yesterday through saturday. you can visit our website online. a reminder, tomorrow we are featuring charlie brown. one thing i will say was so important, for some people, there's time available, there are so many loads we use from audre lorde and others but we see the text around them, it is so much more of an impact. just give it a chance. thank you for tuning in and we will see you tomorrow right here. take care. >> good morning, good afternoon, good evening, depending on your time zone. welcome to the second annual literary festival.

exhibitions at the schomburg center for research in black culture coming to you live from new york city in my little living room. thank you for tuning in to this full day of conversation. 1963, magazine profile of james talks about reading his way to the library in harlem where he grew up which is what became the schomburg center. he said you think your pain and heartbreak are unprecedented in the history of the world but then you read, it was books that taught me the things that tormented me most were the very things that brought me to the people who are alive, have ever been alive. who says you can't read or write deliberation? you can see a literary festival expands notions of black man's

introducing to scholars, children's book authors, memoirs, those who write our joy and sorrow, rage and triumph. those who have new ideas and spark our nation, help us make sense of the path past the plan for the future. take you to all of our authors and moderators on our virtual stage today, i will call each name. thank you cortez, chase, roxan roxanne, doctor brian jones, wanda, shane, alexandria, uganda titman. i think they are all authors and

writers and thinkers who exhibit exactly what i described previously. earlier this summer, the schomburg center released a black liberation meeting for adults and young people. i hope you will create your own and add to the list we have created you can find those books and more by visiting our website at schomburg.orc. black culture as you saw in the video, celebrating its 95 years of the world's leading cultural institutions and the expedition materials focused on black experiences. the items that eliminate the history and culture, james baldwin, article we got. imposed by covid-19, we have migrated online or you can access the archival collections

and enjoy programs. please visit our website at schomburg.org. by the end of the literary festival, we have engaged 35 authors, moderators sharing narratives on the u.s. leading in two diverse expenses of people's dissent. it took off the final day of the festival, author of begin again, james baldwin and his urgent message. if you are watching from our website, scroll down to the bottom, you can also shop through the schomburg website and navigate between the pages. larson is also a librarian. last but not least, check out the book, you can also rewatch all the programs that have

happened monday through thursd thursday. in conversation with my colleague, the director of the schomburg center. following the conversation, we will have time, possibly, hopefully, for questions from the audience. please submit your questions at any time we will do our best to get as many as possible. a reminder, you can order begin again if you're not on our schomburg center literary website, you can go online. use the audience will not be part, please be mindful. be kind to your audience and thank you for tuning in. welcome doctor brian jones to introduce doctor eddie. >> hello.

i am excited to be here and for this conversation with our first guests. i have so many questions. i promise to save time for your questions as well so please submit those in the chat. i am thrilled to introduce eddie junior, the james s mcdonald distinguish university professor and chair of the department of african-american studies at princeton university. he's from mississippi graduate of morehouse college in atlanta, georgia and author of several books including democracy and black. race still enslaves the american soul is here to take to talk about his newest book, begin again james baldwin's america and urgent lessons for our own. i understand professor has a selection to read for us as we begin today.

>> please call me eddie. we can put aside all formalities. first, let me thank the schomburg and brother kevin and especially you, for allowing me allowing me to talk about the book. i decided to read from the introduction. i arrived in germany on a hot saturday morning the day after leaving new jersey. this was the beginning of my stay at the university in the 2019 james w a word, one on the eastern shore of maryland and, 1809. escaping slavery at the age of 18. as the first black man to attend classes at the yale university. a minister in 1849, it afforded him honorary doctorate. the first time to believe european university on his honor

of an african-american. here i was, a country boy from mississippi who were about religious and race in the u.s. flying across the world, the university founded in 1886. i met james, an american graduate student in a small town in michigan sitting there and i checked into my apartment, number two, 60 -- number 64. he got me settled on the first day of my university. the apartment was small. i opened the door and immediately found myself in a kitchenette with the bathroom shower right next to it. the stove had two burners, the oven and microwave. five steps in, i stood in my bedroom, living room, dining room. the bed doubled as a couch and i sat at my desk, nothing else

mattered after that. the apartment with high ceilings, kept the room closing in on you. comfort was his primary concern. part of the campus, it is a stretch to describe it campus in any american sense, it wasn't damaged at all. the buildings felt they were constructed in the 60s and 70s. little character, strictly functional. they waited for me outside. we were going to buy my train pass, check out the grocery store and travel to the old ci city. as we entered the station, i heard screaming people in front of us stood still and stared at commotion. i followed their eye. for police were piled on a black man. one officer had his knee on the man's back and the others twisted his arms, his hands halfway down his legs. his bare butt exposed.

he was down on the concrete as if they were trying to leave an imprint on him the man let out a bloodcurdling scream. all eyes were on him as the crowd stood by and watched intently like spectators at a soccer game without real attachment to the players. they watched the police the black man, their faces revealed nothing. they were inscrutable, at least to me. i had not been there for two hours and police had a black man pressed down on the concrete there knee in his back. he screamed again, i didn't understand his pain worse. i didn't know what he had done, if anything. i only knew screaming was all too familiar. james turned deep red and for some reason, felt the need to apologize to me.

there's a kind of isolation being in a place where you did not know the language. words cannot interrupt your vision, silence allows you to see different. during my short time in heidelberg, the wildflowers, the cobblestone rose, the old building leading into new construction. one noticed sadness, perhaps the feeling of a place experiencing devastation of war or the effect of having the u.s. military base shutdown and the struggle of figuring out what would happen next. i saw the whiteness of the pla place, the color here and there and played all green and served only if you're being food. a language i could not understand. i was experiencing even in that moment, i was not in the united states and in my mind, that is a good thing. i didn't have to go on television and explain what happened at the train station, i

didn't have to explain to james either. i wondered at the time if this is what james baldwin initially felt when he lived abroad. escape to deal what was happening. it was a refuge of sort in his early days. whatever baldwin faces there, at least he didn't have to deal with the racial nonsense here and what was afforded him, he could reimagine himself. it's exhausting to find oneself over and over again navigating the world that the assumptions about you and those who look like you. to see and read about insert harm, death and english but another reason because you are black or black and for black and trans work for me, the daily grind consuming. i cannot escape the news, i am drowning in it. the nastiness of the country as

so many feel like it's going underwater. heidelberg afforded some critical distance of brief refuge from it all. a small apartment, a place where did not know the language. offered me opportunity to be still, quiet my head and think about my country the moment we currently find ourselves in. >> there we go. >> thank you so much for that excerpt from the introduction and as you speak, speak it out loud, i am thinking about the feeling so many people are having just this week that is hurting and feeling sometimes underwater in the news cycle. but why is it that this book, by

you, who is so often a political commentator, what drew you back to baldwin as a way to think about where we are right now? >> i have been thinking with baldwin for about 30 years. ever since graduate school. although, i was hesitant in grad school to approach him because i knew what he would do that when i finally started reading him, he became one of the most important resources how i made sense of the world and how i made sense of democracy, how i read that system so baldwin is kind of a scholarly resource so in the shade of blue, every aspect of the book is, except the last chapter, is baldwin. in democracy, baldwin is the spine of the book. as i'm trying to engage

aristotle dewey, baldwin is the screen door they have to come through for me to say what i said in that book so finally i decided to bring him on stage, get in from behind the scene, the front of the stage. it had everything to do with my own attempt, to grapple with my own and i knew what jimmy went through in the latter days of his career. i wanted to find resources to grapple with my own despair in the states of what looks like, in the face of what is. these folks had done it again. white folks have done it again and i had to find, i had to make sense of it and jimmy was the first person i turned to. >> to help us understand the title following on that, what is the sense in which you saw

baldwin "begin again". "begin again" after what? is what you see it beginning again or needing to "begin again"? >> a wonderful question. his last novel, just above my head, it is an epic book in so many ways. gospel music at its core. it's the moment in the text were in the novel where the character says describe what happens after the assassination, he said the dream was shattered in effect and people scattered and we knew we did. some went bad, some were killed, some were in jail. he says responsibility is not lost, it's advocated. if one refuses application that it begins. baldwin collapsed that of doctor king and 68. they murdered the apostle of

love and what does that say about the country? he had to figure out how to pick up the pieces, 69 he attempted suicide and he found some rest but he was still very fragile and vulnerable. although when the race came out, the first manuscript in the aftermath of his assassination. in there, he's trying to pick up the pieces and give birth to that book. it took everything baldwin was trying to grapple with the fact that the country had turned its back on the promise, the sacrifice of the black freedom. it's not only collected richard nixon and 68 and 72 but elected ronald reagan of all people is trying to make sense of that

moment and to make sense of those of us who survived it and those of us were coming of age in it. so to answer the latter part of your question, i wanted to figure out, give an account of the latest betrayal i wanted to give an account of all of those activists, wanted to write to all the activists in 2014 and before who risked everything to bring the country's attention to what the police were doing to us. i'm thinking about ferguson and the advocates in many who are dead. some are in jail and some were dying in front of us. it is a country doubled down on this obviously unqualified human being. i wanted to write to them in our moment of betrayal, what i call in the book the aftermath.

>> rights. there is an interesting way in which baldwin, and i see you in this book, following baldwin's example in mining and interrogating the society and in doing so, or trying to do so more prospectively analyzing and interrogating. not giving up on people. i can't get over this quote, there are so many wonderful baldwin quotes you share with us in this book. let me just read one. this is the aftermath king's assassination. this is baldwin, most people are not in action very much and yet, every human being and unprecedented miracle. one tries to treat them as the

miracles they are while trying to protect oneself against the disasters they become. i wonder if you could talk a bit about the personal journey for you in writing this book and what you wrestled with. baldwin is wrestling with a lot. he's got a lot of demons chasing him, he attempted suicide but for him to come out of these dramatic expenses of movement, trying to reconcile people in disasters feels to me helpful. >> in the moment, i lived my life, so i can turn around. the name of the street in that moment. that paragraph is so important because the first section of that paragraph, his death, that

tremendous day in atlanta, something has altered in me, something has gone. he gives us this insight human beings are miracles and disasters. he's trying to give an account of what is broken in him because he believes in this system, it is not worth living. unless we say anything about the messiness of the world, we have to deal with the messiness of our own lives so this is why baldwin is one of the critical voices were a certain kind of journalism including the autobiographical. the way in which we account for the world, we implicate ourselves in it. there is this -- i barely survived writing to think book. almost drink myself into a

stupor part of the everything to do with confronting, as i've said over and over, the scaffolding of my own life. that became the precondition to speak honestly about the country and misery. because the. after fantasize. the misery. it is in that moment when i in the honest, that's when the words on the page started to jump. i should just get us shot out to schaumburg because in the archives, in the manuscripts, i

found so many resources where jimmy is just grappling with the grittiness or the funkiness of human doings and human sufferi suffering. >> thank you for the shout out to the schaumburg center. you were a frequent, back when we could physically be there. i can't wait until we can get back. say something about your experience there. conducting research the. >> it's wonderful. because of my schedule, sometimes i don't know when i'm going to be in the city. i would get a call from joe wanting me to be on and i would shoot a quick e-mail and usually that's supposed to happen and particularly given the demand,

that time around, i would be lucky and there would be space available and others would do amazing things for me but i would leave morning joe and make my way to the schaumburg. of course it would be too early so i would have to go around to the library. i am in the county library getting myself together. i am in a suit and people would say i think i just saw you. there'd be shout outs and everything that would make my way to the schaumburg and it was there i found this memo letter that baldwin wrote to robert kennedy. ...

a begging letter. or the letter i found which was so amazing, which i wrote about later it didn't make it into the book but this exchange that he had with hugh downs. and with hugh downs recent death, i actually used some of this paragraphs on twitter, where downs is asking baldwin for help, right? he wants to be more useful to

this moment and baldwin writes this extraordinary letter, or the exchanges between him and toni morrison and i would be in the library trying desperately not to shout, not to say, oh, my god, that's sort of thing. amazing. >> i'm thinking about what you said about writing this book for activists, and baldwin, too as you describe, saw himself as loyal and accountable to the activists, also intention with them. seems like particularly after king's death there's a tension with baldwin and the black power movement in particular, and one of those tensions is about blackness and identity and baldwin's view of blackness and identity as something that is a

kind of essential resource for organizing and struggling but also potentially a trap. >> i think baldwin's relationship with black power is as with everything with him, is complex and nuanced. he never -- i'm sure he had johnnie walker black until the sun rows, sun rose, but he understood why stokley or tour rey would say black power in june of '66 in greenwood, mississippi. he refused to let the nation smith those. refused to let the black

bourgeois dismiss them. the same young people who were fighting and confronting raw terror in the bowels of the south. as youthful know we tend to tell the story of black power as if it's holy separate from the civil rights movement when they're some of the same actors, stokley carmikele was one of the most -- he only broke nonviolent discipline once and that's when he police attacked dr. king. so baldwin understood black power and also understand -- understood its traps. worried about a certain preoccupation with a black ms. does the preoccupation with power according to bailed bald wine should notice blind us to the more question, who do we take ourselveses to be, and if we found ourselves fixating on a category that blinds us to the

humanity of the human being right in front of us, we can in fact become monsterrous, too so there's an ongoing critique of what he calls the mystic tall black bullshit. jimmy will be jimmy. but at the same time he is critical of a certain kind of info vacation of blackness, he also understands it's -- the beauty of invocation and the take the blackness and possess it as our own we have reject our agreement with white america. so black is beautiful for this man born in harlem in 1924, to assert that is a radical injures to and suggests we have finally left behind our internal agreement with what white america says about us. that's powerful. but then he has to also deal

with the likes of eldridge cleaver and folks who questioned his sexuality. eldridge cleaver says baldwin is the most self-hating black man he has ever encountered. that real wyoming what he wants to do is have white men's babies. that eldridge cleaver and his hypermasculinity could not deal with the complexity of baldwin's own posture and hurt him deeply, wounding kind of moment, yet and still baldwin did not retreat, even in no name in the streets. and he knew and understood the cost. there's a reason why he never got the nobel. >> he capes his arrows aimed issue his public arrows aimed at white supremacy and what he calls the lie of america.

there's a part in here where you say that the innocence of the idea of american innocence needs to die. can you talk but what you're putting forward as a way to think about american history. i hear you inviting people into a new way of thinking about american history that is about facing things more squarely and putting aside what baldwin calls the lie, the big lie. >> yeah. in 1962, in an essay he wrote nor new york review of book entitled "as much truth as one can bear" want in give a shoutout to laid randall keenan that gave us access to many of the essays and talks you can find in the schomburg collection. we want to just -- i know he is up there doing exactly what he

does, and we want to give all his loved ones our prayers in their loss, but in that is say, there's this wonderful line he says the trouble is deeper than we wish to think because the trouble is in us. and until we conference our gasalier failures we can never build. i'm paraphrasing here -- that's human community to which we aspire. and there's a sense in which baldwin is also asking us as he does in the 1965 in the essay, issue of ebony, on the white man 's guilt. where he says history is present. it's just self-police past. we carry it within us. there's this insistence that we confront with what we have done that we are honest with what we have done, because in order to

change it, we have to confront it. and in that confrontation we at least put in place the conditions or the possibility for us to be otherwise, which is key. and so i write in the book -- i not only write that the idea of american innocence needs to die, i also say that the idea of white america is irredeemable. but it doesn't follow from that that we are. that requires a kind of honesty and maturity that i think america is always avoiding, evading. we like our innocence. >> yes. i think it's interesting, speaking of whooping out loud, theirs part of you book where i'm whoopingout -- whooping out loud because you offer tweet get out of some of the kind of stuckness of mainstream

political discussion about race and class and working class white people, economic anxiety, trump voters, some particular portion about where i was like, preach! bottom of 114, my wife is like what arerod reading, bottom of 114, top of 15 you say our task then is not save trump voters nor is it to demonize them. our task is to work with every ounce of passion and every drop of love we have to make the kingdom new. i wonder if you can talk -- unpack that a little bit for us. >> sure. again, remember i'm walking with jimmy here, and there's this -- no longer obtains in the academy about this purr advertisizetime of jimmy as the early baldwin, the late baldwin, the late

baldwin represents a clear dine for echo campbell's horrible formulation that baldwin's voice broke in 1963 and he became -- his esthetics esthetics esthetid to propaganda. no maim in the street is the anchor to the book. i'm in conversation with what he is trying to do in that text. michael, the wonderful professor of african-american studies emeritus at university of -- baldwin rechanged and he one -- would no longer preoccupied with trying to get white people to see themselves differently. and in thinking through that, i thought what follows from that? yet he still believed in the new

jerusalem. and i said, now, the way in which i rad the relationship between fire next time and no name in streets, fire next team is a prophecy. no name in the street is the reckoning. so there's a formulation at the end of the fire next time, the relatively few blacks and white and like we like loves blah blah plow. think what is the consistent thread here. he's not turn is his back on white allies but we i says we only have a finite amount of civic energy and we spend so much time trying to convince those who are committed to insidious views about your and my value that we don't have enough energy to actually build the world we're trying to build. and then we compromise with them and have to bear at the brunt of the compromise. it's like general kelly, you want us to compromise with the south? in the context of the civil war?

what the hell does that mean? >> it means holding us hostage politically. >> exactly. we see it now with this unbreakable obsession that the democratic party has with the reagan democrat, trying to convince them, to love them again, and so here we are, spending our energy or bearing the brunt of the compromise when i think we should be spending our energy trying to build the world where none of this stuff has a quarter to breathe. that's where i want to spend my energy, and if like-mind folk who happen to be white whatnot -- want to join in, then hallelujah. >> a couple of more questions i have for you. building off of that you also -- one thing you reckon with

towards the end of the book is your own way of -- your own looking back on your own stances in 2016 in the 2016 election, and trying to rethink the way you understood that. again using baldwin's ideas about reagan's election. talk it pow you're now think can get the playing place of election in our politic is. >> democracy and black i had this moment where i'm confronting this reality of how american politics works, where black folk are treated as cattle chewing cud to be herded to the polls every two and four years are or what mid-this will cheerie u.s.es and scientist describe us as a captured electorate. the way in which we participates

in the democratic process is distorted because of the way in which the republican party figures itself. we're kind of stuck, and so every year member comes and promises something to us and then they take us for granted. and then we found ourselves for eight years during the obama presidency in some ways muting the hell we were catching as a result of the great recession, and obama declaring to us that i'm not the president of black america. i'm the president of all america and i remember saying, no one asked you that. you're not the president of the lgbtq america but you're dressing it you're net the president of women but you're addressing it. we want you to respond to us as a constituency that voted for you've 90%. to break there is -- this a feature of clintonism and triangulation and the right.

so i thought we had an opportunity in the 2016 election cycle to break the back of clintonism, to reject this and so i'm a reader of desk and i love the novel blindness. called for a blankout, we turn out in massive anybodies and if the the democratic party doesn't put forward an agenda that speaks tower suffering, then we leave the presidential ballot blank and vote downballot. when the republican party nominated donald trump i was like this is a really interesting opportunity because there's no way the country will elect someone so obviously unqualified to be the profit the out. that was my first mistake. i overestimated white folks. that was my first mistake. and then as a life long reader of baldwin i should have known better. so even when i wrote a piece with the political scientist fred hair rouse out of columbia,

saying, okay, trump is dangerous, what we need to do is if you're in a battle ground state voice for hillary clinton. if you're not vote for constance. i'm tire of the he democratics pitching pimping us. the it didn't work. and looking back on it, and it's a mistake i pay for every single day, i should have listened to jimmy. sometimes you have to vote to buy yourself some time. so i'll admit it. right? even though that's not enough for some clinton supporters. what they want us to do is to shut up and be quiet and follow orders. but if you're free, if you are free, of innocence, then you are willing to take the risk and

make a mistake. and then admit it. buying time. >> what's what he said. most of us forgets that jimmy carter was france the first neoliberal president. before reagan. those policies of austerity, the way in the he turned his back on the black folk in the term of policy, urban sol si so much sew jesse jackson and as have said we have been bow trade. there was a reason there was alight turnout of black folk that led to reagans election. some of us didn't want to make a choice even though reagan was to us many black power activists in particular, as notorious as george wallace. >> i see that we're -- i'm getting sent some questions from the chat. keep them coming. we're almost there to the part where we'll offer some audience

questions to you, eddie. one last from me is, your idea of elsewhere as a resource for people today who are hurting. i didn't know about baldwin going to istanbul. i learned that's from your back. and it seems like going -- retreating to turkey. i knew but paris but retreating to turkey help he was not a person of means. got himself there. knocked on somebody's door and said, i'm broke. maybe we can't all do transatlantic travel. you went to heidelberg but even if our elsewhere is not across an ocean, you don't write that way. you write about finding an elsewhere as one of the ways -- well, i'll let you say it. what it is that elsewhere, an elsewhere can mean to people who are hurting who didn't too something in and need try draw

themselves to together to move forward. >> they chapter almost didn't get written. was supposed to go to istanbul and going to walk -- retrace baldwin's steps and do that, but as a critic of trump and erdogan's turkey, folk were like, you shouldn't do this. this doesn't make any sense. and so my editor was like, why don't you talk to activists and i was like, we're always asking them. we're also extracting from them and i'm writing to. the i'm writing with them in mind and this is how the chapter emerged, and baldwin didn't leak the word compile. he described himself as a transatlantic commuter. and so i was like so if he's not an exile, what -- how might i describe what he is doing? trying to get the requisite distance from this place to say something pout it. and elsewhere came to mind.

and to be honest, when you look at this extraordinary film from another place, there's a moment when he is standing than balcony and hears something and turned around and i described in the book and his brow is furled, and then his face explodes with this laughter, and i was like do we have all find places, have to find communities that allow to us laugh full belly laughs. we have to have partners and relationships and who allow us to rage to cry, to feel vulnerable, people who love us not because we are on television or because you have your -- you're a director of whatever, whatever, but people who love us because of who we are, and that

community gives you strength. they prop you up when your knees buckle. so we need that kind of community of love, and we need to be open to expanding it over and over again, and we alsod in to figure out how to create the distance from the powers that be, that can turn our eyes bloodshot, because when you're living in this moment and it's constantly coming at you, day in and day out, we have to find a way to disengage and somehow, some ways to disengage is to find solidarity with people who are critiqueing you, who are critiquing it day in and day out. we have to get distance from it because you and i and oars are constantly facing the temptation of the bribe. and the bribe is just you just going to become quiet in the face of the injustice. or just going to be inest? your own brand. and just go out and try to promote what can allow you to

get your paper right. as opposed to speaking to what the moment requires you to -- so we need communities that allow us to laugh full belly laughs. we need disstance so we can speak at the truth put the circumstances of our lives. so we can replenish and enter the fight again, because when jimmy collapsed, he had to figure out how to get up. he had to figure out how to find the language, because how can dethat word the storms keep coming. so he has to give us -- trying to figure out how to give us the resources for the next storm. and so we all have to have our elsewheres, i think. >> thank you for that. let's take some questions from the audience. the first one, can you talk about the value gap? an idea from democracy in black.

>> i'll be quick because we want to get more questions in. they val awe gap is the through line of american history and the value gap is this belief that white people matter more than others. that belief disstores our dispositions and our -- distorts or dispositions and characters and abraham lincoln cannot become the kind of man his view of democracy required plea sizely because he believed that white people matter more than others and so that value gap looks different in the context of slavery than in the context of jim crow and the context of a black man in the white house but we live in society, it's economic, political, social arrangements reflect that somebodies are valued he more than others and even a cop that misses killing breonna taylor, and threatens the life of the white neighbor, he gets held account for just shooting in the

neighbor's apartment, no one is held to account for killing breonna taylor. >> the bullets that miss versus the bullets that land. >> exactly. >> who they miss and who they land on. we have another question about how to move past the compromise you spoke of when it comes to curriculum and this is from a teacher who feels he or she doesn't have autonomy to move away from prescribed curriculum. this is in washington state. feeling like perhaps the compromises you speak. or imbedded in school curriculums, the ideas, the lies. they're in the schools. >> right. and there's always a way in which we can use that material to guide our students on. i tech ketch e teach result i bitman's democratic vistas and there's a way in which i can

teach democratic vistas that can open my student's i'ded to the lie. so there are constrained -- we have been riffing on constraints for a long time. and so i can teach notes on the state of virginia, by tom that jefferson, 1870 and i can give you a whole lecture on racial habits just by reading the notes. so part of what we have to do is be subversive and transgresssive within the constraints as we continue to bring pressure to bear politically on the way in which we teach our children. but you can too that work in the classroom. we just have to be creative. >> right. that's a great answer because baldwin is not on the curriculum everywhere. looks like baldwin is coming out more' more. this is a moment in which that's

there's a new interest in bald win, a library of america coming out with the new anthology. your book. why is this a moment for baldin. >> you have "black lives matter." this movement that in front of it is queer men and women, for grounding, trans, the way "black lives matter" is queering black politics and i think that baldwin is the most insightful critic of race and democracy every produced. i'm surprised about my book. recall's documently i'm not your negro is not important as well. aim talking about the late baldwin, and because i was

worried they were about to make him santa claus. that he is just going to be loved, notes, no. no. no. no, you can't run past the rage. you can't run past the biting condemnation and indictment. if you are going to embrace him, embrace all of him and i say that not only -- let me say i say nat not only to white brothers and sisters, say that to black brothers and sisters when i say embrace him. don't mean agree with him. grapple with all of hill. because the witness is a life arelong witness. >> your book is a helpful resource for people trying to do that grappling. that's what you're doing in this book. you're kind of gramming with baldwin. we have to leave it there. i want to thank you so much for your participation. this has been a treat. please pick up "begin again" by

eddie flawed go to schomburg shop.com to get a copy. >> on sunday december 6th. eddie flawed bill be a guest on our program "in depth." join the conversation that day by calling in with your questions and comments. >> here their current best-selling books. top the list this essential scalia, collection of the late supreme court justice antonin askal's writings. that's followed by journalist rick bragg's writing but the south in which i come from emthen in sicily 43 the author remembers the allied invasion of italy. after that they late author winston groom examines the political lives of alexander hamilton, thomas jefferson and john adams. and wrapping if our look at the best selling books, is the sentinel, the latest in author lee child's fictional jack

reacher series. some over the authors have appeared on booktv and you can watch event online at broadcast boost.org. >> here is programs to watch out for. tonight on our author interview program, "after words," the "washington post" pulitzer prize winning book critic offers thoughts on he books written but president trump. and a discussion of he late supreme court justice al tonin askee's writing and then programs from the recent schomburg literary festival in new york city. find more information at booktv.org. >> i'm'll be acting as your host. on behalf of the group i want to thank you for coming. i also want to thank the rest of