black communist. and i was advised not to do that book because he was a communist, because he was a black southerner and because he was still alive. but i loved it. i still love it. the third book was a history of the united states at the turn of the 20th century. so that is not just black history, but it turns out

that -- it turns out that a lot of things that happened to black people are useful for understanding larger societies or larger histories. and, you know, for the longest time when i was advising dissertations, i would say to my graduate students like cheryl -- who didn't listen to me either -- i would say, you know, take a topic that has that's not just a black topic, but in which black people play a large part. and then you can claim that you have mastered this big thing. and you have also read a lot about black people. i don't think anybody took that advice. [laughter] black people are just too interesting. no, that's not true, because i had some -- i had all of my graduate students were not

writing about black topics. but the ones who wanted to write of black topics continued to write about black topics and didn't take the tack that i had suggested. standing in armageddon, the united states history kind of limped along for a while. the only reason i have a career worth seeing is thanks to the new york times book review. "the new york times" book review has reviewed all of my books. "standing in armageddon" is a very progressive history of the united states which the radical historians did not review. and the problem was that i am not the right kind of black people for the editors of the then-radical journal. middle class. female. but "standing in armageddon" still lives it's in its second

edition, and it's selling very nicely. the next book was so journal iser truth -- sojourner truth which my colleagues here have mentioned very generously. let's see, what came after that? southern history across the color line which is a collection of essays about southerners some of whom are black and come come -- and some of whom are not. and then there was "creating black americans" which came to me, which was proposed to me. and if i had known how much work it was going to be, i wouldn't have done it, because it was a hell of a lot of work. i didn't know art history at the time. so it was a lot of work to write a synthesis of history by yourself. but i did learn a lot about black artists because all of the images are black fine art. i decided i was only going to use black artists.

and black artists who work on historical topics. so it's not an art history, but since most people don't know any black art history, it's way in. the it's a way -- it's a way in. and then the history of white people, which started like sojourner truth, the the history of white people started with a question. i started working on it at the turn of the 31st sent century when the russians were bombing children any ya. and there was a photograph on the front of "the new york times" of chech ya looking like berlin in 1945. it was the capital of chechnya. and i'm thinking why are white americans called czech ans? does that make any sense? so i asked people and nobody had a good answer.

so took a while to answer the question, and then i had to go in front of the answer and then after the answer, so it took a long time. but that book became a new york times best seller, and people carry it on the subway like a secret, you know? people look over and think, what are you reading? [laughter] so that book, that book has done well. at the moment i am writing a memoir, which is the hardest thing i've ever written. it's called "old in art school." t because i was old -- because i was old in art school. [laughter] and people say well, why do you use the word "old"? can't you say older? [laughter] no. say it loud. i'm old and i'm proud. [laughter] [applause] >> i want to go to q&a but can

you give just a few sentences on the transition to art school from being a historian to -- >> yeah. so it started with sojourner truth, the sojourner truth photographs. i didn't know anything about photographs, so i went over to mark han which is the art a history library of princeton which is, it's just -- it's heaven. so there are all these books on everything on art. the only problem is you can't take them out. so i would just sit there and is read and read and read and learn about photographs and images and the rhetoric of the images, and i just loved it. so that started me. and then i thought -- my mother, actually started a new career. you knew my mother, didn't you? yeah. we share the bay area, and i know her mother, and my mother is deceased, but she knew my mother to. >> i loved your mother. >> yeah. my mother was fabulous. don't get me talking about my

mother. [laughter] but my mother wrote a book after she -- she wrote two books after she retired. the second one is a memoir, and it's called "i hope i look that good when i'm that old." [laughter] because that's what people would say to her. and now they're saying it to me. [laughter] so when i get old to, i'm going to write a book called "i hope i look that good when i'm that old, volume ii." [laughter] anyway, my mother said you can do something after -- >> right. >> so i took painting classes at princeton, and i did the drawing and painting marathon at the new york studio school. so i would get up at 6:30 in the morning and take the newark light rail and then take new jersey transit and then take subway and then get to a street

before the youth. and i would stand up for eight hours and draw and paint and i loved it. and then my mentor, bill gaskins here, would give me bits of wisdom every now and then to keep me grounded. and also to answer questions that the rest of my art education wasn't answering. so i did a bfa in painting at mason gross school of the arts at rutgers. yea, rutgers. and then i did an msa at the rhode island school of design which was the hardest educational experience i've ever had. >> thank you for that. so much more to talk about. i want to open it up now to questions and comments. and open up the conversation. so there's a microphone here -- there's microphones in these aisle ways so please.

and we can just alternate mics, right? okay. >> hi. >> hello. thank you all for being here. i appreciate your conversation and your comments. i am an elementary teacher-educator, meaning that i work with older folks who want to become elementary schoolteachers. i've been seated behind some young people, and i know there are some in the audience. and what i'd like to hear from you, tapping into your words of bits of advice is maybe some counsel, some recommendations and some suggestions to young people especially where they have access to a range of technologies and tools but many times don't have the opportunities in schools to use those. so how would you begin to give just a little bit of advice, motivation and encouragement to young people to write to write about themselves and begin to look for their own stories and narratives? >> thank you for that, yeah. >> i have one suggestion.

take them to the library. yeah. >> i'm, actually, it's funny the book that i'm working on right now is about white supremacy and black education. so what to tell young people, i'm going to, you know tear it down, and we've got to rebuild it. which is a whole longer thing because i'm in the middle of a book that's looking at how black people have been educated and how lucrative our miseducation and undereducation -- >> that's right. >> -- often is with certain segments. and we're in a period right now where that's the case. so it's, but it's funny, i'm thinking a lot about k-12 education. but in terms of how to save yourself, i do think you've got to get off the internet. technology is a fabulous thing, but it is literally one of the things that so-called reformers and people who are running both -- how education is talked

about at the government and corporate and business level is all the same thing right now. it's one of the ways that they, that an education is being unmade. it's a tool. it's a tool. and the ways that some in power are using that tool mean that you may not ever see the book. if it's not a kindle book. if it's -- there's not a web site with it. to start to ask the kinds of critical questions still takes people in rooms with young people. teaching them how to think critically how to ask your own questions. all we need to do is give you the tools to answer them but if you don't know that there are questions to be asked, and unfortunately at this moment in my cynical -- and i'm pessimistic right now, not optimistic -- at this moment it's the question of thinking if they're reduced to a test score which doesn't have a lot to do with it. so find ways to question.

find people who will question you. ask questions. demand answers to your questions. from your peers from your family, from people in the grocery store. it doesn't really matter. [laughter] but become a questioning human being. [applause] >> i agree. >> i wanted to add one thing. i came up before the age of facebook or social media so for me it was "essence" magazine. i love the library i love the smell of books i loved going to the library, but i had this conflict because i loved the library, but i didn't see myself in the library. what i would say to those young people is to trust what you know and not just what you read, but what you know deeply about yourself and what you love and to create from that place. so i think for me it was loving books and loving the word and loving art but not seeing myself reflected and knowing that as much as i could take in knowledge, i could also produce knowledge. and so to trust where i came

from and what i knew to be true and to work from that place. but thank you for the work you do, by the way. so a hand -- [applause] >> good afternoon. my name is tyrone nero. i'm a social worker and also a veteran. and i just started a nonprofit organization, it's called black diaries. and my business part her and i we both graduated from columbia and the whole premise is qualitative stories that black folks are going through. like get those stories out there that really are meaningful. and one of the things i think that's important as i listen to editors and writers is, like, how do you find the right story to tell and then the right meaningful powerful, like story? because we all go through things. everybody goes through stuff. and one of the things, the challenges that we have is we just came back from haiti and we have a big chunk of stories that we heard there.

we were in baltimore there's these huge stories. and our whole goal is community organizing. and i understand that art is a part of it, i understand that being empowered is a part of it. but i am utilizing the internet because we are all video-based and documentary-based on telling our stories from our perspective. and i just would like to get insight on when you choose what to talk about or what to write about, i'm sure it's all internal, but how do you get outside resources to -- as noted by a hemowho was arrested, as noted by shah question that who was dealing with these type of things. like how do you get your motivation from folks that are in the communities? >> i would say that the question to ask is for what purpose. because you have a lot of material, and some of -- a lot of it is probably really

interesting even though it does not necessarily suit your purpose. so if your purpose is to illustrate how someone got from being aimless to going to the library to going to community college, then you find the story that furthers that narrative. so in art we call it cure rating, in publishing we call it editing. so you have a lot of stuff and you need to edit toward your end. >> thank you fir that question -- for that question. >> my name is edward harris, and my question is do you find it almost your burden to address the, i guess the basic narrative that's out there now? so with it being the mary jane girl or cookie, do you find that in your writing and your editing

process that you try to steer away from the archetypes and maybe lend them to something that's nontraditional? for instance, sister, you said you were being a little pessimistic right now about some things. i get that. i'm a filmmaker myself. belief me, i get that. -- believe me, i get that. but on one end of saying, okay, it's typical that you have the fly sister that's looking for i guess, the perfect scenario as opposed to someone who's saying, you know, i'm not going to buck the system i'm going to go try something else i'm going to try an ago regaron lifestyle, you know, maybe i'm going to have a mushroom farm be as opposed to try to fight through the corporate ladder. do you find that you have to offer those options in your writings and in your process? >> i think, if i understand your question, i think that there is a cultural appetite for certain kinds of narratives and images of black people. >> yes. >> and when i say "cultural

appetite," we have to almost feed a machine that sees -- it happens with women. like, there's the same kind of cultural appetite for specific images of women across race. there's a certain cultural appetite of images of black people. not so much -- well, yeah. anyway -- [laughter] before i start like -- [inaudible] and i think and this kind of goes back to the question over here, in terms of how do you pick stories again, you have to know that such stories exist. and then you tell stories that can deepen and broaden and widen. you're not going to displace. i don't -- pessimistic here. >> [inaudible] >> i don't think you're going to make it -- >> [inaudible] certain options. i mean -- [inaudible] i have a 16-year-old daughter. and when you start looking at

even with the documentaries, the options that are generally there -- >> right. >> -- they all colored within the lines. whereas 80% of us live somewhere along the line or completely outside of the line completely, right? so how to function in those options, you know? do you find it sort of incumbent upon you guys, you know, because you're the ones who are doing or the ones who are out there on that particular front? i know as a filmmaker i kind of feel like yeah, you know, i can discuss what the issue is, and you know, be very scholarly about what the problem is without offering some sort of substantive -- >> right. >> -- solution at the end of my process. >> uh-huh. >> then you're just kind of pimping, you're sort of poverty pimping in a way, you know? you're making money off of explaining the problem without actually taking it upon yourself to throw a solution out there and to be criticized for that solution. so do you find that a hard balance in what you do?

>> yeah. i mean i can answer that, for sure. i'm a cultural anthropologist, and i did ten years of field work in detroit in a homeless shelter for girls in detroit, and this was an issue that came up for me and still does again and again and again through every part of that process. so i initially started out thinking i was looking at this shelter as -- i was going to analyze the shelter. and it ended up becoming about those young women and not just the young women in that shelter who lived there but their mothers and their aunts and whether grandmother came. because it was exactly that, right? it gets to a point where you feel like -- and we're talking about real, live people, right? not creating a fictional story but real, live people whose narratives seem to so easily fit into these tropes we've heard before these very simplistic tropes, the single mother with three children or, you know, everybody's living with the grandmother. and the thing was, that was true for a lot of those young women, but that wasn't the story. right? and that was such a simple story. and that story could become so

dangerous if that story wasn't unpacked. and if those young women and their mothers and their aunties weren't able to also tell that story in their own way through their own voice. and i just want to say one thing especially when we talk about young black people, we tend to talk about them as if they don't come from families unless the problem is a family. we talk about them as if they've dropped from the sky and aren't tied to communities and aren't tied to larger histories. so when i initially started the field work, i can't write this just about the shelter because it's recreating these same narratives that are not helpful. this is no solution. it's just telling us what we think we already know. so that's why i stayed there for ten years almost twelve, because i really started to live with those young women and their families to think about what does this mean beyond this superficial trope that we think we understand? it also, honestly forced me to look at that shelter differently. i was ready to be like, oh, this shelter is a bad institutional

space, and it's just recreating, you know oppression. that wasn't the case either. you know what i mean? it's complicated. and with we're not -- if we're not brave enough to play in the nuance and the gray area and to be wrong and to revise what we thought before, then we're just going to keep recreating these same dangerous stories that do nothing but allow us to live in a fantasy that we think we're right and we have the answers when we actually don't. but thank you for that question. thank you. [applause] oh there's -- hi. >> hi. my name is ronnie, i'm a full-time ph.d. student at university of houston studying urban education. and in texas we have adopted new textbooks in history that mention, they talk about the civil rights -- i'm sorry the civil war and they mention slavery as a very side issue and that the civil war was about states' rights. not that states -- not states'

rights to own people, but it was about states' rights. so this sort of revisionist history, we see it often in houston and in texas -- that's where i'm from. [laughter] help us. [laughter] but i'm sort of wondering what do you think our responsibility is as -- and i won't say the learned, but just conscious people, people who know, like, we're retelling the story wrong or we're making it up as we go, or we're making the story that it looks better for some people and not as bad for other people. what is our responsibility as writers? i think in my mind i think maybe i am a writer. but what is our responsibility as parents as educators, as teachers to tell history well? because, yeah, it is all an interpretation, but also to tell it well. so when you were speaking about sojourner truth, and it's like that didn't happen. so what is our responsibility, again, as parents, as educators as teachers, anybody in this room. how do we get those stories to

our kids right? >> you go buy them. [laughter] you go buy them. we now have -- we are 30 years into african-american studies and in those 30 years we have produced a bounty. i have written a textbook, you know a general study. cheryl hicks here has written about incarcerated back women which is a case study. you're looking in front, you're standing in front of authors. we have the books exist the films exist the stuff is out there. so as a parent, you're asking a question as a consumer, the stuff is there. it's in the library. it's in the bookstores. we've done our part. you do your part. [applause] >> about texas in particular let me just say because, again, i've just been reading about it.

and your state is no joke. there's a lot of no-joke states, florida is too. but texas has got a whole other thing -- >> because what we order in textbooks, people say oh, texas ordered that, we should all -- >> because texas is the biggest market, texas and california. people want shapes of what everybody else sees. but one thing i will see is there have to be consequences for people for getting this wrong, right? [applause] >> right. >> there has to be consequences and almost -- at this point almost community by community people are going to have to figure out what those consequences are. yes, we have textbooks are one issue that certainly need to be addressed, but there's all kinds of ways that public education right now is being undermined. and i'm sure as you all know right now the public education system is majority of color and majority people who are poor. right? so when these big decrees start coming down from the department

of education there's certain people who are being impacted. and if we're not organized, if we don't even think about a response, if we just say oh, the textbooks, you know, texas and california, they're rewriting the whole thing. although this thing about the civil war having nothing to do about slavery, that's not even new textbooks. that's -- there's a strain of american history that's happy to tell the whole history of the civil war and not mention black people. like really it's an afterthought. that's not even the most egregious ways of retelling i think. because that one, we see it. there's all kinds of other ways that narratives get shaped about black people as pass i have consistently -- passive consistently. there's a whole way not even just about the ways that we were not passive slavery our history is one of trauma can be. there is a narrative. there is a way that people can the tell the whole history of black people in the diaspora.

the department i'm in now, we do african and caribbean and -- there's a whole way you can tell our history where we are constantly having things done to us and you would never know ever, that we ever did anything for us. that we ever fought back and won. like -- right? and there's no consequences for anyone. so as nell said, but the knowledge is out there. it's not secret. >> there's another since the charlton atrocity -- charleston atrocity, and here i will brag about another one of my former ph.d. students chad wilson who started a bibliography of essential reading. it is there. it's there. >> i also want to add the essential reading with kids or with adults, sometimes people can feel like we've mentioned being exhausted before. there are ways to enjoy it organically and, you know, just naturally through different

avenues. if you have a kid that's interested in sports, maybe a sports biography would be -- a biography of muhammad ali or joe lewis may interest them. if someone is interested in culinary arts, there's an author who wrote a book about african-american history through food. i believe it's jessica -- jessica something, i forget. and i'll tweet about it or something later, because that bugs me. but there are different entry points that you can take in there while we are fighting the good fight with these textbooks or whatever instead of losing time and in ten years the 5-year-olds are 15, you know? we can fill in those blank withs now organically -- blanks now organically. they're on -- on netflix there are different documentaries on there from different aspects of black life. as everyone said here the material is out there. it's there. >> thank you. this is our last question. >> hi. my name is a.d. mentor and you

brought up a point a very interesting point, and i figure i better ask this question because if i didn't i'd lose my mind. you mentioned that when you were doing research for a particular magazine, in order for you to get that information, you had to choose a nontraditional way of getting that information. part of -- i'm big history, i love history. history's primarily what i read, and i'm a consummate researcher. and i often find that to be absolutely true for black people in america. one of the things during my undergrad years, one of my first jobs was working at my college's library, specifically in archives. and i was great until i got fired. [laughter] and i got fired because one day an alumni had delivered information on my school's connection to the underground

railroad. and i'm the only black person in the whole place. you put that in front of me, i'm not getting any work done. but years later when i talk and communicate to people on research i always say have you gone to the university and find out what they have in their a archives? and it's never it never comes to people's mind that there are what we call nontraditional ways in which we can find our history. with that being said, the question is are there resources or institutions or just people that are actually doing this nontraditional research on black people that can be passed down to younger people especially since a lot of this stuff is starting slowly becoming digitized, or a lot of the universities are starting to open up their archives to allow regular folks like me and the people here to actually look and see, you know, the complete story of our history? >> let me say really quickly because i know that we're out of

time my issue right now is not the lack of different kinds of research tools that have -- like black newspapers going back to the 19th century. there is microfilm sets of those. the national association of colored women's papers which is fabulous and covers all kinds of stuff -- >> [inaudible] >> it's not. it's still on microfilm. it hasn't been digitized. the issue starts to become -- we did a project on cointel pro and i made them go to the library and look at the papers, and it was like a hunt. i told them go find out when this happened, this happened this happened. there's indexes and stuff. it wasn't like i was telling them to go through 150 reels. and they literally were like what is microfilm? right? you mean i have to actually go where now? [laughter] to the archives? and they were hostile about not being able -- they weren't mad if they weren't mad -- they had

to spent four or five hours discovering that they'd have to go to the library and the project would have taken them an hour and a half maybe -- [laughter] if they had gone like i told them to do in the first place. if it's not easily accessible -- >> yeah. >> and if it's not digitized, right? we -- that's where we're getting lost. things may still be in boxes, but if you have to go to a guide, an actual paper guide -- like if you have to go to the collection and request the boxes and then look at the guide and then tell -- like that's a foreign, that is becoming for a whole generation, even for graduate students, more work. because there's so much available online. they're kind of like maybe i can just look at the stuff that's online. and so that's a different kind of battle that has to do with just teaching. teaching training, learning. and i keep saying stuff is hidden that you really want to know about. the stuff that's in plain sight

the stuff that's easy is not always what's best for you. i know that we are at the wrap-up stage. >> [inaudible] [inaudible conversations] >> we can talk, we can talk afterwards. i'll be here. >> this is fascinating. we just need to wrap up. i just want to say thank you so much to all of the panelists. what we've covered -- [applause] in 90 minutes is really astounding. and thank you to all of you for your comments, for your attention, for your presence. >> and thank you aimee meredith cox for moderating an amazing panel. [applause] thank you so much. you'll pardon me for a little bit of housekeeping. these amazing women's books are available. painter, rooks and cox, at the barnes & noble tent directly outside. nichelle gainer's book is at the schomburg book shop directly upstairs. please thank our panelists once again. [applause] we will be back near a half an hour for the final panel of the day, race and politics in a time of crisis. please come back, but get some

books. thank you. [inaudible conversations] [inaudible conversations]

[inaudible conversations] >> and booktv's live coverage of the harlem book fair continues in just a few minutes. [inaudible conversations] >> we are in the one of the reading rooms of the schomburg where our special collections are held. and we have some real treasures that are a part of the collection. very honored to have this work. >> let's work our way down the row. >> sure. >> now is it okay if the camera gets in relatively tight? >> camera can get in tight. >> okay. >> as you can tell, this is an old book. it turns out that this book is 200 years older than our country. it was published in latin verse

in 1573 by juan latino who was a man of african descent in grenada, spain. he had been enslaved, he was emancipated, became a scholar of grammar and published this book. this is one of arturo schomburg's prized possessions. it's part of his original collection that came to the schomburg center and now lives in our rare book collection. >> now, i notice that you're handling this without the white gloves that curators often use. >> yeah. we are not as, as, what's the word particular about that each though we care deeply about the collections. part of it is that these materials are in the service of learning. and as much as we take great pride in preservation, we make sure the books are in proper conditions, i'm not going to do any long-term damage to this book by picking it up and turning a few pages. >> anyone come in and see this

book? >> anyone can see that book, and if they happen to read latin, then all the better. >> familiar name to a lot of people sir richard wright. >> richard wright, this is his first major novel. this book, "native son," published in 1940 put richard wright on the map in a big way. because he was wrestling with some of the deep issues of poverty, where they come from, how to fix them and resolve them in a novelist's hands. in this case this version, first edition, was signed to the schomburg collection by richard wright. that's pretty special in and of itself. but it's even more special that we have the manuscript of "native son." t so book one, for all who know the book, and here are the manuscript pages with richard wright's edits, cross-outs, punctuationing different words -- pungs changes different words. this is, for a literary scholar

a gold mine. this is exactly what they need in order to understand the vision of the book and to see the difference between the final product and the editing process. >> khalil mohamed, do you have richard wright's entire collection here? >> we do not have richard wright's entire collection, but we are proud to have the manuscript of "native son." >> do you know where his other records may be held? >> i do not know. but we can look it up. we're a library. [laughter] >> all right. continuing our tour of the rare or manuscript -- >> that's right. so we know that one of the most celebrated works of a woman writer and particularly an african-american writer who recently departed, maya ang allow. her first major runaway bestseller "i know why the caged bird sings." this is the actual manuscript

with her title there in faint pencil "caged bird," inside of quotation marks. >> and this is her handwriting. very neat handwriting. >> this is her handwriting. >> precise. >> this is her staple. here she is laying out the actual manuscript making her own edits and beginning to tell this transformative story. >> now her archives are here at the schomburg. >> her archives are part of our permanent collection, absolutely. >> and from maya angelou to, this is -- >> yes. socktive of a recent -- evocative to have a recent moment explosion of slavery studies, several of which have appeared in the last couple of years. and more particularly, the steven mcqueen film, " 12 years a slave," this is the first edition of the solomon

northrup story that expired that film. and here is the copyright page that i'm turning published in 1853. >> and just got made into a movie a couple years ago. >> that's right. so this work for the schomburg center was part of an early effort by arthur schomburg and his successors to find books by black people in a time where x slave narrative or enslaved people's writings were not appreciated, were not valued. so once we got past the abolitionist movement past the civil war books like this had very little value in the book world. and so arthur schomburg was able to capitalize on this kind of work because it was inexpensive for a man who was very much lower middle class in terms of

his income but very much part of a burgeoning black elite that was committed to this kind of cultural preservation. >> and again everything that we've seen, if we walked in here without a camera crew and without c-span credentials and said could we see this with the archivist? >> that's right. that's what we were built to do. this reading room is in the service of anyone uncredentialed wanting to have access to material to write to be inspired, to make documentary film. whatever use that they expect to put to it falling within fair use and copyright -- [laughter] they are entitled to have access to the material. >> my guess is that mary, the archive here, would keep a close eye on them if they had some of these valuable materials. >> our archivists and curators and librarians care deeply for the collections, and they make sure people properly handle and

use the material when it is out for use. >> you're watching booktv. television for serious readers. you can watch any program you see here online at booktv.org. [inaudible conversations] >> the schomburg center for research and black culture has hosted the harlem book fair for the last 17 years, and more live coverage on c-span2's booktv in just a few minutes. [inaudible conversations] >> well, now on booktv we wanted to introduce you to jennifer baumgartner executive director of the feminist press. ms. baumgartner, what is -- >> what is the feminist press? well, the feminist press is a regular, independent, nonprofit

literary press but we really focus on work by women. not just by women. and then voices that have been marginalized in some way. it was founded 45 years ago to recover a lost literature that went out of print, and then it went on to create some of the first texts of the women and gender studies women in universities now that it's everywhere. and now that every publisher publishes some feminist books at least, we publish the most cutting edge the issues that other publishers aren't covering because they're too controversial. so all of our books have, i think, a mission behind them and an urgency to them. but they also might have -- they're kind of new and cutting edge and maybe a little niche as well. >> what's your background? how'd you get into this? >> guest: i'm a journalist and a feminist since birth. i was born 45 years ago when a lot of feminist things happened, i guess and i've written six books, i've made two documentaries, and i've traveled the country speaking on college

campuses about feminism. i know firsthand that it's actually very mainstream, but that word, feminism sometimes is not the word people would label what they're doing or their belief system which is often very feminist. i don't get hung up on the word. each though we're the feminist press and i love that title we're really an expansive definition of that. and i think that my career, the way that i practice it, kind of demonstrates that i write -- the mainstream magazines like harper's "harper's bazaar" and vogue and the books that i write are for a mainstream commercial audience. >> host: what are some of the books that the feminist press has coming out? >> guest: i'm really excited about this fall's books. the first book coming out in the fall, in september is a reprint. so we still recover and retrieve feminist work that was very, very important. something we published called "some of us are brave," it's black feminist studies, so most of the -- some of the most

important black feminist inte remember chuls are in this book. alex walker to roxanne gaye. the next book in october is the feminist utopia project. alexander brodsky is a well known activist and she's all of -- so they're pretty turbo and they put together this collection, we know what we don't believe and what we're mad about. and then in november we're doing a literary chef memoir. she's so worth cutting to. she's hilarious, the work is poignant, and the way she writes about food is so pretentious.

i feel like i'm part of it, but there's a way in which it's kind of elitist. she learned to cook using processed foods, and when we cook for people and when we make food for people, it's expressing love and she wants there to be more love in the world. and her food is amazing. i have to say they've been very popular. >> host: jennifer baumgartner, what's your connection to city university? >> we're very fortunate because we're affiliated, but we're not -- we're not really part of them. they give us our office space and they support us in a variety of ways. and, you know it's 34th and fifth eave in manhattan office space, so i don't think we could afford it otherwise. they want to demonstrate part of their values as the city university of new york educating 500,000 students a year. feminism is part of that, and so they support us in other centers that can do that. >> and finally, you mentioned that you're an author. people are interesting in your books, what are they?

>> manifesto: young women education in the future, and grassroots, and the third one was called look both ways, the fourth one's called aworse and life. the fifth one is a collection of my journalism, and the most recent one was called we do. and it was about gay marriage and significant speeches by politicians that supported gay marriage early. ..

we no the book is attenuating sometimes. and books are very personal. thatthat is what we're looking to do, find different ways to package. >> a little bit from the feminist crowd book tv on c-span2. >> this is book tv on c-span2 and we want to no what is on your summer reading list. send us your choices. tweet post on our facebook page or you can send an e-mail. whatwhat is on your summer reading list? book tv wants to no. [inaudible conversations] >> and now it is time for the last panel.

it is a discussion on politics, and this is live coverage on book tv from c-span2. [inaudible conversations] >> good afternoon and welcome to the final panel of this amazing day humanities programming at the harlem book fair. it's my pleasure to be here to introduce our moderator. i want to say a bit about her. these are fabulous authors whose books are available at the book fair directly outside of the barnes & noble not horrible tent. you'll go outside, purchase a book. you will come back and have it signed by some amazing people. does that make sense? yes. thank you so much.much. and i'm not hustling. i am sharing with you the lovely moment of having a book from these people i have assigned. our moderator for