connecticut, to hear author and documentary filmmaker tom shackman recalled of all the french played in assisting the cotton mill army during the revolutionary war and later that night we will be in denver at the tattered cover bookstore where doug a stat will look the vietnam war's offensive of 1968 through the eyes of 40 men in the us army's echo company. wrapping up the week on friday, we had was to seattle where stanford university history professor on reconstruction and the gilded age trick that's a look at some of the events book tv will cover this week. many of these events are open to the public. look for them to air in the near future on book tv on c-span2. >> good evening, everyone. good evening and welcome

my name is kristin king and i'm the manager here and i want to thank you all for joining us this evening. a couple notes before we begin. first and foremost, the book is available for purchase in the bookstore and will be available after the event and in addition there will be a signing. second, we have a really fantastic fall lineup coming at all six of our busboys and books location this fall. there's an event sign-up list being passed around on a clipboard, so feel free to add your name and e-mail address. thank you again for joining us and without further ado join me in welcoming and he and doctor ibram kendi. [applause]. >> think you. pleasure to have you all here on this rainy afternoon. although, compared to what's happening in houston our hearts and

minds go to the people they are. i want to welcome all of you for being here and let you know that independent bookstores are dropped-- dying breed. they can only make a comeback if you support them and buy support them i don't mean to say it's nice to have them, but actually buy your books their. i went to admonish you not to go home and buy from amazon. amazon has other good things, but books is not what they do best. i know for authors it's very important. bookstores are equally important to show your love through purchasing books their. thank you. we are thrilled to have with us ibram kendi. he's of course a professor of history and national relations and founding director of the anti- race research. frequent speeder-- speaker and commentator and has been everywhere

lately. he's been on many different programs and he is the author, of course, that we will speak about today and also "black campus movement". the book we are talking today is "stamped from the beginning". he is working on a third book right now. that's how i became a racist, is that-- and what should we expect from the book? >> that is what your publishers asking? >> exactly. >> then i won't put you on the spot. it's a pleasure to have you here. maybe some of you know that this place is named after langston hughes who worked as a bus boy while writing poetry. to ask you, america,

the dreamer stream. a black man living in this country saying let america be america again and today we hear someone like donald trump say make america great again here are they living in two parallel worlds? what are we hearing here >> well, i think langston hughes-- first of all i should say such provocative question sort of got my mind running. i would like to thank you, andy, for facilitating and being in conversation with me today about "stamped from the beginning". i would like to thank busboys and most of all you all for coming out to dialogue with us about "stamped from the beginning" and if so back to the question.

that gave me some time to think about an answer [laughter] >> i think langston hughes of course in the 1930s, which was a time particularly in the early 1930s in which america was experiencing the great depression in which millions of americans were out of work particularly black people and in many ways you had many different types of people trying to imagine the type of place america could be and they were measuring the type of place based on the dream that america's long presented itself as and i think that's really what langston hughes was speaking to. i think black americans have long been envisioning and dreaming for an america that was truly about freedom,

un-american that was truly about-- on america that was truly about equality and on america that lived up to what is professed to be ideal, so i think that's what langston hughes was speaking to. i think what the current president was speaking to was somewhat different and that difference was on america for white men by white men and i say that because the title from the beginning is the rise from jefferson davis who is the present for the confederacy who read before he talked about the inequality between the white and black races being stamped from the beginning he talked about how this nation was found for men will by white men and of course over the course of american history there have been racial progress. there has been gender progress.

there has been progress in many different ways, but there's also been the progression of racism and other forms of bigotry. that progress for white men, that for them sort of took them away from their america that they desire, an america of white men supremacy and i think that's the america that donald trump is trying to re-create. >> you speak about the idea that john mcwhorter was a professor at: be at university speaking about the idea what's obama got elected we were in a racial america clearly, that has not come to be true nor was it to read anytime. but, speak about the state of race in america today under trump as compared to an obama. is trump better for race relations or worse? >> he just comes with these, 99-mile an hour

fastballs. so, i think that-- >> i just want to give you a moment to think about it, but preface with the understanding is what, i mean, by that to be clear is that trump has opened up a lot of wounds that were covered up under obama and those wounds needed to be opened and needed to see daylight and air. of the idea that by opening these words you actually address them. we have ignored race and racism in this country for way too long. we had kicked the can of racism down the road hoping somehow it would go away. clearly, that's not how conflict is resolved. we can't just avoid it. is trump holding a mirror to america and saying you need to look at this? >> well, i think so and i think to answer your

question, i think the beauty-- beauty is probably not the best work, but i think what's actually good is that america has experienced obama and trumpet back to back and what, i mean, by that is to me in many ways and i think obama represented racial progress for america, but i would argue that donald trump represents progression of racism and historically our racial america's racial history has been a dual history, a simultaneous racial progress in the progression of racism. typically, racist progress or the program-- progress of racism has followed racial progress. other words when black people broke down barriers when other groups broke down racist barriers, typically what

happened is those who benefited from those barriers figured out ways to create new ever more sophisticated barriers and then created new and ever more sophisticated racist ideas to a blind us from those barriers and get us thinking that the reason white inequality is persisting our growing is because of the inferiority is a black people and so i think that's what is happening now. donald trump has allowed people to see what they did not want to see during obama's presidency when they were so focused on his embodiment of racial progress. they now have been able to see trumps embodiments of the progression of racism and i think that that is good for america because especially from the perspective of people who are suffering ever-- under the foot of racial discrimination, who are

suffering under the foot of racial policies and for americans to finally see that. .. >> anybody know what i'm talking about? the dangerous black neighborhood with dangerous black people. in other words, the idea that southeast d.c. is the most dangerous part of this city. anybody believe that?

anybody thought that? neighbor been told that? and how do we sort of come to that idea? we come to that idea based on crime data, and crime data is typically based on arrest and incarceration rates. and so what that then means is, apparently, the community that has higher levels of arrests and levels of incarceration has more crime than another community? so what that means is people in this room every time we commit crime, we get arrested? or is it that certain neighborhoods have more police officers and so, therefore, and then more certain people are more suspected because of the color of their skin and so, therefore, that's leading to higher arrest rates and incarceration rates. some people are look, so what about all that violent crime. well, there's actually no relationship between blackness and violet crime. violent crime.

that's why if you look at black communities, black middle income neighborhoods do not have the same levels of violent crime as extremely poor black neighborhoods. and if there was a direct relationship between blackness and violent crime, no matter the income level of the neighborhood, there would be similar levels of violent crime, but there's not. and then when we look at across other racial groups, we see a similar story. whether white, latino, others. you have high levels of unemployment, you have higher levels of violent crime across racial groups. and so for us to think of these neighborhoods as dangerous black neighborhoods when, in fact, we should be thinking of them as dangerous unemployed neighborhoods or dangerous impoverished neighborhoods. but, of course, that would change the policy conversation. right? because then we wouldn't say that you know the problem is black-on-black crime, the problem is these people, the problem is they, you know, their families. instead we would say the problem is jobs, right?

another very popular racist idea is that black children are achieving at a lower level than white children. anybody heard of the achievement gap? that's what that basically says. that black children are intellectually inferior to white children, to asian children. and how do people render this? because they score, black children score lower on standardized tests. so, therefore, standardized tests, we believe that standardized tests actually measure intelligence. but then when we actually study what standardized tests really measure, we find that standardized tests primarily measure two things; that somebody can take a test well or there's relationships between the income level of someone's parents and their score on a test. so it actually shows that somebody has money. but we think that it actually shows intelligence. so then that causes us to think that the problem is these black

children, the problem is their parents, the problem is they keep making all these excuses. and we need to, of course, train them to be, you know, to take education more seriously. you know, i can go on and on. but those are just two examples of ways in which we use measures to render black people inferior and, of course, standardized tests as many of you should know were created by you genesis, the same who use these programs to sterilize hundreds of thousands of black people in the south, the same in america who inspired adolf hitler. >> you also speak about examples of the ore other side -- of the other side where in some instances let's say white men are more violent actually. you talk about drunk driving as an example. >> yeah. so when we think of violent crime, we don't include are drunk driving in the category of violent crime. and then we start to think, okay, why don't we consider

drunk drivers to the violent criminals? they kill people, they injure people. typically, the people they injure and kill are people who are completely innocent. and what i mean by completely innocent is when we look at some of these neighborhoods in which there are high levels of violent crime, many of the people who are being subjected to homicides are actually involved, let's say, in particular activities whether drug or gang activities. but the people who are subjected to the wrath of drunk drivers are people who are just trying to get home, right? but we don't even understand that to be a violent crime. i tracked in 1986 when there was the height of the so-called crack epidemic, and there were more people died that year from drunk drivers than they did from homicide and drug overdoses combined. when we look at the number of people who are subjected to violence -- but, of course, we

don't render those people to be violent criminals. and some studies show that the vast majority of drunk drivers in this country are white men. and so those communities with all of those drunk drivers who happen to be white men, people don't understand their neighborhoods as dangerous because people don't see white men as dangerous no matter what they do, no matter what the statistics show. because to be dangerous is to be black. >> you -- what prompted you to write the book? just, did you think that this needed -- because it's, i find it a really fascinating treatise on race. because a lot of times you have the same kind of stuff that gets talked about when we talk about race in america. you know, i don't think there's been any great ideas about raisins james baldwin, frankly, personally. and i think yours gives a very different, fresh look at race and race relations. is your intention here to -- what is the intention of the

book? >> sure. so i'm going to calm down. i feel like i was a little bit -- [laughter] >> yeah, yeah, yeah. [laughter] >> this gives me the opportunity to sort of calm down. >> and i'll try to slow down on my questions. [laughter] >> so in terms of the -- really, i wished i had this sort of beautiful sort of flowery story, you know, about the sort of creation of this book, but really it largely came about as the result of another sort of research project. research project in which i was looking into the origin of black studies in the '60 and i found that black students who were calling for black studies were saying that, you know what? all those disciplines in the academy are racist, and so we need a new discipline which they called black studies. and then i started writing a history of the origin of black studies, and i wanted to sort of chronicle the scientific racism that was pervasive in the

academy as these students were saying. and then i started reading up on the history of scientific racism and racism more broadly, and i started finding that many of these histories were saying that racist ideas were, had become marginal in the 1940s. so you had students in the '60s, you had black power more broadly stating that racism and racist ideas were pervasive, you have scholars and historians saying that, no, it became marginal by the '40s. and so clearly this conundrum is what actually led me down the path of writing this book. and what i realized was that the way we were defining a racist idea was actually the problem. and so these two groups were defining a racist idea differently. so students in the '60s, particularly students who were inspired by black power who were pushing for black studies were

calling assimilationist ideas racist ideas. and historically, scholars and historians have not chatfied a-- classified assimilationist ideas as racist ideas. in the book i differentiate between segregationist ideas and assimilationist ideas which i classify as two kinds of racist ideas. segregationist ideas are more well understood or known as racist ideas. these are ideas suggesting that let's say black people are by nature inferior. so black people are biologically inferior. while assimilationist ideas have typically stated that the racial groups are equal, but black people are inferior by culture or behavior. and so black people are not inferior by nature as segregationists would say, black people are inferior by nurture.

black people are not permanently inferior as segregationists would say. we, assimilationists, would say have the capacity to develop them. and that's what they need, and that's what we should be doing. so clearly these student in the '60s who were inspired by black power, right, who were growing their afros out, who were embracing african-american culture, for them hearing their professors who were assimilationists who also were calling themselves non-racist like every other racist in history -- [laughter] because, you know, everyone, i'm not a -- everyone says they're not a racist, right? >> and these professors were black or white. >> black or white, yeah. you know, clearly when these people were suggesting that that the key to solving the race problem is black people assimilating is, is that african-american culture and the black family was pathological.

when they heard these things, again, they were inspire by black power, they viewed those ideas as racist. and those were the ideas that primarily were dominating academia in the mid '60s. these assimilationist ideas. through the works of people like daniel patrick moynihan. ever heard of him? or nathan glaeser who wrote a prominent book in 1963 with daniel patrick moynihan called "beyond the melting pot." in that book he said black people have, they don't have a culture that they can guard and protect. or somebody like gunner mirdahl who wrote a book called "the american dilemma" which was largely the inspiration for the civil rights movement. in that book he classified african-american culture as pathological and said it would be in the interests of black people to assimilate into the customs and culture that white people hold in esteem.

so these were the ideas these students pushed back against, and these were the ideas that i classified or i should say reclassified as racist ideas and showed their, the way in which assimilationists and segregationists have long argued about how and why black people were inferior while anti-racists were like, no, we're all equal. >> you divide up the book into five sections named after five major figures in the american history starting with cotton mather and going to thomas jefferson, william lloyd garrison, w.e.b. dubois and angela davis. we'll come back to thomas jefferson in a moment, but i wanted to ask you more specifically how did you come up with these five individuals and why them? >> so first of all, i wanted to

make this long history of racist ideas as accessible as possible to the average reader. and, you know, i didn't want really write this book -- i didn't really write this book for the academic community, although the academic community is reading the book and using the book. i really wrote it for everyday people, because all of us are affected by these ideas. we're affected by race in america. and so in doing so, you know, i thought about, okay, what's the best way to present this very long and very complex sort of narrative that would be engaging to people. and so we realized, you know what? let's tell those stories through the lives of a major sort of character or in the case of five major characters, each representing a different section and a different time period in american history. and so we wanted and i wanted to use a major character whose life

sort of bracketed key periods in american history. so cotton mather primarily was the major character during colonial america. thomas jefferson was primarily from sort of the development or the push for independence until the 1820s on the eve of the abolitionist movement. and then william lloyd garrison, the third character, really lasts from the abolitionist movement in the 1830s until the end of reconstruction. and then duboise from reconstruction until civil rights. and angela davis from civil rights to this day. and i also wanted characters whose lives were interesting. in the case of cotton mather, you know, he imagined that christians had white souls, and he was encouraging black people to become christian so you can have a white soul too. no, for real, he really -- [laughter] >> right. >> thomas jefferson, of course,

everyone knows the ways in which his story was so interesting and in many ways contradictory. william lloyd garrison, he was very important in creating this very, very important theory particularly within the progressive community that discrimination is making black people inferior. in his case, it was slavery, that slavery wasn't just dehumanizing, it was literally making black people into subhumans, into what he would call broods. and -- call brutes. and that theory within the community carries on to this day. yes, it is the case that black people are acting in that crazy way, but it's because they're in poverty, it's because they're subject to discrimination, you know? when, in fact, there is no data supporting that black people actually are more lazy or are all of these more negative traits that people say they are as the result of discrimination.

of course, w.e.b. dubois, i sort of track his sort of double consciousness which i argue was a double consciousness of anti-racist and assimilationist ideas. and over the course of his life, he would develop a single anti-racist consciousness. and, of course, the last major character was angela davis -- >> if you could just pause for a moment on w.e.b. dubois, when you call him an assimilationist, you mean he's saying that if black people were exposed to, what, more civilized conditions, that they would actually improve? is that what you mean? >> well, dubois in his, for instance, in his famous essay in 1903 called the talent ten, everybody knew the concept, but most of us haven't read that actual essay in which he argued that the talented ten has

assimilated and represents the best of black people because they've assimilated into the best of european culture. and we, it's our job as the talented ten to bring the rest of barbaric black america -- this is, i mean, read the essay, right? you know, that's our job. and so over the course of his life, he would reject the notion of the talented ten. by 1948 he would talk about the guiding 100. and by 1930s he would emphasize the notion of a nation within a nation, and black people need to be associating with sort of, with black people. but early in his career he was uttering assimilationist ideas as well as anti-racist ideas. >> and angela davis? >> and angela, you know, angela davis was the last major character and really her life story, i think, really shows the reader the way in which it's important to not, it's important

that to truly be an anti-racist you have to really be an intersectional anti-racist. in other words, she was able -- unlike many, i think, black people in history -- to not only understand the racial groups writ large as equal, meaning black people are equal to white people, she was not looking down on the black poor. so as a member of the black working middle class, she was not saying we're superior to the black poor. she was not looking upon black men as superior to white men. she was not looking upon black heterosexuals superior to black, to the black queer community. and the reason why i'm emphasizing this is because i ended up defining a racist idea as any idea that suggests a racial group is superior or inferior to another racial group in any way.

and when i say racial group, i'm specifically not just stating black people or white people. each and every one of us in this room are part of many racializedded groups. so, for instance, i'm not just, quote, black, i'm also a black male which is a racial group, and there have been ideas that have been created that have specifically targeted and rendered black men to be inferior to other racial groups. i'm also a black heterosexual, right? i'm also a member of the black middle class. and so there were many different racial groups all of which ideas have been created and discriminatory policies have been created to sort of hold them back or even advance them. and so really to truly be an anti-racist, you don't just think of the racial groups writ large as equal, you as a black person, you think of yourself like i think of myself as not

only equal to white people, i think of myself as a black male that black men and black women are equal, that the black poor is equal to the black middle class. that, you know, all of these different types of ways -- and i think angela davis principally in many ways was able to sort of show that and personify that, and i wanted to sort of tell her story. >> it's a great story. i want to take you to the present a little bit here with the, what's going on and what happened in charlottesville and continues to happen throughout the country. but you've written, excuse me, you've written a lot about charlottesville. can you speak a little bit about this whole obsession with robert e. lee and why or why isn't it important to address the statues and the symbols? >> first of all, i think that

the symbols and the taking down of these symbols should be the beginning of a struggle, not necessarily the end. and these symbols, these confederate monuments symbolize and represent the inequality that's surrounding them typically in the cities that they're in, right? and so i'm hoping that those activists who are organized and mobilized to take down these monuments will not stop when these monuments come down, they'll then move towards the racist policies in their communities that are actually causing the inequality that is there. i will also say that we should really think deeply about why many powerful forces in this country from the white house to governors' houses or even to

like not far from where i used to live in gainesville there was a state rep who identified himself as a descendant of the confederacy. and that is that in the south in particular where most of these confederate monuments are, there's all sorts of inequality. there's all sorts of economic inequality. there's all sorts of poverty. just like there was in 1860, right, when there were five million poor whites and four million enslaved black people. and so then the question becomes who is to blame. who is to blame for this inequality, who is to blame for this poverty, who is to blame for these problems. right? and during the time of the confederacy, the confederacy -- the confederate leaders were like northerners are to blame. they're the reason why you're impoverished, speaking to five million poor whites, right? they are the ones to blame, right? you should, of course, identify with us. along the same token, we have a

south in which there is similarly, again, all this inequality, and you have southern leaders that, no, we are not to blame even though they're in power, right? the northerners are to blame. those protesters are to blame. and so, you know, these confederate monuments are not just symbolizing inequality, they're also symbolizing the fact that these southern confederate leaders to who most of whom are white men do not want to be blamed for the problems of that society. they want to be honored. they want to be championed like those confederate leaders were even though they were the very cause of those problems. >> but it's not without irony that people walking through the campus of uva, university that was founded by thomas jefferson, lived right down the road in

monticello, lived there, the fact that thomas jefferson arguably had some very damaging racist ideas, wrote to orangutan theory. i mean, some horrific writing really. it seems to me like this focus or this obsession with monuments is a distraction from the bigger picture. and, in fact, steve bannon said let them go after the monuments. that's a great distraction. we can do everything else we want to. the monuments can become this new wedge issue between blacks and whites. let it happen. so what do you speak to that? i mean, the irony of people marching through the university to get to the robert e. lee statue while at the same time you're marching through thomas jefferson's grounds basically? >> yeah. and i think you're, i think one

of the ways in which i show this in the text is to show the ways in which the confederacy and confederate leaders expressed segregationist ideas, horrificically segregationist ideas, but those ideas did not go away with the confederacy. and those ideas continued and persist and even still exist today. and so in many ways what the confederacy represented ideologically and what they tried to achieve from a policy standpoint on some level actually occurred in the united states under the u.s. flag. and i think that's what people, in trying to sort of separate the confederacy from america, we should certainly separate it, but then we should simultaneously recognize the ways in which it's interlocking, right?

and how many former confederate leaders particularly after the fall of reconstruction became u.s. senators, became congressmen, became leaders in the south, right? and that's basically the history. so, you know, i think that's it's certainly when you have people hashtagging this is not us to try to sort of concern i i -- to sort of -- i think that's what becomes problematic. and so for me, again, i'm not going to necessarily say people should not focus at all on the statues. i mean, somebody who's a product of stonewall jackson high school and has that a name attached -- [laughter] the rest of my life. >> [inaudible] that's pretty funny. >> it's very, very -- so -- >> stonewall jackson, he had to change the entire state of virginia because there are more stonewall jackson memorials than anything you could possibly imagine. >> yeah. but i also recognize that as a very personal sort of thing, and we cannot and should not think

about racial matters from a personal standpoint. that's, i think, one of the ways in which we sort of get ourselves in trouble. >> do you think this should continue? should people continue to persist in that, you know, along that vein to change? i tell the story we were in a coffee shop in a little town called mount jackson which is in the shenandoah valley, and weed had just walked in -- we had just walked in, and this lady who looked like the owner of the shop was serving the coffee. and she was bringing the coffee to us, and i looked in the corner, and i see a confederate flag hanging in the corner of the space. i got uncomfortable, and when she turn around and brought the coffee, i said, can i ask you something? why do you have a confederate flag hanging here? because it's offensive. it's offensive to a lot of people, and i don't know why you think it's necessary to hang it here. and i'd never met this woman before, and she was very engaging. she said, you know, this is part of our heritage, i'm from the south.

this is my people's heritage. she said i don't have a racist bone in my body, and i feel -- [laughter] and, you know, i, i give people the benefit of the doubt, and i'm willing to let it be. and i engaged her in this continuous to conversation. a week later my wife and i are driving by the place, the flag was gone. all right? so now she may have sent it to the laundry -- [laughter] maybe it was laundry day, i don't know. but i took credit for it. [laughter] i took credit for it. so this idea of, you know, extricating people from symbols without doing the hard work that needs to happen underneath the surface be seems like -- surface seems like fraught with a lot of conflict that's about to happen. is that avoidable?

>> so i think we have to recognize, i think, the ways in which symbols are actually very similar to ideas. and they're produced by people who have a particular sort of intention in mind. and so in the case of symbols or even ideas we, i think many of us have learned through this recent debate over these confederate monuments that most of these confederate monuments were built in the early 1900s or even in reaction to civil rights activism in the mid 20th century. so the intention was to symbolize white supremacy, right in and to -- right? and to basically renew the cornerstone, renew that cornerstone. and i say cornerstone very deliberately because there was this famous cornerstone speech

that the vice president of the confederate city gave -- confederacy gave, alexander stevens. he has a statue in the capitol. and alexander stevens said, basically he challenged the american constitution which for him he stated sort of believed or considered slavery to be against the laws of nature. .. i'm sure many of the people who say they don't have a racist

bone in their body, but are still waiting these flacks have not heard that speech or say that doesn't represent the confederacy or that doesn't represent me because-- and so ultimately what i want is to show with this book and i think it shows itself with these symbols as well is that people have purposefully build to these monuments. people have purposefully produce these ideas to manipulate us into believing that they are not the progress-- problem in their policies are not the problem, but that black people have the problem that people are the problem and that they are inferior and that's why black people are enslaved because they should be enslaved. they are impoverished because they don't want to work. they created these ideas because the alternative is for us to look out at racial inequality and say that's abnormal and save why is this-- and then pressed to look at discriminatory

policies and create that inequality and then for us to challenge those policies and for those who have benefited from discriminatory policies are no longer able to benefit so when we think about the functions of racist ideas it is the same fundamental punk-- function of the monuments. the resistance to racial discrimination is the fundamental purpose and a so for me when i see people resisting the monuments if anything it shows how they failed, but at the same time you can't end with the monument itself. it has to lead to challenging discrimination that is it being defended by the symbol of the monument itself. >> okay. one of the most important, i think, elements of the book that i took away was you said racism is not a product of ignorance in an hate, but he tool to justify

exportation, which i found to be an important aspect of the book because a lot of times people think that people that are racist are just ignorant or they are hateful, but it's really a justification for supremacy, justification for exploitation. kiddie speak more about that? >> we have largely been taught this line of causation that the line starts with basically ignorance and hate and it's these ignorant and hateful people who are the people who create and express racist ideas and that it's these people who are racist with racist ideas that these are the people who have instituted and who are defending racist policies like slavery, segregation or even today mass incarcerating policy and so what that does is causes

us to be like if the line of causation begins with ignorance and hate what is the solution to it we need to; right? we need to root out the hate; right? that becomes our focus as racial justice activism that has largely been the focus of racial justice informers to educate and persuade away people's racist ideas because they thought it was due to ignorance and hate and then thinking if we get rid of these ideas, then we will get rid of the policy, then we will get rid of discrimination. in writing "stamped from the beginning" i ended up distinguishing between the producers of racist ideas and the consumer. of the producer and the consumer and i wanted to write a book on the producers of racist ideas. i wanted to understand understand fundamentally why were they creating these ideas

and i didn't just assume they were ignorant and hateful. especially we all know some of them were involved with the black people romantically. you all know what i'm talking about; right? [inaudible] >> exactly. we also know that many of the people i: in "stamped from the beginning" are otherwise some of the most brilliant american minds these people were brilliance and so basically i found once i studied and looked at the producers, not consumers the producers it became quite obvious that these people were producing racist ideas to justify existing racist policy and typically those racist policies benefited them. everyone can understand you are slaveowner making a bunch of money off of enslaved by people

any want to continue to make money off of enslaved black people so when abolition ends or enslaved africans are resisting you create racist ideas to save these black people should be enslaved. why are you existing enslavement or we are similar in seeing them to slavishly after the barbarism they experienced and lived in africa. then you circulate these ideas and people consume them and start believing them and that's what actually causes them to become ignorant and hateful. people consume them and they become angry dan hateful and you see that because really when we think about-- you know, i was trying to figure out a way to simplify the complexity of these racial questions and the fundamental question that americans have been asking since the beginning of this country, the fundamental questions has

been why does inequality exist, why does racial inequality exist whether that inequality is in slavery, segregation, all sorts of inequality that persists today. why does it exist? there have largely been three responses. there's been no response from antiracist that say since the racial groups are equal, inequality must be the result of rich-- racial discrimination. does everyone understand like when you have inequality between two groups there are only two causes. either the group on the lower end of the equality is inferior in the other group is superior or some sort of discriminatory policy. i talk-- i may be export sky. anyone like the washington redskins? i'm a huge giants fan. i don't know if you will let me

get out of here tonight. [inaudible] >> sure. the washington football team. let's say if the giants defeated the washington football team every year year after year and we were trying to explain why this was happening. there's only two reasons. either the giants are secure your team. >> or the redskins suck. >> or the giants are cheating. those are the only two causes when you have a consistent and persisting inequality between groups, so then if you know you are cheating and benefiting from the cheating right what are you going to do? you are about to make believe that you are not-- you are winning because you are spirit, so then people won't even look for the cheating right?

little on resist the cheating and then prevent you from continuing to win so that's what i have found in these producers of racist ideas. they were benefiting from the cheating and producing these ideas to normalize the racial inequality to defend discriminatory policy being attacked by resistors because they simply benefited them. >> in many ways the book is a very helpful because it talks about the idea that these racist ideas can be produced and consumed and can also be dismantled, so you also spoke and some especially in the case of angela davis you talked about pivotal moments and for her it was the birmingham bombing, so when you talk about pivotal moments that happened, is there a need for pivotal moments before people reassess and realign their thoughts that these racist ideas?

are we to pivotal moment now? what are those moments and when do you see them-- do you need to have those pivotal moments to move forward? >> typically i think most people make dramatic changes in their life as a result of pivotal moment-- moment. we all have friends and family members who are like we wish they would stop acting that way. we would wish they would stop thinking that way. >> do we need a pivotal moment in this country in order-- in order for us to make that shift? >> i think we are one of those pivotal moments. i was sorely getting out that i think it's unfortunate that human beings need pivotal moments in order to look in the mirror, in order for them to change who they are, in order for them to recognize that it's possible to be a better person.

that is certainly i think indicates for many people, i mean, that pivotal moment was the great depression and i think that for-- i don't 20 giveaway angela davis' other pivotal moments and so i think one of the things i was hoping is to say people from having to experience those pivotal moments by reading stamped from the beginning and realizing this is a lot more simple and complex than we thought. it simple because the racial groups are equal and that's not saying every single black and whites person or other racial groups are the same. that's not saying there are no black people who are lazy or no black people who are violent or no black people who could be more intelligent. that's saying no one has ever proven and we have consistently

disproven that they are are more black lazy people than white lazy people and what happens is when you're white and lazy because of white privilege because of discriminatory policies you are still able to make and gain in ways that black people who are black and lazy are not. that's really a meeting-- i mean, specifically in our time is with the people white and black who are sort of in that in between phase; right? because if you are not exceptional and really there's no black person who is exceptional, but i can't think of another sort of phrase like people are going to render you lack, which means that you are inferior which means i'm not going to hire no black inferior person. we don't have the capacity to make mistakes because when we make mistakes they are

generalized and as though it's a representation of that's what black people do while when white people make mistakes that's what that individual does in that specific day and they will come back better tomorrow; right? >> i know exactly what you're talking about. >> i think what-- when i talk about the racial groups as being equal, what i'm saying is what makes the racial group equal is not the great people, not, it's really the imperfection of black people, white people of other racial groups and that's really what makes it racial group equal because it makes them human trick to be a human group is the imperfect in the racial groups, the racialized groups are imperfect.

and they are a collection of imperfect individuals and i think we need to sort of recognize that, so i don't necessarily advocate for black people to sort of show your best in front of white people. i don't advocate black respectability because it's very difficult to do that. i advocate for black people, for people-- for society to allow people to be in perfect and i think when we get to that point when we can allow for people to be in perfect and we can give people the benefit of the doubt, when we don't generalize people, you know, i think that's the sun as a-- society would like to live in and create. >> very well said. what can why people do? i know this-- i'm sorry to ask that question. i'm in the lucky position that i'm neither white nor black, so

you are all fighting between yourselves. i'm trying to figure out-- i think a lot of people and i have heard this in conversations when we have a kind of dialogue, it's hard to be white in america today and being white because it feels like, you know, people want to jump ahead and be, you know, our lives and things work and write to the rounds in all of this and black people say like i don't need you to be in the front and it's a very difficult interaction, but sometimes it happens especially in some of the interactions on the street. what do you suggest for a white person who wants to be an antiracist, to be a person that is working towards a better america for everyone, would you think they should do?

>> fundamentally. >> as a black person speaking to every black person about every black person in america. >> i think for white people to strive to be and act as an antiracist and what that means is that the racial groups are equal, that black people in other nonwhite groups do not need civilizing. they don't need people to hold their hand. they do not need leaders and messiahs. what they need is the same what all people need is that allies who are going to basically challenge discriminatory policy and put their resources whether financial or organizational resources towards that sort of area.

i think what historically has happened and i show this in the text from the beginning that so many white people have thought their assimilationist ideas are actually good for black people and were actually moving the progressive needle. when they go to these black communities with the intention of i know you can be civilized and they are arguing against those segregationist in their family better like i don't know why you're going into the black community they understood themselves as being good people because they are not like their family members or those other white people who say all these people should be incarcerated or sent to another country, so they understood there for-- perspective and engaged in that

type of work based on that perspective, so i am sort of trying to show white americans that that perspective is a racist perspective, racist perspective build on racist ideas and those ideas are very pervasive within that that white reformist community and as the white reformist community goes into these communities, tries to her thinks the problem is these people need to be civilized and inequality persists and men who do they blame for that equality? they don't look in the mirror. they blame black people. i came and gave all my energies and tools to help you people and things are still the same, so of course it can't be me. it must be you and then some become segregationist and say these people can be civilized

and. winick, in fact the black people are not the problem, your solutions where the problem. >> do you have any favorite comedians or people that are out there breaking that cycle, breaking the mold and redefining, opening up new areas of bringing people together? any favorites? i know we just lost dave gregory and he was an extremely powerful voice and spoke in a beautiful way. he will be missed, but do you have any favorites? >> i have many favorites or chi think when you study racism, you have to go to comedy shows; right? >> absolutely. the dave chapelle show. >> of coarse chapelle is one of

my favorites. i think in particular who is probably the most favorite is about the blind white supremacists is very very indicative of a point i try to sort of make in stamped from the beginning that i think you and black people still resisting and that these are ideas that even black people can hold those ideas and even black people who are not blind can be white premises and i think that's one of the things that i think we and i say we black people of the community have to come to grips with that when we think about racist ideas fundamentally the function of them being is to suppress resistance to racial discrimination and that those who hold these ideas are say no, promise not racial discrimination, the problem is black people and we need to

focus our efforts on you, civilizing these black people. do we have any black people saying that? yes, we do. when we try to resist racial discrimination we have black people saying i don't know why you trying to do that. the problem is black people. i don't know why you think there's a problem with black lives, you know. the problem is black on black crime. those are the real killers. i don't knew why you are even challenging these police officers. black people have been saying that these are people who fundamentally when they see inequality they see what's wrong with black people. this is what they have been taught and this is what they express these are the very people who when-- [inaudible] >> you may have heard the sound of a baby earlier in the front. do you want to introduce us to the newest edition of your

family? >> my young daughter. [applause]. >> and your wife? >> my beautiful wife. >> tell me about your name your i know your name has a meaning, so please share that with me. >> my last name is a kenyan language and when my wife and i were deciding on the name issue and everyone knows the name issue when you are getting married and you have a progressive woman, i ain't taking your name. [laughter] >> one of-- what we decided to do was sort of change our name together and so we selected a name together and unveiled it at our wedding. >> unveiled it to the family.

how did that go? >> it went fairly well. my father didn't throw me in the ocean. [laughter] >> we are going to open it up for conversation if anyone has a questions. these raise your hand and aj here will walk around with a microphone. aj, you decide where to go. thank you, aj. >> thank you for taking the time to share your brilliance. do you think that designated to black people-- from the onset of this country as you mentioned not intelligent, culture list are actually traits of whiteness and therefore as a way to disconnect from the inhumanity of their psyche it creates discrimination, jim crow that

they need to put upon their victims what they were experiencing themselves? >> i didn't expect this coming from a white guy. so, i would say that with certain ideas and i wouldn't necessarily blanket all ideas. when i did comes to mind is the idea that emerged during the enslavement era of the hypersexual aggressive black woman. so, you had all of this intercourse going on, largely and who was the cause of that intercourse; right? it was either the case that these white slave owners were coming on to violently and aggressively black women or it was the case that these black women were aggressively coming onto these white men and so the

white men created the narrative that of course it wasn't as. it was black women who were doing that and simultaneously created this sort of trait of the hypersexual aggressive black woman who cannot be raped and that's why like even during the colonial era-- era that there was no report in colonial american newspapers of a black woman being raped. because from the perspective of these white men and from the perspective of their racist idea about black women their hike-- hypersexual aggressive beings in that sense and of course it allowed them to exonerate their own behavior that was actually happening and we have documented evidence to support that. >> thank you for bringing this conversation to the table. i have-- i want to come back to

the mass incarceration you mentioned in your speech. many organization on this issue and i see some people may be in 10 years they starting to talk about it and bring it to the conversation, but nothing changed and something going to be worse. not only for black people, but also for families as well and there is a circle of the children have the same problem, so how it could be change and how people like activists or any people who want to bring some change? i see some people with family issues, people who came back

from prison help them to find a job, go back to the family, but this is not the issue. this couldn't stop mass incarceration. .-dot on this problem. >> well, i think that we should first recognize that even within the community of people who were and have been engaged in challenging massive perspiration that some if not most of these people were still suffering and i would include myself in this next from the idea that was driving mass incarceration itself or i should say justifying massive conservation itself in this is i did the dangerous black neighborhood with dangerous black people so i think one of the reasons why is

because we still believe, we still are the problem was black people and that we should need to figure out ways to civilize black people. and so when i say we can talk about so if you look at france since the cdc, congressional black caucus and to a certain extent obama's administration, they were to assert next that same both things. you had many black members principally talking about the policy, racist policy of massive copper-- kars ration with any of others were talking about the problem is we need less jails and more cops and so they were

really talking about both issues without realizing it was reinforcing the very problem they were trying to and so i think as a community and a community of americans i think we have to come to grips with the facts that was driving the violent crime is not the inferiority's of people like at a macro sort of level that's more effective as a policy initiative for us if we are going to on reducing violent crime to focus on bringing jobs like-- remember a few years back in chicago, chicago decided a summer initiative in which they introduced a bunch of jobs into the community. what do you think happened with the violent crime rate? it plummeted. we have seen examples over and over again, but i think partly because people are victims themselves or know people who

have been victims of crime, people personalize it like a personalize racial issues more broadly and it's difficult them -- for them to get past and to think about the sort of bigger picture. i also think that we are moving the needle or at least we were moving the needle before the current president to took office on massa kars ration-- mass incarceration. >> i go to the jail once a week and you spoke about intersection audi and that's one of the things that alienates as well. first of all in one to say that less than 2% of all people incarcerated in this country have committed violent crimes. it's not violence driving mass incarceration at all. women are the fastest growing group of people being

incarcerated. this city is 49% black at the jail is 95% black. we talked about educating and i really want you to speak to this and we talk about responsibility and how we blame our own and we talk about marginalization, i teach a class called sharing our stories to save my life and i look at the intersection audi of trauma, women and incarceration and the one thing at the heart of it that i have seen across-the-board is trauma and if they see-- [inaudible] >> lives in dc and has a book called "big kids" and she talks about historical trauma of their community and the beating of a black children and when i read these women's stories and when i know my own story spending foreign half years incarcerated and i go back because i have

learned there's a trauma to prison pipeline and i would like you to speak to that fact like we don't need to educate white people. we don't need to perform for white people. we need to educate ourselves in that being in this room is a privilege. i have educational privilege. i have clear, but i privilege. we all have some sort of privilege, but what are we really going to do about it? how are we really going to analyze it and say there is a something endemic in our community? there is something in historical trauma. we are not blaming ourselves. she gets a lot of flak for her book, but there's a lot of truth being a person coming from a violent home, being in foster care and going back to a jail every week where i sit with these women and hear their stories. i would like you to speak to that. >> thank you and i think this is probably one of the more difficult conversations and more

difficult conversation because you are absolutely correct that black people have experienced trauma and we should, of course, as a community and as a nation be willing to identify the trauma that slavery brought onto black communities, that poverty and violence and segregation and abuse of many different kinds brings on, but at the same time we should also not think that trauma, the effects of trauma is a one-way street. what, i mean, by that is people responded differently to trauma and so there are people who come

through traumatic situations and that sort of leads them down a very difficult path in their life, a path that they will regret later and then there are other people who go through traumatic situations and go down a path that they are actually happy they went down because that trauma sort of encouraged and motivated them to go down that path and so for the lack of a better sort of way to understand is people experienced trauma-- some people experienced trauma in a negative way. some people experience it in a more positive way and we have to recognize that and so we have to individualize the effects of trauma and what, i mean, by that is there individuals who have suffered from, and are facing serious psychological and other

kinds of difficulties in their life right now and we have to recognize the ways in which those difficulties have to rise from the trauma. we can't generalize that individual or take the stories of those individuals who are like that to say black people in general have endemic leak negative qualities that is the result of our history of trauma. typically, and is stacy of course is someone whose work i follow, but some of the other studies makes a case that black people are lazy, materialistic, all these negative qualities because of our history of trauma. then, when you ask for examples they provide anecdotes, this person and that individual and then when i provide them another example of someone who came out in a different way from trauma

we see that we are just going back and forth on anecdotes, so we can't necessarily say that there is something wrong with black people because of trauma. we can say there is something wrong with individuals, not only black but even in other communities. in other communities people have suffered trauma and so that's one of the difficulties of than having these discussions because very widely believed within the black community that their black negativities as a result of trauma and those ideas have never been proven. it's only been proven that individuals and i just want us to recognize that whenever we generalize and say black people are particular way from a behavioral standpoint we have to have evidence in order to substantiate that. >> surely there has to be some element there, i mean, i think poverty in itself is dramatic. >> yes. >> when you have a group of people that are impoverished

there is a collective trauma that comes out of that. wouldn't you say that? >> yes, but at the same time how are we assessing that there was a negative effect to that collective trauma of dramatic experience and typically what middle income people do is they take their standards and they measure the pictures of poor people from their standards and then render poor people and peer your and then say if they are progressive those inferiority's are result of their trauma. >> conch not sure we-- [inaudible] >> 's early in school if you talk to teachers they see students coming every day who are experiencing trauma due to poverty because of situations they have to face at home,

nothing to do with blackness or their skin color. it has to do with their economic conditions and the conditions they live under so i just-- i understand what you are saying and generalization. i think it goes back to what you said earlier. if we generalize that the reason why there is violence in some parts of the city is due to blackness because the black communities than that is a problem. but, if you say there is violence, more violence in more poor areas than that makes sense whether it has nothing to do skin color. >> yacht. >> i just want to piggyback to what the lady was saying. >> my name is taylor. >> thank you, taylor. i want to go back to attain there was saying because i heard a little differently than i think you did. >> what i was hearing and what i heard on many different

occasions is not the idea of people who suffer trauma have these effects. what i hear is black people have particularly suffered trauma and then we have these negative affects, so whenever say people have suffered many different forms of trauma and then there are these effects i completely agree. >> i wanted to clarify like there are studies that show and i have the statistics and the very institute for justice which is amazing, no one has studied women incarcerated. in the last 10 years people might not know while the numbers of men, particularly men of color has decreased, the number of women incarcerated has more than quadrupled. 44% of women incarcerated in the us are black. 86% of women who are incarcerated suffer prior to incarceration sexual violence that is trauma. 76% of those women suffer

intimate partner violence. 60% suffered caregiver violence meaning as a child violence prior to incarceration and at 44% of the women incarcerated in this country are black then we are locking a black women and women of color for surviving trauma. it is not that having trauma makes you a bad person. trauma leads to mental illness. trauma leads to all types of things and we are incarcerating people particularly women for surviving and that's what i'm saying. you can't ignore the statistics. >> i'm certainly not disagreeing with what you just said. the only thing i would push back on his the direct comment that trauma causes mental illness because all i was trying to say is that people respond differently to trauma, so not

every single person who experiences a traumatic situation response in the same way. that's the only thing i was saying. [inaudible] >> the majority of people incarcerated we found have a mental illness, so these are certainly problems that no one can deny. >> go ahead cement that's good to the next one. >> you opened yourself up. >> i know. >> i want to commend you. i am also a long-suffering next fan. we are, ties. have you heard of hillbilly elegy to make i have not. >> was interesting in that particular writing is that the gentleman talks about a particularly community in the

same way we do talk about poor black folk and in a way they are stamping themselves, but they are doing it to themselves. i'm sorry you did not read this so i can't really have the conversation, but it's interesting how this particular group of scott irish who live under these particular conditions, poor folk and that kind of thing, but they are stamping themselves, which i find interesting. have you read the book white trash? >> such a good book. >> i think it would be great to read hillbilly ellard-- hillbilly elegy. think it takes the same issue but looks at it from a different perspective because it shows the ways in which-- of course there is this history of racist ideas that are chronicled, racist ideas which justify and a state

that the reason why black people on the lower and of american society in terms of equality is because black people are inferior. well, white trash sort of shows the ways in which those elites have justified poor people particularly white poor people as on the lower end of the economic divide because they are white trash because they are cheerier. in some of those ideas if not most, poor wee-- why people have consumed and started to believe among themselves in the same way black people consume ideas that render them inferior so it's interesting sort of thing and one quick thing about white trash, i think one of the ways we can understand the concept of white trash is in combination with the concept of the extraordinary negro. there are two sides of the same coin because what is says is

that let's say lazy white person is not really white. they are white trash. the same token that smart black person is not really black, they are white. extraordinaire, so it allows for the continuation of this notion of white over black when we have all of these examples showing that there are lazy white people and a smart black people. the concept of white trash and extraordinary movie-- negro. >> we have time, maybe for two more. >> i went to bring up when andy was here. she shocked the whole world and i think people went home and were shocked, but i won't shock you. i went to understand two things, want to talk about black blood in the other one is. [inaudible]

>> do you understand that concept? >> i think so. >> the other thing was she said a lot of the superiority of white folk come from annihilation of the race. they are afraid. i see the most sophisticated ones are afraid, the ones who are planning, scheming and everything to make sure white are not annihilated from the entire world because they are the minority, not the majority. think you. >> of course the psychologist, is looking at this issue from a different perspective as i am coming up writing a history. one thing i will say is that historically and i should say

even in this time you have the specific people who are creating construction of whiteness and so course getting white people to believe that there is this tangible thing known as whiteness and then causing them to say this thing that you should value that is you is withering away and no longer great. so, therefore it's incumbent upon you to defend that thing that is withering away and i think that is really to a certain extent the sort of focus on the whole concept of make america great again and the whole idea that these people who are immigrating to these nations are in eliminating whiteness, which, of course, should be valued. in order to make people-- in order for people to fear they are going to be lost have to believe they exist. do you understand why me by

exist cracks the whole notion that whiteness exists, that there is a biological whiteness that is pure, beautiful, great, creative, everything that is beautiful and great and civilized in the world, people who are white have to believe that and then they have to believe that it's going away. study after study shows it doesn't exist. there is no such thing as whiteness from a biological standpoint and that the racial groups unfortunately are 99% biologically the same. >> i think we have time maybe for one more. >> i'm going to try to frame my question. i find your distinction between segregationist ideas and ideas interesting.

i feel like i would argue that there are different forms of discrimination is just ideas and i feel like progressivism matriculate out-- takes the form of another assimilation idea in a sense that-- so instead of black people-- the notion of black being civilized and mature collated and incorporated into the society we are saying that society can be civilized or that the society that you could tinker with the notion-- tinker with the material conditions of white supremacy so that black people can exist or that black people can't survive whereas the foundations of the nation state

is as we know anti- black, is as we know-- [inaudible] >> i'm just wondering how would you describe that phenomenon. i think obama is a good example -- so, yeah like how would you describe that? >> i think what you are referring to and correct me if i'm wrong for those to sort explain it is those black people , integrationist ideas basically fundamentally classifying integrationist ideas as assimilationist ideas and is that correct?

so, if that is what you are saying then i would say that that's a different type of thing i think what happens is we can't make everything about racist ideas and so certain things are about strategy. there are black people who can believe that the racial groups are equal, but what black people should be striving to do is integrate into this society and then there are other black people who could say the racial groups are equal, but what black people should seek to do is separate or any other type of strategy. those are more strategies for freedom. strategies for the type of society people want to live in. that's a little bit different than assimilationist idea. i will say that all

assimilationist are integrationist. what, i mean, by that is all assimilationist, blacks in particular would say that white communities are superior and so that's where i want to live. white schools are superior so that's why want to send my child white establishments are superior, so that's why want to be because whiteness is superior and that's what they strive to seek, but all i'm saying is that there are black people who cannot think that and is simultaneously be striving thinking that it's better to have sort of this integrated society and so it's a very tricky thing. i don't want us to sort of-- i don't want us to sort of think that we are saying the same thing because it's a little bit to different. so, i just think that as it relates to race that we should be focused-- even malcolm x.

would talk about, you know, it's not really about integration or separation, it's about freedom, liberation. it's about equality. it's about ending discriminatory policy and how we are going to go about ending discriminatory policy is what we should be focused on and then when we eliminate those policies and when we create racial equality then we can start having conversations, real conversations about should we have integrated societies, different types of societies but i think at this point with people struggling due to being under the foot of discrimination , i think, that is what we should be focused on. that's what i try to focus my work on and that's what i try to get people to realize that racist ideas, taking them away from that work if that makes sense. >> makes perfect sense.

thank you so much. i want to say special thank you to c-span. thank you to our very smart audience. thank you. it's been a pleasure to have you here. [applause]. >> the american-- national book festival that will be happening at the convention center this coming weekend and you will be speaking there. i think jd fans from hillbilly elegy will be there, also. you will be able to see him. thank you so much for being here >> thank you so much. [applause]. [inaudible conversations] >> that was early on when i believe the trump was-- had just announced and they were worried that he was going to be bad for

them in terms of voters and i thought, you're worried now considering how far back they have had an anti- woman platform with reproductive rights, equal pay. >> tonight on q&a, "washington post" pulitzer prize winning cartoonist. >> this is vice president pants and i don't remember who did the interview, but he was interviewed and said something like he never goes to any washington dinners without his wife and i thought okay. this was a gift. i just thought really so you don't have any problem voting about a woman's personal reproductive choices, which is probably the most intimate thing a woman can deal with, but you won't go to dinner where a woman fully clothed is at the same table correct tonight at

8:00 p.m. eastern on c-span q&a. >> could you recount for us the blackburn affair and the underground railroad? >> i think earlier we had a sculpture-- let me see if i can go back to it. ed dwight was a fantastic sculpture and he did the sculptor down the waterfront where you have a group of black people who are looking across the detroit river to canada. i think it's the next one here. this here together. many people have come to detroit and sometimes they scratch their heads, what is that all about. this symbolizes the terminus of the underground railroad. when you have people like lambert, george d baptiste,

william webb, madison lightfoot, i mean, you can go on and on in terms of these pioneering abolitionist. they were joined to some extent by the white abolitionist, many of them quakers because we in lambert had been schooled uneducated and lived among the quakers when he left her new jersey and write in detroit. key for me is a phenomenal individual because he was like one of their main conductors of the underground railroad. i know in my classes in new york city when i talk about the underground railroad the first thing in mind is that a train, d train and i say no. this was a process, the byway in which these here fugitive slaves could get away from bondage, get

away from so-called peculiar institutions and in-depth and destroyed. this year, ed dwight's sculpture symbolizes the people and certainly after 1850, when you had the fugitive slave law, when the act was passed that meant although, and we got the blackburn case, the blackburn affair of these runaway fugitives who arrived from louisville, kentucky, and i thought they had found a safe refuge away from these bounty hunters, but with the passing of the 1850 slave act that meant you had to go a bit further so these people are looking across the detroit river to windsor. sometimes even windsor was not far enough. you had to keep going on up for a one onto ontario, onto toronto of course chatham later on would be a very profound which a call community of abolitionist that

was up there. we can talk about osmond anderson who rode with the john brown and when we start talking about the latest period after the whole abolitionist beginning with william lambert, frederick douglas comes to detroit and meets with john brown downtown, you know second baptist church was very instrumental in that. of course saint matched to was instrumental later on-- st. matthew was instrumental later on. we can ignore the church in terms of resistance and celtic determination. it was coming from number of church leaders took no one more pronounced, profound and william lambert. his a story, i mean, that would be a fascinating film to see the kind of stuff he went through. they had a codeine kind of

secret code, secret language. they trained these individuals on the underground railroad in case you encounter some those bounty hunters out there. i mean, so instructive and later on his involvement with st. matthew's church and with the educational process. .. [inaudible conversations]