numerous, and those of the people and the states are well defined. and so i if we ask the question which we are we headed as a nation, tiny steps at a time, are we headed towards more personal liberty or are we headed towards more government control over our lives? i think it would be the latter. get this guy first and then go to him. >> my question is kind of twofold. it addresses the black community. i live in baltimore and i've experienced, teaching high school in baltimore, and i'm wondering is a possible to change the rhetoric and the mentality of two things, educators in the school system and elected officials in the

municipality? one of my biggest dilemmas was administered being forced to pass students. i experienced that. i received a passing grade in the minister said we need to pastor, i don't know if those the pressure. also as far as elected officials, giving them instead of treating the kennedy as victims, addressing the community and the same these students, two parent family, these are the statistics of people whether they have a religious background or whatever. is there any way they think changing that mentality, the administers in the education system or the elected officials? one thing i have to say, i told them before, dr. williams is probably my biggest inspiration i'm going back and getting my degree in high school.

thank you very much. >> i think one of the problems is that we can't get rid of students whose minds are alien and hostile to the education process. that is, we have to have a mechanism where we can stop the students from anything with the education of others. there have been several studies, at a campsite and this because i've written some years ago, said with a 25 person class many teachers are spending up to 90% of the classtime on discipline. if they could remove just six students that this one time would go down to the national average around 17, 18%. but they can't get rid of student. that is, it's been much like you asking me, it's a barrel of apples, we want to keep them

fresh but you can't get rid of the rotten ones. that's an impossible job. and i think from a political point of view, that just makes sense that we need to deliver education to those kids who can best use their education, and those who can best use education our kids who have parents who care and parents will make them do their homework. and i think that money is not the solution to our education problem. it's because, there some simple things that are needed for kids to get a good education. somebody has to make the kid do his homework. somebody has to make the kid go to bed on time so he can get about 10 hours of sleep. somebody has to wake the get up and getting breakfast, and

somebody has to make sure that he obeys the teacher. these are critical input. if these inputs are not met, and i don't care how much money put in education, it's going to be a failure. we have to ask the question, which one of those inputs can be met by politicians. what can obama do, or what can together do, what can i mayor do to duties basic functions bikes and if they're not done, no matter how much money you put in education, it's not going to work. and i feel like, what the political question that one faces is very much like, if you're in charge of the highways and easy drunk drivers and sober drivers on the highway, what's your first order of business?

your first priority out to be get the drunk ones offer someone my site what are we going to do with the drunks? i look i in the whether you cant do anything at all, but first order of business is to get the drunk ones off. that's the same thing you do with education. that is, the kids making education impossible for other kids. and what do you do with them? well, you get them out. you get them out of the school and some in my site what do you do with them? i don't know what your going to do with the budget to stop them from making education impossible for those kids who want to learn. and who have parents who want them to learn. it's a difficult chore, and the political forces are not on our side. they are on the side of the national education association. i mean, so i believe the waiting list for parents, predominate in black parents, for charter

schools is 21,000 right now, 21,000 parents on the waiting list to get the kids into charter schools. that's a sad commentary that they're such the waiting list exists, and also evidence there's at least some parents who want a better education for their children. >> patrick ewing with heritage foundation. on the topic of owning ourselves i was wondering where you stand on the topic of assisted suicide? because it opens incentives that hurts the vulnerable and the week. >> if i own walter williams, i can decide not to live. but if the united states congress owes me, and i just don't have that right. the true test of ownership is

whether you can, whether you have full rights over your own body. .net sink your the right to impose injury on other people, but you have the right to change -- take your own life. maybe one way to do that is kind of have, what do they call it, the document that you say i don't want anymore -- a living will, yes. and people say things like, well, in terms of self ownership is a look, williams, let's say i don't want to wear a seat belt. let's say that's the case, i do wear a seatbelt blitz that i don't want to wear a seat belt. the argument what to look williams, if you drive a car without a seatbelt and you haven't accident and you turn into a vegetable you will be a burden on society. that's why we are going to make you wear a seat belt.

that's an issue that doesn't have anything to do with personal liberty and private ownership it is not a problem of personal liberty and private ownership, self ownership. it's a problem of socialism. that is, you should not, nobody should be required to take care of me for any reason. but once you get government taking care of you to make decisions, then government can tell you how to it's kind of like my mother, you know, when boys get around 14 or 15 years old and start thinking they can tickle the house over my mother used to say to me, as long as you live in my house and i think the bills, you will do what i say. that's okay for kids, but what about adult? you want to, to say as long as we are paying the bills you will do what i say? do what we say. that's not a good way for

adulthood. >> i'm going to get -- >> next time get two people. >> interest to me, political shenanigans. in 2009 you write about the congress and its apology for slavery and you have a very interesting economic piece about that. do you want to comment? >> the comment about slavery, it doesn't make me very popular but as medevac comes into interviewing for the job in 1971 at university of massachusetts. i didn't know about -- i would not have gone up there to interview for a job. anyway, some professors were

standing about a recession they're holding for me, and the leftist professors do and what has been what they think about the relationship between capitalism and slavery? i said i think slavery has existed under every economic system. he says no, i want to ask you about what you think about the slavery of ancestors, slavery of your ancestors. so i said slavery is a horrible institution, but i have benefited immensely from the suffering and slavery of my ancestors, and the guys just any there in shock. so i said to him, he asked me to explain myself. i said my wealth and my freedom is not as a result of being born in the united states than any country in africa and i asked him, how was it that it came to be born in the united states.

i came to be born and yes, it's because of slavery. and so i have personally, i'm not saying that slavery is good. i'm saying i benefit from it. and most blacks have benefited as black americans, at a document this in my book, race and economics, it added income black americans earn each year at thought of us as a nation, it would be the 17th or 18th richest nation in the face of the earth? and thus the medevac that's richer than any nation on the continent of africa. and so you can say the same thing you can say about colonialism. that is, or the conquest of the romans when they took over england, people in england were barbarians. and the romans, they imported navigation, skills and they

imported education technology and all the importation of the wisdom of the romans ultimately make great britain the mightiest nation on the face of the earth. and it was because of colonialism. again, i'm not making an argument in favor of colonialism but you can't deny the historical facts. so slavery was a historical fact that i benefit from it. >> thank you dr. williams. you highlighted three things this afternoon, liberty, racial disparity and higher education front. would you concur that one of the principles, principle reasons why we have contempt for liberty is that liberty is very underrepresented and all the dimensions of popular culture

and movies and music and the things that influence one's actions? and the question behind that is, given that you can assess with a lot of movement, individuals, might you take the opportunity to explained in one of the reasons why we have contempt, one of places that it's learned is in universities. so i'll ask you, behind the previous event of yours, if you were reconvening the conference and doing another one, would you think that would be a good platform to examine how to move in terms of racial disparities more african-americans from the public sector ecosystem to the private sector ecosystem? which also entertain a minting this abreast of 1955, 64, sorry,

to prohibit discrimination in employment based on credentials? would you entertain intercessor with your colleagues in the conservative movement that they need to take good content like this and put it in more entertaining settings because if i don't answer all your questions, you can remind me. one of the hazards of growing old is not your mind is the first thing to go. the second is worse. [laughter] but i think that, as i've said in the book and as i said on many occasions, one of our very important jobs is to try to sell our fellow americans on the moral superiority of liberty and its main ingredient, limited government. so far as credential -ism, that

is a major problem. that is people who have credentials, they use the credentials to keep others out, to maintain their higher income. and i've written a lot about this, particularly and occupational licensing where, just a little bit away from your question, but it cuts off the bottom of the economic ladder. i point out in the 1920s a poor illiterate italian if it into should innovation should go and buy a used car and write the word taxi on and he was in business for himself. today, that opportunity is not as open in many cities the licensing regulations. in the york you have to buy a galleon to own and operate one

taxi and the medallion is $700,000. in boston and chicago utah, 300, 400, $500,000. so the effect of this law is to keep people out so that they can earn, so the they can earn a higher income by charging higher prices. and you see the desire to maintain this monopoly with the losses against huber and some of the private carriers coming in competing with the incoming cap business -- goober. this phenomenon is widespread, goes across many occupations and many professions. the medical profession is a good example. that once the licensing laws to keep people out.

it turns out for interesting if you look at licensing boards, occupational licensing boards, two-thirds of the boards across the country, the members are people who are in the profession themselves. that is, the doctors occupy totally the licensing board to become a doctor. they decide who has the right to become a doctor enter -- and under what conditions. and, of course, the doctors will say who else has made better able to judge what a person should be a doctor or regulate, who else is better able to regulate doctors and other doctors? that kind of reasoning, you would make al capone the attorney general. that is, who is better able to regulate criminals than other criminals. so i'm for open market entry. i'm for peaceful voluntary

exchange between people, and that requires some of the elimination of the credentials. due to more. >> my name is christopher. if you start from the premise walter williams owning walter williams, person only themselves, it sounds -- how does that not lead to anarchism speak with well, i'm not an anarchist. i believe we do need some government. i believe that people have, that government is necessary. that is, government under the worst circumstances is a necessary evil.

under similar circumstances they can become intolerable. i believe that we have the right, that is, as owners of her own body, we have the right to delegate certain things to the government. that is, i have the right, since i have the right to protect myself from criminals or from anybody else, then i have the right to delegate that authority, some government level to protect me. i can have the right to say look, if we had a more orderly society, if it can agency is about the protection, have a police force. i don't have a right to take your money. i do have a natural right or any other right to take your money so, therefore, i cannot delegate the right to government to take your money. and some the only rights come

from a moral point of view, the only rights that can be delegated to the federal government are rights that you possess yourself, that human beings possess themselves. and so that might sound like a rock bar a little bit. but i don't see myself as a follower of milton friedman says there's like two kinds of, some estimate that chicago school economics versus high-tech or austrian school of economics. and he says there's like two kinds of economists, a good economist and the bad economist. >> al milliken, amec. are united states supreme court, how deeply they've shown contempt for liberty in the recent years? >> well, they don't hold as

unconstitutional many things that congress is doing. that is, it is not in the constitution for congress to do most of what it does. that is, two-thirds to three quarters of all federal spending, is no constitutional authority for it. the word education does not even appear in the constitution but the government is involved in a. the founders say congress can only to those enumerated things, the things that are enumerated in article one of, article 1, section 8 of the united states constitution. but the supreme court has been derelict. both jefferson and madison, they want us, they said do not allow the courts to be the final arbiter of what's constitutional

or not. he said if we allow the courts to be the final arbiter, then we will be living under oligarchy. and that's in fact what we are doing. i think that it's tragic that the supreme court, and i would say most of its members, have little respect for the united states constitution. there's probably two members, i'm not going to mention their names, probably to members who have respect for the united states constitution and are willing to go to bat for it. look, folks, thank you very much. thank you. [applause] >> thank you. again the book is "american contempt for liberty." you will find it quite interesting and very thought-provoking. i do encourage you to pick up a copy here while we have them,

and we think our friends at the hoover institution for supplying them to us, and to all of you for your kind attention. >> walter williams will be a guest on both tvs in depth program in november for three hours on the first sunday of the month. for more information visit booktv.org. >> pamela newkirk discusses her book "spectacle: the astonishing life of ota benga" at the 17th annual harlem book fair. watch it now on booktv.nk you v stuck well, thank you very much. good afternoon, everyone. come on now, good afternoon. >> good afternoon. >> we had a wonderful panel thio afternoon and were in for a treat. i'm so happy to be here this afternoon to introduce our panel our panel today which will be g.

"pride and prejudice: more on the white gaze." cri literary critic kenneth burke once said that we are the instrument of our instrument ant we are two exemplars to dateaveo include have their work insurance of the dedication toav the black identity. so i'm very pleased to introduce our panel this afternoon. le let's start with our moderator th of the sessione and that is the director of the schomburg center for research in black culture r, and that is khalil muhammad. here in my public library, the f research division, is a former associate professor of historyia at indiana university.f this book, the combination of lil blackness, making of a modern urban america was published by harvard university press e frankt book award in american studies. and here also this afternoon is we have author and nyu professor

of journalism, dr. pamela newkirk. he book, which you all see in your programs, is "spectacle: the astonishing life of ota bengal" she is an author, journalist, and professor at new york university, multifacetted scholar who has published a variety of works that present multidimensional portraits of african-american life. her first book within the veiled black journalist, like me, explores historical troubles of journalists integrate can mainstream news rooms in america. love letters from a black america "which i had the pleasure of reading recently, a fantastic tome put on the list. the book we're talking about this afternoon, i'm not going steal her thunder as she is going to talk to us about the book and all that went putting

it together as part of a wonderful afternoon. please join me in welcoming our speaker this afternoon. [applause] >> thank you. thank you very much. thank you all for that terrific production. i want to thank all of you for being here this afternoon, and i want to thank our guests, decider pamela newkirk, the author of spectacle. it's hard to say wonderful with the subject matter she hays written about, but i think that as a writer, as someone deeply committed to learning from the past to recovering stories that have something to say, that speak to us across generations, that makes this book quite rivetting and amazing and one that, if nothing else gets said of any interest, you must buy it and read for yourself. because in some ways this story is better known than some

others, and i do want to talk about the context that ota bengays journey is situated in, one which you lay out clearly. for those who don't in the name ota benning gasser don't know the story of a map in a caged zoo just a few miles from here. what happened? >> guest: so, first of all, thank you for facilitating this conversation -- about a very difficult subject at an apt time in american life, as we look forward we also look back on, like, what it is that african-americans have or african people have defendant with over the centuries. so, ota benga was a young african, a person from the congo, said to be a pygmy -- i say a so-called pig my because that's a contested team because

of the etymology of the term. at one point it meant chimpanzee. but he was brought to the united states first in 1904 by a man named samuel verner, who was commissioned by the organizers of the st. louis world fair to bring back pygmies to exhibit on the st. louis world fairground. so that's how he first came to this country. and then would years later behind up being exhibited with an orangutan in a cage in the bronx zoo to seen to say that those who have known of ota benga, just about everything that we thought we knew about ota benga, was a fiction created by the people who exploited him. so there was always this suggestion that he was complicit in his exhibition. he was complicit in his degradation, as if he was

showman, but the archives show definitively that he was held -- he was captured and brought to this country against his wishes. he was caged in a zoo with apes against his wishes. so this is a corrective of history. >> host: so he book opens with a very detailed and textured account of the bronx zoo nit early days. one of the things that is really compelling in the way you present this story is not a story of horror. it is a story of triumph. it is a story of scientific celebration. it is a story of the architectural grandure of a new technology age where the united states of america is positioning itself in relation to hit european counterparts as having arrived and so the very notion of a zoo in the bronx as a

course part to central park is sort of the arrival of the bronx itself. talk about that context as the annexation which many of us don't know about. >> guest: the bronx zoo was not part of the celebration of new york's rise into this global city that only recently the five boroughs have been consolidated into greater new york. now we have going from a place where brooklyn was a city and all these manhattan was a city -- 1898. so, the bronx zoo arrived two years -- 0 year later, and it was an architectural wonderland. right? the greatest architects from around the country and the world were assembled to build these beautiful structure. so there was this juxtaposition

of grandeur with the dedegreed gages of this young african man who had been can touper and was now being shown as the missing link. >> host: you describe the earliest tours, the revealing. we're all accustomed to exhibition openings, whether it's the natural museum of history -- and we'll learn something about a the dinosaur we had no idea walked the earth -- or some fine arts show. these are big deal. so talk about the moment when oat too beginning back goods exhibition opening happenings. >> guest: right. so, william horn horn aday, the offending director of the zoo and the nation's most imminent zoologist, the founding director of the national zoo in washington, dc, major, major fig. >> host: the kind after people you look up, right.

>> yes. eminent scientists. so he had this pygmy. right? and he is at the gate telling people, you have to see what i have today. you have never seen what you are about to see. this is an amazing exhibit. so he starts leading people, one and all, to the primate house, where it's in this glistening white building, where there are little animals engraved on -- over the doorway, family of monkeys, apes, to suggest what was inside. it was the prime primate house, and people went in, and there he was, this slight 4'11"-inch boy, s03 pounds, and the second day -- "the new york times"

covered it. bushman shares a cage with bronx park apes. so the second day, sunday, thousands of people stream up to the zoo to see ota benga, and we're calling it the bronx zoo, then it was the new york zoological garden. a centerpiece in new york city. this was again asymbol of what new york was at this time. and by the second day, hornaday littered the cage with bones to suggest that ota beginning back was a cannibal, and he added an orang gang to his cage and placed him in a larger cage, crescents shaped cage where more people could view him, and that was the introduction of ota benga to new yorkers, and he became first a sensation in new york city and then a sensation across the country, and then eventually around the world. his exhibition made headlines in

paris and london. just everywhere. >> host: this is every museum director's dream. >> guest: i hope not. >> host: well, we'll talk about that because this is a moment where in the language of our tech know rattic present, the way we think about metrics and think about best practices and how we measure outcomes and success, the success of hornaday was to drive attendance and he is breaking records. >> guest: he broke records. one day alone, 40,000 people went to the bronx zoo to see ota benga. who sat solemnly in this cage, looking out like, he must have -- like, who are you? are you crazy? why? >> host: so, just to give a little bit more texture to what pamela has already described in terms of "the new york times"

adulation for this event i want to read a quote from the article she has already cited, bushman shares a cage withbronx park apes, ota beginning base normal specimen of his race or tribe with a brain as much developed as those of his other members. whether they are held to be illustrations of a arrested development and really closer to the anthropoid aprils or jude as descendents of ordinary negroes they are of equal interest to the student ofth nothing and can be studied with profit. >> guest: this was science. accepted by most mainstream white, i should say, americans, as science. >> host: although you cite a few headlines from around the country, one from los angeles, quote. genuine pygmy is ota benga, can talk with orang gang.

in new york, from minneapolis, which is considered a very liberal city, from the minneapolis journal, he is about as near in approach to the missing link as any human species yet found. >> guest: those are the kinder headlines. >> host: you go to great length -- and i think that's a real credit to what you have done here -- to highlight this moment in relation to the self-reflective, self-righteous notion of new york as an imperial city, an evolved place, sophisticated place. much easier in this moment to sort of think about this as something that southerners would have engaged in, but it's very much not the case. >> guest: right. even southern newspapers mocked new york for what it was doing to black people. >> host: which i think is also another entry point into the fact that there was resistance from day one. this wasn't a story that went unnoticed by those who saw this

as an outrage to humanity. >> guest: one of the people who saw ota benga the first day, and who expressed outrage, was a very prominent minister in new york named robert mcarthur, who was pastor of a church on 57th street. that's still there. cavalry baptist church. in the re-telling of the story he ends up, this black baptist minister, but he actually was a white canadian pastor, and he raised objections and he went to the black ministers who were in the nearby tenderloin area which is where black people lived. very few people in hard. he at that time. and he said this is outrageous, you have to go up there and see what i saw. so they had an emergency meeting monday morning and then they went up to the zoo and from that day on they were protests -- they demanded to meet with the mayor. the mayor refused to meet with them. "the new york times" was like,

what is the problem? why? he is a savage. he is subhuman. and that was the view of most of the newspaper editors at the time and while there are lot of bad actors in this drama, it's important to point out the handful of people who did defy the convention of the day where race was concern, and one was william randolph hearst, the man known for yellow journalism, his paper was the only paper in new york city that called it a disgusting outrage. so -- but these people were in the minority. >> host: to come back, we won't beat up on "times" too much today. but there is an arc worth noting, but just to echo what pamela just describes, "the new

york times," somewhat on the defensive, editorializes just a few days later in the midst of the initial outrage, and the quote here from the editorial is: pygmies are very low in the human scale and the suggestion that benga should be in a school instead of a cage ignores the high probability that school would be a place of torture to him. the idea that men are all much alike, except as they have had or lacked opportunity to for getting an education is now far out of date. let's just pause on that for a moment. >> guest: stick with that. >> host: because we live in the midst where, for several years now, we have had ongoing critiques of the war on drugs and mass incarceration, just earlier this week, a sitting president for the first time in history visited a federal penitentiary in a moment where we have the largest imprisoned population, not only in the

world but in recorded history. and so the notion that 100 years ago, in a moment where scientific innovation was beginning to shape the world we know today, that the most liberal and sophies tick indicate paper, then and now, could make the claim that it would be foolish for us to think that education could be the great equalizer, that the motion that some people ought to be in school rather than in cages, seemed to echo across time and offer us much greater insight into a lot of the thinking we are now fighting. >> guest: the "times" was only reflecting at attitudes imbedded in science and imbedded in government policy. they didn't make this up. this was the mainstream racial ideology of white america.

>> host: and that drive for scientific certainty, that assertion of inequality, is definitely on the ascent. this is not a moment where even the critique of ota bengas encagement or imprisonment will usher in a reformist moment. we are only in 1906 at this moment. so, the very idea that jim crow itself could be legitimatated on the basis of proving that people who looked like an ota benga or descend from an ota benga were in fact, ipso facto, prime ma fay she, on the face of things evidently inferior. >> guest: and while ota benga was being exhibit net a cage, the belgian king leopold who owned the congo -- he was given the congo -- >> host: jo show the first slide. >> guest: he was the congo was being plundered by these

civilized people. right? who were killing -- >> to the purpose of profit and progress. >> guest: exactly. and in the name of civilization, you know, the congo was being plundered. millions of congoese were being tortured, maimed, killed, and ota beginning back, one of its millions of victims, was being exhibited as a sign of savagery. >> host: could you describe this caption. >> guest: yes. that's ota benga. this is him in some of the other young congress la -- congoese who were brought to the united states and they're been exhibited on the st. louis world fairgrounds, posedly as evidence of the least civilized people on the planet. they were said in the catalogue for the world fair to be cannibals, to be savages to be -- none was true. and ota benga, the is the second

one on my left. they said he was in this picture 21 years old. if you believe that, i have a bridge to sell you. clearly a child. clearly a child. and two years later he -- that's who was exhibited in the monkey house. >> host: one of the things you point out in the story -- again, it's easy to think about ota benga, but there had been numerous africans brought to the united states by missionaries, by anthropologists, by other scientists, appearing both in this world fair and previous ones, could you talk about that larger practice that of which ota benga is part of. >> guest: so, world fairs at this time were very popular, not only here but throughout europe. and people -- the 1904 worlds

fair has an anthropology exhibit that brought tens of thousands of people to -- across the fairground and the whole point was to allegedly map human progress from the lowest to the highest civilizations, and guess who is represented the highest civilization? i wonder. the people who set up these fairs. so, you had an irish village. you had a native american village. you had a -- >> host: real people. >> guest: not just real people. hundreds, thousands sometimes, of these people, whole villages brought to the fairground. babies, mothers, fathers. samuel verner when he was given a contract to go hunting for pygmies, which is what he said he did. he said he -- he wrote himself, in an article for the "st. louis

post-dispatch," how i hunted pygmies in central africa. he went heavily armed. so, this story, for 100 years, he had emerged as ota benga's saviour and his hero and his friend. >> host: you describe in trying to get to the truth of how ota benga is captured, one of the myths is that he was saved from cannibals. >> guest: the biggest myth -- a myth that survived 100 years -- was that he gave many stories but in every account he was ota benga's saviour. he saved him from cannibals, saved him from enslavement. saved him from life in the congress congo but he saved him, and he suggested that he came with him willingly. but in the archives, we see that he stopped in london on the way there, and he brought, like,

cases and cases of ammunition, guns and rifles and all manner of military gear, and he even suggested in one letter that maybe he'll take a cannon to make it easier to execute his mission. why would you need that? these people were supposedly coming here voluntarily. he took a -- you know. so he went heavily armed. he brings them back. and all of the writeups on ota benga, they were friends. they were best -- >> host: bffs. >> guest: yes. >> host: we have a closer portrait of ota benga. so samuel verner is their friends and that is accepted, and also the bronx zoo in the 1970s, and recounting what happened, said it's unlikely he had ever been exhibited at all.

that he was their helping with the monkeys and all of the signs, people were curious, oh, there is -- a sign was put up, but at the time in their own zoological bulletin there was an article on the latest exhibit. >> host: the rewriting of history. >> guest: rewritten and then the think that kind of cemented this fiction into the american imagination was that samuel verner's grandson in the 1990s wrote a book about the friendship between his grandfather and ota benga, and that became the definitive story on their relationship. it was just accepted. and do. >> like "gone with the wind" the history of the confederacy and the flag. >> guest: yes. the slave love and the master. it was that familiar but pernicious narrative about black

life. that he would subject himself to this kind of degradation and do so happily. >> host: can we talk about the teeth? there are two stories. >> guest: this is -- because he had these -- they were actually called chipped teeth. i i it was a conceit in the congo, very popular in some villages, a woman wont date you if you didn't have these beautifully filed teeth. the people who did them were artisans so you goo do get your ears pierced or tattoos or whatever but that was a very popular style, fashion, and in the congo, but it also made it much easier for sam uverner to pass him off as a cannibal. so unfortunately that is what most led to him being the one who samuel verner crept close by. >> host: we have one more image

of samuel verner, just so that we have this -- in the juxtaposition of civility -- >> guest: yes, from a very prominent family in south carolina. south carolina. and -- [laughter] >> guest: sorry. sorry. can't make this up. >> host: chisel south carolina out and just -- >> guest: i didn't say that. >> host: i did. >> guest: okay. so, a lot of good people in south carolina and out of south carolina. he was not one of those good people. from a former slave holder family, father was in the legislature, family of congressmen and educators and just very, very prominent, and his father was one of the south carolina legislators who led the

protests against reconstruction and the rise of african-americans from enslavement and they were determined to take back their country, where we were before... profit off all of -- house of representatives they are funded by king leopold. >> guest: he becomes one of the paid agents. >> host: to give another sense of the scale of this activity because i think the tendency we knew these stories is to compartmentalize them in good and evil as borne by the name of an individual.

these are not part of larger systems of ideas or -- >> guest: that's a key point. there is a tendency in american history define the one that guy. it's like that movie, the help. there was just one bad apple at all the other side and ladies, lovely. they were nice, you know. but with this story we see how systemic these ideas were that resulted in him being in this ti cage. but the system, it managed to degrade degrade most people of color house of representatives it made legitimate the notion of inferiority, scientific facts. there was a response, but the notion that it would be ridiculous to think that people

who are closer to ota benga in their heritage or equal to people like werner and his heritage is absurd. >> guest: right. why i thought it was so important to get the record straight is that hornaday emerged as the bad guy. he was the one bad guy who put them in the zoo the everyone else's hands were clean, but this was a whole city that was complicit in the degradation of ota benga. everyone signed on to this. they were very to protest the most people thought it was a good thing. >> host: can i read a quote? this is john, and you were describing your other people who have expertise. who was john again transferred he was one of the people who wrote the letter to the editor, eddie turns out to be like some swiner