i'm happy. i'm just content to do god's will. so that was his speech. they said after he finished, he was almost physically drained. he practically collapsed on stage. they get him back to the room and he rests. well, the next day sarah palis . he's in a totally different mindset. he's cracking jokes. he's gone to the cafe and had a catfish dinner with abernathy. about 5:00 that afternoon, andrew young had showed up. the city had put an injunction against dr. king and a restraining order against dr. king not to have a rally. so andrew young was trying to get that lifted. he said, why didn't you check in? and king hit him with a pillow. he hit king back with a pillow. and everybody started having a pillow fight. they all laughed and king said, it's time to get ready for dinner. so they leave, he shares a room with abernathy.

abernathy was shaving. king steps out onto the balcony where the wreath is positioned. he's talking down the courtyard below to jesse who was introducing him to the musician who is going to play that night. ben branch was a musician from chicago, and dr. king says to ben branch, i want you to play my favorite song tonight, ben. i want you to play "precious lord" which is what you're hearing right now from amelia jackson. he said, all right, mr. king, i'll play it and i'll play it real pretty. then the silence was cracked by a gunshot. that was at 6:01 p.m. one shot. he fell backwards where that square is cut in the concrete. his feet were kind of hanging off the edge. people started screaming and rushed up the steps to where he was. the famous photograph of everybody pointing was in response to the police who were on this fire department station roof right here. they came climbing off the roof saying, where did the shot w t. that point is to the building in

the middle, which was the original rooming house that the assassin had rented that day. it was one shot. it entered the right side of his throat area, neck area, severed his spine and went down to his chest cavity. they took him to a local hospital, and the doctors worked on him for about 20 minutes because of who he was. they wanted to make sure that everything was done, but they knew pretty much he was doa. that was the beginning for us as a museum. i know a tragic situation, but we don't dwell on the fact that king died here. for us his legacy is about what he did as a live person. our legacy to the king is that he died a tragic death so that others could have such rich lives, and he did not mind that. he knew that. so we opened our doors in '91 as a testament and as a testimony to what he believed, that everybody deserved the best that this country has to offer. and that's what we believe in

today. >> for more information about the national civil rights museum, visit the museum's web site at civilrightsmuseum.org. for more information about american history tv, including our complete schedule, visit our web site at cspan.org/history. and we'll have more american history tv tomorrow night on cspan3. at 8:00 eastern, the history of the u.s. space program. jean kranz reflects on his experience as nasa's flight director. and then at 9:30, the astronauts are given the highest honor, the congressional medal. and at 10:30, the life of john glenn who 50 years ago became the first astronaut to orbit the earth. >> each week, american history

tv sits in on a lecture with one of the country's college professors. you can watch the classes here every saturday at 8:00 p.m. and midnight eastern and sundays at 11:00 a.m. now professor william foster teaches an english class in which students investigate the and society. in this lecture, professor foster discusses the history of the use of the n-word in american literature and culture. in the adventures of huckleberry finn by mark twain. also please note that some viewers may find language in this hour-long program offensive. >> good afternoon, class. >> good afternoon. >> today we're in english 102 composition and literature. we're going to start off our discussion talking about the use of the n-word in both harriet --

harriet beacher stole's very famous classic, "uncle tom's cabin" and we'll be talking about mark twain's "huckleberry finn" is correct. there has been recent controversy talking about a publisher who is changing the n-word to slave and they're changing the injun word to indian because a lot of people offended by that. this is not a controversy that just started, this is a controversy that's been going on since day one. these novels came out in the 1860s, and the idea is that since that point in time there's beb been a little bit of controversy. we're going to start with the history, because many times in class, you have to have a sense of literature to understand history. if you don't understand what motivated people to do what they did, you really kind of lose it

when we talk about potatoetry, we talk about drama, when we talk about history. let's look at cart to the cartoe board. he was 1950s's greatest and a little kid in the back said gangsta rappers. that's the only way he has connection to it. let's take a look at another slide and see how we go. okay. this is a video that we watched. it is -- ignore the promotion at the bottom. it is the n-word, divided we stand. we are given an opportunity to see any number of interpretations of the word. even if we had no historical context. if we just went looking for how this word is used, we still have controversy, do went? -- do we not? >> yes. >> the controversy being what?

someone help me. it's offensive to certain people but not to everybody. we have audiences who think they could use it, others don't think they could use it at all. in watching this video, we also got a chance to see there are many different definitions for the word, something everyone here has to admit to. we can't assume it has only one meaning. its primary, the one it's known for, is a derogatory term to people of color. we can say black people and i'm sure we'll be okay. but there is also the idea of who can use the word. so our discussion becomes less about language and more about control and power, yes? it's an important conversation. it's surprising to see how history and then to literature leads us to contemporary thought. because if i can control what you think, i can control what happens after that. the fact that we say the n-word instead of the word nigger means the control was already started, does it not? it is not a power of law, it's a power of social engineering,

yeah? okay. so let's take a look and see what else we have here, see what we're looking at in terms of reviewing where we've gotten to today. this is a cartoon by a good friend of mine. the name of the strip is called "secret agent man" where he's asking them about political correctness because that will be part of our discussion as well. checking out the new sneakers, he said, where is the black guy in the green jacket? he has a black friend. does that offend you, charlie? he says, nope. okay, david duke -- he was the head of the ku klux klan -- give me a break. is it a label just for the sake of being pc, politically correct? especially since i didn't mean any offense. you have to be sensitive to those who might be offended, thus we have the reason for using the n-word instead of the word nigger.

but how am i supposed to know that? i'm not some mind-reading gypsy, and then he krekcorrects him, ts rumanian, you bigot. >> we often sit in this class during this discussion saying in the 1950s and 1960s, certain words were used in fairly regularity. these were examples of derogatory terms and they were used in open form, and you understood because there was a context. nobody came to you because it sounded like another word. they didn't come after you at all. nowadays it becomes harder to explore these words and why they're appropriate and why they're not. particularly in literature. yes? >> me and my little brother used to watch "all in the family" every single night, and i didn't

realize it was offensive until i was like older. i was just thinking about all the family, and me and my brother, we were little, and we would watch it every single night and i didn't realize it was offensive and that they were using offensive words until i got older. >> when you use the word a whole lot, you may find more people who find it offensive. we talk about other forms of censorship. it's not just about race, sometimes it's about sexuality. sometimes it's about your orientation, your sexual orientation. all of those is something we need to figure out exactly where we're going to go in terms of the way rewe use language. if you have questions, ask them as we go along. this is the classic version of huckleberry finn, which i'm sure you're familiar with. it's a nice, easy way to find

out about the literary classic. you had said at one point that you were curious in the, quote, unquote, youth version or young adult version if they had taken the words out, okay? careful examination and even cursory examination shows that, no, they didn't. and i've looked at these as far back as the 1940s, 1930s, and i also like to check them to see what the illustrations looked like because that's what i'm interest as well as the words themselves. so no, nigger is still used, injun is still used, and i think there was another word that was offensive that they changed as well. debra, can you tell me what they're changing it to? to slave, as if it was somehow less offensive. didn't you tell me you thought slave was more offensive than the word nigger? you said you thought the word slave was more offensive?

[ inaudible ] >> because of europe? which is -- thank you. it's important to have an appreciation when they change the word. do you think this is the end of it? will they be changing the word again? because someone is going to say that slave is too offensive. let us think about probably one of the most interesting uses of language in our society. the names of sport teams, the braves, the indians, the huskies -- we already talked about that. i'm not talking about that again because that's going to be trouble. the yankees. that's not too bad. the university of massachusetts where i attended for undergraduate, the name of the team was the red men. native american, okay? there was a time when they thought it was too offensive. they changed it to -- anybody

know the name of the team now? the patriots. actually they call them the minute men. even when they changed them from red men to minute men, i thought, what are they eventually going to call them? the whales? the snail daughters. we'll call them the snail daughters. no, that would be wrong because they would be offended, too. this will be part of our discussion as well. let's take a look at a few more of these and then we'll go to my notes on the board. this is a classic illustrated version of "uncle tom's cabin." very clear image. you see the evil slave catcher in the background with the dog. you see the black man coming out of the swamp, frightened. probably one of the most powerful images of "uncle tom's cabin" if you don't get where he

will -- elsa dies and goes to heaven. where harriet beacham wrote this story, what did she have in mind? >> i think she was trying to shock people and she was an abolitionist. she was trying to show the evils of slavery. >> absolutely. thank you. in her doing that, she painted -- this is a early review of her work. she painted a very, very simplistic view of slavery. you had the kind of good slave -- i don't know why i'm going to mr. beckett when i say that -- the good slave owner and then you had the evil slave owner, okay, and you had the evil slave catcher, okay. and that was basically what slavery was about. you never knew -- you were at the whim of somebody. it was power. you were under somebody's

control, you were their slave. and it talks about the worst part of slavery. what would be the worse thing about having a child sold away from her? we did talk about that. there's a cover of little eva crossing -- here we go -- crossing the ice slope. if you can only imagine, if you've been near an icy river where there's huge chunks of ice on it as it goes down -- this is literature. she's using -- >> imagery. >> -- imagery. an a for my brother. she is so frightened of being caught and sold down the river and her baby being separated from her that she's jumping from one ice floe to the other. >> she also lost her shoes -- she also lost her shoes and her

feet were bleeding as she crossed the river. >> this is the power of words that harriet beacham was using to convince you about the weakness of slavery. even though her story was based on supposedly true events, if you didn't know this, she was challenged from day one. how dare you write this horrible story. slavery is not like that; slave masters. they were offended. that somehow she painted a picture that wasn't true. so she went out of her way several years after the publication to go and find that these are the facts this was based on. what happened nowadays, oh, sour grapes, shut up. she wanted to be sure that people got a sense of exactly what she was talking about, okay? it was one of the most well-read stories in america. for an america that was liter e

literate, they chewed this story up. it was a big hit overseas, okay. so even if it wasn't in the controlled environment of the north, because people in the south thought it was out of hand, but the idea was it was a major hit. it went through any number of publications. she became independently wealthy. she had grown up dirt poor. she became so wealthy that her needs were taken care of for the rest of her life. she wrote other things as well, okay? and the idea was that this was the beginning. women were not encouraged to write. women were not encouraged to have their own careers. it's so important to get a sense of the history of the time. did you have a question? >> no, sorry. >> yeah. >> especially focusing on the time period itself with women writers, we so many times in literature you think about kate chopin, and kate chopin had

written a story where she thinks her husband dies. and women really didn't have -- their security was their marriage, their security was in that household, and so if we're really thinking about the pivotal moment of women in history at that time, this was absolutely monumental, to say the least. >> no question about t. thank y you, octavia. you had to get a sense of what she was doing and why she was doing it. in terms of the merit -- thank you. i was there, i was just messing with you guys. in terms of the literary merit of her work, many people came after her for saying she created very simplistic stereotypes. but that was indeed her purpose. a lot of people said, this was very poor novel writing, how dare you, i understand what you're trying to do but you can do it better. i think they missed a point. she was trying to tell a story in as stark of detail as she possibly could, in kind of a relief map of what happened.

let's go through the major characters of "uncle tom's cabin," yes? we have uncle tom. uncle tom is presented as what. who can help me with character analysis of uncle tom. >> pro ttagonist? >> okay. what else? someone said very religious? go ahead. >> i don't know if i need that. >> yes, you do. >> thank you. he was, like she said, very pious, very loyal to his master. even at the end of the book when he had legre as his master, he said he would follow him, even though legre said he would beat him silly. even though legre beat another slave, he said, you can make me

do anything. you can't make me beat another slave. legre was the >> he's a monster. question, comment? >> he's a very loyal man. he would always come back into no matter how bad he was mistreated. >> yeah. >> okay. >> and even towards the end of the story he was mistreated so bad he almost forgot his beliefs in god but he just went through it and forgot about it. >> thank you. such an important stereotype one that lives so long is when you say uncle tom, at least in the '60s and '70s, you were referring to a black person that no matter what white people did, you loved and worshipped them, even to the point of your own destruction.

kind of a cole condemnation. >> i think that's somewhat inaccurate. >> realry? here we go. this is good. go for it. >> i understand that uncle tom and that the term uncle tom is to portray a black person. >> a docile black person. >> right. i get that. however, he still -- he wouldn't beat the other slaves even though legree wanted him to become more of a head slave in charge of the others, he wouldn't do it. and i think that he was submissive but not to the point of betraying his own people. so he still held to his beliefs. >> even if he was submissive to the point of not worrying about his own safety, he would not mistreat his own people. excellent point that he did have a good, moral center. >> i think the other gentlemen who was it, sambo? >> you're right, it was sambo. >> i would much rather be called an uncle tom than a sambo.

>> absolutely in terms of the character development or the characterizations from each character. i think you're absolute right. often we look at a caricature, we don't really remember or have any idea what the original was like. okay? in fact, someone saying the situation looks like we're rearranging deck chairs on the "titanic." you guys get that, right? work with me, thank you. okay. the idea is that why would that be considered a useless gesture? if sighed a this is like rearranging deck chairs on "titanic"? if you're not sure, we'll pass it down. i know destiny knows. >> someone said. >> this is useless. >> yeah, the idea is that this as useless kind of thing. some people don't even know what the "titanic" was, that second movie notwithstanding. come on, every woman knows. don't try to front with me. n mo onto the written notes because i want to take you someplace else. this is a book called "where did

i come from," from the 1970s talking about young people about their own sexuality written by several young men who got tired of not having the issue being confronted directly. they did not have very graphic drawings this, because we did talk about it in class. it was very simplistic drawings. they explained the act of sexual congress as when two people love each other. they always kept it in an emotional frame. this book outraged many groups. how dare you? okay. this is about the "n" word. how dare you take the power out of my hands to tell my child what sex is and draw pictures and have words to go with it. you! but the idea was this was an important book. i loved had book but thin i'd rather know than not know. i do have appreciation there are many people in our society who would rather not know than know. okay? and this is perhaps the core of our discussion. do we, in fact -- and this is

linked surprisingly to another topic, prohibition, do we in fact say because there are two guys who don't know how to stop drinking that we say nobody in here can drink anymore legally? so the same thing goes when we have a discussion of sexuality. i'm not going to ask, because i can only be embarrassed how many of you guys had that talk while where they took the boys in one room and the girls in the other and showed that horrible video that i still have nightmares about right now? still trying to get those images out of my head. no, not mom and dad. but the idea is about it's about power. is it not? who has the right to share this information? society? the government? school board? how was that discussion related to what happens with the n word, uncle tom's cabin and huckleberry finn? if the book is offending you as a teacher -- i can't read this book to my chirp, this book is horrible.

look at this, it says n word right in front of it. i don't have any black children in my class but it would be wrong to teach that book to my students. is that not a quandary for you as a teacher? how do you resolve that? yes? please. >> well, you can resolve it by giving them the history of the word to make it, tell them why it offends you and why you at first didn't want to teach it because then they can realize what it actually means to you and not just seeing the word and thinking their own thought about it. >> thank you. the idea is that now you're speak as a teach who are wants to address the issue head-on. it's also possible for people to try to duck the issue as well, yes? >> yes. >> okay. so if you're the school lie barian -- not you, her -- if you're the school librarian and you had this book on the shelf, elementary school, yeah, let's make it hard for you, it's an elementary school, what are you going to doing? ah, there's a microphone right for you.

>> i guess i would just warn them first about what the book's about and tell them what the word means so they don't misuse it. >> so you wouldn't take it off shelf? >> no. >> okay. >> in the restricted section. >> in the restricted section of the free public library? speaking of irony. oh, my god. look. >> [ inaudible question ]. i mean, i really don't think children have any you know, they shouldn't be reading this book in the first place. >> gasp! >> only because twain himself said in a -- >> just a second. we're working with equipment. stay tuned, folks, we'll be right back. check, check. >> thank you, gentleman. >> all right. twain said himself, in defense of the brooklyn public library banned his book saying it was crude and they shouldn't be read

by, you know, children. >> ah. >> twain said himself he never meant the book -- he wrote the book for adults. he never meant for children to read it. he said he -- yeah, he just basically said that he wrote it for adults and he -- he looked down on any guardian that would let their children read this book. because as i an child, i guess apparently his guardians let him read an uncensored version of the bible and it kind of stuck with him and like kind of -- yeah, it just messed him up. >> curious. i was a bible scholar as a young man. i got to tell you, the stories of hell and brim fire kept me straight. the story of jezebel being trampled by horses and the only thing left were the palms of her hands and soles of her feet kept me straight for many a year. but he does have a point, okay. please. we'll be right back. >> i just wanted to comment on that. >> please. >> even though they didn't want younger viewers to read it, i still think that was a major

part of the reason why the book was so huge and the effect it had on society because not only were adults reading it, but younger aged people were reading it also. you know, maybe like teenagers and then a little younger. so it had an effect on society because they're the upcoming new world. so they were able to read the book and interpret their own thought, not what their parents think. so really even though he didn't want kids to read it, i believe that the younger crowd was the one to make it really a hit. >> thank you. i think this is an important part about that as well, is that it was the first huckleberry finn, first american novel, the first one ever written on a typewriter, it was the first one that was in jargon and supposedly written by a young person. so two total different perspectives added to the pantheon of american literature, which is just amazing.

if you listen to it on tape or you hear an actor do the part of huck finn, it's just amazing. now we make fun of everybody. if somebody speaks with a at's hilarious. this is one of the first times where it was supposed because the original title was the autobiography of huck finn. he changed it several times. it's just amazing to me. it gives me a chance as someone from contemporary times to place literally myself in the body of a young man who is my age even though his background and experience is totally different than mine. okay? this is also the cover of tom sawyer from the illustrated comic series, okay. and this one here it, "happy to be nappy" relates to our conversation about censorship and images and symbolism relating to race, yes? happy to be nappy, bell hooks. love her work. the book is about a young girl