aparth apartheid had created its own blossoming professions. there were black law schools, black schools of architecture, black medical schools, et cetera. and black undergraduate schools, et cetera because -- and black entrepreneurs had a closed and captured audience, black doctor, black mortician, et cetera, et cetera. and they all lived together in one neighborhood forced by apartheid or segregation. the doctor lived next door to the car renter who lived next door to the whoever. when that was over, it was over. and it's a beautiful thing to have more choices. and, of course, some of those choices left behind a different kind of neighborhood that was bound there by class, by its inability to move out.

now, some of that is changing rapidly now. i mean, enterprise, people moving back into neighborhoods, tons of people moving away from urban areas and back to the south. it's changing. it's fluid. that, i think, is better than the -- obviously than the forced segregation. but in this root to this sort of completely diversified world that we seem to lead and desire, there are moments when you will find certain schools that are 80, 90% black. some parts of the country are 80% to 90% black. i'm not disturbed by that. provided that all students in all schools have a relationship

or familiarity in their life outside of school. but the question becomes what they are taught, how well they are taught, the quality of the teaching and the money. i keep saying the becse sometimes the social net doesn't really matter simply because so many people were taught in living rooms and -- but it does matter and the resources have got to go into those schools. anyway, that's a very, very long sort of teacherly answer to the question about, you know, is it awful now that there's still some kind of reintegration? you know, all these struggles were for more choices rather than fewer ones. i think there should be girls' schools. and i think there should be all

sorts of places we can go and learn and feel comfortable. but not be forced. and, of course, i think the major trust of the governor of the state should be the absolute support as its prime budget carrier requirement and interest in the publicschools. now let me see if there's anything else that i haven't covered in that long answer. there's one here that's a little off the wall. but it sort of interests me a little bit. what advice would you give to graduating seniors who are considering pursuing a career in print journalism? it's a noble calling, i suppose, but you will have to change it.

in many instances because of the huge melding of corporation of all media in press where the aggravation and sort of pro provocateur role that is changing. journalists had eighth grade, ninth grade, maybe fourth grade educations. they thought they were the people. when they say "we," they meant all of us. and now that they all go to graduate school and get honorary degrees, when they say "we," they mean them. i was listening to something last night.

man everitz wrote a book. he didn't go to stanford, the way he said. he didn't have a degree, the way he said. he was a nice, working class boy from seattle, oregon, what have you, and felt that he didn't have the credits. so, he invented them. and then when he no longer had to, he changed it and came clean. in the beginning he felt in order to be in that crowd he had to give himself some false props, as they say. but it was -- and it was, you know, stellar. stellar reporter who subsequently, i think, left rather disappointed the way journalism was changing. anyway, you have a tough, tough pa heart and very sharp mind, go ahead and see what happens. but it's a dangerous field now for independent thinking.

do you think the supreme court in the implementation of its order rather than all deliberate speed? i suppose, but it wasn't going to happen. that's one of the ways they got through. i mean, it was a long, long time. it was not overnight. whole counties would close their schools, for years. five, six, seven years. they just closed down the public schools. and everybody had to go somewhere else. white children went to certain schools, black children had to go to, you know, detroit, places -- i mean, can you believe that? they just shut them down. they weren't going to have them. there's a question here, and i think a couple of other ones about the achievement gap. do you believe it's useful,

bringing down success, failure along color lines? what can be done to close this gap? can the schools do it or must the community? that's a very entangled question and problem, the gap. you know, i have a -- those tests test class. that's what they test. you know that. they don't test black people doing better than or worse than or asian people. they test a certain kind of culture and a certain kind of class. i think i can distribute blame in a number of places. and i feel very comfortable doing that. [ laughter ] >> but in my own heart of hearts, i think the changes come

from parents. i really do. and i hate to say that so blatantly, because i am aware of the fact that more and more schools are dumping their teaching job on to parents. and they spend hours and hours and hours doing homework with their children. and it's more and more burdensome. not because there's more and more knowledge, but because less and less is being done in many of the classrooms. i'm very mindful of that. on the other hand, i get a lot of questions about how can i help my children or my child read better, or read? what do you suggest we do to make children read? and i always ask them, do you read? do your children see you sitting somewhere, oblivious to

everything because you're reading a book? do they see you really excited to go to a book store or going into the library? do you salivate or pant when you get this book and you can't wait to get home and read it? i mean, do you? i say to this hypothetical parent. because whether they do it or not, they will see what is interesting to you. and what is fascinating to you and where your pleasure lies. that helps. not just having books lying around. but by being active participants in the process, sharing stories that you read with your children. what do you think this means? what does this mean, et cetera? you are, we are, as adults, parents, i'm not sure how much of what we say matters to children, but i do know that

what we do matters a great deal. and they have -- they are very sharp. their antenna is up and shivering all the time. they're like little mind readers. they have to be, because they don't know the whole language. they have to look at something else. i remember once my son came to me and had a picture he had drawn and he said, mama, look what i did. and he showed me this picture. and i was doing something and i said, uh-huh, that's lovely. and he tore it up. right in front of my face. and i said what did you do that for? and he said because you had that little smile on your face, you know, that little patronnizing, ah, that's lovely. and it was true. i was trying to get rid of him. yeah, yeah. oh, it's lovely. and he recognized it and had the -- whatever it takes, to

tell me about it by just ripping it up in front of my face. from then on i realized that he knew certainly as much as i did when i was a kid. you know, you remember how you had to really tell who was lying and who wasn't? is that sort of thing. so, because they had this kind of really sharp intelligence, i think parents can make enormous differences in what their -- how their children behave and learn in school. the photographs, huge boxes of them were sent to me. some i knew i wanted in the book and others were just sent to me and i picked them out when i felt suddenly that i knew probably what this guy was thinking drinking out of that fountain or what they were

thinking when they were sitting at a soda fountain, little string over here and you can't go here. you can't go there. when that appealed to me -- when the photograph appealed to me, i was able to do it. and some the house itself, the editors itself wanted me to compensate on some i may not have chosen. more questions about the persistence of segregation and i think i try to comment as clearly as i could about the complexity of that. not wanting the necessity of doing numbers, 50% this and 50% that. but at the same time, wanting choice choices to be available.

this question is a good ending because it's about an ending and can end the session. beloved ended with the refrain, this is not a story to pass on. is "remember" a story to pass on? definitely, this is a story to pass on. thanks. [ applause ] next week on history bookself, john perry talks about his book, "myths & realities of american slavery." in the book, mr. perry makes the case that slavery was not an

integral part of the reason behind fighting the civil war, as wit is widely thought. history bookshelf appears every saturday at noon eastern. join american history tv on monday for 24 hours of america's first ladies, including an interview with eleanor roosevelt at 4:45 pm eastern. >> i think, like everything else, that we started out expected the united nations would solve every difficulty right -- just by being the united nations. >> tour the white house private quarters with laura bush at 5:00 and lady bird john sn at 8:00. nancy reagan reminisces about her husband at 8:00 and secretary of state hillary clinton about her campaign in 2008.

president's day on c-span3. lisa kathleen graty is curator here at the smithsonian. when you were putting together this latest exhibit, how did you decide the gowns would be placed and what it would say about the history and the role of these first ladies? >> we picked a series of gowns, partly based on what we thought was pretty and what hadn't been out in the -- sometimes it's nice to be curator, because you can just choose things. we wanted an array of color, different styles, not con logical. we wanted to maximize the space and really maximize the look of each style and color of each dress against each other, to make a more pleasing picture. and i think that putting things that are far apart in time next to each other, as opposed to a slow progression, you really see the amazing difference between, say, lucy hayes, the dress with

the bustle and really tight shoulders. you're not going to raise your arm above your waist. an amazing difference that these were chronological, so far apart you wouldn't be able to see them. >> we tried to put things out that haven't been up in a while. are there gowns and items that are back in storage? >> there are some things that are back in storage that hopefully will come out in time. one of the ideas is that we can change things out here. if you're not doing every first lady, eases the pressure on the dresses. trying to make them survive as long as possible. and some of them have been standing around for 100 years. so, they need to rest, be out of light. and this allows us to change things around. it also specifically allows some thing that is haven't been seen before to be seen by the people. we have more in the collection than the gowns that i think -- i always think of them as being

the -- specimen gowns, everyone expects to see for each first lady. sometimes we have others and those are interesting, too. >> a lot of fan fare goes into giving up the dress. how did that come about? >> that is -- has also been a changing tradition. people always think the exhibit looked one way. actually about nine different shows, it's been changing. people think that the gown presentation always happened one way. in reality, it didn't really start until lady bird johnson. the tradition was, mass dresses to create the show. that happened, just sort of a big bolt the first time. they would ask each first lady and the ones to fill in the blanks for a dress. now, helen taft got interested in the exhibition. she was the first lady at the time and she contributed her 1909 inaugural gown. so, she set sort of the tradition of giving your

inaugural gown. every first lady since then who has had an inaugural ball has given her inaugural gown. has anyone ever refused or balked at the idea? >> i don't think anyone has ever refused, but edith roosevelt, who we'll see around the corner, we'll also see her inaugural gown, she didn't have a lot of patience for this. she was not first lady at the time. but she said she didn't save clothing, that she cut it up and made other things out of it. so, she did not donate anything to the collection. her daughter, however, later did. and what she donated was the inaugural gown. but mrs. roosevelt wasn't kidding. the bodice had been removed from the dress. >> does that give us context at the time that that was a traditional, normal thing to do? >> mrs. roosevelt said she liked to cut them up and satin gowns or silk gowns made tea gowns.

it may have been a quirk of hers that she remade clothes. >> there were examples of other types of gowns here. it seems on every occasion we're looking to see what they're wearing. >> i think, one, it's become sort of a red carpet culture that likes to look and analyze what people are wearing. there's always been an interest in first lady's fashion. people were interested in what martha washington was wearing. i think it's because we look to these clothes. we don't -- currently we probably have more exposure to the first lady and we still don't know her. most of us will never meet the first lady. so we have to figure her out based on these little clues, snippets of interviews, what she's wearing, what she served for dinner, how she entertains. we piece all that together to get an idea. the causes she promotes. we piece all that together to create a rounded

and which first lady didn't meet public expectations when it came to that and which ones were really praised for their style. i think the first lady sets the tone, the style, and demeanor and tone of the presidency. she picks the china, she arranges entertainments, she's the one that sets the feeling. she's also the more accessible probably partner in the presidency. so she has to decide.

i can't imagine how daunts it would be to have to face your first state dinner. and they need to set a tone. and if they deviate that much, they did people like it or not like it and the white house has ebbed and flowed between very elegant and more casual and as the country's changed, also the style has changed. and people have reacted differently each way. how do you command respect for a new nation, a fledgling nation, but not look like a monarchy. you've got to step away from that. so how do you balance that? what's casual, what was washington. who was criticized. who really hit it out of the

park and met expectations. >> i think dolly madison is the first amazing social first lady. she was the go to -- she had decor rum, but there was a little bit of casual informal and none. if you had a card and an introduction you could come to ms. madison's weekly crushes. people mixed and talks. it was said you couldn't tell who her friends and enemies were. because she treated everyone the same. some first ladies have been less successful, sometimes they were awkward in the job, because their tastes were not the countiry's taste. nancy reagan came in to make a

much more formal, what she thought more appropriate white house. she got some push back for tin crease in formality. but when, as that went on, people began to admire what the reagans were doing in terms of the tone of the white house. >> so does the criticism, the praise sort of reflect the policies of the time, the culture of the time, maybe the public polling of the president at the time. >> i think it reflects popular culture. we do expect a higher standard of the white house, we know it's not our house, we know that it is a more formal style, but it can't seem to formal, it can't seem too ostentatious. it can't be show. >> like eleanor roosevelt's

dress for example, or another dress that comes to mind, maybe. >> i think they're all pretty representative of their time period. i think eleanor roosevelt really reflects that period of time. she's walking a line, because at the first inaugural ball, it's during the aggressidepression, to look elegant and appropriate. that is an elegant, simple dress. you could visualize yourself in that dress. i think most people could look at the pictures of her and see that they -- this was something that they could relate to. jacqueline kennedy, this is the dress from her first state dinner. jacqueline kennedy is more shaping fashions.

that really speaks to the formality of the new look and the 50s. and if you look at something like the flapper dresses, actually nancy reagan's wonderful suit. when you look at that, you know it's the 1980s. they want to be appropriate for the occasion, appropriate for their age and appropriate for the circumstance. and appropriate as a symbol of the united states. even when she's not in duty hours, she represents the united states. >> we will have two photo

opportunities, the first is for the still photographers and then that will be followed by the television camera. so we ask our guests to please be patient. >> all day monday, american history tv is featuring america's first ladies. who do you think was our most influential first ladies, join the conversation on facebook at facebook.com/cspan. >> each year, time mag zbe"time posts the -- if the same question were posed in 1862, who would be named as the person of the year. as historions and james mcpherson ponder that question and present their candidates for person of the year, 1862. the museum of the confederacy and the library of virginia

hosts the all day forum. live coverage begins at 9:30 amount. this week on american artifacts, we visit the center for education and leadership across the street from forbes theater, as he enjoyed the play our american cousin. whereits fors talks about the center's purpose and goals. >> we are in the center for education and leadership, directly across the street from forbes theater on tenth street in washington, d.c. behind me is the tower of books, which is a concept that really

started about five years ago to visualize and showcase the unending quest. so this tower of books represents as we all know that abraham lincoln is the most written about figure in world history next to jesus christ. we believe that ford's theater is the location in washington, d.c. we are able to marry the concepts and the excerpts that we bring to the museum experience. we will teach our or tate for. we will do these to do our teacher training. this center is what this is all

about. >> the battle of mchenry -- coming up next, the maryland historical society features music -- star spangled banner and how writing and poetry became musical expressions of patriotism. this is about an hour. >> much more important than the white cloth is the black table