governorship, what letter would you assign to it? and the second question is, as the first catholic presidential candidate, did he help how the country viewed religion as a factor? >> let's take the governor question here and the religion question there. >> i would give the governor smith an "a" because he faced a tremendously uphill battle. new york was a republican state at the time. and as i mentioned, he had a very tough time dealing with the legislature which was overwhelmingly republican. in fact, in 1920 when they expelled the socialists, i never understood why because they had 110 republicans out of 150 seats. and it didn't really matter when it came to the votes. but i think that i would give governor smith an "a." he created so many things, as i mentioned, the executive budget, the short ballot, making the short ballot would be stop voting for six or seven statewide offices and have some of them appointed like a state engineer and the like. the public authority was one thing that he tried to undertake and power authority and the

like. and also the port authority in new york and new jersey was one of his ideas. a bistate authority. he had a lot of interesting things. >> john evers, biggest failure of al smith. >> some of it might be that he overthought things. i think from a political science point of view, public authorities were something he wanted to deal with. and he created those. and now there's debates over public authorities and bonding. governor smith was a huge proponent of bonding. and that has also created propensity today for dependence on bonding and could create state debt. >> what difference in al smith make in national politics? >> i think that al smith called certain questions and faced them down. his candidacy raised questions that had been percolating in various ways throughout the 1920s. these questions that we've been talking about. immigration, nativism, all of these sorts of issues. and he really calls the question

-- he takes a very sort of powerful stand about who's going to be an american. who ought to be included as an american. and becomes a great symbol for that. i think within the democratic party, he is also a very powerful figure and sort of consolidating what we now talk about as the roosevelt coalition, but it's really something that begins with al smith bringing this urban core into the democratic party. >> yale university history professor beverly gage and john evers, former new york state assembly historian, thank you so much for being on "the contenders." and we also want to make sure to thank speaker sheldon silver and the people here at the new york state assembly for allowing us to broadcast live. we want to thank our studio audience and our cable partner up here in albany, time warner. we're going to leave you with a few of al smith's own words on his career and life. >> i was elected to my first

public office in 1903. i remained in the assembly for 12 years. then i was elected sheriff of new york county. then i was elected president of the board of baltimore. in fact, i ran for office 22 times. i was elected 20 times and defeated twice. i worked for the county. i've worked for the city. i have worked for the state. and you will probably remember that i tried to get a job down in washington, but something happened to me at that time. ♪ ♪

all summer on sundays, american history tv presents "the contenders." this 14-week series highlights key political figures who ran for president and lost but who nevertheless changed political history. our program with al smith airs again tonight on american history tv on c-span3. next sunday, we continue our "contenders" series featuring wendell willkie who ran against fdr in 1940. watch "the contenders" each sunday at 8:30 a.m., 7:30 p.m., and 10:30 p.m. through labor day weekend. up next, at the organization

of american historians meeting in milwaukee, new york university professor linda gordon discusses birth control in america. she argues that birth control in the u.s. wasn't controversial until women became politically active and seeking the right to vote in the 19th century. she also outlines the history of the politics of birth control leading up to the 2012 election. this is about 20 minutes. >> american history tv is at the annual meeting of the organization of american historians. meeting in milwaukee. linda gordon, professor of history at new york university, joins us to talk a little bit about the history of birth control politics. you wrote the book "moral property: the history of birth control politics." a 2003 publication. where do -- where does the debate over birth control begin in american history? >> it actually began only about 175 years ago because for all of human society in every known

society, people have always practiced some kind of birth control. and it was not ever controversial before that. but for the last 175 years, in sort of peaks and valleys, there have been concerns about it. but from a point of view of an historian, this is only a modern controversy because by and large, you know, the main motive behind people's use of birth control has always been economic. it's always about how many kids can you afford to have, bring up in the right way? how close together can you allow them to come? and so it's such an important thing that people have always tried to control it. of course, they didn't have great methods in the old days. >> take us back 175 -- that's pretty specific. where does that start?

>> it starts with the women's rights movement. what some people call the women's suffrage movement, even though there were a lot of different women's rights that people were fighting about. really the first campaign against birth control was a backlash, a reaction to this women's rights movement. from conservatives who were afraid that women were leaving the home, that they were agitating for higher education. they were agitating for access to employment, access to public politics, to being able to vote, to being able to serve on juries. and they argued at that time that birth control was going to take women away from their god-given destiny which was to stay home and raise children and be wives. and that movement succeeded. and first most of the states, but then in 1873, the federal government passed a law that declared anything to do with birth control obscene and therefore not allowable in the interstate mail. >> so any sort of product

couldn't be sold or mailed? >> yes. it was not only a product. you could not even legally write, you know, an article arguing for birth control. that was considered obscene. and that lasted for quite a while. it lasted well into the 20th century. and it was in the early 20th century around 1910 that there really arose a movement to get rid of that prohibition. i think the reason then was there were many more women in the labor force. it was becoming more important to have fewer children because children were supposed to stay in school. they weren't supposed to go out and work to help support the family. between 1910 and 1920, there was what they called birth control leagues, organizations advocating birth control in every large city or town in this country. and state by state, states began

getting rid of their prohibition on birth control until finally the supreme court ruled in 1965, actually, not until then that it was unconstitutional to have any ban on birth control. >> this period between 1910 and 1920, was this also parallel to the women getting the vote movement? >> yes, very much. very much. birth control was seen as a really fundamental thing that women just needed if they are to organize their lives the way they needed to be organized in modern society. but again, i would say at that time the main motive is still economic is that people are seeing that they need smaller families. that they have to educate their children. and also that they can't expect their children to go out and work at age 13 and contribute money to the family. so you can't afford as many children. >> your history on the issue is titled "moral property." what do you mean by that term?

>> it's a quote. and it's actually a quote from a french minister of health at a time very recently when they tried to ban the drugru-486 which is actually an abortion-creating drug. and the company that manufactured it said that because it's controversial, we won't sell it here. and the french minister of health said, you can't do that because this is the moral property of women. if you won't sell it, we will manufacture it ourselves. and make it available. in other words, they were just refusing to capitulate to the pressure from the corporation which was trying to avoid controversy as corporations sometimes are. and i just like the quote because i think -- actually, i think it's the moral property of everyone, not just women. and you know, today, in the past, too, it's not as if this is, quote, a women's issue in the sense that women usually

think one thing and men think the opposite. in fact, there's very little gender gap in public opinion about birth control. as many men support birth control as women. and on the other hand, there are women who don't support birth control. it's really a family issue, i think, much more than a women's issue. but it has become a women's issue in the last 40 years. >> well, you wrote initially the book that people may be familiar with in 1976, "a woman's body, a woman's right." >> right. >> there's many years in between, 25 years or so. >> yeah. >> what did you learn in between that book and "moral property" about the issue of birth control that changed? how did your view change? >> the reason for the title of the first book is that that was the period in which it was not contraception, but it was abortion that was controversial. remember, this is the period right around the time of roe v. wade. the supreme court decision that legalized abortion. and it was also a wave. by the time of the supreme court decision, there were already 18 states whose legislatures had repealed the ban on abortion. and abortion at that time was connected with the women's movement which was very powerful in the 1970s. and people saw it as a tool for women. >> right. >> there's many years in between, 25 years or so. >> yeah. >> what did you learn in between that book and "moral property" about the issue of birth control that changed? how did your view change? >> the reason for the title of the first book is that that was the period in which it was not contraception, but it was abortion that was controversial. remember, this is the period

right around the time of roe v. wade. the supreme court decision that legalized abortion. and it was also a wave. by the time of the supreme court decision, there were already 18 states whose legislatures had repealed the ban on abortion. and abortion at that time was connected with the women's movement which was very powerful in the 1970s. and people saw it as a tool for women. it is in some ways, but it isn't in other ways, right? after all, of course, it's women's bodies who bear children. but as i said before, the polls always showed that as many men were in favor of birth control as women, but one of the -- one of the inequalities is that ever since 1920, men have been able to walk into any department store and buy condoms. women could not do that. because female birth control is

more expensive. it usually requires some degree of medical supervision. especially when you got to the pill because the birth control pill can have a lot of consequences. so it's more expensive. it's more -- it takes more of an effort for women to get birth control than for guys. >> how did the advent of the birth control pill change the political discussion over birth control in the united states? >> it changed because a lot of people thought with these pills that will be so readily accessible, it's the argument that birth control actually makes people more sexually active. i actually think there's no evidence for that. and most of the evidence suggests the opposite. you know, i teach young people. i teach college students all the time. and i always ask and talk about this issue because it comes up. none of them believe that access to birth control is what makes them sexually active or that lack of access is what keeps

them from being sexually active. but there is a very strong particularly christian conservative view that certainly believes that. and believes that if you can keep birth control from people, then they won't have sex. the problem is, first of all, we now live in a society in which half of all people who get married have lived together for several years before they got married. we have a whole new kind of family system. our family system has changed. so these people who are officially not married and usuallily in the eyes of christians of certain orthodox

christians, they are sinning, but in fact, they're couples. and they expect their lives to work that way. in fact, it's now very common for people to live together until they decide to have a child. and then they get married. but what's going on right now or in the last five years or four years, i think is actually a slightly more complicated thing because i think the anxiety that people have about contraception has intersected with a sort of tea party kind of movement that is attacking big government with a movement against the health insurance plan, what people like to call obamacare. and also just there's, i think,

a lot of conservative bill -- i was going to say opposition, but i think it's stronger than opposition. really people are very, very antagonistic toward obama. just a lot of hatred of obama. and i think all those things have intersected. the contraception issue, the anti-big government issue. and of course the expression of it was the attack on planned parenthood. which is a very old organization. and a very important one. >> are you surprised that the issue of contraception, of birth control, has come back into the political debate? >> very, very. because, you know, when i wrote that first book, as i said, the controversy in the 1970s was about abortion. as far as contraception was concerned, that was just a long-settled issue. and people in most other parts of the world, i have to say, think the americans are a little weird about this. especially because there are very substantial reasons to worry about population control in certain other countries. and the main tool that you have for that is contraception. but also because the economy today is very weak. huge numbers of families. the vast majority, in fact, of american families are absolutely

depend end on two wage earners. they cannot live on the wages of one person. when you have two full-time wage earners in a family, you really have to be able to have the freedom to have some control over how many children you're going to create. >> you talked some about the obama health care law and its requirement in terms of paying for contraception, which has caused some controversy in recent weeks and months. what about on the state level? have states passed laws either increasing birth control access or restricting it recently? >> it depends on the state. states like new york know that they really need to increase birth control. and there are a lot of clinics. states like texas have done the opposite. and they essentially reflect what people now popularly call the red and blue states, right? but what people don't actually

often register is that actually only the minority of planned parenthood's services have to do with either abortion, which is just a tiny percentage, or even contraception. because planned parenthood serves essentially poor people. and they provide -- they provide mammograms for breast cancer screening. they do cervical cancer screening. they provide health services for men. they do prostate cancer screening. they teach safe sex, going along with screening for venereal disease or aids and so on. that's why i say it's part of this idea that we don't want big government spending money on these kinds of things. when, in fact, what we spend for every poor person that becomes pregnant and has a baby is, of course, far greater than what we spend on prevention. >> we've spent a good deal of

time talking about birth control mainly for women. you've talked about the access of condoms. in your books, and particularly in "the moral property" book, what do you write about as the role of men in the political debate over birth control? >> well, i think it's very important not to frame this issue as an issue of men against women because that's just not the way i see it. of course, women do get very annoyed when you have, as we saw lately, a house -- a congressional panel where you have only men talking about birth control. but that's not, in fact, representative. and it's very important. there are a lot of catholic women who are very opposed to birth control. so it doesn't divide along those lines. but the fact remains that there's one fundamental difference between condoms and

other forms of birth control. and that is who is in charge of the birth control in? and one of the interesting things i find among my college students is they're not happy which means that they can't just rely on condoms. >> have you found that to be the case throughout the 175 years or 200 years of history of looking at this issue? that women want to make those -- or are -- >> be in control, yeah. to some extent. the evidence, you know, from a historian's point of view, i don't have definitive evidence. sometimes men don't like to use condoms at all. at other times they don't feel as great of a sense of the risk are it is going to be part of a woman's culture, there is a danger that i can get pregnant. it is women who know what stage

of their monthly menstrual cycle they're at. i think there's actually some real basis for thinking that all along, women have been somewhat more disciplined about the use of birth control and they want therefore to have that in their own hands. >> if you were going to write a sequel to your book on moral property ten years down the road, what is the chapter that you would like to include in there? what would you like to see in that chapter? >> it would -- it would actually very much be about values. and moral values. and not so much about data. because i find that, you know, in american politics, people often don't respond very well to data. i can show them how it's a money-saving thing to provide contraception and that doesn't sway them. but i do think that -- and this is partly what i mean by moral property. i think it is an extremely moral

act to make clear decisions about when you're going to have children and how many. and with what spacing. and it has to do with valuing children. with value iing a real hands-on parenthood. that you really have children because you want to give them a lot of love and to create some kind of family around them. i'm very open about what kind of family. i have no objection to families of two women or even families of two men, which we occasionally see. but i see that as a moral value. and i do think that in some ways what goes on with a very religious movement, like the christian right, is that they seem to be the only people who stand for morality. and i think we have other kinds of moral issues that are important. so i think that's what i would probably talk about and how that has changed over time. >> linda gordon, professor of history from new york

university, thanks for joining us on american history tv. jeff city, missouri. lewis and clark stopped here during their expedition. hooegsed by c-span's content vehicles, we visited many sites showcasing the city's rich here. learn more on american history tv. we're going into the stacks where the records are held for the archives. we hold records from all branches of state government. we have at least 338 million documents in our holdings here. 500,000 photographs. video and film library. just a tremendous amount of material that researchers are able to use when they're

conducting reserve at the archives. these rows here, we are storing the missouri state penitentiary and the records of the other agencies in corrections. your national audience i'm sure is familiar with james earl ray and his killing of dr. king. that's what we're going to show you in this area today. what i'm going to pull here is the classification book for james earl ray. it actually has the marks and scars that he had for identification purposes, and since he escaped from the missouri state penitentiary, that was important for identifying him once that the national authorities determined who that they were looking for in the manhunt for the killer of dr. king. this is actually the criminal identification for james earl ray. it gives all the statistics for him. if you see here, it kind of lists, like, his birth date, where he was born, his mother's name, his address, then down on the page further it also talks

about what he was actually charged for, why he was in the missouri state penitentiary, those kind -- that kind of information. he'd actually stolen a motor vehicle, so he was in for auto theft, basically. these came as a transfer from the missouri state penitentiary. we have a number of series here we pulled some other volumes already that relate to james earl ray as well. and we received all these as transfers from the missouri state penitentiary. what we're looking at here is the inmate register that contains the information on james earl ray. we marked the page previously. if you look here, his inmate number, 00416, shows when he was admitted to the missouri state penitentiary in 1960. and it shows all the different information about him. he was a baker as his occupation and catholic as well. he only went to the 10th grade, which is interesting as well. he did not graduate from high

school, and then this column shows where he had been in prison before, so if you look, he had been in both the state penitentiary in illinois as well as serving two stints in leavenworth, kansas, in the u.s. penitentiary there. he was serving 20 years. i'm sure some of that had to do with the fact of him being a repeat felon. and it shows how long that he was serving. so he was convicted in february of 1960. and admitted to the state penitentiary on march 17, 1960, and he was supposed to get out of the state penitentiary in 1980, and if he served good time, which he did not, because he escaped, he would have gotten out for good behavior march 16th of 1975, and these last columns are for discharge and violation of rules. and this is where it shows that at one time he had been admitted to the state hospital in fulton.

and that was in 1966. but then on april the 23rd of 1967, he escaped from the missouri state penitentiary. next we're going to look at the record of escapes for the time period when james earl ray left the missouri state penitentiary. he escaped from the missouri state penitentiary. you can kind of look at the book here and look at all the escapes from 1965 through 1967, and he's the next to last entry on the page. he actually smuggled himself out in a bread truck, but it's kind of interesting whenever you look at all these escapes. they highlighted those that came from inside the prison itself on this page and so there are only five on this page from june of '65 to may of '67, basically, a two-year period, that escaped from the missouri state penitentiary. most of the rest of these were on work release when they esc e

escaped. if you look at the page too, and how they were all recaptured except james earl ray. he's the only blank entry on this page. he went to alabama and then went to memphis where he killed dr. king. he escaped to canada eventually, took on an alias, went to england, and that's where he was captured is in england. and what we're looking at now is the extradition folder for james earl ray. because he was actually captured in great britain, there was a number of telegrams and correspondence. because he still was supposed to be in the custody of the missouri state penitentiary at the time. so the extradition was based on his escape from the missouri state penitentiary. this document here is the actual request for extradition hearing

that was taken in great britain, and if you look on here too, it says james earl ray, but they specifically cite his alias that he assumed when he fled to canada and that's what was on his passport when he went to great britain as well. the extradition was in june of 1968, and he was brought back soon thereafter to memphis, tennessee, for prosecution. he eventually pleads guilty, actually, to the assassination. he was incarcerated in tennessee eventually at the brushy mountain state penitentiary there in tennessee. and he eventually died in the tennessee state penitentiary. the james earl ray documents are really an example of -- of what you would find for any family that has a family member in a prison, so in that respect, it's kind of just a general approach,