there are people stories in people's lives at the center of this book. ibook. i did not want it to be filled with academic jargon even though i wanted to make a scholarly intervention. as a human story and incredible struggle and aspiration and contribution at the heart of the book. >> host: here at northwestern university. a hotspot fora hotspot for the black movement of the 60s and 70s? >> surprisingly it was. you would not think it would be aa hotbed of black radicalism, but in its own way it was because it was right next to a major urban center that had a really important local civil rights struggle, local black power struggle with very important organizations and leadership. many of them came to chicago.

1965, 1966, 19671965, 1966, 1967 that had as there goal to widen opportunities to a much larger group and to, you know, transform the curriculum and convert northwestern from an overwhelmingly white university with an overwhelmingly white or euro centric curriculum into a multiracial learning environment with much more access and opportunities. they lost struggle in 1968. they plan to sit in. they engineered a really successful protest. they take over over the building for a couple days. a great media strategy.

they were able to win many demands driving today and has one of the phd program, one of ten or 11 in the country that can serve phd's and african-american study. >> host: what is your background? >> guest: initially as a young person i wanted to be a civil rights lawyer. i grew up in connecticut and came into political social consciousness as a young person in the 1970s and was very taken with the black liberation movement, the women's movement. just the words like equality, freedom powerful and important.

when i went in the high school and college i was very much taken with the social movements and the issues they were raising wanted to fight for justice and have the opportunity of taking history classes in college and saw particularly in the study of african american history and the black political thought that many of the issues that i thought were urgent in the contemporary, many of the issues i wanted to pursue as a lawyer, the deep historical roots and that they were being debated and played out and african-american history, and i, and i found it to be a vital area of inquiry. i decided to go to graduate school in history as a result and change my career plans. i really have focused all of my research and

scholarship in the area of social movement and black radicalism seeing what i wanted to bring out in my research and book is the extraordinary impact that the black liberation struggle has had a democratizing american society more broadly. >> host: the black revolution on campus is the name of the book. this is book tv on c-span2. >> book tv in primetime continues friday with books by presidential candidates. ohio governor john kasich discuss his stand for something, the battle for america's soul. louisiana governor bobby to no on his book leadership in crisis and then an interview with kentucky senator randy paul about his book government bullies, how everyday americans are being

harassed, abused, and imprisoned by the fed. former texas governor rick perry discusses fed up.

>> all right. hi, everyone. thank you all so much for coming out on such a

beautiful spring evening. a few housekeeping points. if you could take aa minute to turn off her silence your cell phones. secondly, we're going to have a question-and-answer portion. it is important for you to come to our audience microphone so that we can get your questions recorded. and lastly it will give you more space bar the book signing and help us get back to bookselling. welcome to politics and prose. i run all of our events. if you're not familiar i would invite you to take a moment and sign up for a weekly e-mail or pick up on a calendar of events and see everything we have going on. operating inside three locations emily doing events in all this basis. i would hate for you to miss out. with that on the bayou were here, so happy to have eric

byrnes back with us. talking about his new book. he brings his journalist on to the topic as he has with his previous books, former nbc news correspondent and has won an emmy for media criticism. he strips away the glamour that surrounds our concept. ..

why why are you if you want to get those i don't drink coffee, i don't like coffee and i always that the reason was the taste. it may be instead my lack of coordination. i would like to ask your forbearance if i stumble somewhere. i'm a flawless speaker but i may just be done in by coffee today. 1920 was a remarkable year in and of itself, because events of that year were part of what would happen later in the decade, later in the century,

and even to events which happened in this century. two of of the major events of the century. thursday, september 16, 1920, trinity church on wall street. the final bell from the tower sounds the noon hour. at that precise instance, a horse that had been standing in front of the bank, which was across the street, explodes. a horse explodes into so many pieces that none could ever be found. i will not be questioned. the horse had been attached to the court and inside the card was the equivalent of 100 pounds of dynamite and weights which

when the explosion occurred it had the look of shrapnel. men and women who are going to restaurants and park benches to go to to eat their lunches, 38 were killed, more than 400 injured and a few of those who are injured would die in a hospital within a week. it was the first terrorist attack ever in the united states, and it was the worst until timothy mcveigh detonated the lies of a hundred and 68 people in oklahoma city in 1995. legislators back in 1920 started talking about homeland security. they did not call it homeland security, but they started talking about making it more

difficult to pass through the portals of ellis island. who set off the bomb? why? were they ever caught? 1920 was the only year in which two amendments of the constitution of the united states took effect. the first, was the 18th amendment which made it even legal to sell, buy, or manufacture but curiously enough, not to drink alcoholic beverages. of course we know it as prohibition. it started on january 16 at 12:01 a.m. it ended for all practical purposes on january 16 at 12:02 a.m. many people made their own

versions of the beverages they used to know and love so well, most commonly a beer in which people called home brew. for this reason, prohibition became the greatest, do-it-yourself project in the history of this country. it brought the family closer together than it had ever been before. a poem from the time. mothers in the kitchen watching out the jugs, sisters in the pantry. fathers and the seller mixing up hop, johnny's on the front porch watching for the cops. [laughter] americans still respected the law generally. this one specifically was too contrary to human nature to be obeyed on a widespread basis. among those who disobeyed it were rotary club presidents, pastors, doctors, veterans of the great war, and on one bizarre occasion in our nations

capital a lawmaker himself. in the lobby of the office building of the house of representatives. a congressman named the rado laguardia invited friends, fellow legislators, tours, reporters, news cameramen, and even a capital hill police force. he invited them to watch a demonstration. here is how his story describes the demonstration. laguardia blended two parts malt tonic, only to interest of a knee knee makes an easy to obtain at any drugstore, to one port on tran part near beer and thus it was legal under

prohibition although some reports from the time say that the taste was something like dishwater left in the sink overnight. he stir the ingredients and allowed a few seconds to pass to heighten the suspense, then he he drank up and licked his lips. the camera zoomed in, a brewmaster was standing by to sample the mixture. he pronounced it delicious and of quote. i think he was on laguardia's payroll. then he started passing around samples of his second string beer and he even said the police should try its. he had people in the crowd pass glasses back to the police who were confounded about whether they should arrest this man, he was breaking the law, he was a was a congressman, everybody

broke the law, they didn't know what to do. so they fled. chances are some of them ended up in their speakeasies drowning there sorrows with a better quality leverage that in the car rissman passed himself. in addition to near beer, industrial alcohol was illegal during the 18th amendment because it was used in very manufacturing processes. but as beverage additives, industrial alcohol were poison. they were blended with real alcohol to increase quantities and thus increase profits. in addition, they increased deaths. in some cases to sell bootleg hooch to people who couldn't afford better was to commit murder. in the words of some people, government sanctioned murder.

one of the destructive products used at the time, concocted by gangsters was called jamaica gin. or jake. if you'd drank too much jake, there wasn't much of a chance he would die but what it did somehow was weak and tendons in your ankle so that you couldn't walk normally. you walked as if you had a club foot. you are called a jake trotter. imagine this, in studying the various recipes up or jake, american scientist scientist learned some of the principles that would lead german scientist to develop nerve gases during world war ii.

the second amendment that was passed in 1920 was surprisingly controversial and long overdue. it finally gave women the right to vote. despite bribes to the contrary that took place right out in the open, right up to the last minute. in fact, there were occasions in the middle of the isles of various legislative houses, state legislative houses, you could see a lobbyist give a handful of bills to a legislator who would then not his head. he was signifying that his oppositions to suffrage was now bought and paid for. but the 19th amendment was added to the constitution in the summer of 1920. ironically, just a few months before the first national election in which women would vote, and women joined meant and

they had no choice, in voting out of office the first female president of the united states. and so far, the only female president. now. now she wasn't really the president, but she was the president de facto let's say. most americans didn't even know about it. as i look out here, i see most americans to know about it today. the political community in washington new about the woman in the white house, senator albert fall of new mexico was enraged created we have petticoat governments, he said. the diplomatic community in washington new, the french ambassador who reported back to paris that he was dealing with the madam mosel president.

the greatest misunderstanding about 1920 was it was the first year of the most carefree and wealthy decade we have ever had in this country. while it wasn't carefree, american still lived under the shadow of the great war which of course is what world war i was called at the time. the conflict that was once so brutal and nonsensical that we could not help but fear it would break out again. as the case of the exploding horse demonstrated, this time it might even break out on our own soil. as the case of the exploding horse demonstrated, maybe it already had. so 1920 wasn't a carefree year and it certainly wasn't a wealthy one unless you are one of the so-called robber barons and their allies. keep in mind this was their era,

the era of morgan, mellon, rockefeller, rockefeller, the vanderbilt descendents, among many others. the arab men who made millions of dollars from the bent backs and aching shoulders of men and women, and children, the era of vicious employers. some of the men had recently returned from fighting a war that enriched them even more. since it was then who had manufactured some of the arms and ammunition's. at the same time, other other men who were not nearly so fortunate had been part of the so-called great internal migration, which consisted mostly of african-americans apart from the con fields of the south, or the factories of the north. they're desperate for a better

life, but finding a life just as punishing, the hours just as long, the pay just as minimal, and the future just as depressing. it's not easy to calculate but considering the minimal income tax that existed at the time, it's probably true that the earning gaps between the richest of americans in the poorest of americans was greater in 1920 then it is today. scott and now that may have pranced through their fountain in new york's plaza hotel drunk and soaking wet and laughing hysterically, but the men who worked in steel mills, coal mines for a few dollars a week, the women who worked in sweatshops for a few coins a day , the young boys who got up in the middle of the night to deliver blocks of ice that weighed almost as much as they did, or the young girls who earned their pennies by spending

12 hours a day, six days a week sowing callers and forced to stand up any their lunches so they could keep working. these people were the truer symbols of life in america in 1920, then scott and the flappers. carlo ponzi, otherwise known as charles ponzi was an immigrant to the united states and he was determined not to live the kind of life i just described. he didn't. there were times however when he might have been better off if he did. a few people actually made money from ponzi's financial fascinations, which by the way

were legal when he began to offer his financial product. the initial ponzi team was misunderstood in several other ways which i will mention a few minutes. before long, so much money was being made by a few people that a law was passed that made his dealings a criminal activity. when ponzi kept selling his now horseless paper, he became a crook in in the ponzi scheme became a reality. late in the 20th century the scheme was reborn and in 2008 made up went to jail for the rest of his life. i suspect, i don't know but isis back that ponzi's that ponzi's name might have been in the newspaper more in 2008 than it was in 1920.

most of us think the ponzi scheme is a kind of chain letter but in its original form it's not that of all. it's much much more complicated than that. it involved postal rates in different countries, and different parts of the world. i don't really understand completely, and i wrote about it in a book. so if you buy the book and you come to that section, you may be assured that what i wrote was true, it's just that you will be confused too. bernie made off version of the ponzi scheme lasted almost a decade. carlo ponzi didn't even last one year. early in 1920 he was a smalltime hoodlum trying to impress his mom.

his italian mama back home, he wrote letters. it's going so well in america, he was doing better and becoming more successful all the time. figuratively. in fact by the fourth of july, ponzi was a multimillionaire. before the year was over he was a jailbird. things moved very quickly for this most famous of scam artists. but i have this surprise for you, you won't believe it now, but just wait. if you read, 1920 the year that made the decade roar, by by the time you finish you will not despise charles ponzi, you will sympathize with him. you will feel for him. child ponzi's story is one of the saddest tales of a crook, of a man ever put on paper.

in 1920, worn harding, republican senator from ohio defeated a democratic senator from ohio and some years later's harding was voted the 29th the best president of the history of the united states. you see what's coming don't you. at the time america had had 29 presidents. none, however had presided over an administration as corrupt as hardings. one member of the administration was perhaps, and this was a fellow whose office was next to the attorney general, he he was perhaps the leading bootlegger in washington and committed suicide when he feared he might be exposed.

a cabinet officer, a friend of hardings, a despicable man was put despicable man was put in charge of veterans affairs and he stole from veterans hospital, a year or two after the war. veteran's hospitals needed their supplies as much as ever, he stole from them for his own profit and then with hardings approval escaped to europe. he was never prosecuted. his top assistant feared prosecution, he committed suicide. the attorney general was indicted for fraud. albert fall was appointed secretary of the interior whereupon the kickback he sold military oil reserves to friends of his for private profit. this ghetto was called teapot dome because of the shape of the rock formation under which most of the oil resided.

teapot dome was probably the biggest trans aggression against justice in america until 1972 when the first, and greatest of the scandal ending in gate was revealed. meanwhile, harding was setting records for adultery that would not be eclipsed until john kennedy came along. one day a tour of the white house was being conducted and the visitors heard something that sounded like two people banging off the walls of a tiny janitor's office. mobs are sliding down the walls, buckets were tumbling over. a male voice joined a female voice joined with lustful panting. usually janitorial services do not inspire that kind of

enthusiasm. the tour guide asked his group to walk faster, they were happy to oblige. the most important event of 1920, in my opinion, was also the most important event of the 20th century. it took place in a small shack, on a roof of a factory, just off side pittsburgh pennsylvania. in that shack, the american mass media of which there is no force more influential began. what radio station kd ka did on the first tuesday night in november of 1920 was broadcast a news event, live. it was never done before. it was the election return and neither the country nor the world would ever be the same again.

although few people could have imagined that radio could have lead to something called the television and no one could have imagined keeping up with the kardashians. small towns were always thought of as the home of virtue. in 1920 sinclair lewis wrote, our town. in american literature was never the same again. the stage was usually the home of entertainment that was fluffy, moralistic, and then in 1920 eugene o'neill one the first pulitzer prize with beyond the horizon, and the theater was never the same again. poetry, it was the home of romance, then in 1920cs elliott and carl samberg came along and verse was never the same again.

with the exception of some popular songs were insipid, they had songs like daddy you been a mother to me. when the moon shines, on the moonshine. and, who ate ate napoleon's with josephine when napoleon was away. [laughter] real titles, real songs. then, in 1920 out of nowhere a woman who virtually no one had ever heard of, named maybe smith release the record called crazy blues. it became against all odds the number one song in the country and the jazz age had officially begun.

with the harlem renaissance having already begun, music and literature, poetry poetry and pose a leica changed all the more revealing the great many of the country's priorities had changed. the roaring 20s are the most famous decade in the history of the united states. they are the only decade that has its own name, its own adjective but without these and other events of 1920 to jumpstart the decades engine, it may have been quite a while before history heard so much as a spotter. that is the end of what you will hear from me tonight about 1920, the year that made the decade roar. [applause]. thank you.

>> that's not true that's not the last you'll hear from me but now it will be up to you to decide what you hear. >> very interesting. i thought there were terrorist attacks, or at least one before 1920i think they're some anarchists who threw a bomb into a carriage in new york with elegant ladies coming back from shopping. it said something like what you paid for a gown i could support my family for whole year. >> yes there were anarchist attacks before 1920. in 1919 there is is a wave of package bombs sent. one person died and it was the person who was delivering the package. the worst injury beside that was

a made handling the package, lost her hands. these package bombs were sent to mayors, judges, members of the establishment. i don't know about the case you are talking about, but yes there were on a small scale, a lot of individual incidents. there had never, however been anything that killed and injured as many people as the attack i told you about. >> i may going to be 90 on thursday but i didn't hear you talk about wilson being the president elected that you are talking to. >> i'm sorry you were brought

that up, i was being cute. while this is not an analogy i'm crazy about, but it was like it was because basically a serious talk to the voice of commerce in my mind saying make them buy the book so they will find out. you have come up to the microphone and ruined. fortunately you have just ruined one of the questions i didn't. >> while the second one is. >> oh good. >> with regard to ponzi, it may be oversimplistic but i studied his con game many years ago. i reduced it to what his appeal was, his sales appeal was he was engaging in what we would call international postal rate

arbitrage. >> that's a good term for. >> you said you didn't even understand it. >> i don't. that's a good term but i don't think it explains exactly what he was doing. >> he was obviously collecting far more money than he could pay out. the the appeal was the sales talk was, look postal rates are different in different countries around the world, i'm able to buy these postal certificates from various countries and then trade them off in another country where the postal rate is different, i make the profit and you get the benefits. that was his pitch. >> my understanding, and i'm not sure in my reading i haven't seen this, is that he more than likely didn't go into that kind

of detail for fear of confusing people. >> and maybe he never evening aged in it but i thought thousand sales pitch speemac's primary sales pitch was i will give you 50% return. it is, whenever you want your money i will give you 50% return. >> okay thank you. >> you didn't do too much damage. >> i apologize for blowing your teaser. >> i would like to make a correction i believe and then a question. you said that sinclair lewis wrote, our town. town. i think you're referring to main street. >> oh for heaven sake and thorton wilder wrote our town. >> host: this gentleman caught a foolish mistake, of course he wrote main street. >> now for the question. did you watch boardwalk empire

by any chance? >> host: no. >> my question was going to be how realistic did you think it was but you would know. >> i don't know i'm sorry. >> i have a question i think i read somewhere not too long ago, that it may have been 1920 or maybe not exactly that year that in the midst of all this turmoil you had one of the largest, if not the largest demonstration down on the mall. at that time anyway. is that correct or is that maybe a slightly different year? i know there are convening things, veterans and anger about the war, i was just wondering, does that come out too much? host mac to the best of my knowledge nothing like that came out in 1920 what was the reason for this.

>> that was quite a bit later. >> host: protest didn't occur much then, and interestingly enough i'd didn't go into everything. i didn't go into labor unrest and strikes. there were in 1920, 3000 strikes, 20 years before that there would have been none. it was a massive change and an indication of how terrible the working conditions were that the strike became a staple of the american workplace. >> it's probably a naïve question but what was the political forces against women voting. so people peoplee