raised in a racist society so she send her kids all over europe. so the russian troop, harry bell font at the, rich wright, paul. it was just was the place ton the south side. so it wasn't that she was a grim person by any -- when i talked to her and we did this walk around brownville and just because i asked her to because i want -- i'm working on this into and would like to know brownsville and i said here's all the historical sites, we stop? she said, sure. so, as we were walking along it wasn't like we were just talking about our families. no. no it's like we're talk can

about history. she was not a chit-chatty person. richard durham was a radio writer so clarice said she just wasn't but chit-chat. she was about bringing people together to get something done, and that was -- that's what drove her. >> host: writing biography is tough and, colin-when you get the contract to do that there had been one -- only one previous book about nelson, by bettina drew when we had drinks at ricardo's, later that year, out come two films two documentaries about nelson algren, and also almost

coinciding with the publication of your book is the fine book, algren a life of the what do you think about this explosion of stuff? did you know but the movies before hand? >> i did know but both movies before hand. people are coming back to algren and the work is still good. the work is 57 years old and it's still remarkable and still has something to say about society, and so people want to write about him. make films about him. i enjoy both films. also, algren's publisher did a stage production of the steppenwolf iwas part of that. >> that's out now. it's just a testament to the work. >> host: what but did you read mary's book while you were writing -- that's -- >> after my book was -- >> host: after. it's a good book, don't you think? >> uh-huh. >> host: they're different but it's -- i assume -- and i think she feels this way, too, i don't

mean to speak for mary, the more nelson the better, basically. nelson died in 1981. in marys case she get to at least meet the subject of their work. you didn't. many people, studs was not really around. art shay was nelson's running buddy, the great photographer was round. did you have any difficulty finding algren people? >> there weren't all that many still around. >> host: yeah. >> there was a great, great amount of archival america and one benefit -- you mentioned the first back. when bettina finish head her book she someplaced materials into an archive. i discovered she audio roadside almost all of her interview. >> host: that's amazing. >> which is pretty amazing.

so i spent weeks just listening to and transcribing those i could go back to source ferrell and speaker interview dozen of people who have been dead for many years. incredible resource, and some characters that are prominent in my book came out of that tree search. i mentioned abe ahern. central to algren's life in the 30s and fades away from the chicago scene and died, i want to say 15 or 20 years ago aft this point. maybe even more. he gave her miss drew a wonderful interview, which led me to his brother, which led me to his daughter who is still alive and could talk about how chicago shaped her father's life and add some context. >> host: that is one of the, i think, frustrating upsides of writing biographies, one person will lead you to another person, will lead you to another three people, and when do you -- when

did you have to say, okay, i'm done? >> yeah. it is kind of arbitrary in some ways. >> host: i bet. >> i could have kept going but it was five years, and i was in fort wayne, indiana, and i teach full-time, and so i wasn't getting some big grant to stop teaching and come and do this. it was just short of catch as catch can so that was just practical. some was just i was waiting to get interest the archives of the museum, and it took that long to finally get in because -- well, that's not story but -- once i got interest that i felt like, i think i've got the round story, get enough i can. but dish felt like i was hearing a similar story from people after a while. >> host: when things get

redundant. >> right, and then how far out die want to get, into the labor movement stuff or -- there was just different side road is could have pursued more. more thing about her husband and how that tied in, but it was like, okay, i knew the basic story, so we get enough. >> host: well, you know your back would be the foundation for any future. you know that. >> yes, and i hope there are more because the idea is i'm not going to do it all but this is the gateway to other writers and scholars to do more but margaret because she is such an amazing figure that is so underappreciated. >> host: especially in this town i-when i was walking through brownsville, every chapter begins bowled the talk around brownsville, every 50 feet somebody would stop and greet

her and thank her and say i'm doing this because of you. and the interesting thing is -- we were crossing king drive at one point. there's two young women in a car, at the stoplight. they shout out to her, dr. burring yous but they had a copy of her newly self-published auto biography, waving out out window. this is king driver but i effect like i was in a village. everybody turn, people knew her, respected her. we walked interest a hardwarester and had a beautiful mural when it wag louis armstrong's club. we back in one of the grandsons of the meiers who ran the store, he greets her like she is royalty and sits her down, gives hear cold drink, and she just says, show this lady around and he's like, on this -- if she asked you to do something, you

did it. and that's why i'm writing the book. she didn't ask me but i knew she wanted me to do it. >> host: one of the to go -- colin, when did you -- when we had that now famous drink at shutters rick card dough's, 2014, you optimistically expected, told me, well, i'll be -- the become will be published in 2016. but you got caught in that -- it was enjoyable, though, one person leading to another and another store, even with the -- with all of the material you had from nelson. >> it really just never ended and could have kept going and going. i think in the end i found letter biz him or about him or recordings of him and more than 50 archives, scattered across the country. and that seemed to never stop.

somebody would come up in a correspondence and i would think does that person have an archive? and that excepted -- that kept going for years. stopped when i ran another of money and got a -- that allowed in to take a leave from my teaching job and i was supposed to have that for a year and make the money work for a year and i stretched that into two, which didn't go over particularly well at home. and so i --y with a little baby. >> yes, young son. so it was running out of money and time. my editor at norton, happened to be my neighbor, so after about the third extension on my contract, i noticed that i would see him coming and i would step into a doorway and i thought, probably time to wrap it up. i think my original contract was

two and a half years and i took twice that and i also -- i think the contract was for 100,000 words. my first draft was 193,000 without notes. so, then there was a process -- >> host: now there's a volume two coming? just joking. >> no. but i was given -- >> host: you can both be terribly proud of what you have accomplished. a remarkable piece in the new yorker about your book. sadly there are not the book review sectionses that many of us used to enjoy years ago. but what have you heard even by word of mouth but you book? there's still a lot of people who knew margaret. >> there was -- several reviews and then there was an interview online publication out of atlanta, but i just remember from book lists, which is from the american library association, one of the word that was used to describe the

book was,ing hography which means the lives of the saints and at first i took some offense to that, but then when i re-read the review i thought, that's appropriate because margaret was a patron saint of brownsville, and they weren't really saying that this is a bad thing in their review. they were just saying, that's just sort of the kind of focus i had on margaret that actually it in in with my intentions, not to make her a saint because she was a real human being and not perfect, but it was to present her in the light of how the people who entrusted me with their stories about her saw her. one person in specifically said if you're digging up dirt on margaret i'm not participatingment not that there's anything to dig up, although i suppose if you wanted to, you could do that about

anybody and i wasn't trying to paint her with a romantic halo glow but i wanted to take the trust of people and represent her as people recognized her. and the word of mouth that i received from the people i've interviewed in the book, have been, yes, this is her and i did it. >> host: thank you all for coming and i think in many ways, the title of mary ann's book is the southside venus. for those who couldn't come out in the rain today. i also think that you could have -- you could have stolen the title of colin's book, for this book, never a lovely so real, which colin took from

nelson algren. this colin asher's book. this, ladies and gentlemen, is your perfect summer reading. thank you both. [applause] >> thank you all for attend thing program. the becomes are available in the book for purchase and the autographs are available on the table next to that. thank you so much. [inaudible conversations]

[inaudible conversations] [inaudible conversations] [inaudible conversations]

[inaudible conversations] [inaudible conversations] [inaudible conversations] >> a conversation there built some notable chicagoans and in a few minutes we'll be back with more live coverage of the printer row lit fest.

you'll hear from eve ewing on chicago's public school system. [inaudible conversations] >> now on booktv, portion of a recent program. the manhattan institutes heather mcdonald takes a critical look at critical correctness in higher education in her recent book "the diversity dilution." >> there has never been a more tolerant, more opportunity-filled environment in human history than a college campus. it's filled with the most well-meaning faculty who want all of their students to succeed, in particular society's traditionally oppressed groups and yet students are being encouraged by this growing

diversity bureaucracy to think of themselves as victims and to celebrate their victimhood. there is a worthless competition underway on every college campus today to be the top dog victim. these days that position glorified, sought after, is occupied by trans visits but that won't last little anybody who can guest the next top dog victim gets the prize because they are the students are desperate to find some way to trump the current total poem of victim omaha. >> host: isn't there some legitimate si in women's studies, african-american studies to tell the stories in history as snell. >> i don't think they should be separate disciplines. we tell them all the time, novels tell the story of women, of blacks, with extraordinary

empathy. huck finn does. i just read book, slaves of solitude in post world war ii britain. incredible insights into female sexual competitiveness. of course we should open our history. we should understand reality in it great and broad a way as possible, but the reality is this, peter. those separate studies departments, which it's black studied, women residents studied, they have become grievance factories and not but openness. they are about cultivating a very particular mindset which is one that is at war with the accomplishments of western civilization. >> host: when you speak on a college campus what's you're reception? >> it's varied. it's been at times rather a

hostile, physically so, brute force. other times it's merely tense. and -- but other times students have listened respectfully and asked questions. university of pennsylvania recently that was a -- it was a challenging audience but they were all respectful. there was no interruptions. i was at the university of colorado boulder, that was mixed audience, a lot of people, adults from the community so they were very receptive to my message, but there was some faculty there that were insulted by the fact i actually said that there are no big gots at the university -- bigots at the university overcovers. this this weird thing but our current moment. there's nothing more insulting you can sty a college administrator at than you're institution is filled with good

people. there nor bigots there. because they want to say, this is a bigoted environment. it is a very perverse situation. you have elite liberal institutions, voluntarily embracing the narrative that they discriminate, when this is empirically demon false. the university o colorado did a wonderful john inviting me but for me to say this is an open-minded institution was seen by some people there as an insult. go figure. >> host: but what is the advantage to saying it's not an open-minded. >> guest: the a fabulous question. if one was starting from scratch, not knowing the whole victim ideology we live in, it's absolutely puzzling, and yet

there is a bureaucracy in every university today. it's not confined to the elite colleges. it's now trickling down sadly even into community colleges that is invests its entire well-being dependent on the idea that there is institutional racism only college campuses and people whose identity -- if you're doing black studies, possibly you are reading ralph ellisson and dubois with an ear for just their language and greatness, but the far greater likelihood is what you were telling students is that the enlightenment itself, which was all about tolerance, i is a source of racism and bigotry, which is historically false but these deps are invested in this

narrative that america remains inchemically, permanently, racist and sexist. this is -- coates is beloved by every college administrator because his message is, the identity of america, not just 200 years ago but today, is to destroy the black body, and that is the message which colleges perversely welcome and encourage and they don't want to hear a counternarrative. >> host: back to diversity dilution. you yao quote the vice president of academic affairs at clermont mckenna college in california, i fully understand that people have strong opinions and different, an painful experience with the issues, heather macdonald discusses. i also understand that words can

hurt. why did you include that in the book? >> guest: well, i guess i wanted to give a full picture of what happened claremont mcken dana which was a student blockade of 250 students that sounded the aulder toum wheres was supposed to beak my book, the war on cops, which tries to give voice to the hundreds of people whom i have had the privilege to meet in high crime neighborhoods, whether it's south central los angeles, or central harlem, who are law-abiding. they want their children to succeed and they support the cops. they want public order. they want the same freedom from fear that people in other neighborhoods can take for granted. and they say the cops, white why aren't you getting the kidded off the street and the drug dealers off the corner? i wanted to give voice to those

people to give an alternative for st. are to the "black lives matter" anywherety. this is viewed that was not tollable, not allowable, on claremont mckenna camp pulse by the students and those from the neighborhooding claremont knowledges, like pomona and pittsburgh, and behavers i was to speak students started to congregate outside of the odder toum it and was -- this is just classic of students wallowing their self-pity. they're rule for the blockade was that the black students would be on the inner ring because otherwise they were so at risk from claremont feckless police -- the college police forces, that somehow they would

come in with billy clubs and would beat them. so the students believed that my presence there as a racist, sexist, warrophobe, transphone, he usual litany of substitutions for thought and engagement, that fascist macdonald has to be shut down. well, one of the deans was trying to sort of -- i don't know -- thread the needle and throw them a soft so say this is somehow threatening rhetoric or makes people feel unsafe or -- which is just ridiculous. we should not be playing into this absurd conceit. there are millions of students abroad in asia right now, peter, who are studying night and day for the privilege of attending an american college, this

alleged maelstrom only hatred. they're students of senator what do they want to come here? they understand that an american college today offers boundless opportunities. you can read every book that has ever been written. this is something that would have driven the renaissance humanists mad with envy and desire. and yet these students are being taught to think of themselves as victims. it is educational malpractice. >> that was heather are macdonald, author of the diversity dilution on booktv. you can watch that's rest of this program with visiting our web site, and searching heather macdonald book at the top of the page. [inaudible conversations]

>> now live from chicago, it's eve ewing on racism in schools. ...

[inaudible conversations] >> hello again, everyone. welcome to the 35th annual printers row lit fest presented by the near south planning council. i want to give a special thank you for their generous support this year. especially when the trust as our programming sponsor. the alpha word foundation for the tribune. 3l real estate and c-span tv. today's program will be broadcast live on c-span2's booktv. if there's time at the end of the presentation for a q and a, we ask you to use the microphones located at the center of the room and please

speak clearly so our viewers at home can follow along. i also asked you silence your cell phone at this time if you do choose to take photos during the presentation, that your turn off your flash and consideration of our presenters. with that said, please welcome carrie cranston and eve ewing. [applause] >> hi, how are you? this will be fast. we only have 45 minutes. what carrie and i decided to do is i would talk about the book and read a few poems to get us started and then i will hop back over here and he will ask me questions and we will try to leave time for you to ask questions. only questions are not embarrassed to have broadcast live on c-span2. so think of your questions. my name is even -- eve ewing.

each of the poems in the book is in conversation with a report from 1922, called the negro in chicago which was an analysis of why the race riots to place and how it could be prevented. how racial violence in chicago could be prevented. i will read each of these poems, a quotation from the report in 1922. and then i'll read the poem. the first form is called the train speaks bit i begin with this quotation. the presence of negroes in large numbers in our great cities is not a medicine itself. the last menace in itself. this poem is called the train speeds. even though i dream of them. quiet nights and the railyard when the little rat the skidder beneath me. when the last of the strongmen with his gleaming silver button has locked the door and laid his hands against me. i see them dancing in every path and cloud.my babies. my babies.

born unto me in the hills and green lands. loose threads catching in my sharp parts when they don't watch out. - - they move like rabbits then. they look for a lash that isn't there, even them that never felt it.it's in their shoulders. the last lives in their shoulders. along after the last biscuit is gone, when the sunrise fuel mountains been my children look and look through the space i have made for them. the gift i have prepared. they are safe within but can see without. they feel it before they know the words. then smile when it comes to them. it's flat. the land is flat. and they smile to think of it. this new place, the uncle or cousin will greet them. the hat they will buy the ribbons. they know not the cold, my

babies. they know not the men who are waiting and angry. they know not that the absence of signs does not pretend the absence of danger. my children, my precious one, i can never take you home. you have none. and so you go out into the wind. thank you. [applause] >> so, this riot that happened in 1919 began when a young boy named eugene williams who was 17 years old was swimming in lake michigan on the beach. and, there was no legal segregation but informally, there was a beach where black people swim and white people swam between 37th and 38th street. he was in the water and he started to drift over to the side where white people were. when he looked out onto the shore, he saw people throwing rocks been some people think rocks were thrown and actually

hit him. some people think he was too afraid to come out of the water as he was afraid he would be stoned to death. either way, he was floating on a railroad tire. a piece of board and ultimately he drowned. people were outraged and that was the beginning of what was the ride it.so this poem is about that moment of his frowning. in the poem is called, jump rope. it begins with this quotation. on sunday, july 27, 1919, there was a clash of white people and negroes at a bathing beach in ♪ ♪ chicago which resulted in ♪ the drowning of a negro boy. ♪ jump rope. ♪ little eugene, sweetest i've ♪ seen. ♪ seen, seen. ♪ his mama told him them white ♪ boys mean. ♪ he didn't listen, listen, ♪ listen, to what mama say, ♪ say.

♪ went to the lake, lake, ♪ lake. ♪ that july day, day, day. ♪ little eugene w, so sorry to ♪ ♪ trouble you. ♪ rise eugene, rise. ♪ your mama's cries. ♪ don't let them bury you ♪ down. ♪ no, it goes like, down down ♪ baby, down the water is ♪ talking. ♪ sweet sweet baby, don't make ♪ me let you go. ♪ swallow, swallow dark. ♪ swallow, grab the sky. ♪ grandma, grandma, sick in ♪ bed. ♪ call on jesus because your ♪ babies - - no, it goes like ♪ they all dressed in black, ♪ black, black. ♪ all dressed in - - and he

♪ never came back, back, back. thank you. [applause] >> i'm going to be due to more poems. i wasn't going to read this one but one of the people who sort of inspired this poem is unexpectedly in the room. i feel like i have to read this poem called sightseers. which is very much influenced by the workers - - who i'm very appreciative i live in the same time as him. so this poem begins with two quotations that i will read for you. the first one is from the report, the negro in chicago and they're talking about the fact that people participated in mob violence that ultimately resulted in people dying but they didn't realize until afterwards. they entered like a fuchs state. the quotations is, often the

sightseers and even those included in the nucleus did not know why they had taken part in crime. the viciousness of which was not apparent to them until afterwards. the second quotation is from - - who says, the sad truth is that most evil is done by people who never make up their minds to be good or evil. this poem is called sightseers. just this once, i hope you'll forgive me for writing a somewhat didactic poem. i just didn't know how else to say we live in a time of sightseers. standing on the bridge as history, watching the water go by and there are bodies in the water. and the water has been dirty for so long. and to the sightseers still drink from it. they buy special filters and they smile. they have nice glasses and teacups. they put sugar in the dirty water that has our bodies in it. and there are sightseers seated beneath the tower of empire, peering up the lights and there are children in the tower. and the tower has been crooked

for so long. and the sightseers still look at it. they find the lights and chanting. the meat on the weekends. they have picnics on the plaza of the tower that has our children in it. and there are sightseers looking at the house of power. waiting to take a tour. there are devils in the house and the house has been wicked for so long. and the sightseers still worship it. they stand in front and take pictures. they marvel at the white pillars with a send postcards of the house that has the devils in. just this once, i hope you'll forgive me for asking you directly to forget the lovely walk. forget the charming pillars you'd because there are children in the tower. there are children in the tower. there are children in the tower and they are dead already. thank you. [applause] >> thank you for being so kind and this is my first reading of this book at like, since it's been out. so that's cool. so thanks y'all for being here

for that. i'm going to read one final poem. if you read my first book, electric arches, you know i write in the tradition of astral futurism. i'm trying to trouble our assumptions of time moving in a straight line. this is a poem about emmett till it's a poem that takes place in the universe were emmett still lives a long and boring life and that of us learned his name because he never became famous for the victim of a vicious murderer. in this poem i run into emmett till at jewel. and it's called, i saw emmett till at thegrocery store. looking over the plums , one by one. turning it over slowly. a little first. checking the smooth skin for pock marks and rot and signs of unkind days or people. then slighting them gently into the plastic.

whistling softly, reaching with a slim arm into the car to the first balance them over the wire before realizing the danger of bruising. and lifting them back out, cradling them in the crook of his elbow until something harder could take that bottom space. i knew him from his hat. one of those they use to sell on roosevelt road. it had lost its feather but he had carefully folded a dollar bill and split it between the ribbon and the felt and it stood at attention. he wore his money. upright and strong, he was already to the checkout by the time i caught up with him but i called out his name and his bond like a dancer, candy bar in hand and looked at me quizzically be for a moment before remembering my face. well hello young lady. hello, so chilly today. i should have one my warm coat like you. yes, so cool for august in chicago. how are things going for you?

he side and put the candy on the belt. it goes. it goes. thank you all so much. [applause] >> thank you very much for that. >> thank you. >> the book is absolutely amazing. it's hard to read. can you talk about what brought you to it? adversely, goes in the schoolyard have something to do with it but what was the process like? >> sure. my second book as some of you may know is a nonfiction book about the 2013 school closures in chicago. the largest mass public school closure in the history of the united states. and, in writing that book, i started - - i realize in order to talk about segregation in 2013, i had to talk about

segregation a century earlier. and i started reading and writing about the great migration which ended up pretty essential to one of the chapters in goes.as part of my research, i started reading this report, the negro in chicago in 1922. it was so fascinating. number one because it captured this period of black life in chicago at a time when black history in chicago was very short. so it's amazing work of social science. even though it was a government report, it had these lines i found to be very poetic or puzzling or paradoxical. i wanted to be in conversation with them and have a chance to dive into that more. the other reason i wanted to write the book is because i realized i knew very little about this period of history. like many of you, the red summer probably got a paragraph maybe end u.s. history textbook in high school.

i realized that often our discussions about black history. people know about slavery and the civil rights movement and in between, black people were just doing stuff. where did everyone go? so i realized how little i knew about this event.but the more i studied it, the more i became convinced that the racial boundaries and social realities of 2019 are in many ways traceable to this seminal thing that happened 100 years ago. i wanted to understand it more and was curious as to why i didn't know more about it. a recurring thread in my work is which histories get sold and which ones don't and why. so, i have four degrees i care a lot about race and chicago. i read books and write them. i care a lot and i realize, if i knew so little. and every time i talk to people about the project, they would always say, i'm really embarrassed to say i don't know much about that.

wanted to create the book is kind of whati hope is an assessable entry point for a conversation about a period of history we should talk about a lot more . >> and so, as a work. when you talk about the history of this. and the impact and as you said, not being taught. not something we hear about. your book looks at this from three points of your three periods. before, during and after. in the after section you go back and forth with other dates. really tying it back in different ways. can you talk about that process of putting it together? >> yeah, i wanted to do this narrative storytelling so it has these three sections. before the event itself which is about the conditions of the great migration. what it was like for black people coming up to chicago for many folks in this room. wow. that's amazing. this is a time i actually reveal i am ella connecticut. matilda was about me.

the. of what it was like the black people coming into chicago. parents, grandmother great-grandparents. the sequence of the right itself and after, i'm thinking about everything from emmett till including the poem i just read february 19, 1968 and what happens after doctor martin luther king is assassinated. and probably, in 1995, which is - - there's a poem called july, july which is about the heat wave that happened in which over 700 people died. which is a. similarly interest me because the only reason i know about that is because i remember it happening. many of you in this room probably remember it happening. i thought about it these years later, i thought 700 people dying in the summer over the intersection of natural disaster and human policy.

seems like something we ought to talk about a lot more. it was almost like did i dream this happened? then probably the most recent poem, linearly is a poem about the jason van dyck verdict. for those of you who are not big poetry fans, and erasure is when you take a text that previously exists and blackout or erase parts of it to make a new text or poem. on the day of the rest the days before the jason van dyck verdict around the murder of lebron mcdonald, with 16 shots to his body. i received an email, perhaps many receive similar in meals at your workplace is bid i received from the manager of my apartment building basically warning me how to protect myself in the case of massive civil unrest. i don't know if you remember that day. the police department commissioned cpa buses full of police and drove them around downtown. the idea there would be

essentially a race riot.the idea was that black people were going to be marauding in the street if jason van dyck was not found guilty. so i found this email very bizarre that made weird assumptions about race and boundaries and who was safe. and i think is a pretty obvious legacy to me. eugene williams you may not have heard his name before today but it's a familiar story. his 17-year-old black boy killed in chicago the cause of the kind of racialized boundaries weave in spite on our space. and that's the story of emmett till and look - - laquan mcdonnell. in a way, the before, during and after is really a roost as i don't believe in things like that collects so you edit structurally in things you don't believe in.

can you go back to the race light and 1919. you're a has read a lot and looked at this. in tulsa, after 1919, so it wasn't during the red summer. they had a riot. and now in tulsa they've started to talk about rephrasing the terminology. calling it the tulsa massacre. what do you think about looking at it from a different perspective like that? >> that such a great question but as a person west to talk about this riot all the time, it's an open question for me. i think there are certain situations where it's very clear. what happened in baltimore after freddie gray's murder, i would not call or write it. there's a way in which the term riot delegitimize hispolitical action . delegitimize violence as a

response to systemic oppression but what happened in tulsa is the opposite end of the extreme which is that, essentially, white residents who were enraged at a certain level of black material success literally wanted to rip it apart with their bare hands. i write in ghost in the schoolyard similar things that happened with public housing in chicago. in a neighborhood that's now almost a completely black neighborhood which many years ago was not. when cha started building housing and try to move eight black families into roseland into a predominantly white neighborhood, there was a riot that lasted for 4-5 nights and 1000 police officers had to end it. it was specifically again white residents and rates by the presence of black people. what happened in 1919, the majority of the people who were murdered for black people that were killed at the hands of roving street gangs or what were called at the time, athletic clubs.

in the great hall of euphemisms. athletic clubs were groups of young men, usually affiliated with white ethnic immigrant groups that might be irish or italian groups. because it's chicago, they generally had a loose affiliation or patronage with some sort of powerful politician. usually an alderman. where the term i like to use - - [indiscernible]. so these athletic clubs, they would act as kind of a street presence of the political machine. in turn, they could act with impunity and break the law and know they had police protection. so by the people who wrote the negro in chicago, they were considered the groups most responsible for the violence because they were roving the streets attacking random black people on the street.

streetcars. one of the poems is about a guy who was murdered in the loop on adams. a black man who was murdered there. and of course, one of the most famous members of these groups was a member of the hamburg gang who was a member at the time and went on to become their president. that person was richard daley. who famously refused to ever confirm or deny his participation in the riots. so i think it's a really loaded term and it brings with it a lot of assumptions about race. about animal instincts and brutal violence. but i think really need to be examined. i don't personally have a strong stance one way or the other but i think it's a good catalyst for conversation about how we label different forms of violence in windows forms of violence are seen as noble and wonderful and acceptable.

the forms of violence our military and axon people and so forth. and when it's not. i think it's an open question. >> when you look at the starting point of this, it's an act of violence.it really is in the notion of the great migration, people that left. it's a public lynching. >> exactly. that's why the poem, jump rope. not to be over explanatory is playing with the image of the rope as the weapon most frequently affiliated with lynching. i appreciate you bringing that up because i think there's a way of talking about the great migration that avoids talking about violence. and so, black people migrated to the north because they were living under conditions of state sanctioned racial terror in the south. with the resurgence of the clan and with the many ways violence could be enacted against you, seemingly at random at any time for offenses as looking menacingly at white women.

two things like being successful in business. ida b wells was famous for being anti-lynching crusader, but she herself was personally impacted by this. she ran a newspaper in the south and memphis was is what she considered her hometown. when a group of black grocers were murdered in memphis. she wrote against it in her newspaper. she was told you could never come back here. we will kill you. her printing press was literally destroyed.all of her investment and the things she used to publish her newspaper was destroyed and she was never able to go back home. so these are the conditions people were living in and they were coming here looking like so many immigration stories, coming to a new place looking to fulfill the promise of something different and the promise of the american dream essentially been as tends to be

the case, things were more compensated as you expect on the receiving end. >> the less complicated. >> there's a difference between the reaction of the people of chicago to the great migration to what we are seeing today. >> absolutely. it's a no phobia essentially. there was so much in terms of economic tension, racial tension. black migrants were seen as dirty. they were seen as uneducated. they were seen as not fit to operate in polite society. one of the poems is about the frequent complaint that they would wear their clothes from the union stock yards on the street carpet this idea that they would work all day and they would get on the car and be smelly or dirty. there were multiple tubercular - - tuberculosis epidemic that happened because people didn't have adequate sanitation or water but that was seen as

reinforcement that black people were dirty. they brought disease. they were unintelligent. they had to be held back in school. all of the aforementioned assumptions we see about immigrants and all kinds of context since time and memorial. >> the notion of how this tied to housing. what they were living in and your book goes from the schoolyard and that type of thing. can you talk a little about what it meant for the city to grow. and it only grew because of this migration really. it was a huge part of the economic engine that drove the city forward. yet at the same time, was pushed aside. >> yeah, that's always how it is, right? black laborers were instrumental in working in sort of the dumbest exterior working in factories and the union stockyards. often at lower pay or with lower opportunities for advancement than their white counterparts. the black population in chicago in a 20 year period grew by

about 3.9 times.while the rest of the city was growing at about 1.5 times that rate. and so, this is how we come to understand the city we now live in.right? the economic imprint of the cultural imprint of black migrants on chicago. the people we considered some of our greatest musicians, literary producers and so on and so forth. but the question becomes how do people have opportunities to reap the benefits of that capital in their lives? often the case is, not so much. >> so again, writing this obvious he was difficult. there was a point at which you can't write a poem in response to something you read. how much different was this process and then electric last. >> so different. electric arches is mostly a

autobiographical work. and this book is not. there are hints and pieces. my own grandmother came up from mississippi when she was five years old. there some oblique references to my own family history with the great migration in the poem. for the most part, it's not autobiographical at all.i think it was challenging number one, because i made this decision. i have sort of a compulsive personality. if any of you have followed, i've been trying to make - - in sequential order since 2017. which some people come up and say, i like your books and some say, i like your bread. [laughter] collects so i get compulsive about things. once i made the decision, i'm going to write this book and conversation with this report

from a century ago, the report is like it hundred 50 pages long. it's a pdf, publicly available. i encourage people to check it out. it's really interesting.part of it was the arduous notice of saying, electric arches, some of those poems i could write on my phone in line at cvs. this i had to pour through this massive poem. my friends would go, how's the book going? i was embarrassed to tell them i was only on page 500. so i went through this whole text and i was highlighting passages and thinking about things i wanted to write into or right out of there so that aspect was difficult and i push myself to write and form a lot in this booklet so there are a lot of forms in the book. patricia smith, another great chicago poet. said you really made it as a poet when you can write and

form without having to announce its and form. you want people to know, i wrote this poem and it was so hard. there are a couple here labeled but a couple that are not. i'm getting intermediate in my writing form. wanted to push myself technically and on a crap level to do things i hadn't done before. on the other hand, it was sort of a relief. not writing about yourself is kind of a relief. once i created the mechanism of how i wanted the book to work. it was sort of decoupled from the. this was just a task i had to complete. then it's important, i could have taken 4-5 years and written another nonfiction book. trying to write the definitive history of this event. this is the teacher in me speaking, i feel like i want

people to read the book. i want people to go from a baseline of not very much knowledge to feeling like they have an assessment and report to learning more on their own. that's kind of a relief as well. to know this is not the definitive history of something. it's meant to be an invitation into a broader conversation that i hope folks continue on their own. that's also why we have these archival photos. it has a series of photographs i think really helps people understand what this was like. i encourage you, if you're a chicagoan and you get a chance to check out the book. what does it look like to see a picture of the national guard walking down the street we all traverse every day? those are photos and histories that i wasn't familiar with before so i hope people get something out of that. >> you talked about the craft

and what you put into it. for example, there are three exodus poems in the series. so i don't want to downplay just how beautiful, as painful as it is been how beautifully written the book is. the effort you put into it and the gorgeous use of language. to take this. so i don't think we should push that down. because i think that's part of the reason it's assessable. >> the - - famously said, the role of the artist is to make the revolution irresistible. part of what i like to do is think about, this has to do with being a professor. being a poet and professor are these two occupations people think of as being in assessable. or that you're like some sort of person up high in the tower but i get up everyday and look out my window and i ponder the realities of human existence. then itake my quill pen . i'm a deeply regular person. so i think archival work is a

piece of that. archives are something people think of as being in assessable or difficult to enter. and so, if you can make something that hopefully beautiful, using a snippet of something that has the potential for people to unlock so much more meaning on their own. that's what i hope is an invitation. i don't want to be the expert. i want to be the person that hold your hand and pulls you along. >> okay. can i make a segue - - while you were writing this, along with your academic work and along with your teaching but you were also writing for marvel comics. >> yes. >>. [laughter] i think my question is having seen you at comic con and listened to you talk about iron heart and this character. that you took over and has major own. my question is, you were doing that while writing this book.

>> yeah but do not recommend. >> how did they blend together and influence? >> that's a great question. i think the various white supremacist homogenous that were deeply horrified that i was hired to write for marvel comics. and continue to be so. just mad. and i think their vision of me is the social justice warrior. which by the way, is not an insult. [laughter] yeah, totally. that people like me are going to write these comic books where superheroes throw their costumes to the ground and stand up and give an impassioned speech about medicare for all or something like that. or single-payer healthcare. i think it's so ridiculous because i too want exciting

stories about people fighting that's what the people came for. if you pay $4.99 for marvel, book, you want to see people fight. i want them to fight. that's what the people came for. i think the funny thing is there are actually more subversive political and i'm sort of outing myself. i think that there is a more subtle and subversive political ideology that's present in iron heart and the other comment i finished working on which is called, marvel team up. which is between spiderman and miss marvel. peter parker is one of the most iconic characters to live and - - who is a 16-year-old pakistani american muslim girl from new jersey. i was like, clearly they have to switch bodies. and now, peter parker until a few minutes ago was a slightly

washed up white dude from queens is inhabiting the body of a teenage girl from new jersey point high jinx and sue and it's cool and funny. what is at stake for that to happen and what do they learn from each other, i think similarly in hiring - - iron heart, traditionally, there are ideas about good and bad people. and so, iron heart, bb williams comes from the south side of chicago. she comes from social security's - - social conditions that the lines of good and bad are not so clear. the people in power are not so good and some of the people

doing bad things are doing bad things because they've been pushed there. what does it mean to have a superhero that understands that? that's the more subtle, racial or political undertone. i always wanted - - to not be a superhero who happens to be black. the advertising agent famously said, black people are not dark skinned white people. so similarly, riri is a black teen girl superhero. what does that mean about how she moves through the world interacts with people? i'm always trying to ask that question. while also making sure people fight. i think one of my favorite scenes in iron heart too, there's a she finds out there's a ring of people stealing electronics. so she's like flying over.

and so, she spots a thief whose stolen a phone and she chases this person. they go through the ped way and have this whole chase scene. she chases him down to the metro tracks. she lands and does the iconic superhero land. you've got to do that for the people. the person turns around and she sees it's a kid. who's crying. she gets down so she's actually at his level and looks him in his eye and is like, why are you doing this? what's going on? i'm not going to hurt you. what can i do for you? he gets scared and runs away from her. but the panel of the two of them looking i try. confronting the fees and not just bundling them up and calling nypd. and thinking how do you encounter that person on a human level. and asking, i wonder how this

person feels about themselves and how that leads them to where they are? i think there are a lot of threads there between that work and 1919 as well. but don't tell the white supremacists, yeah. they don't have the range. the first mine in iron heart is a maya angelou quote. 95 percent are like, she's flying through the air. >> i think we're going to take questions if folks want to line up. if you're not scared. you can con - - come up and ask a question. in the meantime, i will just ask if you made a connection between what you just talked about - - williams. the end of this book is the emmett till poem. what you want for the future in that connection?

what do you want people to feel? >> that's a great question. as a sociologist, i'm always trying to ask why is the world the way it is? as a poem i'm always asking the question, how can we imagine the world as it could be otherwise. and so, i think for me, questions of the future are always questions of the present. we build toward the future we want to see. i think what i'm interested in is how we can be center ideas of basic care and empathy as clichc as it sounds. as basic respect for one another and what it looks like to and not that in our daily being. so that's what i hope for. >> okay. we have a question. >> first of all, i adore you. there are a lot of people who look like me that i adore you as well. >> what's your name? >> regan burke.

how you described you wanted to take us along with you. we want to go with you but we are having trouble getting in? >> are you here on behalf of all the white people? [laughter] >> it's all the old white people. [laughter] we've all done stuff. we haven't run for office but we've helped people get elected and made our phone calls. gone door-to-door but it's a little bit different now but we still do it. and we still want to do it but we don't know where we are going. and we don't know what to do. you make the plight of our brothers and sisters on the south side of chicago very accessible. but where are we going and how can we help?

>> that's a great question. thank you to all the people who sent you. [laughter] yeah, so, i think often. i talked often about the idea of abolition. and i think something that's easy for us to forget is at the time when slavery was abolished, the entire social, political, moral, economic system of the united states since its founding was predicated upon the system of slavery. no one who was alive ever understood what reality could be. they had never experienced anything but that it wasn't just like some people have been it was the fabric of reality. right? as much as the sky is blue that there are black people who are property and their owned by a plant or class. that is fact and it feeds into

the economic system of our country. still, people had to be able to imagine something they had never seen. they had to be imaginative enough to answer basic, bogus questions like. where are they going to go, they can't read. we need to do it but will we free them at once, can we use some sort of actuated system? these are the questions people were asking at the time. and they're the same kind of unimaginative questions people like to ask now about social issues been i can never answer the question, where are we going? that's what makes it terrifying. what it means to move through the world with moral courage is to say, i don't know where we're going but where we are is patently unacceptable. right? we can take that down to the microcosm of people escaping from slavery or the people in this book. people leaving mississippi and alabama and coming to chicago. folks told them you will freeze to death. the press published articles about how cold it was in chicago and how people would die.

how terrible it was going to be. it is kind of terrible sometimes. but you can't stay where you are because you're afraid of where you're going or you don't know.i invite you to stumble with me forward into the dark. periodically, you can have a flashlight or a match or whatever and when you see that, you just have to follow it further and hope you're somewhere better than when you are five minutes ago. and then we all die and hopefully someone picked up where we left off. think you.thank you so much. [applause] >> my name is - - i am also a poet and abolitionist. as firing teacher. i guess as a fellow poet and self named activist, i'm wondering how you make sure you take care of yourself when you're writing about difficult topics like these?

because i try to write about difficult topics, especially as black history. it can be emotionally taxing and i'm wondering how i can better take care of myself? >> thank you for the important question been you can't write academically about things that impact people that look like you been in some cases impacts you've been there are all the stories about how black women in academia still have terrible health outcomes and early mortality. it's like terrible for me to read those things about my little self. i think you have to figure out ways of building distance and taking breaks. i tried to not reach him at his myself through my writing. i feel like when i was growing up, the image of what i was given what it meant to be a black woman poet is you had to put everything on the page and put all of your pain in the world and that's what people wanted to hear from you. part of what i was trying to do with electric arches went - -

was right a different book. some people like you got called the n-word. most of the things that have happened, i've never written about and probably never will. i think you have to take breaks. recognize those boundaries for yourself. you also have to have a community of people that you can talk it through with. i'm also a big believer in therapy. writing is not therapy contrary to what people say. therapy is therapy and writing is writing. there is one thing that is therapy, and that is therapy i'm a big believer in that and having this designated space. but it's really tough. when i wrote those in the schoolyard, i had to listen to recordings of kids crying for hours on end.

like please don't close my school. i don't want my school to go with you knowing at the end of the story, their school is closed. people on tape begging people in power to not do something that they later did. that was really difficult. so i think you have to be aware and know there's no kind of glory or obligation in pushing through or fighting for been you take the break should be to take and talk to the people you need to talk to. yeah, thank you. [applause] you can clap. that was tonya. >> i want to ask a question about the revolution. >> the french revolution? >> i am so grateful for you and your work. love your work. loved electric arches and goes in the schoolyard even though when i was reading that, i was thinking about the social production of space. and - - [indiscernible]. and ongoing struggles and not

portraying these struggles of history's past because there are foregone conclusion as somebody who aspires to be a radical educator in k-12 education. it's a bizarre time because naked power and domination - - >> glamorized, celebrated. >> yeah, so the spaces of freedom in the classroom and between schools have been so clamped down that i just want to create a wormhole with students and create an autonomy away from the system. the powers that are hurting them and the way the economic system is structured. some of us could benefit by stepping on the next of others. and so, the question is, what do you do as a medical educator that wants to bring the revolution to communities and

schools to create spaces of freedom for kids? how do you do that under naked power and domination? >> that is a great question that does not have a simple answer. but i appreciate it. i think what you're unearthing is the tension you constantly have to work through. but i think one thing is, - - tells us we actually can never bring. people in an oppressive social system can never bring freedom or liberation to other people. liberation is something that people who are in oppressed circumstances have to find for themselves. one of the things you can do is step aside. try to give people tools and reading. essentially as an educator where there are young people in front of you that the state says you get to spend x hours of day with them. what does it mean to give them the tools to understand their own political power and then be

willing to step aside. i think what you said about history is important because one of the most powerful things we can do for our young people is highlight the stories of incredibly mundane, average people in changing the world. part of what i wanted to do with ghosts and the schoolyard is talk about cps even has a history. my colleague elizabeth - - does a similar thing with her book. - - something people don't think of as even having historical reality. and highlighting for young people, do you know that to protest segregation in the 60s, 220,000 sepia students walked out of school. 40 percent walked out of school on freedom day and protested in 1963. and they were not any different than you've been if you've heard me talk, you've heard me

say this before so i apologize if it's repetitive. we talk about the march on washington and martin luther king giving an awesome speech. but somebody had to make sure there were permits.somebody had to make sure people have things to even somebody had to make sure there was childcare during the planning minutes. someone had to say , are you going to the march remark do you need a ride? how will you get there? it is the majority of the work. how do we valorize narratives, especially in how we to teach to young people. how do we valorize the every day. the revolution needs and designers. yoga instructors. people who need to make sure the slideshow works properly. everybody needs to find their lane and get in where they fit in. if you only have a charismatic person who gives a great speech, that's not how social change happens. how do we teach young people to see and valorize those other roles they can play. i think that's a small answer to part of your question. [applause]

>> we are out of time. >> oh no. this young person, you can speak to me afterwards. thank you all so much but i'm so grateful you're here. thank you for the great questions. >> happy to do it. [applause] [inaudible conversations] >> there will be an autograph signing on the way out. [inaudible conversations] >> a look at racism in schools. live from the printers row lit fest in ch