an explanation for why the third woman is named is tituba, who was the probably indian slave in the paris household. and the minister's household who would have known these girls intimately, who would have prayed with these girls and eaten with these girls and probably slept in the same room as these girls? and she's the third person who was named as a potential suspect when the when sarah osborne and sarah, we are sarah osborne sarah good deny all intimacy with witchcraft. tituba will offer an extraordinary kaleidoscopic immensely colorful confession. and of course, as soon as someone has confessed to witchcraft, then it witchcraft trial is set in place and fingers begin to point and right. watch the full program online at book tv dot org. just search in depth or stacy schiff. and now more live of the texas book festival in.

when you go. okay, great. about 20 seconds. okay. turn to. the wood. that's. okay. welcome. hello and welcome to the 28th annual texas book festival. please silence your cell phones. after this conversation, the authors will sign books in the book. people signing tents located near 11th street in congress avenue. books are for sale throughout

festival weekend courtesy of book people. so you can help support our authors. texas book festival and the largest independent bookstore in texas by purchasing books by our incredible authors and the book people sales get a portion of every book sale help support the texas book festival's mission, which includes expanding literacy and access to literature across the state. my name is peniel joseph, and i'm a professor history and public affairs at the lbj school of public affairs at the university of texas at austin. and it's my distinct honor and pleasure to be in conversation today with two extraordinary authors dr. daniel black and mr. ernest mcmillan. i'll introduce each and we will really commence the conversation. dr. daniel black, the author of eight books, and he's a professor of african american studies at clark atlanta

university in atlanta. his novels include don't cry for me, an next and book of the month club, pick as well as the coming perfect peace. and they tell me of home. he is the winner of the distinguished writer award from the middle atlantic writers association and has been nominated for the tauzin prize for fiction, the ernest j. gaines award, and the georgia author of, the year award. he was raised in arkansas and lives in georgia. thank you. thank you. and the book is black on black on our resilience and brilliance in america. black on black. our next author is mr. ernest mcmillan, and his book is standing one man's odyssey through the turbulent sixties. mr. ernest mcmillan is a veteran human rights activist who worked through the 1960s in texas, mississippi, alabama and georgia with the student nonviolent coordinating committee, or

snick. and throughout the 1980s with the national black united front and the united league of mississippi, mr. mcmillan served as the chairman of the dallas snake. from 1967 to 1969. in 2007, he returned to his hometown in dallas, where he continued to volunteer extensively for organizations such as dallas center iffco, pastures for peace, youth believing in change karamu theater company, oakwood farm and neighbors space. today, he resides in new mexico, where he intends to keep up his life's work building bridges to support the emerging movement self-determination, justice and equity. thank you, mr. mcmillan. okay, so let's begin our conversation. so, daniel, i'm interested in the style of writing in these brilliant essays in your latest book, black on black?

there's a mixture of memoir cultural criticism throughout. what inspired you to this book and what writers inspired you? well, first of all, thank you for having me. thank you all for being here. i think i'd say two things. one, i was english major in college as probably of you were. that's why we're here, right? i was an english major. and so i love writing. i love words. i love literature. i love the beauty of words. i love the rhythm and the cadence of language. and so i never want to sacrifice face the beauty of words for the difficulty of what i'm saying. you know, i never want to i never want to make my words words pay, if you will, for for for a difficult. and so i'm a huge, huge james baldwin. i'm a huge toni morrison. i love, love, love, love, love.

a book called jilly. and i don't if anybody's read this book right. gorgeous, gorgeous writer whose name was going to come to me in a minute. marilynne robinson. marilynne robinson. yeah, absolutely. love her. i love jesmyn ward. i'm and and the truth, the matter is. i love many of the classics class and by classics i don't necessarily mean, you know, aged folks mean some of the popular readers, but also i think it's very important to know that i come from the tradition. i come from the black church tradition. and in the black church tradition, you get the cadence of preachers you get the rhythm, the collar response of the black church. and so as a black boy in rural arkansas, i was a church musician and i always wanted to transfer the beauty of the melody of black music onto the page. right. and and i very few authors who could do that. and so i'm praying and, hoping that i'm to capture that art. i think there's a beauty in black idiomatic expression that

deserves to be in print. oh, well, thank you. thank you so much. okay, so brother ernest, your memoir is really a powerful tour de force from dallas, texas, to mali, monrovia, ghana, new york, detroit los angeles, and back. i've never read a memoir from a black texan before. can you share with us why you wrote book? because it's such a powerful story of your battle against injustice, but also your battle to help change the world with workers, with sharecroppers. but you also do this internal work, too, you know, and we're going to get to that in another question. but i think it's an extraordinary and i would really tell everybody to read it because it's such an inspirational story. and your life, it reads like a movie in terms of your life

where you are on the run. you go to africa. it's just it's just such a transport of memoir. so i'd like you to share with us. yes. well, thank you so much for the generous, too generous introduction. i'm honored to be here with you today. i think my time has finally come around where i'm realizing that my days behind me are more than my days in front of me. and with that kind of feeling, i've been encouraged more and more by people to tell my story. i started writing as a journalist in high school. writing a letter to the lovelorn from the lovelorn. so i did both ends of the letter all the way to writing and journals, newspaper newsletters, even from prison. and so with those stories coming out of me, people said, what about?

you are writing in the third person. it's always you never write in the first person. so i felt not really worthy to tell my until i was confronted more and more by friends and families that you got to tell your story. so in 2018, i turn earnestly to writing and telling story. i wanted to share my life with my grandson, my son, and those who are not born. i want you to realize the price we have to pay to struggle need to go through, and somehow or another transmit some bit what i've learned or failed to learn as well with with the world. so here i am today exposed. thank you so. okay, daniel, you talk in this book black on black about black beauty and the obstacles we face, seeing ourselves queer clearly. and you also talk about queer black culture and the obstacle

obstacles. queer black folks, queer black men face. to really themselves as beautiful. yes. in the church, in higher education. in sports and other places. i want you to. and you share a memoir here, too. this is this is both these essays, but there's a lot of memoir as we find out about you and how you were perceived by your father, by people in family, and how you had to go through these powerful acts of self creation. and i, including through finding religion and finding grace outside of western paradigms, of grace and religion. yes. even though you're you're a deeply faithful, you're a believer. alan baldwin. i grew up in the black church, too. i want us to talk. i want you to discuss this in terms of i love that you mentioned the bluest eye frequently because.

that's one of my favorites as well. toni morrison. but can you tell us about this idea of of finding beauty? and i think write about it beautifully in an intersectional way, but in a way that centers your experience because sometimes we talk about intersectional, but we all have to center our that's what audre lorde and other people and we through centering our experiences we reach out to to others. all of our experiences are universal, right? you know, the first thing i think is important to is as a young boy, i didn't know boys could not beautiful. i know only girls were beautiful, right? and then i learned very that that boys and girls were various. and i had you know, i had missed whole gender thing, a bang as a queer. you know, i remember my sister getting a dress and pocket books and a hat and pantyhose and padded leather shoes for easter

and all i got was a pair of pants and a shirt and, and i was waiting on, you know, all the other a cute raymond that was going, you know, make cute. i remember. and i was like, why does she get all of that? and she gets her haircut and know folks made me cut my hair off right. and i was like, why? why can't i have mine? and, you know, and i did not, of course, know the rules and the laws of gender at the time, but i also did not know that there were certain ways that this country prepared women to be. that it did not prepare boys that way. and father kept reminding me, you're going to be a man one day. boy, don't you get it? and i was like, no, i don't like. what does that mean. and what he was really telling me is one day i was going to rule roost. you're going to be the man of the house. you're going to be the head of the household. don't worry about things being unfair. don't you know they don't take your name, man and i was like,

but if i don't want that. he was like, you do, you know? and so and so a kid, i was just very troubled by the constructs presented to me. i loved beautiful things, loved flowers. i loved different. that was all a problem. the whole thing was a problem. you know, i loved hugging people. again, i was a musician. i was. i was a dancer. i was a singer very, very early. six, seven years old. and people wondered who the hell i was. yeah. you know, i grew up in rural arkansas, so, you know, that's enough said, you know, and i folks just could not figure out what was with me. they just couldn't figure out what. and i perfectly fine to me. you. and so as i began read and as i began to write, i began to wonder how in the world people had come up with these ideas. and then my biggest hurdle was when people put their preference says in god's mouth.

yeah. and then i began to wonder how god was so dumb? you know, i said, there's no god thinks this just god just cannot be that slow. i mean, how do you make galaxies and and then you think all men to be head of a house? that's no way. you know. and so i was very i was very often in contention with folks starting with my right very serious contention. then i was in contention with the church. then i was in continuous, you know, but one thing that my father me very well was how to shut hell up. and so, you know, that's how i kind of got by. but i think all of that simply to say that i learned very early that if i were going to. but if i were going to bloom, if i were going to be who i was if i were going to be the artist, the man god had sent, i was absolute lutely going to have to be okay with standing by myself for a while until other people

caught up. great. thank you so much much. so. ernest, you write so movingly about africa. i want you to really dig into your time in africa. i just came back from really a life changing trip to ghana in september. can you please discuss your time there and its impact? and i know and tell us that the the contact because you're you are a fugitive in context. i felt forced leave my home city dallas it wasn't planned to be a of a time from the country but a way of of dealing with the pressures of the cointelpro ground. we're dealing with the the attacks militant organizations like the student nonviolent coordinating committee snake the panther party, the shrine of black madonna, republican, new

africa. all of us were going just african-american people. but people fighting for justice against the war, women trying to raise their cold, personal equal rights. we're all out by the cointelpro around led by j. edgar hoover and our organization was one of those that was in the bull's eye to be destroyed, to be liquidated, to be raised. and so the things we were going through in dallas in 1967, 68, 69, were how the repressive moments where we were being pulled over, stop, arrested a jail for really no reason at all. if you read the book, you'll see some people were just pulled over and given a substance like marijuana and this is yours. so those who can't, they we will face it and we will. dealing with economic boycotts. we're standing up welfare rights reform. we're we're standing up for protecting the of farmers from

becoming know the ship channel for trinity river for the houston ship channel to be a transport means for them. we were confronted by violence and by intimidation. i was charged a crime of possession firearms, although it wasn't a crime to buy a gun legally over the counter. i was charged because i was supposedly convicted of a felony and being convicted of a felony that was on appeal. it wasn't family. i said i've said no to prison. so i was fighting that case and borrowed 30 caliber or more in car. my home was attacked and i my wife in my neighbors and my friends, they were living with me our place and gun and could be pull the trigger on one of us at any second. so then i was locked up. i had my passport taken away from me, but i was given the to travel outside the northern district of texas by calling my

lawyer and get permission and then know where i'm going, where i'm when i'm return. how can i be reached there? so this happened for several occasions traveling to belleville and later the cities waiting in a campaign to free political prisoners. so my last trip to go, i didn't get the formal approval to go and was challenged by my lawyer saying, go ahead. even though we haven't gotten to where you you're going to go, you have all these other trips no problem. but when i got to the world council of churches meeting greenwich, connecticut, the the same lawyer said, oh they want you. they said you shouldn't have left. you need to sneak on back to dallas. so my journey was to begin to out of fear and a reflection of not having safety. this is all a design way to erase this. i left and went to africa after stint in canada for seven months, getting my documents

together to travel another person as a canadian citizen and being in africa was not my sole purpose was to find refuge and refuge i thought would available. we would be a guinea, which is where the word kwame to read, formerly known as stokely carmichael, was now a citizen. and we thought could find refuge there. i never made it to guinea. i got as far as my liberia. ghana certainly around guinea because we were told, come back tomorrow. we'll figure out if you can come in or not. and so it was that year of travel around africa saying that it wasn't unified country where everybody spoke same language. everybody's on the same where they've been divided by artificial lines and borders that people of languages were not one or two, but 250 different languages. and all of religious and spiritual. so i began to see for myself

that this was a country, this was a continent that was so many cultures and and might to call for people it i ran into orphans refuge was how can we get to the united states? you know, this is hell here you you left haven't come in here to hell. and so it was it was confusing to me. conflicting i've not never found the security i felt i needed. i never found a receptiveness of people to say, let's join together and fight for pan-africanism of a liberation here. i will support you in struggle for to for africa american revolution of revolution or change in america. so it was became apparent to the things in the united states gotten worse that we were facing murders assassination, killings, jailings, exile. but on the panthers 29 panthers were killed in a year 1969 alone. so just seeing those kind of things to realize that, this

romantic vision had of africa was not real and that we are real failures here in united states. so i discovered so many angels in the flesh in africa. it was beautiful to have be received by many, to be housed, to be support it. i had a new friends, new a new family members. in fact. and so it was an eye opening experience for me. but the desire will the need to return to united states to build a new underground railroad to build refuge for potential to help make the organization together was become overarching purpose. and that's what we did. we returned. all right. thank you. all. daniel, you have an essay here entitled integration of failed experiment. and i thought this was a very, very interesting essay because you talk.

the pitfalls of racial and you have a quote from one of the elders who you were interviewing who said, we marched and fought so white folks would surrender us what already belong to us. so i'd love for you to talk about essay and what do you mean in terms of a high line for for, for our audience. when you say integration was a failed experiment? well, the first thing i mean is that integration never happened. right. i think that's important to first say because, you know, in for something to be integrated, you must take equal parts and put together. the thing about the sixties is that folks were never aiming do that. absolutely never. all the time. black kids were bus to white schools. when were the white kids bused to the black schools? mm hmm. see, that's integration. mm hmm. if the white kids never bused to the black school, you do not

have integration. you have forced migration of black people into white structures of supremacy. mm hmm. right. and i think that's extraordinary important. or even was there ever a time that a white could not come to a black business when ever? mm hmm. and i think without us acknowledging this right will misunderstand this history. and there have been so black elders who've said that if they could do it over again, they would not vote for integration. i understand that now, but i understand it not because the melding of races is a bad idea. in fact, if we're going to be honest, black have been willing to integrate from the time we got off the boats. hmm. it was never black people who were unwilling to integrate. the question really becomes, at what point does black humanity and human death become assumed right so that people believe of coexistence with black people?

it's beneficial to white people. everybody believes that white structures are beneficial to black people. everybody believes that what people are not sure about. what would white people get from with blackness? and the thing that you just said, daniel, that everybody believes that white structures are beneficial black people in this essay you problem ties that too. i want i want you tell us what what do believe in in terms of because i wouldn't say everybody it but certainly that's a mainstream narrative that if we send kids to especially things that are perceived as as white institutions and let's say harvard instead of clark atlanta. right. they're going to get a better education at harvard. that's the belief a popular. what do you believe? right. i i'm not sure you mean that, but. i've been on faculty at clark atlanta university now for 30 years. this is my 30th year.

and yes, yes, you can go after that. and i'm happy it that. the thing that's interesting is will boast of a child going harvard people will boast of whites are going to harvard and people both of a black child going to harvard. but i don't know any people who voted white kids coming to black schools. right. i think that's a problem because i'm there. yeah. and i think i would do a white child. really? well, and i'm being very serious about it. right. in terms of education. right. and i'm i think, in fact, for to even compare black schools to, white schools as if black schools need some extra focal referent is a kind of latent sort of racism. right. it is highly problematic for. and so i absolutely believe that hbcu is a wonderful, wonderful place. and tell us where hbcu years are. that's where the audience is and and the fact that i have to tell you is the problem. yeah. well, you don't have to tell me that you. not you. right. i'm talking about now to the

world because they've here since the days of slavery. well, let's end it. so you see what i'm saying? the fact that we have to keep defining means they're always marginalized. and yet some of our greatest black minds have come from them. there is w.e.b. dubois without at. without fisk university. outfest university. in fact, when dubois gets to harvard, harvard. far easier. hmm than fisk. far easier. in fact, the only reason really survives at at at harvard is because he went to fisk. right. but fisk doesn't get the celebration right. martin luther king is a morehouse graduate. marva collins is the clark atlanta university graduate. you know, the list goes on and on, on and on. and hbcu stands for certainly black colleges, university. but let's be honest. why were they built in the first place? hmm. why are they built in first place? because you can't come over here. yeah, right. if we're going to be honest. right. and. but at this point.

now, historically. right. i think it's important for us to be very clear that we need these institutions because. these institutions do a particular kind of work that mainstream white institutions don't do for black kids. right. and i think that work is too vital for us to miss. and i think that work is too vital for us not to celebrate. so i think in integration, there were many, many, many things. the black community lost. and i think some of those need to be absolutely resurrected. but i'm a be honest with you, brother. the thing really believe that we missed on integration is white children missed black instruction. okay. and i think that would have changed this nation. i mean, that's a great point. that's a great point. i have to give a shout to houston, tillotson and that fact. we had an hbcu right here and in austin, the oldest institution of higher education in is used until it's and then university of texas at austin, where i teach brother ernest. the last part of your memoir is

a series of letters wrote to your mother between 1972. in 1974, which reminded me of some of the blessed best act, best black activist and prisoner writings prison intellectual writings from assata shakur or to george jackson to angela davis to malcolm x. can you discuss the impact prison had on you, what family meant to you. you discussed the assistance of comrades and snick and political figures such as congressman leland, one of the great giants of the 20th century in securing your freedom. but you also discuss in those letters how working on yourself you know, and i thought that was really and at the time, you know you're born at the time you're in your twenties, you're in your twenties, you're just right. so it's lot of a remarkable level of of intellectual and emotional self work you're able to do in in an excruciating circumstance in prison.

so i want you discuss that. i thought that was some of the most parts of the entire book. thank you. i'm the third generation. my family born free, my great grandfather was born. enslavement. hmm. and his son was a farmer beside him as a free man. but my great grandfather told him you need to go to school. and he went to a ham medical school, became a doctor and built the first black hospital, dallas. and my mother came from a family of of farmers and east i'm sorry west and who came to texas. she was four years old and she was my backbone, my inspiration. she was the daughter of a farmer who sent three of his her older and sisters to college.

she was the generation my grandfather was getting ill and had to say, i can't do this anymore. let me sell the land. so i could send the next three children and my family to college. that didn't happen. when he sold the land, he was getting given a check for $50,000 for the land just north dallas in addison, texas my uncle bought check to the bank. we asked him, what are you. he was with a more fair skinned straight haired young man and. they thought they would help him get by. he said, well, i'm colored. she said, we're no -- deserve any money like this at. all a check up from the real. so my grandfather was fighting the rest of his days to reclaim his rightful share of his property. and my mother went to college. and so life was devoted to building the community and becoming educated on her own. so i have those kind of pillars

i'm standing on today. and that's been my encouragement in prison. my family stood by me and really didn't know my nut. as i said, my mother, with three years worth of letters, letters were in her possession, had preserved until. my niece said, look at this. what i found in her closet. so those became a part of my book and the experience in prison was being in a texas department correction, as well as being in the federal prison system and the federal prison system. we had a little more freedom, although death and was there. we still have some new rights have been won. there were not one in the texas level of prison. so one of those was the right to have your own community organization or club. a black cultural american indian workshop. and so we had a latino and i was became the of the black

workshops newsletter. so having that at the same time, i was seeing men who were i guess rebels in a sense of their word, their term would take it that way and put an isolated condition. there was a prison farm, a prison, a hospital as springville, where i've heard two or three young men died of pneumonia, but they died of pneumonia forcibly because you put into a cell and you were given thorazine to make you paralyzed move. and then they turn on the dashwood water, turn on the air, and then you die legally. biology if you have pneumonia, but you've been killed. so we had those kind of things going on on both levels. texas even more stringent, more cruel, more outright violent. and so if you didn't go to work, you suffered pains of being and becoming example. i refuse to work on a sunday and

i was singled out with not all the men who i did not know all refused to work on a sunday which had be father's day. and because of that i was faced repression and force and violence where every one of a single percent of solitary confinement and taken out of the cell, one by one and beaten and, berated, while the rest of the prisoners were put on top of a year's work and, watch this beating take place as a lesson to them. so being able to realize i had family support realize there were people in the community who would be if they knew about those kind of things led to my relating this information to anybody's who was state representative who later became a congresswoman. she and mickey leland started a prison reform movement, which helped me to get the word out, make some changes to what was happening. we had prisoners operating as medical doctors on other prisoners where you had a person

who beaten up or isolated and building tender systems, which were notorious, whose job was to keep the guards supported and in line, the prisoners in line. so i'm not sure i answered your question exactly, but the prison experience with one for me was an eye opener, a learning experience, and one which i went endure for three years. it was relatively for us, and because i know of who were locked up then, who were unjustly imprisoned for little bit of crimes and misspent and there were imposed life imprisonment because they would call habitual criminals. if you got two convictions for, let's say, possession, the third one, you could be given a life sentence and. if do you faced with a choice of taking 40, 50 years rather than taking a life sentence, you would plead guilty because the system is stacked against you. a juror is going to be all white. the judge is going to be a political candidate who runs on

law and order. so you have to plead guilty and take 40 years in prison, rather be in actual fact, you be sentenced to life imprisonment. if you don't if you if you plead not guilty because 99% of the people plead not guilty. no one would walk out of court. innocent you know, you 1% of the 100 people who go through will be convicted of a felony, according to the law. so faced with those kind of things and seeing the difference embolden me and assist take on a task. i got out of prison to fight prison reform, to fight not for prison reform, but for radical change in our society. leads to those conditions. i'm not answer you know, you're good. you know, that's great. thank you. thank you. thank that's a it's a great segway. i'm going to ask one more question and then i want open it up to questions. daniel, in so many ways.

when i read black on black in the different essays and just like brother ernest was talking about with prison experience, you really talking this effort for freedom, emancipation in many different in terms of sexual identity, in terms of gender, in terms of citizenship. so i want talk to you about two two of the essays in conversation with each one essay is on ava duvernay's. when see us and the other essay is on harriet tubman and the movie harriet tubman. and i want you to discuss the ways in which, you know, one quote i have here on page 111, you say we've soft the truth of racial terror for a contemporary generation whom we hoped wouldn't have to bear the ugliness of america's racial character is really many great

lines like this all throughout the other is the only the willfully naive hope that three centuries is of slavery's devastation and trauma can be purged without volatility. and until that fury is expunged and honored racial tension will exist will persist in this land, the unfree and home of brave. so i want you to talk to me about those tensions, this idea of you write about at times literal prisons, central park five, donald wanting death sentences and death penalties for five innocent black and brown boys, young men. but there are these other prisons that you talk in harriet tubman, too. right. and you have a really very, i think, interesting, innovative reading of the harriet tubman film. and you're using all of west african in spiritual belief,

religious practices to explain harriet and how harriet is really communing with those those spirits of of nature. and these these spirits that are healing forces, but they're also liberating forces. right. if we see through the right eyes and we don't just say, oh, that's some african think, including black people who get whose minds get when call it colonized or brainwashed into not wanting to say we are african people, we are haitian people as well. whether you're from, whether you think you're from haiti or not, whether you think you're from africa or not, who we are. and we've got to at least claim parts of those and integrate them, the rest of us. sure. there are about 12 questions in that you asked, me. so i'm going to figure out of them. you know, the place i'm going to start actually is, ironically to most people, i really believe

that america can be healed racially. i really do believe. first of all, i believe that are many white people who hate white supremacy. mm hmm. i really do believe that. i believe that. i believe that. but there is one thing that at bars, our ability to do anything, terms of racial healing in america, and that is we constantly lie about it. mm hmm. if we can tell the truth one time, we'd be done with whole thing. i really, honestly that i honestly believe that. but it's so ugly. we really we want to do this thing of, well, maybe a slave didn't come. maybe indentured workers see them all. see, as long as we keep trying to figure out how to soften the blow of our own historical ugliness, we have no choice but to revisit it constantly over and over and over.

over again. and so what i'm really saying and once it's in this essay, is that the to racial healing in america is that we keep trying we keep finding new ways to lie about it. that's the that's the whole with oh you know we don't want to teach critical theory. nobody's teaching critical race theory. nobody is teaching critical race theory. right. people can't even define it. even the people who are against it. right. and they place like an ad in in florida where, you know, we don't want to. african american studies. most schools are not. so there's no surprise to me. but what i'm saying here is black history, black kids, white kids, latino kids, all of them need black history. it's like boys need to read women's. right. we're to make human beings here. people. right. and you don't make a human being by allowing them are inviting them to know only the narrow

scope of their own possibility. yeah. of their own existence. yeah right. absolutely. absolutely i believe that sincerely. the second thing concerning the harriet essay, that that i was really getting at is african people. what now call black people, did not meet god in america. right. i really need people get clear about that. absolutely. the introduction of christianity does not introduce black people to god and that's the silliest thing on the planet. because what it was when africans you not to be for the thousands of years before the encounter you know with. i think that's very important be clear about. the second thing is we need to get of this notion that i'm sure i'm on thin ice here, but i'm azadeh anyway that however i in god, if you don't, you're wrong. yeah. we've to give other people room to believe in god in ways that

are diametrically opposed to the way believe. and in fact, i think. i think that god is big to be opposing things all at once. hmm. yeah. i think god can be opposite things once. i think god is just that great and just that marvelous. and so i wrote that essay to how there are ways that harriet tubman is actually pulling on many of her west african traditions in terms of who is god, what is god? the way she sees, the way she understands trees, the way she understands forest as she's running. you know, from on foot to freedom. she's talking to these trees, which is a very, very, very african centered, kind of tradition. right. which does not clash with praying to jesus, too. yeah. because jesus is in the tree. do you know what i mean? and i'm saying, really that real spirituality is fluid of god, is knowing that god is something far greater than, even what you believe. right. and this gets to the whole notion of the bible and, all of

this. and i think the bible is wonderful in five. but the notion that the bible is the only thing god ever i think is also childish and. yeah. right. and so i'm trying to all of this up so that we as a nation can begin to move to places whereby. we let people in people's culture be wonderful without thinking that, healing is erasing the specificity of who people are in order that we can be, for all practical purposes, naked, unencumbered with one another's culture. you know, it's that old, traditional of, you know, when i see you, i don't see a black man. right. i hope nobody ever says that to me. i just really opened my eyes to. that. right. how is that a compliment? you know what, is that. right. but. but the greater thing is what is the need for. yeah, that's the thing. why do you? why do you see better? you think if you erased my black. right. why is my humanity clearer to you now? you know.

and so i wanted to move from that. i wanted to get to the place where everybody can be themselves and be beautifully and absolutely themselves. and we see god in all of it. so we only have 2 minutes left. what i'm going to do just as moderator's prerogative is just this up by telling folks that these these two books, one is standing. one man's odyssey through the turbulent by ernest mcmillan. the is black on black on our resilience and brilliance america by daniel black. these two must read books. these are two must read memoirs and essays. really. two black authors and intellectuals and scholar, activist who are doing incredible work on reimagining what the struggle for black dignity and citizenship looks like in ways that that are eloquent but, also acutely

impactful for the times that we live in right? right. and so i, i would stress to everyone to pick this book up. these books, the authors will be signing these books immediately after. this. and, you know, i want to thank c-span, the texas book festival, for allowing to have these kind of conversation. and it's really important and with the lightning round, because i see i've got just like 60, 90 seconds. brother brother ernest, you know, what would you like us to out of your memoir that the struggle continues. we're there yet. and i would work for slick as a field secretary and in 1966 the -- national council of -- women provide us with scholarships because the freedom the equal rights amendment had passed and the voting rights act had

passed. so we can go back to our schools. but the job was not over, as we all know. hopefully today that the struggle is more perilous now than it was. we have to contend the demise, the mother earth, all about the demise of democracy that. the future of our youth and our generations. all are hiding the classroom for fear of an armed invader. those are the things we will face that we have to address. and it's going to require radical change. a relationship in how this government is run. thank you so much. thank you. going to we're going to end it right there. we're on time. thank you so much. thank you, everyone. thank you for texas book festival, c-span book people. thank you. thank you. thank you.

if you missed any of today's coverage of the texas book festival, it in its entirety starting tonight at 11 p.m. eastern. weekends on c-span, two are an intellectual. every saturday, american tv documents america's story. and on sundays booktv brings you the latest in nonfiction books. authors. funding fo c-span two comes from these television companies and more, including cox cox.

cool. and every syndrome is extreme rare. high, high. but friends have to be. this is joe. when you're connected, you're not alone alone. cox along with these television supports c-span two as a public service service. the finalist for, the 2023 national book awards were recently announced the annual awards were established in 1950 to celebrate the best in american writing. since 1989. they have been overseen by the nonprofit national book foundation. in the nonfiction category, this year's finalists include ned blackhawk r the rediscovery of america native peoples and the unmaking of u.s. history. christina garza for lillian is invincible summer a sister's search for justice. christina sharpe for ordinary. roger shehata we could have been friends. my fatheand i. a palestinian memoir.

and john valiant fire. whether a true story. a hotter world. the winners of this year's awards will be announcedn york city on november 15th and book tv will be covering the award ceremony. recently at the 2023 los angeles times festival. books author and breitbart.com senior editor joel pollak discussed bans and cancel culture. here's some of what he said. i don't know that we are experiencing divorce just yet. i think we are taking a step back to evaluate what our common is without giving up a common future. and i think we still have so much in common than we have that separates us. i do think we're consuming media and of course, breitbart is a part that. breitbart started to challenge what andrew breitbart saw as the

left wing or liberal dominance of the mainstream media and it exists still today to provide an outlet for conservatives that would be drowned out or censored under the rules that silicon valley and the media have tended to apply lately. but i think that most americans still share the same goals for their own lives, for the lives of their children, and i think that even though i'm engaged every day in politics and political analysis and political reporting, i think that most americans have a healthy relationship with politics where it doesn't dominate their lives. of course, i want people to take an interest because. that's what i do. that's what i write about. but i think it's a sign of mental health. a person says, i'm informed on the issues, but i don't get too involved in politics and we want people to be involved again. that's the essence of democracy, is participation in self-government. but i think most people have a healthy, arm's length

relationship, politics, and they're willing to put those things aside. there was a statistic that came out about a year or two ago saying that something like 14% of all social media users drive most of the fighting on social and the other 86% are quite happy to get along, share baby pictures and vacation photos and thine that. watch this interview and our coverage of thetimes festival of books at book tv dot org. lick on the book fnd festivals tab or search. joel. publishers weekly has released its choice of best nonfiction books for 2023. on the list are, jonathan og's biography of mart luther king jr dubcek. how infrastructure works inside thsystems that shape world. and sarah look at humanism and free. also on the list in levittown shadow which explores the post-world war two summer and

former new york city policeman edn raymond's an inconvenit cop, which looks at the intersection of police brutality and racism. th full of bes books of 2023 is available at publishers weekly. ao.com. in the past 25 years, book tv has been on the air over 1300 weekends, covered nearly nine book festivals and featured 22,000 authors, including event and his doctor dr. benjamin waterhouse, who'd been a friend of the family for years and who became the head of the harvard medical school, wrote a wonderful letter to john quincy adams, who then president of the united states and. he said this, but as was his material, his mind was still enthroned. if you read that, you go way

back, way, way back to the summer, 1756, when john adams was 20 years old, 1756, 20 years short of the summer of 1776. and he was teaching in worcester, massachusetts, which was then the frontier. keep in mind that in that two thirds of all of massachusetts still forest. two thirds of pennsylvania were still the largest building in all of america. nassau hall at princeton, civilization was just a little grim along some wealth. a european civilization, american, western, just a little grim along the coast only about 50 miles deep. it was a vastly different world just from the present, but from europe. and here he was out with what he thought was the the frontier

teaching in a one room schoolhouse, miserable he knew he didn't want to be a schoolteacher. and if his father had thought he would be a minister. and that's how he got his why he got his scholarship to harvard. but he decided that he didn't want to be a minister. he wasn't cut out for that. he decided wanted to be an attorney, a lawyer, and to get into public life. and on the night of. august 22nd, a sunday after having attended church day, which was to be a lifelong habit for john adams, he went out under the stars stars. so inspired by the sermon, said, and also in a state of euphoria. and it would seem by a feeling of relief that decision not to become a minister was at last resolved. and he wrote of the glorious shows of nature and the intense

sense and a pleasure they evoked beholding the night sky, the amazing concave of heaven, sprinkled and glittering with stars. he was thrown. he wrote into a kind of transport and knew that such wonders were the gifts of god. expressions of god's love. but that the greatest gift of all he was certain was gift of an inquiring mind. he would become a. but all the provisions that he god has made for the gratification of our senses are much inferior to. the provision, the wonderful that he has made for the gratification of our nobler powers of intelligence and reason he has given reason to

find out truth and the real design and true end of our existence. it will be hard, he wrote, meaning the study that we're still ahead of him. but the point is now determined. i shall have the liberty to think for myself. did you know that all 2000 plus hours of book tv programing is available online? just visit book tv dot org to watch full programs on your favorite authors did you know? you can watch book tv o anytime at booktv dawg. use the search box to find your favorite nonfiction authors. pull pulitzer prize winning journalist chris hedges, who covered conflicts across the globe. the new york times discussed his on war and its victims. here's some of what he had to say. so i open it to questions. i'm just going to read the last

part of the book, and i call it a coda, because if i'd called it a prayer to frighten away. i carry within me death the smell decayed and bloated corpses, the cries of the wounded the shrieks of children, the sound of gunfire the deafening blasts, the fear, the stench of cordite, the humiliation comes when you surrender to terror, beg for life, the long alienation, the numbness, the nightmares, the lack of sleep, the inability to connect to all living things, even to those we love the most, the regret, the absurdity, the waste, the futility.

it is only the broken and the maimed that no war. we ask forgiveness. we seek redemption. we carry on our backs this awful cross of death for the essence of war is death and the weight of it digs into our shoulders and eats away at our souls. we drag it life up hills and down hills along the roads into, the most intimate recesses of our. it never leaves us. those who know us best know that there is something unspeakable and evil. many of harbor within us. this evil is intimate. it is personal. we do not speak its name it is the evil of things done and things left undone. it is the evil of war war.

war is captured in the long vacant stares in the in the trembling fingers, in the memories. most of us keep buried deep within us. in the tears. it is impossible to portray a war narrative as even anti-war narratives. make the irrational, rational. they make the incomprehensible comprehensible. they make the illogical logic a call. they make the despibeautiful als all discussions. all films, all evocation of war, good or bad, are an obscenity. there is nothing to say. there are only the scars. wounds those carry within us. these we cannot articulate. the horror. the horror.

i wander through life with the deadness of war within. there is no escape. there is no peace. all of us who have been war know an awful truth. ghosts. strangers in a land. who are our brothers and sisters? who is our family? whom have we become? we have become those whom we once despised and killed. we have become the enemy. our mother. is the mother grieving over her murdered child. and we murdered this child in a mud walled village. afghanistan. a sand filled cemetery in fallujah or mariupol. our father is the father on a pallet in a hut paralyzed by blast from an iron fragmentation bomb. our sister lives in poverty in a refugee camp outside kabul.

widowed, desperately poor, raising her children alone. our brother. yes. our brother is the taliban. and the iraqi insurgent. and al qaeda. and the russian soldiers. and he has an automatic. and he kills. and he is becoming us. war is always the same plague. it imparts the same deadly virus. it teaches us to deny another's humanity. worth being. and to kill and be killed. watch the full program.