he knew what he was talking about, that i think explains why people were so drawn to him. i do not think that history has given the right credit to james madison. i wrote the book basically about statesmanship. you see it in the way they talk about the federal judiciary, about the united states senate and talks about regular citizens. theres supposed to be challenging of public opinion. there's supposed to be research and knowledge, supposed to be alliances and compromises and debate and deliberation, all of which go toward pushing to a higher plain and not just to the lowest common enominator. we would not be here except for his statesmanship at any number of crucial junctures that we had. whether it was freedom of religious or getting the constitution passed. we needed someone doing what he did. the fact that we don't think about it muchtoday i think is

a problem. >> book tv is in charlottesville, virginia, home of the virginia festival of the books. up next, we take you to the festival's headquarters to speak with bess macy about her book, truevine. >> george and willie muse were two african-american brothers born around the turn of the central with al binism. they were kidnapped and whisked away to the circus side show because of their differences and this is a story about the mother, harriet muse, who risked her life, i would say, to get them back and also then to get justice for her family. if you talked to anyone who was african-american in roanoke over the age of 60 they would have remembered hearing this story. they nt would have known if it was true per se, but they would have been grown up, especially if they're going to a circus or

a carnival. the mother would have said stay together or you might get kidnapped like george and willie. they were born around 1900 in a share cropper farm in a crossroads called truevine and most americans worked in share cropping and tobacco. it's tough time for american families, not long after reconstruction at the start of jim crow laws and versus fergus ferguson. and it was a rough time for african-american families everywhere, but particularly in rural areas where they were beholden to the land owners if they complained about not getting paid correctly because the tobacco allegedly didn't bring the price it was supposed to be. sometimes they would get nothing at the end of the season. some moved to roanoke,

virginia, about an hour an i way looking to join the cash economy. so coming to roanoke, you would have come looking for a job on the booming m and w railway at the time. it's a tough story to pin down because the history itself wasn't reported accurately. i couldn't find their record of their birth. so, some documents say they were born in 1890's, others around 1900. what we know for sure is that they were working with the circus carnival by 1914. and when know that they weren't reunited with their family until 1927. so we know for sure that they were trafficked for a period of at least 13 years. in the early years, the mid teens, you know, world war i was going on. they were told to quit crying that their mother was dead and stop asking to go home according to stories they told their relatives.

so, it was a really hard time. george muse, who was the older of the two, he was three years older, they were probably young teenagers during this time, he would kind of be the father figure for willie and they have a song that they sang, it was a popular world war i anthem about missing home called it's a long way. >> and he would sing that to george and later when they played music in the side show, they would sing that song, and that's an important song. and he would say i know our mother is out there and we'll see her one day. >> the origin how they got in the circus. one is the story that the family told, whiillie muse himself told, the long time manager they were working in a tobacco field one day and if you go to truevine today there are still some older people that remember growing up

hearing the story and they will say, ell, oh, i heard the carnival came through true vice-preside vice-president-- that was a truevine and they heard we had a couple of african-american albinos and they snatched them from the field. somebody else would say i heard they were snatched from a carnival in rocky. there was evidence in media at the time. billboard covered the circus at that time and they covered the circus. they were taken by their mother and a friend. the mother didn't read and write. you have to filter it through the times, saying that she had initially let them go, but expected them to be returned and it was christmas now and she wanted them back and they weren't returned. and then we know she didn't see them for at least 13 years after that. so there is two different versions of the story about exactly how they got, but the

truth is i couldn't find out exactly how they got with the circus. being bought and sold, that's just a hard thing and yet, the challenge of the book was printing the general reader back in the mindset where most white americans saw african-americans were subhuman beings. not only did they not have the right to vote, but told where they could live, on which block in roanoke city where the muse family lands, and i didn't have evidence of bought and sold, because one of their own circus managers, his name is lg barnes, he ran probably the second biggest circus second to ringling brothers he brags about buying them and making them a paying proposition. so in the circus, the side show was a separate tent set off to the side of the big top and the idea was you wanted to catch the patrons before or as they

were coming out and get another admission. so they would have these examples of what you would see inside and also have these paintings, kind of caricatures of the acts inside and you know, this was a time kind of post darwin, post science, there's a lot of interest in africa. so a lot of the acts inside would be hyped outside to try to get the patrons quarter. you're going to see these exotic animals or exotic creatures from africa, and you know, they would be like the wild men of borneo were actually from a farming family in ohio, that kind of thing. they would exaggerate the characteristics, people were more naive and science medicine was knew, and child rights didn't exist and child labor.

it was a time you could imagine this could happen to a pair of young boys with albinism. and they were swept into this world. the circus was the number one form of entertainment in america. this was before tv, movies, professional sports were big. this was the industrial revolution is going on and factory workers eager to spend this money and they said that circus said the day the circus came to town, to your town, for many families, it was like the vacation. so, circus day was only second to christmas day, it was a really big deal when the circus came to town and people would get up early and they would j us to see a peek of the circuses unloading the train at the depot and bringing the acts over. so, it was a big deal. their particular act was, in

the beginning they were just exhibited, as far as i could tell. so there were differences because they had a white skin and blondish air which was sort of sculpted into dredlocks which were very unusual at the time. and they were eventually, they were given instruments to play and their relatives say that initially it was just thought to be a joke like certainly, they couldn't play instruments. they were thought to be not very mentally with it, when in fact they were. according to doctors and lawyers who deposed them later in life, relatives. but they were sort of cast as people who weren't very bright and of course, they weren't able to go to school so they didn't learn to read and write and that was kind of a social, too. but by all accounts, they were really good musicians and they could hear a song one time and play it on almost any instrument so they played a variety of instruments and so,

when the circus dealer would walk the patrons around. you would walk inside the side show tent, pay your quarter, walk in and the person kind of in charge would walk around and give you a talk about the act. at that point the act would demonstrate their special skill, george and willie played music or answer a question or two and then the patrons were sort of standing up and kind of move around as they went around the different acts. harriet muse is an illiterate maid, a washerwoman, and i think she had been a share crop are working in tobacco in virginia. we know that she contacted the authorities for a brief time, the humane society of virginia helped her look for them, but it never came to anything. the family's sense is that

really not much was done to help her find them and they were really-- it's not like the internet today, you could google if you knew their show names, you could find them in the literature, they were being written about about you how is an ill literal made working in roanoke, virginia, know they're in vancouver or washington, or wherever they were? they were all over. so, somehow is came to her attention, we don't know exactly why. she told relatives it came to her in a dream that her sons were working for the side show for ringling brothers and barnum and bailey in 1927, roanoke was still a young boomtown built around the railroad and she got this idea that she was going to go to the fairgrounds where ringling brothers were going to host the big one, the greatest show on earth. and she went down there and she got them back.

it was october 14th, 1927, it was on the front page. newspaper for five days, it was a big deal. the headline said, circus reu united states negro family, like the circus did it, brought them back together. and eight policemen came out, ringling traveled with lawyers, the manager didn't want to give them up. there's actually this exchange, that's accounted in the press where he claims they're his children, not hers. and in a scene, the brothers recounted till their death, george and willie didn't see very well. most people who have have albinism at first are. it was the back end blues, where african-american people were to sit. but circus experts that i interviewed said that the side show was one of the few places with are it broke down.

as i said earlier, people stood up and they walked around so i imagine here, a photograph of her wearing thislong dress, somebody said, you know, like on a wagon train, and those oxford shoes with no laces in them and a hat, and she was very tall and dignified, very beautiful woman and i imagine her paying her quarter and going in there andmaking her way very slowly to sort of the front of the crowd. she would have had to have been pretty close up for them to have seen her. ned been told for 13 years, maybemore, that their mother was dead and there she was. in a scene that willie recounted until his dying day. saying he could of been arrested. >> and elbows him, there is our dear old mother, she's not dead. and i just-- just knowing that a month

earlier in the same place, in the fairgrounds in roanoke, virginia, the kkk rally and the head of the kkk and the founder of the local kkk, the largest one in the state was the top law enforcement automotive in roanoke, virginia, who would have been the boss of those eight officers that came out to you know, sort of navigate this tug-of-war about the brothers. and somehow, and again, we don't know because she was never interviewed and that's so fwrufg. like, how can you-- this is a journalist, how could you write about this event that happened five days and never ever interview the main players involved? so, which just begs the question, how were blacks treated during that time in the media in general. that was on a friday. she gets them back on monday. she goes downtown, and she

finds the most brash ambitious white young attorney to take her case and she files a lawsuit for the back wages against the greatest show on earth. and eventually she wins a sizable settlement. we don't know how much. because that wasnever recorded. and that happened and takes a km of months to play out. we have some accounts of what happened during the interim. people were very interested in them. making fun of them, always trying to get a peek at george and willie. iko and eko. one man would remember they were exhibited in the front window of a drug store in town and that they looked really sad. so-- which kind of makes you think, you know, was their life better off in the circle than it would have been back home. there are five people crammed into a little shack and of

course, they were thrilled to see their mother again and we do know that by the following spring they had rejoined the circus, this time for pay ostensibly. that was complicated, too. and we found that whenever the manager could get away with skimming the wages, he would. and harriet muse finds another lawyer in 1936, has another legal dispute with the showman and ends up getting this legal contract, that was a guardianship where in, whenever the circus fails to pay, there's a legal avenue in works that basically this guy goes out and find it and that's pretty interesting, too. she was just subverting the system at almost every turn in the story. i just found her fascinating.

in 1938, was a tumultuous year for barnum and bailey, there was a strike going on and ended up closing early and they parted from them that year in 1938. they then went to work for a carnival owner, pete korts and he worked for various carnival entest, -- entities. because of what their mother did from 1936 to 1938 this legal guardianship, it resulted in money coming back and being put into a trust fund for them. the mother got a little bit of money. every month the lawyer gets a little bit of moan and the rest went into the trust fund for george and willie. by the time they retired in 1961, they had a house bought ap paid for in their name.

they retire and the women in the family look after them and they have this kind of lovely retirement. george died in 1972 and willie, who had been so dependent on him, the family thought, eoh, he's not going to live longer because had he cast dependent. he died in 2001, at age 108. i want people to have an understanding what life was like in jim crow. a lot of these stories were really hard to talk about for many, many years and they did a lot of driving around the west end of roanoke with the women mainly in their 80's and 90 a he is, they had a connection, either they knew the family in the neighborhood, grown up with it, or see the brothers when they came home.

one woman said, mother ingram, their manager would hover over him and she just looked at me and she said the circus owned them, you see. and that was what she believed. that's what people believed, he was hovering over them like he owned them. and another woman in her 80's was driving around, trying to bring this neighborhood to life, what the neighborhood was like to kind of compare it to what that was like versus what george and willie were on the road. they didn't hate the sir can us, they would say of the side show, people were laughing at us, but we were laughing at them because they were paying to see us. and many of them were almost like a pride of calling and where they were at home among everybody who has a difference to them. and they did feel at home there in the later years. not so in the beginning, you can tell that from the photographs alone.

i was driving around with an 86-year-old woman and we're driving by where the muse family had lived and she shows me where she lives and the white street, that she walls salem avenue. you could see it was in 1900's ap how they would will live. they would walk, because the buses weren't for the kids. and there was a house with a porch, and as they walked, the woman trained their parrotsto squawk racial epithets to them. and she said pull over here, the house has long been torn down and she's telling me the way these-- imagine the hours it would have taken to train your parrot to squawkand the little n-words

and this dignified lady telling me the story. and so, i just think it's important for people to know that, you know, it wasn't just separate schools ap separate water fountain, it was these kind of omnipresent humiliations that people grow up in. they want the stories told and people to understand. at the very end of my reporting, i saw this 94-year-old who grew up in truevine and now lives in the west end of

>> next on "after words", charles campisi, former chief of the new york police department internal affairs bureau talks about his investigations into corruption within the force in his book "blue on blue." he was the second longest serving member of the internal affairs bureau answer under for police commissioners during his tenure. he's interviewed by former nypd officer corey pegues, author of "once a cop." >> host: chief, great seeing you. >> guest: great to be here. >> host: such a pleasure. he wrote a phenomenal