i have had people ask me, when you're going to retire and what you going to do? imrt doing it. i can't think of anything i would rather do than travel around tracking down rare books. i enjoy these books. people ask, do you read them? absolutely. you never know if one of the earlier versions have made an inscription that could substantially increase the value of the book or add added interest to the story behind the book so i will always do this. and never get tired of it. i love sharing stories with old and young and i look forward to it every day. bookshops have been closing in record numbers. national chains are closing down 15 years ago i knew owners of about 300 bookstores. 250 of those closed just in the past 15 years so it's important

for these stores to continue to survive. they add character to the local community. it's a place, a meeting place for people and it keeps history alive. by these bookshops continuing to be in existence. >> booktv toured the vivian g. harsh collection. it's part of the chicago public library. >> beverly cook where we? >> wherein the lobby of the woodson library. in chicago, illinois. >> host: what is special about this library? >> besides me? the vivian g. harsh collection.

vivian g. harsh was the first african-american branch manager in the chicago public library system. she is my mentor. she is the one who founded the special collection which we call call the harsher research collection. >> host: what is the nay collection? >> guest: remember vivian g. harsh opened up in the black belt in 1932 was the first full service branch library for that community. she was the first branch manager and she had a mission common mission to create a place or a space for people to come in and learn, to continue lifelong learning, how to read, how to discover, hot to do anything that they needed to know how to do. to that and she would ring and special books and bring in special people to talk about things that were happening and current events in the city and around the country and she was just fantastic treat she and her counterpart do who is a

children's librarian in harlem at that point. >> host: and when you say -- where were they physically? >> guest: this collection started out in michigan. you get a chance you have to go down and look at it. it was very unique for that time because there was a room for adults, room for teenagers in a room for children. >> host: was a considered a black library? >> guest: was the only black library in the community in that time because this was 1932. yet your member that we have this huge influx of african-americans fleeing the south and coming to chicago. >> host: by chicago? >> guest: chicago, a lot of it was because of robert abbott. he advertised in the chicago defendant the chicago was the place for us to come to have freedom of choice, to have better education, to lead the lynch mobs, and opportunity.

he worked with the reporters because the chicago defender was illegal in itself. >> host: what is the "chicago defender"? >> guest: newspaper. robert apis started it and they would chop off -- if you look at the early defendant was heavy on visual because we are talking about a population that was not really very literate. they were illiterate so he advertised it, they jumped the train and they left in the middle of the night. they came to chicago. >> host: vivian harz collected what? disco vivian harz collected lack history. she collected black newspapers, anything that would speak to the black experience. when you studied 15 harsh she is a historian who never wrote however she left the bigfoot

print. she would come an early paper she was a social life. you would see her at tea parties and things like that but under the tutelage of people like george cleveland hall she became a social activist so she started going to the schomburg and looking for other collections to see what made up a special collection and with help from the julia's rosenwald foundation grant she did get money to make these trips where she started collecting books on black history. she collected them and she have them in the bookcase in her office. she called it the special collection and for my people tell me today she didn't just let anybody go in there and read those books. you have to really prove that you are worthy of reading those books. that's the nucleus of our collection. >> host: how a lot -- how large is the vivian g. harsh collection? >> guest: we have over 4000

manuscript collections and we have maybe 30,000 or 40,000 books. changes. we are one of the largest periodical collections in the united states because remember we started collecting in 1932 which you may recognize as we have every issue of the negro digest and exhibit we have a new magazine collection that didn't last but we still have some of the few additions that are still up. >> host: i know that we are going to look at some defender items on our tour. >> guest: at his weekly now which is strange because it started out in 1905 as a weekly. he in 1948 when daily after abbott died and recently it's gone back to weekly newspaper but it is still very very

popular, still very influential and highly. in the by committee. >> host: who uses the vivian harsh collection? >> guest: we are open seven days a week at the wonderful thing is our constituents are from the cradle two the grave and i truly mean that. it doesn't matter if you are black or white as we have people from all races coming here. we have people coming from france, from japan, from great britain. they come here to use the collection and in this case that we are standing in front of now if the output of a lot of researchers coming here using our collection. a user manuscript collections and they write their books on what they need. wallace does good passionately human, no less divine, i love that title but he talks about

the rise of gospel music in chicago and some of the early church figures in chicago. you have thurling clarke hein who is a professor at northwestern doing a book on the black chicago renaissance which i'm happy to say we have really promoted that because everybody has written and talked about harlem but people seem to have forgotten that the money dried up and to the system under fdr. those writers came to chicago to finish their research. >> host: when was the chicago renaissance? >> guest: actually the chicago renaissance was from 1937 or 35 to the early 60s. >> host: what was it like? and by the way are we located right now in and african-american neighborhood in chicago? >> guest: yes, we are.

remember fdr founded a wpa project. he put people back to work say that writers and photographers in the head camera people and he had musicians able to go out into the black community to people who would recognize him and be open to them to get their story. we are still doing it today with story crafts. back in those days you have african-americans going into communities hiding out where did your grandfather come from from? they got a first-hand story the people that came from the south, the migration story. they had people like charles c. b., walton. they were members doing the wti and still probably one of the few that is lasting that was created under fdr so chicago has quite a lot to boast about. >> host: wanted to ask about

adam green's book, selling the race. what is this about? >> guest: he looks at the economy during that time period what worked and what didn't work. he. >> a lot of time in his book explaining the rise of the black press. people like john h. johnson, people like the "chicago defender", the -- so he does a lot of things during the migration period and during world war i and world war ii. it's a really fantastic work, you know? one of the books that people really like is kings though. a lot of people knew especially the older people. >> host: what is this book about? >> guest: policy. today's lottery, yesterday's lottery. >> host: the policy was actually lottery?

>> guest: yeah it was. in those days it was the numbers real. i can remember my anti-takumi numbers and saying go down the street and put in 5 cents on this and 5 cents on that and someone also turn the wheel and give the numbers out later. later on the state decided to legalize it and we have a lot of today so it's fantastic. it was illegal during those days but people did what they have had to do to make it to put food on the table and feed their children. >> host: where did you start in the what's in library? >> guest: i was getting tired of being hung up on because i was an outpatient billing. i went back to rosemond college and got my masters in library science. >> host: where's the

connection that? >> guest: this collection was ice in the black community. i've lived in bronxville so so was 48 to michigan. i was there. we moved here in 75. i followed it because everything you needed to know you could find in the harsh research collection. people would come out and talk about their books so they always saw me and the assistant curator at the time edward manning asked me, why do you become a librarian? he said you are always out here. you are here more than the people that work here. the next time i came out here he has an application to the college that he made me fill out i got accepted and when i graduated he said did you call and get a interview and i said no. he said we set up an interview for you. he did, i went down was interviewed, interviewed one day and hired the next day and is

started december 23, 1986 and have never credited. >> host: and you told us he went on vacation in december 24th, 1987. >> guest: i was very blessed and very lucky. >> guest: you have been here since 1987? >> i haven't been this physical site that i've been with the chicago public library since 1987. it's a dual role because i'm a librarian but i'm also an archivist by passion and by choice away kerry the dash help the pages but i'm also an archivist who loves to dig into the people's business. >> host: somebody came in and said i'm really adjusted ms. cook and richard wright. could you help them? >> guest: definitely i could. shall we move? >> host: sure. where are we?

>> guest: we are now heading towards the exhibit gallery. we usually try to do two exhibits a year and since you guys are coming out to interview us we decided to let this out for you. you asked me about richard wright. richard wright, everybody knows richard wright, an angry black man, okay? >> host: he lived in chicago. guess that he lived in chicago for a while before he went into new york. he had a huge influence on the chicago renaissance in that period because they move back and forth. some of the material out here, here's a picture of richard wright and vivian g. harsh. he is presented and autographed copy to her. >> host: in the library? >> guest: she was very light and a lot of the early african-american leaders were

light enough to pass for white. that meant that they would fit into society and a way that created no animosity or fear to the existing society around them which was mostly white. >> host: this is a first draft? >> guest: this is the first draft. this is kind of important. >> host: his typing in his riding? >> guest: is typing in his editing and we learn that he lived in indiana. indiana has three or four blocks from state street. state street is the dividing line and this is fantastic it has it was written in 1936 and it's all about stripping away of innocence from young black voice that it starts off with four boys in the south that were having an ideally time playing

and running and jumping like boys will do. they were teenagers and they decided they were going to swim in the swimming hole. one of the boys said you know mr. holidays him like that. it was a white guy that owned the land and the other said let's try it. they took off all their clothing and they were sobbing in their mouth is was suddenly heard something and when they looked up they saw this white lady. she was standing there to cheer come upon them unexpectedly. they immediately felt fear. they knew that they were not supposed to be there so they jumped out of the water. the two start to run away and the other two said let's go get her clothing. the white lady started screaming some white guy had a shotgun and shot to the boys right then and there they died. a big boy grabbed a gun and wrestled with it.

the white guy said boy, give me that gun i bought he was fighting for the gun discharged and he killed the white guy. he also felt fear, ran home. i'm going to give you the whole story. the story to muse about how four young men goes from an ideally childhood scene to an angry young man because now you are running for your life. now you are leaving your home and all your people that you were comfortable with and running to the north. >> host: he wrote this book in chicago. >> guest: he wrote this book in chicago in 1936. it's part of the later publication on uncle tom's children. let's go to white men, taller and heavier throwing big boy to the ground. he dropped the clothing ran up and jumped onto the white man's back.

>> guest: you have to love the language but even in 1936 you could see the anger in richard wright. it's an anchor frankly that spoke to the public is a lot of people were feeling that anger and that disconnect because they were in america and the land of opportunity and the land of the free yet they didn't have the same opportunities. plus when 1936 with their large enough lack population in chicago to buy this book, to read the book and to buy it and to understand where he was coming from? >> they didn't publish this book in 1936 but remember this is the hall branch library today with university outside of the university at 40th and michigan. that meant that the public was invited in. people like richard wright, langston hughes, jack conroy. that was their home place. that was their meeting place so you could come in and listen to people like margaret walker and read their work.

in that sense yes the public got a chance and a lot of people could not read and write so for him to be invited to an author's talk was fantastic. posted 1936 most african-americans here in the chicago area, what kinds of jobs that they have? >> guest: menial, labor, maids , selling newspapers. >> host: better than the south? >> guest: in the south remember at this point in time they had the bovine infestation and the new mechanization coming along so it's not a big job picking cotton because they have the machines that can do it. you have jim crow laws and you have lynching. yeah it was pretty much better to leave, you know and there are no jobs because people remember after world war ii sharecropping caiman which meant i've got to

go to you to borrow money to write your land and borrow money to buy your land and so by the time the harvest came and i owe you my whole paycheck. what do i have to show for that whole year? plus two you mentioned langston hughes. i think of him as a new yorker. >> guest: i know you do. i want to show you one more thing. right here is arabella thompson. bring her up because we have for collection and she was the managing editor. she was the manager for over two years that it ran. i bring her up because at the same time that she was writing richard wright the world knows richard wright. the world at large doesn't know arabella thompson only to people that are professional in the world. his anger was flatter than her humor.

she had the same feelings that he had coming from the south being discriminated against but she had to find another way to get her story out and she would use humor. as her collection becomes popular you will see a lot of books that kind of compare them. she did her autobiographer of africa, land of my father and she gave it the main script and it was published the same time richard wright's black tar was published. they are both biographical stories of their years in africa. everybody has written -- arabella thompson. >> host: is called? >> guest: africa land of my fathers. >> host: could you buy a two-day? ..

>> >> has spent up play don humanity as the world continues to be sharply divided by race is in that

fantastic? that keeps the collection and still surviving. you can see the connection from 37 until she retired. >> very quickly tour they? >> the founder of the but the magazine. but they started in 1945. >> right here in chicago. this is important to remember of the humanities articles.

and their allies connected they believed would never choices they were given. >> now we get to langston hughes. and because of their friendships he made here he spent a lot of time so the family does do preservation and conservation because

they like to see compared to the finished product. >> how did langston hughes spend those years and? >> he kept coming back and forth. and back in those days that ted was a mighty weapon because you have to use though letter to communicate today we have the internet and whatever else but because of the letters that they wrote back and forth we concede that developing friendship ms. thompson thank you for publishing my poillon so you can tell that friendship is going so that is fantastic.

i found this here with us to election from langston hughes. i put this out here because it was also written with the head of the illinois writers' project also within this portrait yearly form of gwendolyn brooks bibliophiles like to commend to see those autographed copies. >> gives somebody said i saw the original draft could

they come see it? >> of course, we have some of the most wonderful hours to view the manuscript in the credit states. when you come in telling us to your hand what you want to see the gloves at the end of the table that certain materials because fidelity wailes of the figures to touched the papers because that would cause deterioration. >> is something else from your collection what do you want to show less? >> her picture is opposite out there on the old wall she works he did in hand with vivian harsh. she was very open and friendly and social she was

a mentor to langston hughes. and she was called the lieutenant and i would tell you why the care she was more from the old social the. and was very passionate about the special league -- negro collection. >> money is in even the issue is unsettling from the very beginning just like if you could read and write as opposed to having $1 million. vivian harsh did graduate with a degree in library

science. to be ahead of danger in the head and a joseph rollins. and her passion in her love was children she was a gifted storyteller we have all of her published works in her collection but she also has the passion about what type of book should be in a library. she applied for a grant and could write the curriculum guide what it is is a manifesto of those types of materials from around the country and around the world. this kravis steady of the

chicago teachers symposium that said what do you want to do when you grow up? the white liberal suburb like to go to the school to learn how to so but i guess i cannot go there. why not? that is in the black community so back then even then there was a bias she didn't know why she pauli was just repeating what somebody else said so what you see are what she was fighting against. >> the whole point is that if the book does the present a positive image it should not be on the shelf whether black or white or asian children have to have a role

model so she kept these books in her collection to use these as the two will of what not to purchase. >> what is the point is she an author? >> so why is that dash five? >> click anti-imagery the exaggerated features around the eyes or the mouth. it doesn't present a positive of what they can expect in life and i didn't put it out here but little black sambo was on the shelf around the country and said this is very negative we don't want our children to believe this is what they would expect to be or how people should see them

barrasso with the white kids reading back so we know that is not quite true. she did it. >> this is election season. i will show you some of the other things. one that also had to flee for his life as they start to get very close to the kkk and the people were criticizing them even though that was part of the social elite he had to leave because he started to get threatening letters. but the point i'm making

even back then with 1939, to vote you had to prove you had those wonderful questions to let somebody know you paid your dues and could register to vote. so when he died the people donated his papers. >> from 1950. >> also where he lives. $2 doesn't look much now but it back in the day that would count for something. >> to westchester? >> he was a cartoonist who worked about 40 years.

we do have his collection we have his documents because he loved making trains he also recognized that the public he was speaking to did not read a lot so he is is that idea that a picture is worth a thousand words to tell a story. but also the supreme court decision it is obvious with brown vs. board of education it speaks to what is happening today. >> that is one of his cartoons. >> he drew on everything.

>> beverly cook this weekend 51 shootings this past weekend. >> we're at the epicenter right now. >> know because i have noticed lately is that it jumps it isn't just day in one community they used to be the south side or the west side but now the violence jumps up in rogers parking and uptown. i don't know the answer but we do need to give our kids something to do besides sit on the quarter. remember they would say idle audiences the devil's workshop? that is so true if you give them something to do light work for the library tries to provide where people but

none can express their wishes with those that don't have lunches we are providing a safe harbor from the time they are down here with the finger painting or the storytelling to write their dissertations to find that material. with the paper trail we're all things to all people. >> we are touring the vivian harsh collection. your partner. >> beverly cut. >> she mentioned chester

commodore. >> right now part of the 111 years of the chicago defender because he was in trouble -- inter goal and drew cartoons over 50 years this is a great image of him in 1980 and become the editorial cartoonist that was from this was published june 12, 1954. it designated that civil-rights in social justice issues is what he would bring to the chicago defender. those that help african-americans and civil

rights with the victory during world war ii in to can see that in his cartoon. the supreme court decision marks the beginning of that. the other was the shade of mississippi cartoon. this was 1955 hanging from the tree he wanted to shock his readers into paying attention. you have three men. the three black men murdered in the south during the campaign of lynch -- alleging they are hanging from the tree. in then coming up behind them with the calgary you have sold her right thigh -- roy wilkins. in he was working down in

the south he invited journalists to the about the people they should interview. this was published one week before the trial started. >> this immediately went through my head that chester commodore was never awarded a pulitzer prize. >> and those proposals that they put together but unfortunately and unfairly he lost both times. >> host: what is the importance of the chicago defender? >> it is a local paper and had two printings. and national and local

printing we were open seven days a week it was important but and schools could have and that's him now was to begin that was smuggled into the south of the civil rights era which was the unofficial contract that the publishers had selected the defender promote new writers? >> we posed from over six different collections with there is a poetry section

that was edited that contributed those to write to the papers. but they later came on to be the first african-american woman to win the prize. >> show our viewers. you can see here that he was part of the editorial this is a column anybody could contribute to you have people writing short stories or long stories a it became more like a club than a column in the newspaper. to really feel that it was your local paper with the national audience. he left the chicago defender and went to work at the hope

house where he just started when he passed away this 1930 you will dash state to deny. so with this display there are copies? >> microfilm or you can search of mine because everybody loves to look at them. with her the history, a civil rights, publishing with local or national writers here is something very recent in terms of historical context. barack obama becoming president in 2008 they were the senator of illinois first so he actually gave him an interview on behalf of the chicago defender talking about the importance of the chicago defender to

chicago. >> so also dreams of my father? giving people come to read archive they want to see all the old materials. is adjusted to the reference books from the collection not only dates the chicago defender but also his lifelong work in the community. >> how did you start here? director started in minnesota by cave to chicago and has the second-largest city of museums and historical centers then i got into irish history that models of similarities of

african-americans and who couldn't fall of love with south side of chicago history? >> show us other parts of the collection. >> absolutely. arcus have the number of projects they are working on we help researchers but one of my favorite tasks is processing so they can in garbage cans and boxes sometimes they are lovely and organized alphabetically sometimes they come through a will from all of family sometimes they are dropped off or organizations want to be a part of the collection. this but i am currently processing is a reverend claude white papers it is broken into two parts.

in is the speech she wrote in 1965 shortly after the march from selma lecter element every. kardashian to montgomery. this is process they can view this now what is not processed is a very large photograph collection that they left us. about 3,000 photographs there is a number of triplicates. >> who were they? >> they were:pastors of the church of the south side located on stoney island. the church is still going.

there also a meat cutting factor in the union activist also a co-founder of the black trade union in in in this photo she was a speaker and a co-founder of the first coalition that had the first convention hearing in chicago over 3,000 women attended and she appears in the opening address. >> when do you see yourself finishing her papers? >> hopefully this year we like to have that photograph collection fully processed before that happens. it goes up to the early 1000's