[inaudible conversations] >> you can watch this and all other booktv programs at booktv.org. type the author's name and the word book in the search bar at the top of the page. >> now from the southern festival of books on booktv, journalist john lingen and karida brown cuss race, class, and call noor plain. >> good afternoon. >> i'm linda caldwell. it's my flour welcome you to this session of the southern festival of books forked by humanities tennessee. this is our 30th year to host this festival, so we eave always been able to keep the festival free and open to everybody and the way we do that is through

sponsorships and donations. so i hope you'll think but donating to the festival. can use do at that time he festival tent. the headquarters tent. and also you can do it at humanitiestennessee online on their web site. it helps promote literature, helps promote this event free to all and it would be the christian thing to do. i'm very pleased today to be here with these two authors. they're both here for their first books and i'm so excited about both of them and about both of the books. so, i'm go to introduce both of them briefly and they're going to talk a little bit and then we'll leave some time for questions and answers, and we'll close down the session and go straight to the signing tent where you can get their books odd graphed for -- autographed for you. i'm going to start with john lingan going to speak first? >> sure. >> all right.

john lingan is -- lives in baltimore where he writes for such publications as the atlantic, new york times magazine, slate, new republic, and many other publications. this is his first book, home place, which he is going to talk about today. also here is karida brown who grew up in long island, but she is the proud granddaughter of coalminers from kentucky so she is here to talk but her work and also her first book so welcome to both and we'll start with you, john. >> thank you. i'm i'm extremely excited to be here. my book is largely about patsy cline and her home town of winchester, virginia, and when we talked but publication, i told my publisher that one thief main thing is wanted was to get to nashville one way or the

other, and so it's a true honor to be here at the at this philadelphia, to be here with karida and celebrate her first book and i thank you all for coming here. this got started, i'm a free lance writer, and i write often about music, but music is not all i care about or all i find interesting, and -- but the way that was brought together worked out kind of perfectly. i it was late 2012 and i was listening to patsy cline for reason is cannot recall. i mean, she's great. i like her. but it's not like it was some super fan. was just listening to her and really thinking but that in a way i hadn't thought about before and this unique, kind of odd music that doesn't really match our conception of what

country music is. i don't know anything about her. so i of course did the first step to any research and went to wikipedia and learned that she grew up in winchester, virginia, which i live in the washington d.c. suburbs and i was shocked that, that's about a 90-minute drive from my house. thought she was a more deep southern person. and it so happened that at that moment, we were approaching the 50th anniversary of her death by plane crash, which occurred in march of 1963. and so i thought, great, i would like to be a writer, i would like to write about music. i'll go to her home town the weekend of that anniversary and surely they'll have some type of, like, giant commemoration happening and i can write about sort of smalltown events like

that and bring into it the music. so imagine my surprise when i did go to winchester in march of 2013 and discovered that there was commemoration of her, and her house that she lived in in winchester, had been turned recently into an historic home, place you could visit that had a little historic marker. the had also very recently built a new performing arts center on to the high school in town and named it after her. but other than that -- again, those were quite recent developments. really was not any commemoration of her at all and i thought, this is completely bizarre. this is a woman who -- the first solo female inductee into the country musician hall of fame. on a postage stamp. has a star on the hollywood walk of fame and is globally famous.

people all over the world -- and i've meat many of them now -- who love this woman and revere her and even interpret her songs and pay homage to her and her style. so i thought, well, how could that be? how could a town of 25,000 -- no offense to winchester, but a small town with, like, world famous person, and world beloved person, how could they not celebrate her night and day, and turn out that it really isn't anymore complicated than patsy was poor. kind of it. she grew up on the figurative and literal wrong side of the tracks, on the east side of town, where poor white people lived at the time, and winchester, as i soon discovered, was founded -- a colonial era town 'the first sort of trading place to be founded sort of west of the

appalachian -- the blue ridge mounts so the first and remains the default commercial capital of the shenandoah valley, and some of the -- they hold sway in the 40s and 50s and to them it didn't matter that she was invited to join the grand ol' on preor she participated in one of the first country music shows at carnegie hall or that she performed on a very famous television show of the era called "arthur god frei's talent scout. she was not the kind of person who was grands respect and reverence in the local media or the local powers that be and that continued for many years and really only changed because the town itself changed.

that old way of doing things fell away. people came forgot outside and sort of burst the little bubble that had existed in winchester for 200 years at that point, and transformed the socioeconomic makeup of the town, and that was really the story that i was compelled to tell and that i think is what i hope this book is about. it's certainly about patsy, certainly about music, but it's really her music is a way sort of into discover and learn about the way that a town has changed and that continues to change. i do think that the -- all these different developments in the sort of changing nature of the place continues to this day and so one of the people i was told to meet while i was learning about patsy was this gentleman named jim mckoy, in miss

history his mid-80s when i med him in 2013, and he claim to fame was that he grew up on a mountaintop in the blue ridge mountains in he panhandle of west, 40 miles north of winchester, and he used to hitchhike into town to host a country music show from 4:30 to 9:00 in the morning, at winc, still operational raidey station there. the only country and western show, and it was in in that capacity in 1948 when he was 19, that a 16-year-old patty cline then still known as virginia hensley and she came in because jim had a thing -- i guess you could call it's promotion if you came in during his show and paid him $2, he would let you sing on the air. patsy comes in and did not have $2 because she was that poor, and she said i'll sing for you

in the hallway so the step out in the hallway and she swings, san antonio rose and he guess, yes, ma'am, right this way, as you can imagine. so bringser in and that was the first time that patsy cline's voice had ever been heard on the radio, and she remained a good friend of hers, collaborator of hers, dear friends with her second husband, who white house him in was charlie dick, and she was eventually awe pal bearer at her funeral and after she died in 1963 he continued to have his own career in country music. he he was a record store owner winchester, a record label owner, produced records, wrote songs. he was a radio dj for many years. just one of these sort of jack of all trades, i think country music tends to sort of invite that kind of entrepreneurialism and he embodiesed that.

so i met him when he was in this 80s, when he was in this 50s in the mid-1980s, he moved back up to his ancestral land on the top of the blue ridge mountains and eventually was kind of forced to by all the people who visit him, expecting a party, was forced to open up a venue up there called the truba and lounge named an ernest tub, the trubadour. so jim open up a bar that couldn't help but be kind of a throwback to times before -- when country musicians traveled on state road and would do a circuit through western maryland, the eastern panhandle of west virginia, northern virginia, and the kind of the

big city was washington, dc, which was quite a -- quite renowned as a country destination in the '50s, and so he opened up this bar, and when i went up there and everybody told me you have to meet him, the bar was still standing, so i go up there and its it's quite a scene. the last of these kinds of bars i know of at least in the virginias, and i think most people who go there say there really ant many bars like this anymore at all. it's a mountaintop, honky-tonk with a stage, they have karaoke nights, a restaurant, pool tables in the back, formica tables, the whole bit and there's -- as a suburban kid, i had never been to a place like this before at all, and it was amazing, and the music was wonderful, and outside they have a picnic area as well, the park, and this place includes an

outdoor band stand, it includes the official west virginia country music hall of fame in a trailer on the grounds. it includes jim's garden that he used -- he would grow tomatoes he supplied to the restaurant. it included studios, functional recordings studio also in a trailer, as you might imagine, and an outdoor barbecue setting. so i'll read a section -- this is the first sort of day party that i went testimony went to a night and saw karaoke night on friday, and then the following day was a saturday afternoon during the summer, and i'm going to make reference to a giant pistol and that is kind of the crown jewel of the park which is a ten-foot tall and long, i believe made of painted plywood likes six-shooter revolver that

they build a barrel with logs so it sort of smokes -- i'm sorry -- it smokes out of the baylor and all day when they're having outdoor family friendly things that's what i'm referring to and just goal to read a little section about what it's like to party at the park on a saturday afternoon in the summer. the day aftercare oak can i night, jim opened the park for the summer seasonal. more than 200 people paid their requested $10 donation interior privilege of setting their foiled covered side dish on the long picnic tables near the giant smoking pistol. one man, his skin as deeply textured as a piece of sun parched oak cared an enormous macaw on his shoulder. method is a wheys to outside bar and paid for one mountain dew and a cupful of ice and then tack seat a tibble to powder thes so da. the parrot dismounted from the man's shoulder and put his beak in the cup, guzzling billion the

bar, under a low canopy, jim and birth -- they're's employees paris a smorgasbords am young man with sweat on his mustache unscrewed the top from a gallon jug of barbecue sues. i recognizes him as our stake chef from the night before and obviously had the sim fuss-free with a with chickens. tipped the jug into a pile've thighs and legs and tossed them with his bear hand, sauce up to the tan line 0 his elbows and threw the meet on a grill -- meat of the grill. jim was seated by donation bucket at the entrance way. greeting everyone who came in. he stayed glued to a stark giving thumps up and accepting kisses on the cheek. after a while jim's doctor, who has spoken of in grateful hushed tones, dot on the stage and topped the mic as donny turned the volume on. he was in his early 50s but look can like a fresh faced

teenager with a shaved head. he winces from a blast of feedback, back at the troubador. heat gave hand to jim and bertha. i've had so much fun up here i fee bad northern people who live somewhere else. first i wanted to remind everyone that jim and berg that have had their problems and lately. a lot or doctor bills and we know they're going to get better. little eddy, their bus boy, began to unwrap the foil from the dozens of pyrex dishes at the base of the mega gun, mc macaw fished for a piece of ice. its owner had ripped the cup down so the bird could each its prize. around styrofoam were gathered under his launch cheer, floating liable bubbles in the curling mountain grass. the darkening clouds moved like galleons and i know we all feel deeply great follow those people who have given souse many

wonderful afternoons like this up here, surrounds by friends and great music, so i encourage everyone to visit that donation bucket and see how generous you feel today. to his right the plywood rem sat not, their doors slightly ajar. the light still agreed in the the men's to his left three children shook the thin frame of a swingset with chipped paint. there was a small boom as he clicked off the mic and then donnie feedded in a kenny chesney cd and he lines back forming. a breeze blew. in chicken and cool pine. the beer can bin was just full enough to rattle each time a new emptied dropped in. anxieties felt impossible. through a twisting aisle of lawn cheer a man in a cowboy hat strode toward jim. way late 30s, hairless excepted for a struggling blonde goatee. he wore a black sleeveless tv shirt, ironed which he had tucked these should wrangles and secured with a belt buckle with

enough for a buick's hood with a soaring eagle. behind him following his boot was young girl, neighbor 14 and not at all graceful. poor posture, wore boys gym socks. a silent old ever man presumably her father trailed her at a small distance. mr. mckoy, he said, leaning into a conversation between jim and two older women, the women wrapped with a kiss only jim's cheek. jim says nothing. michigan mccoy i have sun here i think you'd like to hear sing. do you? jim asked, skeptical. namees milly. he turned and gestured the girl in screams, laughter, echoing music, debate over the approaching clouds. she lives out -- loves to sing. i was hoping you might have her on stage tonight to see if she's ready to record.

jim looked at her with interest but was assessing is this young lady ready no show business? what do you sing, he asked her. i like, huh -- her agent's face was grimly focused you would thick guns were drawn. miranda lambert, she asked? oh, i don't know if these fellas are going to know something that new, gesture thing at the road war users tuning on stage, guitars, drums, base, a couple of pony tails. anything a little old center he girl opened her mouth and stared at the agent for approval as the syllables came out slowly. loretta lynn? they might know that, say jim. he began shoving up toward the stage to tell the band they were featureing melly nona couple of -- melanie on a couple of tunes he said we appreciate this, mr. mccoy.

it's one over those tiny towns that dot the weapons eastern panhandle. places that had their own elks lodge or road house where joeling anyone and hi melody playboys might play. today fewer than 400 people live there. maybe that man heard melanie sing with her friend while the watched a music video on a phone. maybe she was in the church choir. maybe she was his niece. however it happened, one day he heard her voice and thought, that could be it. this young girl might sing well enough to get some attention. and who knows what might come of that. maybe a little money. many a lot of money. plenty of girls just like her, from nothing doing towns in the far cornsers of rural states have suck their way to fame and wealth and the mon who discovered the best there was, the real joltedden jim mccoy himself is right up the mountain. why not dream. it's happened before. thank you very much.

>> good afternoon, so before i begin, can everyone hear me? because i have really soft voice. okay, good. so, what an honor it is to be here this afternoon with all of you. thank you, linda, for that beautiful introduction and, john, thank you for that fantastic reading. i can't wait to pick upper book like everybody else in the room. so, i'm going to share a little bit this afternoon about my book, my very first book, "gone home, race and roots through appalachia," published last month with university of north carolina press. first i'll share a little bit about myself. i'm a sociologist by training so i'm a professor at ucla in california. and my scholarship specializes in the areas of race, my

gracious, and the history of -- migration and the history of segregatessed education systems. while my academic interests very much bleed through the pages of this book, the real motivation that brought me to this topic and on the journey of what it took to produce this book is because my ancestors wanted me to. i say that because while i was born and raised in long island, new york, my mother and father, both of my grandfathers and my grandmothers, all made their lives in a little coal town called lynch, kentucky. i'm the proud granddaughter of black coalminers, and even when growing up in new york, because my grandparents still lived up in the mountains, every year at least once a year, sometimes more, even when i was in my mother's womb, my parents would

make sure so take that 13-hour drive and make sure that my brother and i reconnected with their home which is very much a place that i consider my and -- sees central home and these are coal towns in harlen county, kentucky. primarily the focus in this book is on the towns of benam, lynch and cumberland, i sigh you mouthing the names. we're talking the iconic bloody harlen county. so i'll tell you about just thank you overall themes i sweep through in the book and how i came to learn this story i tried share in the spirit in which it was given me is a collected the data, the history nor book. so this is largely an oral history project. i was a graduate student at brown university in the

department of sociology. i came to graduate school with a really boring project idea in my mind. that no one was really interested in, and early into my first year of grad what school, one may, memorial day weekend, my father said, it's been almost a decade. why don't you come home? and when he said home, he was not talking about new york. he was talking about kentucky. ihunt been since my grandparents passed on. so, so i dent have anything better to do issue had my brothering project and just moped up to lynch to reconnect with my family and when i sat on my grandmother's porch, because my family still owned their childhood homes, up in the mountains, i looked around and realized that the built environment of that community that i had known so well as a child was a third of the size

and i'm talking entire streets and neighborhoods that were no longer there that i remember running through as a young child. but also the people, all of those families and faces that were so familiar to me, many of the folks had passes on but the young people, too, were no longer in the communities some that day and that was in -- may of 2012, sitting on my grandmother's porch or first street in lynch, that my ancestors said this is your project. you have to tell this story. so that was the impetus for the story and i told my adviser i'm going to follow these african-american migrants from harlen county, kentucky, coalminer's children, and my adviser said i've been studying

macmigration for the last 30 years and i'm here to tell you, there are no black people from those regions and if they are, it's and -- neck total. he didn't know he was looking me in my face and telling me that i and my family really didn't exist. so as you can imagine i got a new adviser, and went on with the project and how i decided to pursue the research was not through statistical analysis, how i'd been trained, or through surveys. i quickly realized at the advice of my research participants that if i wanted to get the story right, i had to come with the recorder and sit and listen. and that's exactly what i did. i took upon a three-year oral history project in which i traveled across the country,

locating african-americans who had -- have roots in and through appalachia so that's the subtitle of the book, "race and roots through appalachia" because that history and that region runs deep in their blood. and i traveled to 14 states across the country and 34 cities and what that look like was from connecticut all the way to san jose, california, and cities in between. and i conducted a total of 215 oral history interviews in the homes of this generation of african-americans who grew up largely in the '40s, '50s and '60s in the coal towns so a great delights and a labor of love to sit at my elder's feet and hear this her history. what's in a story? embodiesed in this collection of

oral history interviews are stories not only of the great -- the african-american great migration, which occurred across the 20th century, in which an estimated 6 million african-americans voted with their feet and left the deep south in search of greater opportunity and that is how our northern -- american cities in the north and midwest became chocolate cities through this migration, so, yes, those stories were there, but also, stories of the transformation of the american body politic. this is the generation of african-americans who, as children, integrated our public school systems. now, while our political leaders, activist and lawyers fought the bats in the courts to get brown versus board of education that legislation

passed, it was the children who were on the front lines who had to integrate those schoolings, or as my research participants say in their oral history, we had to go up to the white schools. what was that like? and they were able to share that -- those stories through community biography. so, many of those themes run deeply through the book, not only the intergenerational migration, but also the stories of the transition through the pre-and post civil rights era, and these -- i dig deeply in asking questions about the transformation of african-american subjectivity and that is just a fancy academic way of saying what does it really mean to be black? we due boys asked the question in this 1903 book, "the souls of

black folk" and says, in this book lies the strange meaning of what it means to be black in america at the dawn of the 20th century. well, at the time that he wrote that book, which was a fantastic work of essays and literature, 90% of the black population in the united states still remained in the deep south. so, i revisited that iconic question that dubois and recast the question. what is the strange mean offering being black in america as our country transformed in such a phenomenal way through the preand post civil rights movement and what did it mean to be those historical actors, those changemakers, and i had the great honor of telling it -- this story through this generation of coalminers sons

and daughters. so, i think that the book, i hope, has broads reach, not only to black history or appalachian history but the story really runs through our country's national history and of course, because the story is set in appalachia, not only in appalachia but in harlen county, kentucky where some othis famous and blood where coal wars were fought, there's this phenomenal story of labor that is imbedded in this book. so, before i do a brief selection of reading from the book, i just want to share a little bit about the book itself. so, the -- i've dedicate this book to the generation of african-americans who so proudly

say, my daddy was a coalminer. and here goes my mother raising her hand in the audience, and i point that out because i want to thank two members in the audience for coming out today, my mother, are arnia davis brown who is lynch, kentucky, native, and dr. freda hopkins, she, too is a lynch, kentucky, native and a resident here of nashville, kentucky -- i mean, nashville, tennessee so thank you so much for coming out. and it's really just a testament, black coalminers and their descend extents are everywhere. there's no place that guy and give a talk where someone from this book -- and they're bow in the book -- don't just show up which is quite lovely. i'll also share the book has a piece of original art on the front, the cover was painted by

the fine artist, charlie palmer. i commissioned him to paint this cover. i gave him a couple of excerpts from the book and a few old photos of what those coal camps looked like back in the day and he used that as inspiration to interpret a cover, and i just love that aspect of the book, not only the text itself but the esthetics because when i had the great pleasure of doing my first book release, which was at a reunion with the participants who contributed 0 this book, they started arguing, saying, that is first street. no that's cumberland. that's church street. so did have that feel of home. so that was really validating. ...

reading from chapter four. it's really about home. home is not just where you live or the place where you grew up, we all make home through our relationships and our memories. one thing that i find so sweet and special about, that i learned from his body of oral history. there was no separation in these towns between your private life and labor. so industry and every day public life where us inextricably linked, these were also segregated communities. those racial faultlines and fishers also ran through the

communities, they poked their nose in that process as well. i'm going to read from a section titled, my daddy was a coal miner. the coal mining father embodied labor, when he was away from home but not working in the mines, he was on the side of the mountain working in his garden, or out mistreat from friday night to sunday morning, working on a bottle of moonshine. only to come home in the midnight hours to work his nerves by raising hell. when he was at home during the week, he was resting as he was tired from work. work was the entrée to which children came to relate to their fathers. as a young girl, eric smith accompanied her mother on a walk to the big store. along the way, her mother took up a conversation with an eerie man. shy and obedient, she did not

interject into the confrontation between adults. however, her silence did not preclude her curiosity. she said, i was looking up at this man and i was wondering, who is this man talking to my mother? he was pitch black from head to do. all you could see was his eyes. perplexed, her body language gave her away. she goes on to say, i guess he saw me staring at him and he looks down at me and my mother looked at me and said, clara, do you know who that is? i said, no. she said, that is your daddy. i looked at him and i said, daddy, that's you? then my hand was black and my mother had to get some kleenex and scrub my head because i could not believe that was him. that's just how dirty they were. when they came out of the mine, you could not see anything on him that would make me know that was my father.

so much of those men in an of the earth, while digging the goal, they emerged from the mines unrecognizable. after work, the miners went straight to the house to wash away any minder of their labor so they could enter their household simply as fathers and husband. however, despite of an unwashed minor was blind. my participants go on to say, some of the miners would come home and those dirty clothes but my daddy changed at the bathhouse. i never saw him in his mining close. they had a bathhouse and we go there sometimes. they would be in the and they would be so black, you cannot tell a white man from a black man. >> the mullens, siblings, this was a group interview. but i remember being up near where they came out of their

mines, and you would see the guys coming out and go into the shower. up at that part, they would come out of the mines, and they'd be so black. so that's just an example of how -- and this is how children were interfacing with the elders in their community and coming to understand their home. much of it through labor. i mentioned that this was the generation also of african-americans who desegregated the school system, and i have two chapters in the book that are dedicated to that. one chapter that really just focuses on what was the colored school? what was it like to attend a segregated a school system, what were the teachers like, how did that generation remember that very specific period in educational history. and then the next chapter goes

on to tell the story of desegregation, thatga long procs of what it meant to institutionally, legally and then physically with your own body and soul enter into a new chapter in american history. while i won't read from those chapters, i set that up to share that this book has an arc of rise and fall and that decline of these particular coal towns really starts at that point of school desegregation largely just because that was a time of bust for the coal mining industry, and we're talking the early to mid 1960s. but also because this was the period that was the height of the african-american great migration, so the opportunity structure for african-americans -- young, working-age adults -- was just so open and ripe for young

people that many of the african-americans who grew up in these coal towns got them a one-way ticket and got out of harlan county, and they populated -- they created a diaspora through the rest of the united states. and lucky that they did, because the industry too was on a rapid decline, and there were few jobs available to anyone in the community, but c particularly to the african-american community. so i'm going to do a very brief reading from the last chapter entitled "gone home," and this is really unraveling that story and telling the story of industrial decline. and that's something that american cities across the country are experiencing now, what happens when the jobs leave, when the people go, you know, and all that's really left is the memory of that place that shaped your life.

they had been preparing for this time their entire lives. lynch was home, benham was home, cumberland was home. teach down, however, they knew -- deep down, however, they knew it was never theirs. home to centuries of lives and generations and people and cultures and tongues and feuds and spilled blood were a mere sheet of parchment in a thick set of in this land. from the indigenous peoples who girded their loins as they bore witness to their own genocide, refusing to leave their land dead or alive, to the perpetrators -- the scotch-irish frontiersmen who began settling the cumberland plateau at the beginning of the 17th century. to king coal, the paternalistic industry that brought its own population of southern black refugees, transforming that same

native white frontiersman into the invisible and culturally extinct hillbilly. to nature, which is now reclaiming the land that was always her own. in this way, appalachia belongs to no one. by the mid 1940s, coal mining had begun to the transition from a labor-intensive to a a machine-intensive industry. international harvester corporation and u.s. steel no longer invested in bodies; but, rather,, in machinery and technology. the companies adopted new strategies to control their labor population including systemic layoffs, hiring freezes and imposing certification requirements on certain jobs to create areas of expertise. through this process of mechanization, the black population stood witness toys own erasure. laborersnt were expelled from harlan county in the same way they were recruited, by a

judicious mixture of race and earth misty. it is -- ethnicity. it is no surprise that the black body was the most expendable. black, working-age young adults found themselves with no job opportunities in sight. earl turner worked in the mines of lynch for 55 years before retiring. one of the first black mine foremen in harlan county and a veteran member of the united mine workers of america, turner braced his children to treatment of another world. his son jeff was a young child whenca the industry transitione, and here's jeff turn's recollection. turner's recollection. absolutely, we saw it, because our fathers were telling us what was going to happen, and what my father saidd was going to happen to us happened because nobody black got jobs any longer. before the mechanization of the industry, coal mining was definitely in your blood. it was in your blood. but what the mechanization did

was eliminated jobs. it eliminated jobs because mechanization increased tonnage. but when they brought those big machines into lynch, i will never forget that as a little boy, when they brought those machines in. thank you. [applause] >> we have time for questions, but i will ask you if you will go w to the microphone there. c-span's recording this, and they'd like to hear your question. so feel free, get up, go straight to the microphone. all right. [inaudible conversations]

>> it's so quiet, and my question is not that important. [laughter] thank you both for joining us in nashville today. professor brown, i'm wondering if in your, just sitting and listening to families talk, if you could see a strain of psychological or emotional wear and tear on the families of these african-american men, men who worked sometimes miles underground? as a claustrophobic myself, i wonder if i would have the wherewithalhe to go beif neither the surface of the earth to work -- beneath. and then how does that express itself this one's family life or personal life when they come up aboveground? >> well, i have to tell you that was an extremely important question, so thank you for asking. yes, it absolutely expressed

itself in the stories. in the household from the perspective of children, one of the most common versions of stories that came up in relation to -- i'd ask the question, did you understand what your father was really doing, right? did you really get that. and most as adults, they did, but as children not really. but what they did understand, that daddy was a coal miner, that his job was dangerous, that any point anybody's father could be killed in the mines. that was something that loomed large in the stories. but the way that psychologically that expressed itself in the household washa alcoholism. so in that small excerpt that i read in the opening when i said daddies wouldai work on that bottle of moonshine and then come home and raise hell?

that is the nice euphemism that this population of folks uses to mean daddy would come home raging drunk. ask in those drunk -- and in those drunk moments, they'd tell stories about how their fathers would express their anger, their anger and frustration with not only the work that they were doing, but the racism that they faced in the mines, the racism that they faced in the community, the racism that they faced in their migration journey to even get those jobs in eastern kentucky. because many of that generation of first comers migrated from alabama where they were leaving convict-leasing situations, where they were leaving unfair sharecropping situations, where they had to pick up and leave their families to try to make some sort of semblance of life. so in those stories, you'd hear

lots of expressions of those were the times when daddies talked. but other than that, if they weren't drunk, most folks would say my father didn't really speak much. mama did all the raising and all the talking. daddy was really quiet. [laughter]r] >> could someone hold -- [laughter] >> i'm offended. [laughter] you guys are heightists. when you were talking about -- i grew up in the '60s, and there's a fairly famous picture of probably in georgia, someplace liken that, but theres this itty bitty little girl, tiny little girl dressed to the nines. and and she's walking past a whole row of adults, white adults who are clearly just, they're not -- [laughter]

wow. >> you got it. >> they're cruel to her. i can't believe this. anyway, i can imagine that the same concept of courage, the need for courage that would get somebody underground every day had to be, that had to somehow trickle down to the kids who were facing their own terrors. i mean, the generational trauma there has got to be something that they're still feeling today, i would imagine. can youma speak to that for a second? and i'm sorryt about that. [inaudible conversations] >> we should be emotional about racism. yes, so i'll be really brief in

my response, but that is by no means a flip response because it's brief. absolutely. one argument that i make vehemently at the conclusion of this book is that race relations in the united states have not changed. it is, in fact, a changing same. what has changed is that there's a rearticulation in the structure in which racism expresses itself largely through institutions. so you no longer need people to be the racists, because systems will do that work for you, ask we can all go to bed at night feeling good about ourselves -- enter many people are still willing to step up though. [laughter] >> thank you. so,pl yes, absolutely. but i'll say just two points to that. in this generational arc of

schism in the united states -- racism in the united r states, it's embedded in the foundation of our system. just like all parents, right, parents always hope for a better world for their children, and then those children do the same for their -- so there's always a hope that i saw along the line, you know, where each generation just hoped that it wouldn't be as bad. and iffch many of those -- and y of those hopes were packed up in those suitcases and taken on a migration journey. i'll also say this is one of the most pride ifful and joyous group of african-americans that you'll ever want to meet. so while the stories that i shared were a bit grim, they are just full of life in spite of, right? so happy and proud and, you know, i just, i really can't express the amount of love that they generate not only within their community, but pushing that out to change the scene a

little bit. thank you. >> i actually don't know where to start and who to ask these questions to. i'm a big fan of patsy klein, i just want you to know. that. >> glad to hear it. >> she was not a country singer to me, she was just a singer. and unfortunately but true, we lived here in nashville, and we have this station out of murfreesboro on down called randy. randy used to play all of the good music all through kentucky -- well, you can tell by the hair how old i am to remember all of this. one of the things that i wanted to know, didn't she -- when she rose to stardom, so to speak, and got on the grand ole opry, i'm not sure if it was loretta lynn or somebody that took her under their wing to kind of help them, did you get any research on that?

>> it was actually the opposite, it was patsy who put loretta -- >> that's right. i had it a little backwards. >> and i have to say i'm also, i'm glad that you mentioned she's not really a country singer. in the -- historically, i suppose, you could say that the importance of her as a country musician is that she helped inaugurate what was called the nashville sound. >> yes. >> prior to the late 1950s -- i should say prior to world war ii, country music was a regional music. so as i'm sure coal mining towns each had their own sort of standards and their own musical traditions,ea you know, there ws country music, there was western musician, there wasas hillbilly music, and that's how it was known. and it wasn't until -- and i'm sure nashville residents are tired of hearing about owen bradley at this point, but he was significant in the sense that he created the idea of country music as, like, a mature

person's living room music. it's something you could put on the hi-fi and not something, you know? and alt city embodied that and -- patsy embodied that and became his sort of muse for it precise hi because the way she sang didn't have a drawl to it. and i was, it was really interesting to learn in my research that the first music that she ever herald and loved -- heard and loved was big band jazz. her first -- she loved the andrewsst sisters, she loved, yu know, what was considered to be, like, adult pop music of the late '40 and early '50s. and, you know, we can only imagine if, i can suspect that she would have done more with that style had she lived longer. >> and just to make mention with dr. brown if -- i mean, professor brown, is it dr. brown?on >> i [inaudible] >> you know, you took me back sitting over there. and i'm listening to you and how proud i could see your mother just admiring what you were

saying. but the one -- don't you find that what yout all experienced n the ap appalachia, it related al across? because you sort of touched on that. and it reminded me of my father who worked at the united methodist publishing house right on 9th and -- [inaudible] it's no longer there, it's in metro center. and i remember my father, i thought he was a businessman. didn't know that he worked in this mailing room covered with all of this paper, you know, from bailing paper. and when he would come home, he would come home -- shower at the job and come home with his tie and shirt and things on. and when you think back in those days, black families, that is what they did, that is what they taught us. they set those standards for us to follow. we lived in the black community or of fisk university, tsu --

[inaudible] and which i am a product of all three. >> all right. >> oh, yes. and when i listen to you, you just kind of touched -- when you talked about the people, my parents didn't drink, but i remember my if father used to say coming through john henry hill projects right off of joe johnston, he would come through thoseen prompts, and these girl, i mean, people didn't have a mother and father in the homes. sole he would tell me about peoe getting drunk on the weekends because this was their, i guess, outlet from working so hard to provide for their families. and i am just proud if to have sat in this audience today to listen to both of you. and i understand that lady that just got touched, because it is heartfelt. and i praise you for putting thated book out. thank you. >> thank you. [applause] >> and thank you. we're going to move to the signing tent, so just follow us up the street, get your books

and get 'em signed. [inaudible conversations] >> you're watching booktv on c-span2. for a complete television schedule, visit booktv.org. you can also follow i a long -- follow along behind the scenes on twitter, instagram and facebook. and our final program of the day from the southern festival of books in nashville is a discussion on race in america. >> goodn afternoon, everyone. thank you so much for joining us here. my name is olusola tribble. [applause] i am the community and organizational development coordinator at metro as