to many more stories together that have avoided crime. >> and thank you again for tonight because every dollar of this book but i get my hands on the national center for exploited children when i wrote the $25000 check to them i am just so grateful. >> thank you. more exciting book festival events are coming up for go check your local jcp for updated listing stay safe, stay healthy and stay tuned. good night.

>> good morning good afternoon good evening. the second annual schaumburg center leader is one - - literary festival. 's programs here at the schaumburg center coming to you live from new york city in my little one - - in my living room thank you for tuning in for conversation with authors from across the world life magazine profile of james baldwin talked about where he grew up which is where he became the schaumburg center and said the pain and heartbreak those that connected me to all the people who are alive to introduce us

to those with the joy and the sorrow and to spark the imagination and then to confront the present a plan for the future thank you to all the moderators 11:00 a.m. to 5:30 p.m. eastern and

alexandria and those thinkers who exhibit what i described previously earlier the schaumburg center for adults and young people i hope you will add to the list we have created's by visiting the website at schaumburg center one of the leading cultural institutions to research preservation the public archives with history and culture whose archives we acquired in 2017 continuing to

navigate the quarantine and enjoy those programs at schaumburg at the literary festival authors and moderators for when we came to west africa and jamaica with those experiences and author of begin again james baldwin and the urgent lessons if you're watching this scroll down to the bottom also shop on the schaumburg website we navigate between those three stages with langston hughes and also others who are a

librarian check out the full schedule of events and you can also re- watch all the programs that have happened monday through thursday on a show called rewind. we will be in conversation with my colleague the associate director of education at the schaumburg center we will have time name possibly for questions from the audience we will do our best to get to as many questions as possible just a reminder you can order begin again on the literary festival website you can go to schaumburg shops.com we are recording for the archives but you will not be part of the recording please be mindful of your fellow audience members

and thank you for tuning in with that said thank you to ryan jones. i am excited to be here i have so many questions and i promise to save some time for your questions as well and i am thrilled to introduce the distinguished university professor and chair of the department of african-american studies and as a graduate of morehouse college in atlanta georgia and the author of several books including democracy and black and is

here today to talk about his newest book james baldwin's america and the urgent lessons i understand the professor has a selection to read as we begin today. welcome. thank you for being here. >> first let me think the schaumburg allowing me the opportunity to talk about the book. read from the introduction if that is okay. i arrived in heidelberg germany the day after leaving newark new jersey. the beginning of my time as a recipient of the pennington award on the eastern shore of maryland in 19 oh nine escaping slavery at the age of 18.

going on to become a minister in 1849 award him the honorary doctorate. the first time the university and here i was then to fly across the world to accept the honor named after pennington with university he founded in 1386. in a small town in michigan studying at heidelberg as i checked into my apartment. the elevator wasn't working so we walked up three flights of stairs. the apartment was small and i found myself in a kitchenette with a bathroom shower right next to it the stove had to

burners and the oven was a microwave is to do my living room bedroom dining room the bed - - as a couch and i spotted my desk nothing else mattered after that. the high ceilings kept the room from closing in on you, was not a primary concern as part of the campus and that is a stretch in any american sense was not appealing at all. all the buildings out they were constructed in the sixties and seventies little character strictly functional. and to check out the grocery store. as we entered the station i heard screaming. people stood still and stared at a commotion. i follow their eyes. policeman were piled on a

black man one twisted his arm his pants were halfway down his legs and his bare ass exposed. they pressed his head down into the concrete as if they were trying to leave the imprint he let out a bloodcurdling scream all eyes were on him like spectators at a soccer game i watch them as they watch the police in the black man their faces revealed nothing. they were inscrutable to me. i had not been heidelberg two hours and a black man's face was pressed down in the concrete with the knee in his back. he screamed again. i did not understand his words.

i did not know what he had done, if anything. i only knew the screen was familiar. james turned deep red and for some reason felt the need to apologize to me. there is an isolation being in a place you do not know the language words to interrupt your vision silence allows you to see differently. and in the landscape the wildflowers in the cobblestone roads one noticed the sadness with the devastation of war and then to shut down the struggle of what would happen next. the soul food restaurant to play out green serving only ethiopian food and the harshness of the language i could not understand even in that initial traumatic moment

i was not in the united states and that was a good thing in my mind i have to go on television to explain what happened at the train station i have to explain it to james either. and what if this is what he felt when he lived abroad. and what was happening because of it. at least you didn't have to deal with the barrage of the silence and could reimagine himself. it is exhausting to find oneself over and over again with the deadly assumptions and those that look like you to see and read about death and anguish because you are

black and poor or black and trans. i cannot escape the news. i am drowning in it. and those that feel like it is going underwater. heidelberg afforded a critical refuge from it all and a place i did not know the language to offer me an opportunity to be still and quiet my head and think about my country and the moment we currently find ourselves in. there we go. >> thank you so much for that the excerpt from the introduction. as you speak it out loud the feeling so may people are having just this week that it

is hurting and feeling underwater why is it this book what do you back to baldwin to think about where we are right now? >> thinking about baldwin for 30 years. was hesitant in graduate school to approach him. but when i finally started reading he became one of the most important resources for the world and how i made sense and so baldwin is a scholarly resource so every epigraph of the book is last chapter is an

epigraph from baldwin it is the spine of the book to engage aristotle baldwin is the screen door they have to come through for me to say what i said in the book so finally i decided to bring him on the stage from behind the scenes to the front and i know what jimmy went through in the latter days of his career and in the face of what look like for it is that white folk had done it again i had to make

sense of it and jimmy was the first person i turned to. >> so what is the sense in which you begin again after what? and that you see us as beginning again? >> that's a good question i get the title from the last novel just above my head and it is an epic book in so many ways with gospel music at its core but a moment in the text where the character says describe what happens after the assassination and the dream was shattered and people scattered and we knew what we did some were mad somewhere in jail some of the country. the responsibility is not lost it is advocated if one refuses then they begin again so that

was an echo. baldwin collapsed after the assassination of doctor king and 68. they killed and murdered so what does that say about the country? and 69 attempted suicide and he found respite in instant bull that was vulnerable and although rap on race came out many in the street with the first manuscript after the assassination on their he tries to pick up the pieces and to give birth to that book that he calls the mighty

motherfucker excuse my language and with the struggle that not only elected nixon but also ronald reagan of all people. so he tried to make sense of that moment and to make sense of those of us who survived it and those of us who were coming-of-age in it. so to answer the latter part of your question, i wanted to figure out and give an account of the latest betrayal of all of those and i wanted to write all those activist in 2014 and those who risked everything to bring the country's attention to what the police were doing to us like ferguson and all those activist and many of whom are dead. somewhere in jail but they were dying in front of us and here the country doubles down

on this obviously unqualified human being. so i wanted to write to them in our moment of betrayal what i call the afterthought. >> there is an interesting way in which bolden - - baldwin and acu following his example to interrogate society and in doing sue one - - doing so more honestly or perceptively and analyzing and interrogating. and not giving up on people. i cannot get over this quotation there are so many wonderful baldwin"that you share in this book let me just read one. after the aftermath after king's assassination most

people are not worth very much in action but yet every human being is the unprecedented miracle one tries to treat them as the miracles they are well trying to protect oneself against the disasters they have become. >> yes. >> can you just talk about as a personal journey for you in writing this book and what you wrestled with? baldwin is wrestling with a lot he attempted suicide but for him to come out of these traumatic experiences to reconcile people as miracles and disasters, feels to me like hopeful resource. >> in that moment i'm in my

library so i can turn around. and that paragraph is so important because the first sentence is since martin's death and that tremendous day in atlanta, something has altered in me and something has gone. he gives the insight they are miracles and disasters and try to give the account of what had broken in him. because baldwin believes in the socratic system and that if we say anything about the messiness of the world, we have to deal with our own lives. so this is why baldwin is one of the critical voices for certain journalism that includes the autobiographical the way in which we account for the world we implicate

ourselves in it. i barely survived writing the damn book almost drink myself into a stupor. part of that had everything to do with confronting as i said over and over again the scaffolding of my own life. and that became the precondition to speak honestly about the country and the misery as is called the. after and it's in that moment that i am dead on is the sentence on the page began to jump and i should say thi this, actually i should give a shout out to the schaumburg

because it is in the archives and the schaumburg the rear manuscripts and book division that i found so many resources where he is just grappling with the grittiness as cornell west says the funkiness the human doings and sufferings it was beautiful in that sense. >> thank you for the shout out to the schomburg center home to a large collection of james baldwin's papers. and you were a frequent schomburg center back when we could physically be there i wish we could get back. say something about your experience there to conduct research and elsewhere also. >> it's wonderful. because of my schedule, sometimes i don't know when i will be in the city, so i would get the call

wanting to be on than a word shoot a quick e-mail and particularly given the demand that you guys had during that time around his papers 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 tape that and then make my way to the schaumburg and of course it would be too early. have to go around to the common library. i'm in the library getting myself together and i'm in a suit. they would say i just saw you and give me shout outs and then i would make my way to the schaumburg and there i found this little memo letter

that baldwin wrote to robert kennedy on behalf of all those who met with him and 63 and harry belafonte and jerome smith and he's writing this note to remember that little memo pad? he wrote the note expressing his own grief and sharing kennedy's grief for the death of his brother and using that suffering as the bridge. and to read baldwin's letter begging lorraine to help them. it was a begging letter it was hilarious. or that what i found which was so amazing that i wrote about later it didn't make it into the book. with this exchange he had with hugh downs. and with his recent death

actually used some of those paragraphs on twitter were downs is asking baldwin for help. he wants to be more useful to this moment and baldwin writes an extraordinary letter these exchanges between him and toni morrison i would be in the library desperately trying not to shout and say oh my god. it was amazing. >> thinking about what you said about writing this book for activist and baldwin as you describe saw himself as and accountable to the activist but also particularly after king's death there is

attention where baldwin and the black power movement in particular in one of those is about blackness and identity and baldwin's view of blackness and identity that is the essential resource for struggling. >> i think baldwin's relationship with black power as with everything is nuanced he never betrayed those young people he promised them in that apartment in dc where they were drinking i'm sure she had johnny walker black. but he understood why stokely would say black power in

mississippi. he refused to let the nation and dismiss them. we have to confront her vision people were the same that were fighting or confronting in the bowels of the south. and to tell the story wholly separate from the civil rights movement was some of the same actors stokely carmichael was one of the most skilled organizers he only broke nonviolent discipline wants so baldwin understood black power but he also understood the traps he was worried about a certain preoccupation because that should not blind us to

the moral question at the heart of the matter and we take ourselves to be? and if we found ourselves fixated on the category that binds us to the humanity right in front of us in fact we can become monstrous to. there is an ongoing critique of that mystical black bullshit. when he is critical of blackness he also understands it is the beauty of the invocation once we take this term a category of blackness and process that as our own and we have rejected with wet white america says about us. black is beautiful for the man born in harlem in 1924 that is

a radical gesture to suggest we are finally left behind the internal agreement with white america says about us and that is powerful but then also deal with the likes of eldridge cleaver and sexuality that is the most self-feeding black he has ever encountered he was to have white men's babies in the hyper- masculinity could not deal with the complexity of baldwin's posture and it hurt him deeply it was a wound moment and yet baldwin did not betray and then to understand that's a reason why he never got the nobel.

>> he keeps his those aimed at white supremacy. there is a part in here you say the innocence and the idea of american innocence needs to die and you talk about what you put forward as a way to think about american history. i hear you inviting people into a new way of thinking is facing things more clearly to put aside where baldwin calls the big lie. >> in 1962 nsa he will for the new york review of books as much truth as one can bear giving a shout out to that extraordinary edited volume

that gave us access to many of the essays that you can find in the schaumburg collection i know he is a pair doing what he does and to give all the loved ones players. on - - players but to say the trouble is deeper than we wish to take. and then told me confront our gas the failures we can never build to that community to which we can aspire and in the issue of evidence with the

white man's guilt and it is history we carried out within us. so this insistence that we confront what we have done we are honest with what we have done so we have to confront it and to put in place for us to be otherwise which is key so i write in the book the idea of american innocence needs to die but it is irredeemable but it doesn't follow from now that we are spirit that requires and honesty and maturity i think america is always avoiding and evading. we like our innocence. >> there are parts of your

book i am yelling out loud because you offer helpful ways to get out the mainstream political discussion of race and class working-class white people economic anxiety and trump voters in those particular portions and i was preach. my wife said what are you reading? and then you say it's not to say the trump voters were to demonize them but to work with every ounce of passion and every drop of blood we have to make the kingdom new. can you unpack that little bit? >> again remember i am walking with jimmy with the baldwin or

the lead to baldwin that represents a decline or to echo campbell's horrible formulation in 1963 that they were subordinated to the propaganda i think that's just wrong for by walking with his later work known as the anchor to the book and the conversation with what he's trying to do, michael, the wonderful professor of african-american studies at the university of massachusetts amherst told me we changed not that he was no

longer preoccupied to get white people to see themselves differently and in thinking that he still believed in the new jerusalem. so the way in which i read the relationship name industry is the reckoning so there is a formulation where he says the relatively few and like lovers i was thinking what is the consistent thread he's not turning his back on white people here saying we only have a finite amount and we spend so much time trying to convince those who are committed to those in city is views of our values we don't

have enough energy to build the world we are trying to build. that may compromise that we have to bear the brunt of the compromise like general kelly he wanted to compromise with the south? what the hell does that mean? >> clothing us hostage. >> we see that now. right? with this unbreakable web session the democratic party has with the reagan democrats constantly trying to convince them to love them again. so here we are spending our energy your bearing the brunt of the compromise i think we should be trying to build the world one end of this can breathe that's what i want to spend my energy and of like-minded folk happen to be quite want to jump

in, hallelujah. >> have a couple more questions for you but building off of that one of the things that you reckon with toward the end of the book is your own stands in 2016 trying to rethink the way you understood that using portland's ideas of reagan's election and now you are thinking of these elections in politics. >> so with democracy and black i had a moment where i am

confronting this reality of how american politics works where black for car treated as cattle food to the polls every two or four years of what scientists call or how they describe this as the captured electorate the way we participate in the process in is distorted because of the way of the republican party configures itself so we are stuck several years somebody promises to us and then take us for granted and then after years during the obama presidency in some ways muting the hell we were catching for the great recession and obama declared to us i'm not the president of black america but of all america but no one asked you that. you are not the president of lgbtq america you are not the president of women we want you to respond to us several of you at 90 percent.

so to break this this is a feature of clinton and triangular zone so i thought we had an opportunity in the 2016 election cycle to break the back of clinton and to reject this program or reader of fiction so i called for a blank out and they turned out in massive numbers in the democratic party doesn't put forward an agenda that speaks to her suffering then we leave the ballot blank and put down the ballot and when the republican party nominated trump i thought this is a really interesting opportunity because no way the country will elect someone so obviously unqualified to be president of the united states. that was my first mistake and

estimated the way folks. that was my first mistake. then as a lifelong reader of baldwin i should have known better. so even when they wrote a piece with the political scientist out of columbia saying trump is dangerous where we need to do if you are in a battleground state voting for clinton if not for your conscience maybe we can do something i'm still trying to push the democratic party because i'm tired of them testing us and the black political class address our misery and circumstance. it did not work. looking back it is a mistake that i pay for every single day. should have listened to jimmy sometimes you have to vote to buy yourself some time. i will admit it even though that's not enough for some clinton supporters because

what they want us to do is shut up and be quiet and follow orders. but if you're free live in a since then you're willing to take the risk and make a mistake and admitted. >> buying time spent that's what he said because most of us forget jimmy carter was perhaps the first neoliberal president those policies of austerity in the way he turned his back on black folk on that policy with urban policy so much so that jesse jackson said when he has been betrayed there was a reason there was a low turnout in 1970 election leading to reagan's election because we didn't want to make a choice even though reagan was to us as notorious as

george wallace. >> keep the questions coming we are almost there to where we will offer audience questions your idea of elsewhere for people who are hurting. i didn't know about baldwin going i learned that from your book and it seems like retreating to turkey. i knew about paris even when not a person of means and then said i'm broke. [laughter] we cannot all do transatlantic travel you to go to heidelberg but even if not across the notion you don't write about it that way as one of the ways

can mean to people who are hurting and need to draw themselves together to move forward. >> that chapter almost did not get written. 's was to go to and stumble i was going to retrace his steps. but as a critic of trump and turkey and said you shouldn't do this it does not make sense. my editor said why don't you go talk to activist? we are always asking them but remember i am writing to them with them in mind so this is how the chapter emerged. i did not like the word exile.

so he is not in exile how do i describe what he is doing? had we say something about it and elsewhere came to mind. to be honest when you look at this extraordinary film from another place there is a moment he is standing on the balcony and turns around and then his face explodes with laughter we have to find communities to have full belly laughs and partners and relationships who allow us to rage and cry and feel vulnerable or not because to

be the director of whatever but the people who love us because of what we are and that community pop you up. we need that community of love and to be open to expanding it over and over and figure out how to create the distance from the powers that be to turn our eyes bloodshot because living in this moment constantly coming at you day in and day out we have to disengage and then to find solidarity with people who are critiquing day in and day out we have to get distance because you and i are and others face the temptation of the bribe.

where you will just be invested in go out and try to promote to get your paper right as to speaking with a moment requires we need those full belly laughs and that distance to speak the truth of the circumstances of our lives to replenish and enter the fight again but he has to figure out how to get up and find the language because the storms keep coming he's trying to figure out how to give us the resources. so we all have to have it elsewhere.

>> thank you for that. let's take some questions from the audience can you talk about the value gap the idea from democracy in black. >> yes the value gap is the true line of american and history and the belief that white people matter more than others that distorts the disposition and character so much so lincoln cannot become the kind of man that his view of democracy requires precisely he believes why people matter more than others that looks different in the context of slavery than it world in jim crow or a black man in the white house. but we live in a society to reflect that somebody is valued more than others even

next hop premises killing beyond the taylor threatening the life of the negro gets held to account in the neighbor's apartment no one is held to account for killing beyond the taylor that is a concrete example. >> the bullets that missed versus those that landed and who they land on. >> we have another question of how to move past the compromise when it comes to curriculum from a teacher who feels they don't have the economy to moved away from the prescribed curriculum in washington state the feeling that perhaps the compromise you speak of are embedded in school curriculums they are in

the schools. >> right there's always a way to guide us. i can teach walt whitman and there is a way that i can teach to open my students eyes. we have been working off of constraints for a long time i can teach notes on the state of virginia by thomas jefferson and i can give you a whole lecture on racial havoc just by reading the notes so we have to do is to be subversive within the constraints and as we continue to bring pressure to bear politically on the way in which we teach our children. but you can do that work in the classroom you just have to be creative spirit that's a

great answer because he is not on the curriculum everywhere although coming out more and more in this is our moment with the new interest with a library of america coming up with a new anthology why is this a moment for baldwin? >> i think it has to do with black lives matter with this movement in front it is clea clear, men and women so there's a way it clears that policy so it makes sense i also think baldwin is the most critic that we have ever produced i'm surprised about

my book with that extraordinary documentary was important as well but because i was worried it will just be love you can't run past the rage or the condemnation if you're going to embrace it and embrace all of it and they say that to my brothers and sisters i don't mean agree with them but grapple with all of it. >> i think your book is a helpful resource for people trying to do that grappling as

you are grappling with baldwin. we have to leave it there but thank you so much this has been a treat please pick up again and again go to the schaumburg shop.com to get a copy.

>> i think those that speak for themselves and the outcomes of those and the reasons we did it and to be corroborated and to verify the reasons they should believe for all these independent books over three years with analysts looking at every aspect every text or e-mail or no communication all of which have concluded there was no evidence of improper motive on top of that multiple us attorneys at the department of justice is designed to look at

all the congressional investigations tried the things we have done not to mention the media all of these things and investigations have come up with no indication or evidence for consideration he cannot do a town hall without fact checking and there are things he says that are not true. time and time again they have cataloged the untruth. and then to be lumped into a crazy conspiracy and then specifically to investigate those allegations of trump and don't want the