of white racism against african-americans in this country. up now carol anderson, author of white rage. >> i think will go ahead and get started. hello and welcome to left bank books for our event with carol anderson. this is of course not left bank books. imd event host for left bank

books and i would like to thank our cosponsor for the evening, the ferguson public library library. their work and their activism is incredible and inspiring. they are a wonderful partner to have for such an event like this left bank books hosts over 300 author events each year end it is with your help that we continue bringing in your favorite authors. when you support us, you are reinvesting in your community because your tax dollars are going into your schools, parks, streets, libraries and community projects at an incredibly higher rate. we give back by partnering with many charities and organizations and also we are doing our fundraising for readers program and we have brochures at the back. the river city readers serves st. louis public school children by building their own home library and encouraging literacy. the students get to keep five books each year end meet the authors of culturally relevant new books. i would like to ask you to make a donation tonight of any amount

you can do so at the sales table or you can ask me about sponsoring a child. this program is near injured my heart and it is wonderful and i will tell you all about it if you would like to hear. i would like to thank all of you for your continued support for us. for information about our upcoming events and information about our reading group, ferguson reads and much more please visit our website, grab a newsletter newsletter at the back and definitely get signed up for our mailing list. i am very proud to introduce carol anderson for left bank books. as ferguson interrupted and commentators referred to the angry response of african-americans as black rage, anderson wrote a remarkable op-ed in the washington post showing that this was instead white rage at work.

it was countered by deliberate and crafted deliberation, white white rage pulls back the veil that was made in the name of protecting democracy. one said few historians right with the great clarity and intellectual that she summons in this book. there are a handful of riders whose work i can consider indispensable. professor anderson is high up on that list. the editor of white rage also says this is one of the most important books that he has worked on. carol anderson is professor of afghan american studies at emory university. she the author of many books including bourgeois radicals, there naacp and the struggle for colonial and numerous articles. her article from the washington post will appear in the fire this time, a new generation speaks about race.

it's edited by national book award winner which comes out in august and i highly recommend that book as well. that article shaped and help define this book and a movement. white rage is inspiring, maddening and necessary. from the epilogue, imagine, it is time to diffuse the power of white rage. it is time to finally truly move into the future. tonight carol will be discussing white rage, the unspoken unspoken truth of our racial divide, answering your questions and signing copies of her book available for purchase from left bank books. would you please help me in welcoming carol anderson. [applause] >> thank you. thank you for coming out on ,-comma what day is this i really truly appreciate it. i appreciate what ferguson

public library has done and is for this community. thank you. i appreciate left bank books as well. thank you. i wanted to spend some time first talking about how i got to white rage ,-comma what white rage is and then to move into several excerpts from the book and then open it up for q&a. when i first began to wrestle with the concept of white rage, it wasn't ferguson. it was in fact, in february 1999 when a black man in new york city stepped out on his doorstep after a long hard days work to go get something to eat. he was greeted with 41 bullets. nineteen hit him. his was gunned down by the nypd.

he was unarmed. that was bad enough, but as we know from these killings, it is the response that begins to tell you what's happening in society and so, i'm sitting there and i'm listening to mayor rudy giuliani in an interview with ted koppel on "nightline" and ted koppel is talking about the nypd, the killing, he's talking about 41 bullets, he's talking about stop and frisk, he's talking about police brutality and rudy giuliani says i have the most restraint and best behave police force you can

imagine. okay i had one of those scooby doo moments. and then he began to talk about how his policies were working, that what he has put in place in new york city has brought down crime. new york city is a safer place because of his policies and he has flow charts and graphs and bars, everything, and what you don't hear is that an unarmed black man stepped out on his porch and was gunned down. i'm sitting there going something is fundamentally wrong , structurally wrong. i didn't know what to call it. i didn't know what to label it, but i knew something was going on and i continued working and thinking and working and

thinking and then august 2014 the television is on and i'm watching and i see ferguson in flames and then i hear the pundits talking and what they were talking about was black rage. why are black people burning up where they live. what is wrong with black people must mark how could they burn up where they live. you know there's something wrong with black people. why are they burning up, and it didn't matter what ideological stripe. it was all censured. the the baseline, the starting point was black rage. i found myself in this moment shaking my head. you know that moment when you're shaking your head because something's going on and you don't even realize. you're just gone that's not

right and that's when it hit me and i thought what were really seeing is white rage. but we are really seeing is that we been so focused in on the flames that we've missed the kindling. we have missed what has stoked this fire. we have missed, for instance, distant disenfranchisement of the black community in ferguson that through all kinds of such shenanigans and rigmarole had created, where in the 2013 municipal election, in election, in a population that is 67% of ferguson population you have a 6% black voter turnout. you've gotta work really hard to make that happen we missed in ferguson schools that had been on probation for 15 years. where a state has an accounting

system of accreditation of 140 points and ferguson public schools were getting ten points a year. we had allowed that to happen for 15 years. we have allowed an entire generation of students to go through kindergarten to graduati with a school in the school system that we notice at work, kindling. we have a police force thator didn't see that its role was to protect and serve, but saw african americans as a revenue generating source that could provide 27% of the city's t budget, kindling. what all of this kindling does and i started wrestling with white range and began to understand what we are really looking at are the policies. we are so drawn to the spectacular.

we are so drawn to what we can see that we miss those tectonic plates that are actually moving. white rage moves subtly, almost imperceptibly, corrosive league through the courts, legislaturer , government for accuracy, white house, congress and it reeks have ached subtly so it's hard to discern what is the source of what you are seeing and so i set out to make white rage visible because the first thing you got to do is see the rage.be the trigger for white rage is black advancement.

it's not the mere presence of black people that is the catalyst, but black ambition, blackness with drive, purpose, aspiration with the demands for full and equal citizenship. it is blackness that refuses to give up and threw rage, policy of salts, legal maneuvering white rage consistently publishes black resilience and black resolve. how else can we reasonably explain why government after government.. hard to keep black children from

getting an education. we sought after the civil war. we thought all the way through the brown decision. we see it now. why is it so difficult to educate black children? educ why do we have this even when at least since 1957 when the us said we have a national security crisis, we must educate as many of our citizens as we can to be able to effectively wage the cold war, but brown was not going to get implemented, so even in the face of a national secured a crisis, even in the face when we say this is what our nation needs, white rage says i don't think so.

why would this nation design a war on drugs that incarcerates those who sell and do drugs the least, why? y, particularly with the tribes and successes of the civil rights movement, the civil rights act of 1964 in the voting rights act of 1965, why would we incarcerate? why would we overwhelm state budget? why would we destabilize families? why would we do this to those who aren't the primary users or sellers of narcotics?

why? why would state after state develop cruise after bruce to keep american citizens from being able to vote and to have a say in their own and democracy? when we say we value democracy, when we say this is why we fight , then why would we have such massive voter suppression? understand that that's none of this was done with a mere clan across. there wasn't any cross burning that made all of this happened. all of this was then coolly, methodically, systematically and so in my new book white rage i trace this historical pattern

with signposts, reconstruction, the great migration, the brown decision. the civil rights movement and the election of barack obama and i also trace it through three key sectors, education, criminal justice system and the right to vote, so now i want to eat-- read some excerpts. as you know, in 1954 the us supreme court ruled that separate but equal was unconstitutional, overturned the plessy decision and said we must integrate. jim crow was no longer the law of the land. the south rose up and said with massive resistance and said no, and used a series of ruses that

impact dragged this process out for a long long time. in 1973, the court battles are still going on. in 1973, there was an area in san antonio called the edgewood district and in the edgewood neighborhood it was 96% mexican-american and african-american. was it was the poorest neighborhood in san antonio with the loading-- lowest median income and lowest property valut they taxed themselves at the highest rate in order to try to fund their children's education. by taxing themselves at thees highest rate they garnered $21 for capital. meanwhile, alamo high, which was

a predominantly white neighborhood in san antonio taxed themselves at a much lower rate. they garnished over $300 per student. lower rate, 1500% more in funding. down, what we know is that property values have a lot to do with public policy. where governments choose to say put the landfill.l where they choose to put the highway. where they choose to zone certain types of businesses and not others has a lot to do with property value, so the parents and-- in the edgewood district took texas to court and said this is violate our children's

amendment right to have equal protection under the law. it violates brown. the us supreme court ruled in a five-four decision, four of the justices were appointed by richard nixon and one was appointed by eisenhower, dwight eisenhower. that's quote there is no fundamental right to education in the constitution. they said that the state funding scheme did not systematically discriminate against all poor people in texas and that's because districts across the united states use property taxes , that this method was not so irrational as to be invidiously discriminatory. disc thurgood marshall, his dissent

and that's what i'm going to read. fully recognizing the implications of rodriguez, than in the case, justice thurgood marshall was-- more than 40% of black children, 14 and under live with family below the poverty line as compared with about 10% of white children. under those circumstances, marshall feared,e african-american children would not stand a chance. the decision he wrote in his dissent could only be seen as a retreat from a commitment to equality of educational opportunities as well as an unsupportable capitulation to a system which deprives children of a chance to reach their full potential as citizens. he was simply dumbfounded that the majority would acknowledge the existence of district funding for schools across

texas, but then instead of focusing on the cause of that disparity clumsily pirouettes c throughout the states supposed efforts to close the gaps. the issue, marshall explained is not whether texas is doing its best to delete the worst features of a discriminatory t scheme, but rather whether it's the scheme itself is in fact unconstitutionallyitself discriminatory. moreover, he founded the height of absurdity that texas could actually argue that there was no correlation between funding and school equality. you can't make this up. then, from that faulty premiset deduced that there were no discriminatory consequences for the children of the disadvantaged district.

he was equally unimpressed with texas' tendency to pray before the justices the stories of children who had expelled despite living in under resourced district as some sort of proof that funding was irrelevant, that child could excel even when forced to attend an underfunded school with poor physical proof-- facilities, less experienced teachers,an larger classrooms and another at -- number of other deficits compared to a school with substantially more funds. it's the credit of the child, not the state, but rodriguez played on the backs of the most vulnerable while walling off access to the necessary resources for quality education and played beautifully into the colorblind post civil rights language as substituting economics for race yet achieving

a similar result. the simple truth was that i virtue of the sheer demographics of poverty rodriguez would have not only eight desperate impact on children, but also a disastrous one. i know, sobering.bering. i then move into the war on drugs because it has so warped american society in ways that are so profound and so i walk us through how the war on drugs emerge.k i then walk us through the court cases, the supreme court decision that rachelle alexander in the new jim crow so beautifully laid out and then iu lay out some of the consequences

and as i go through the court cases it i then say taken together those rulings allow indeed encourage the criminal justice system to run racially amuck and that's exactly what happened on july 23, 1999, in tulia, texas. in the dead of night local police launched a massive grade and busted a major cocaine trafficking ring. at least that's how it was billed by the local media with after being tipped off lined up to get the best most humiliating photographs of 46 of the town's 5000 residents handcuffed in pajamas, underwear and uncombed bed hair paraded into the jail for booking. the local newspaper ran the headline: tulia streets clear garbage.

the editorial praised law enforcement for reading tulia of the scumbags. the raid was the result of an 18 month investigation by a man who will be named by texas attorney general as outstanding law man of the year, attached to the federally funded panhandle regional narcotics task force based in our marilla, aboutor 50 miles away from toll yet. tom coleman did not a team of investigators, instead he single-handedly identified each member of this massive cooking operation and made more than 100 undercover drug purchases. he was hailed as a hero and his testimony immediately led to 38 of the 46 being convicted. the other cases were just waiting to get into the core system.

one was sentenced to 99 years were selling $200 worth of cocaine to the undercover narcotics agent. kesey white, received 25 years while her husband, william, landed 434 years for possessing an ounce of cocaine. well, the case began to unravel, however, when kinsey's assister tawny went to trial. he swore she had sold him drugs. tawny however had video proof that she was at a bank in oklahoma city, 300 miles away cashing a check at the very moment he claims to have bought cocaine from her. c then another defendant, billy john wafer headed timesheets and his bosses eyewitness testimony that's a wafer was at work and not out selling drugs to coleman when the outstanding lawman of

the year swore under oath that he had purchased cocaine from you will bryant, a tall bushy haired man only to have bryant, bald and 5'6" appear in court. it finally became very clear that something was awry. coleman, in fact, had no proof whatsoever.ny proof tha no proof that any of the alleged drug dealings had taken place. there were no audiotapes, no photographs, no witnesses, no other police officers present, no fingerprints but his on the bag of drugs, no records. over the span of an 18 month investigation he never wore a wire. now, he claims to have written each drug transaction on his leg , but to have washed with

evidence when he showered. so, i'm either thinking he showered once in 18 months or additional investigation led to know cooperating proof when the police arrested those 46 people and vigorously at search to their possessions no drugs were found, nor were weapons, money, paraphernalia or any other indication at all that the housewife, pig farmer or anyone else arrested were actually drug kingpin's. what was discovered, however, was judicial misconduct running rampant in the war on drugs in tulia, texas, with a clear racial bias. coleman had accused 10% of tulia's black population of dealing in cocaine. based on his word alone, 50% of

all of the black men in the town were indicted, convicted and sentenced to prison. randy credit: for racial justice called it tulia a mass lynching, taking down 50% of the male black adult population like that is outrageous, like being accused of raping someone in indiana in the 1930s. you didn't do it, but it doesn't matter because a bunch of klansmen on the jury will strin you up anyway. but, this was night 1930. it was the beginning of the 21st century and a powerful21 civil rights movement had bridged those two. then, the last excerpt i want to read, the last chapter filled

with the election of presidentpt obama. how how white rage reared up in really deep, profound ways, almost ways we had not seen in years and it's so as i walk through voter suppression and then i move into the threats on his life in the disrespect that the office of the president has received i then begin to build with the violence. black respectability or appropriate behavior does not seem to matter. if anything, black achievement, plaque aspirations and a black success are construed as direct threats. obama's presidency made that clear. aspirations and their achievements provide no protection, not even to--

[inaudible] >> on june 17, 2015, south carolina's dylann roof, a white unemployed 21-year old high school dropout was on a mission to take his country back. ever since george zimmerman walked out of the courthouse a free man after killing tribe on martin in a racially polarized nation, roof looked to understand the history of america. trolling to the internet he stumbled across the council of conservative citizens, the product of the 1950s white citizen counsel that had terrorized black people, closed schools and worked hand-in-hand with the government to defy civil rights laws. but, despite the groups about racial police system in the mid-

1990s at the southern poverty law center report the groupter boasted having 34 members in the mississippi legislature and had powerful republican allies including then senate majority leader trent lott cup mississippi. by 2004, mississippi governor haley barbour, the chair of the republican national committee and 37 other powerful politicians at all attended events in the 21st century.21stu earl holt, the chair gave $65000 to republican campaign funds in recent years including donations to the 2016th presidential campaigns of rand paul, rick santorum and ted cruz. the tracy then enjoyed precisely

the cachet of respect building that racism requires to achieve its own goals within american society. soci and this website of hatred and lies provided the self-servingrv education dylann roof so desperately craved. he drink in the poison of its knowledge.to charl he got into his car, drove to college, entered the emmanuel ame church and landed in a bible study with a group of african-americans who were the very model respectability. proof prayed with them, read the bible, that they were so nice and then he shot them dead, leaving just one woman alive so she could tell the world what he had done and why. you are taking over our country, he said and he knew this to be true.tr

not even a full month after dylann roof gunned down nine african-americans at emmanuel ame in charleston, south carolina, republican presidential front-runner donald trump fired up his silent majority audience of thousands in july, 2015, with a macabre promise, don't worry, we will take our country back.ry it's time that we take our country forward into the future. thank you. [applause]. >> thank you. now, we will open it up for questions, but i would ask because c-span is filming it that if you have a question that

you please go to the microphone. ask. ask. thank you. >> i have read your book. we have discussed it with ferguson's group-- book group. with the readings on recent book a group. my one question and i found it very helpful and a good compendium of things i kind of know, but it's good to have it all in one place. the one concern i had was the thing you really detailed of the problems that happened under republican administrations with eisenhower to nixon, to bush and then the present situation under obama, but you did not talk much

about sake what for example clinton ending welfare as we know it or other things that might happen under democratic administrations, which also has disproportionate effects on black people. >> thank you and one of the reasons behind that is because i was looking at the moments of advancement and in those moments of advancements where you see the pushback comes, you know,seg before 68, you know, give the republicans and democrats, but one of the things in a piece i did just recently, i do begin to unpack somewhat bill clinton and what he has done. now, the arctic-- article

focusing on the gop, but understand there are a couple things happening, that whitete rage moves through parties. m it isn't just isolated like in the republicans or isolated in the democrats and that is alsoth really important to understand. so it was just the epoque's that i looked at that did that, but i could've easily, for instance, during the great depression when franklin delano roosevelt is creating a whole series ofth programs one of the things you see happening there are that the democrats are saying, yes, we really need relief. we need relief and agricultural funding and support, social security, but black people can't have that, so you can create this whole new deal of programs,

but you have to exclude african-americans and i could have talked about that, but crunch peace time. thank you. >> hello. i really want to thank you so much for this work. it's incredibly profound and that things in here that you cited that i was completely unaware of like the state of mississippi did not ratify the 13th amendment until 2013. >> yes, the state of mississippi finally got around to ratifying the 13th amendment which abolished slavery in 2013. they said it was an oversight. >> well, you know, the really difficult pieces in here and i want to say thank you for telling the story, which i had only recently learned about, but i think being a witness to hert

story is so important is so powerful.to i read the book for the ferguson readings on race broke, also. it's such a great group. i was really diligent about reading it and i had to put it down sometimes and it was so difficult and painful, so my question is, was it that-- was it like that for you writing it? i mean, it had to be so much more difficult to write and research it. >> it too was tough. one of the things-- but i have been through this before in the first book, eyes off the prize. i had to deal with a lot of the lynchings that happened after the second world war, you know, so i'm dealing with a blowtorch lynching and talking about hisg blood boiling so hard that his eyeballs popped out of his head

and i'm in those records. i met reading through this, so i have been in the bowels and that's how it felt in these moments going through this, but one of the things go, i have the mary turner lynching-- it is tough. it is a woman who protested because her husband was lynched and she's angry and she's eight months pregnant and is so the winters, after her because she did not know her place. how dare she protest that her husband was wished and so they snatched her, they stripped her, they hunt upside down from a tree, doused her with gasoline and set her on fire and then they saw her stomach because she's eight months pregnant.

they saw her stomach quivering so they got a knife and slice right open. the baby popped out and theyit stopped on the baby's head and when you are reading through those records because one of the things i think is also important to understand about the way white rage works as we focus in on this kind of violence, but it's the system around that condones and legitimizes that violence and allows it to happen, that allows it to occur and sanctions it. that's what gives it traction, so everyone knew who killed mary turner. you go through that naacp papers as well to write the head of the naacp is ready to the governor of georgia naming the names, so in so and he works at standard oil, so-and-so and he works at the furniture shop and nothing happened.

so, when you have that kind of violence that happens in a community and then the powers that be are like yeah. that's white rage because it creates the kinds of policies,c that allow that to occur in order to keep african-americans in their place.that advan >> i have another question. we talk about this a lot in her book that what can we do. what can we do? >> you are doing it ended this is the thing about-- i study movements. i love the movements. i love what i study, how do we change the norm?

there are these moments, so for instance before the civil war, 80% of the nation's gnp was tied up in slavery, tied to slavery, 80% of the united states gnpof u tied to slavery. but, we got to the point to fight a mean hard war, but where the norman changed when knew slavery was wrong. we came to know jim crow was wrong. we came to know that apartheid, wrong. the movements but it takes to change those norms is bit by bit , neighbors talking to neighbors, it's mobilizing, organizing, rising, talking,

thinking, it's voting.oting it's voting. it's laying the pressure on policymakers to make this a much more just and decent nation of the world. that's how we do it. that's how we do it, by working together. >> at evening, everybody. how are you doing? i had to write everything down that i wanted to say. recently i was completing a job application and internationality it said latin, spanish, mexican, african, or african haitian and then just said whitener

caucasian. nothing to reference where european or russian or anything like that. why do you think it's so hard for some caucasians to recognize that there are also-- they are also immigrants of this country and quick to say it's their country? >> i think a lot of that has to do with the way that history-- a novel and not all. [inaudible]son, but >> it creates a civics lesson and not a history lesson in terms of a very kind of flattened narrative about who and how the nation, by whom and how the nation was founded, who built the nation, who created the railroads, who built the

cities, who invented this, who invented that and if you go through those kinds of standard textbooks what you will find is very minimal discussion about anyone else that it is why twoan of the america, whites who have sustained america, whites who created america, whites are america. it is that framing in our textbooks from k-12 that have really solidified this narrative and so we do get that we are a nation of immigrants.ants. you get that kind of thrown out there, but then we had the melting pot and we all become one, but not really. so-- and i cited statistic that said only about 20% of americans

have a bachelor's degree. so, that means somewhere about 80% that this is the history that they know. this is the history they know and you know how it is when someone tells you something, the first to store you hear is the one then that everything else has to be weighed against, so if the first store you here and it's a story you have heard over and over and over and over again then trying to say, hey, you know your folks came over from poland. lets me tell you a quick story. i have tons of stories. i was teaching a us cold war foreign-policy class and i broke

my students up into research teams and they were to be the a president's transition team for a series of issues, so we had things like human rights, energy, the environment and i had one on immigration and so that team actually wrote a great policy paper on immigration. really good policy paper on immigration, but i required that they then present it to the rest of the class as part of the presidents team. the responses were so-- thingson like yeah, so, you know, myik parents were immigrants, but i think we need to build a wall. wow, wow, wow.

>> you talked about that we only pay attention to the flashpoints of michael and right here in ferguson, michael brown is shot and killed-- sorry. you talked about the fact that people only pay attention to the flashpoints inhere in ferguson michael brown was shot and killed. people take to the streets. the police, politicians, governors overreact, ferguson blows up and suddenly it's national and international news; right? in baltimore, people march peacefully and no one pays attention until people start looting and writing and suddenly want to get its national and international news, so my question is as someone who is as a nonviolent as you can get like

it seems like the only thing people pay attention to, the only thing that white people pay attention do is when suddenlyply things once again turn violent, so how do you protest peacefully and still get attention and make a difference when it seems like the flashpoints are the only thing people listen to?th >> one of the reasons i won't write-- white rage is so we begin to pay attention to the candling. that we really understand the power of policy, that we begin to pay attention and what they are recommending on doing and asking that next set of questions and i would push back just a bit on that to whites only pay attention when something blows up.uld push bac

and movement, and struggles, you have whites who are there on the ground who are doing that hard, heavy lifting. you have asians who are on the ground doing that hard heavy lifting. as well as having latinos and african-americans. you have people who are doing the day's work, the organizing, the strategizing, the letter writing and social media hassoca helped so much with that kind of mobilization, so you have that going on. of the thing that happens then is that we don't see it.'t see but, it is happening and that is why when something jumps off, mad, crazy because that kind of

organizing has already been in place you have people and organizations that step into the brief. who help provide policy rationales, policy options, who provide safe places. we just oc that heavy lifting initially, but it is there and that's why we have to keep at it , keep doing it. it's not separate. this kind of heavy lifting isis not sexy, but as i documented and tried to go through just looking at what the supreme court is doing, this is why we have to pay attention to who the supreme court nominees are. we have to pay really close attention because their

decisions help shape this nation. >> to follow-up with six questions.y i think we really do pay attention, we whites, but in a different way. back to charleston in one of the things i notice, when one of us whites don't act appropriate as whites do then the media starts talking about was at parents, environment and we go on to this intellectual assessment so we can figure it out and keep our image intact while we never agree that nine of our brothers and sisters are there is american so it doesn't count. we judge ourselves by our best examples and you by your worst, so there is violence in that by never allowing ourselves, we call it know it's not safe.fortu we mislabel it. the media then presents in the

narrative that we whites want and endorse and support and that's a violence for me. i think is-- we know flashpointe when we are out of line we make sure we come back looking good. could you comment on that. >> okay. that was a boom. >> i'm working on a piece right now dealing with politics of respectability and one of the elements in this politics of respectability is how african-americans don't get the benefit of the doubt. but, i walk through why the politics of respectability was deployed during the civil rights movement. as a means to try to humanize

african-americans to the larger american society. to the power brokers. and other because there had been a series of killings, brutal horrific killings like the lynching of caught meal in 1934 where he was dragged out of an alabama jail and put through a call went of torture, in florida, hoisted upp on the sand and tortured, tortured. florida said there is no crime here because he was not from here in alabama said there was no crime here because he was not killed here so that naacp turns to the fbi because we now have the lindbergh law that if you cross federal lines is a federal offense and j edgar hoover said there was no ransom required, no crime.

so, seeing what this kind of violence on the blackbody has done. we saw the civil rights movement deploy the politics of respectability as a way to make visible that the only way, the only reason that you are seeing mrs. amelia boynton yanked onto the concrete in selma, it's because she's black. this can't be anything but racism, so it was a way to say you had a criminal record and so this is why you see this deployed. the politics of respectability does have some good pieces in it. i'm not one of those who's justt pops it off as some kind of victorian thing because being sober is not a bad thing.

we know alcohol and drugs destroy families. of being sober is not a bad thing. education is a good thing, but what it doesn't do is protecttet black bodies from white violence , so i look one of the things about charleston. charleston drove me to thisch because i look at that because the nine who were killed were the models of respectability. you saw nikki haley and south carolina saying that was really bad, that was really bad. event, you had to have their killer, so you have respectability. their killer had to be an avowed white supremacists. they had to findth incontrovertible proof that he was an avowed white white

supremacists, so he had to have the rhodesian flag, apartheid in south africa flag and he had to have the confederate flag-- i'm not done yet-- and that he had to have this manifesto where he said i want to start a race war. that's still not enough. then, you had to have the families of the slain forgive dylann roof, wow. wow. then, they're going to take down the confederate flag with the dignity. we see it today. what's happened in orlando, is

terrific-- is horrific, but the way that the killers have then become the avatar for all muslims in the world, but you didn't see the same kind of rationale being used, for instance, with timothy mcveigh; right? so, that is part of the way that these narratives work and the way that they begin to undergird policy because you hear as they are talking about muslims and terrorists that they are in fact talking about what kind of policies to put in place. >> another thing, when they

looked up and they saw three flags flying at half mast us flags, state flag and the confederacy flag flew at full mass and then they strategize and she then a white male tall guys stood at the bottom-- [inaudible] >> this is my interpretation which appeared to the white men kill her? know they let her live it and i think the only reason she is alive today the white man was at the bottom of the poll. people don't know that story because they won't reported. >> i'm a host story and. on going to run with this one. in 1946, in columbia, tennesseer

a white shop owner smacked a black woman. her son, a black veteran was standing next to her. you do not lay your hands on someone's mother. that the veteran picks that white man up and went and threw him out the plateglass window. whites in the town organized to lynch the black man. the black veteran's in that town weren't having it and basically it's called the columbia tennessee race riots. after it was over 23 african-americans were arrestedd for murder. no lights were arrested. although, as you know lots of shootings happened. thurgood marshall came to defend the black man in columbia tennessee, but he could not stay in a hotel because it was a whites only, so after court every day he would have to drive thurgood marshall had one of his

colleagues was a white man and asked that they are driving out of columbia tennessee one night after court, looks up behind and there's a cop car behind them. they go left and that cop car goes left. they go right and the cop car goes right and finally the cop pulls them over and they arees like, you need to come with us. thurgood is like this is bad. thurgood gets up, gets in the cop car. the white man looks up and realizes there are several carsa behind that cop car and they don't turn around to go back into columbia, tennessee, they are headed off to the woods. thurgood marshall is getting ready to get lynched. the white man hops over onto the drivers seat, turns the car on

and starts following and he is scared, but he's like i'm not going to let this happen. they speed up, he speeds up. they turn right, he turns right, they turned left he turns leftfs and finally they stuff and get out of the car and there likeey what you doing and he said i'm not going to let you do this. think about the courage that it took in 1946, in the middle of tennessee, this loan white man standing up before the sheriff h and his posse saying i'm not going to let you do this. it was one of those moments-- i

am so glad i have folks my age in here. remember those old aqua bell the commercials? thanks, i needed that. it was like this bracing moment. they had never seen anything like that before and they went okay, fine. so, there is history in this kind of solidarity. it's absolutely essential. >> what i was going to ask you about is, i believe her that the problem with-- i'm involved with a lot of groups, you know, concerning racism, solving it, getting rid of it, but i think we have a problem.ave a i think we really need to know more about really what happened

and we have not been told the real truth. it may offend my caucasian friends, but i'm sorry. i think they need to be offended if the truth is going to offend them, it will help them become whole and i think that's really one of the problems is that we are not really telling the truth and i'm glad you and rachelle alexander writing the way your writing and a lot of six are coming out.e as example, i listen to satellite radio and i heari hunter, ms. hunter and shelley's talks-- and she always talks from a historical point of view and she was talking about the lynchings that took place and i did not know that they had lynching parties.ties. they would roast animals and then they would bring in the person to be lynched and not only lynch him.

they would cutoff their head and they might barbecued it.d they would not eat it. they would throw it away. so, things like that we really need to know more about and the things you brought up without they are saying that the 49 people that were killed in orlando, you know, the worst massacre we have ever said and sarah hunter said that's not true and you look at evelyn, someplace in arkansas, 500. >> elaine, arkansas. st. louis and tulsa. >> i say keep on writing. now, i wanted to ask you another question.o i've been looking for books by e franklin frazier kirk i read about him in the late 50s and early 60s and i would like to know where i might retrieve some of those old books and at the book she mentioned and i don't

remember the author's name about the lynchings that took place, but a lot of these books are out of print now. if you don't do now-- >> i will do it after because there are some really good books that i use in my class on lynching because most of my students have not heard about this, but one of the things that happen in many black familieshi there is a lynchings story. you know, you begin to think about what that means to have a lynching the story in the familg , how it shapes the way you move in this society. how it frames about what you think about justice and how the system works in the society. it is a staggering and is so there are several books i use and one of them is philip dray at the hands of the persons unknown.

that's sounding like a time. anyone else? well, thank you so much. i really appreciate it. thank you. [applause]. ..