thank you to our audience for joining us and for your great questions. thank you for another exciting and fascinating presentation. >> there are a lot of places to get political information. but only at c-span do you get it straight from the source. no matter where you are from or where you stand on the issues, c-span is america's network. unfiltered, unbiased, word for word. if it happens here, or here, or here, or anywhere that matters, america is watching on c-span. powered by cable. hello, everyone. welcome to tonight's program. thanks for being here. i'm marcia eli. i come to you from the center of brooklyn history of the brooklyn public library and pbl presents,

the arts and culture arm. tonight i'm thrilled to welcome author james gaines whose latest book which comes out on february 8th is "the fifties, an underground history." it's packed with insights. gaines delivers a compassionate and insightful portrait of singular men and women who spoke out on lgbtq issues, women's rights, civil rights and the environment in the 1950s. now the complacent era that we all make you think it is. quicks for you first while the book is not released for a few more weeks. this is kind of a sneak peek. you can pre-order it and we will put a link in the chat to the website of a local brooklyn bookstore the community

bookstore so that you can do that if you so desire with just a couple of clicks. second like all of our talks you have the option tonight to use closed captioning that features that the bottom of your screen life transcript and finally i want to invite you all to share your questions tonight for james type them throughout the program into the q&a box at the bottom of your screen and dan will will take as many of them as he has time for towards the end of the program. now, let me say a word about each. our guests and i will happily hand it off to them. james our gaines is the former managing editor of time life and people magazines and the author of several books, including wits and days and nights of the algonquin roundtable evening in the palace of reason a study of johann sebastian bach in the early enlightenment, and for liberty and glory, washington lafayette and their revolutions.

and daniel ocrants books include great fortune the epic of rockefeller center, which was a finalist for the 2004 pulitzer prize in history last call the rise and fall of prohibition and the guarded gate bigotry eugenics and the law that kept two generations of -- italians and other europeans out of america. he was also the first public editor of the new york times. welcome to you both. thank you so much for being here. i'm excited to hear your conversation and take it away. thank you very much. marsha. i'm very happy to be here and i want to thank the library and the bookstore for making this possible and i would say hello to my old friend jim. hi jim. hi, dan, jim and i met during the 1960s. we're very old. in ann arbor, michigan at a moment when people of our generation thought that we were

changing the world. we didn't change the world that much but we did take a lot of self-congratulatory moments to so how different were we were but what one learns from reading jim's book and reading the 50s is that the 60s were the consequence of the 50s as marsha said when she introduced us the complacent fifties were not complacent for those people who are fighting enormous battles that had great consequences in the 60s and many of them still have consequences a very positive sense today. jim why did you write this book? um initially it was because my kids came home from school one day and said, why is our time not as exciting as the sixties. yes, and i had to say you know, i'm well, i didn't say that. it was actually fraught it wasn't all fun and games they were talking about the music i think. um, but then i started think i

was looking for subject after i finished. the washington lafayette book and and i started to think. how was it that this black and white decade led to this polychromatic riot of the 60s history just doesn't work that way. you know, it's it's it doesn't work my decades. as you well know. so i started to think why you know, how did the 60s emerge? and as i was because i was reading it came to me that it wasn't the decade. i thought it was. not at i say it wasn't at all. but it was different and more complicated than i had known. and that makes her good book. could you maybe introduce where we're going by reading the last paragraph of the introduction page? yeah.

there's a theory that change happens not by winning hearts and minds. but by changing the law. after which harps and minds will follow among isolated people of the 50s. however, there's evidence of an earlier stage in the process of change. the moment when a singular man or woman sets out to confront other than evade some intimately personal conflict which inspires them and others to change the heart's minds of those who make the laws. so isolated by their personal histories, idiosyncrasies flaws and gifts. they have in common the courage the vision and a profoundly motivating need to fight for change in their time in the future. this book is about some of the best of them. and that's what we're going to talk about tonight many of the people that jim writes about in this book several of them are familiar names and we'll talk about a few of them.

but the great the one of the huge contributions that i think the book makes is it introduces us to people who were enormously influential players and our nation's history and very few of us know who they were. and i thought we might start out for jim. tell us a little bit about harry. hay who was harry. hay. harry hayes started the first sustained organization for gay rights in the history in american history and he did so at the worst possible time. it was just after world war two. a time when when the united states the soviet union and nazi germany shared the view that homosexuals were criminals and potential security risks. and the church thought were wicked and the medical profession called psychopaths

and it was at this moment that harry. hey who's then married with two? daughters decided and a member of the communist party by the way, which will come back to decided that it was time to start a gay rights movement. and everybody told me it was crazy and he did it anyway because among other things he was incredibly stubborn. and he did it. it was called the matter sheen society and it was a sort of like a alcoholic's anonymous group where you came and you talked about that issue, but it took him three or four years to even get someone. to join him in that effort and in that time he lost his family. yeah. what year are we in jim? when he started that when he actually got to start the it was 1951. when he thought about it, it was 1946-47.

and in the time between he lost his family. he lost all his friends except the gay men that he new and we're her friend. where's his friends outside the home he lost his relationship with his daughters. although he he tried to keep it up with by paying the you know, the child support he was supposed to through his job at a at a weapon factory. this was in los angeles and they lived in a neighborhood that was called the swish alps because it was a gay scene. and it was a scene he had to keep himself away from which was he had terrible dreams as he as he moved towards starting this organization that falling down mountain sides pushing his children down that sides, you know hurting them and his wife. um, i don't i can't imagine a worse conflict. but he managed to do it and then as soon as he did it at their first convention, he was voted out of power.

because of his communist connections and by then it was 1953 and everybody was scared to death of mccarthy. and he and they were at every right to be scared of mccarthy because like the combination of communism and homosexuality was really not at the time. it was everybody thought that they were that they were spies. derby there are being fired by the hundreds from the state department. um a couple things jumped out of me reading about hey and the and the environment one, you know, just as a fact that i had no idea that when the american army liberated the concentration camps in eastern europe. we did not set free the men who had pink triangles on their shoulders. they were just left there. they were returned to germany where whose courts had sentenced them to long prison terms and they got no credit for time served in the concentration camp. incredible and we knew that when we handed them over.

that's 1945 1945 46. yep. so no 1945. yeah, moving forward a few years of phrase that comes up in the in the discussion of the medicine society is self-respect as a radical demand. can you elaborate on that? i think that does it says it all i mean, can you imagine a time when self-respect would be considered a radical demand? i mean, it's it's infuriating honestly, but at the time that was the case, that's effectively what at that point. hey and associates were not. advocating changes in laws or anything. they wanted self-respect. that was really the issue self-respect, but they also wanted the the gale stuff to stop where cops would demand payment from bars for forgive from gay bars and also that they that you know that they were

generally oppressed. everywhere they went they were oppressed. they had to have they had to have sex in bathrooms. and so the police hung out in bathrooms. i mean it was. it was very sorry sight. so when harry hay is kicked out of the organization that he had labored and sweat for to found that doesn't end things who us about frank caminy. before i get to canada, i'll tell you where it went. it went to a guy who in. san francisco who? who turned the organization inside out he made psychologists part of their routine meetings psychologists who told them they were sick and needed help. he actually told the fbi that he would help them find gay people in san francisco.

that didn't come out until very recent book, but it was it was it was terrible, but then frank hamady in washington. who had never joined the vanishing? was a perfect. he had got his astronomy from harvard. and was about to to start teaching at georgetown when he went to san francisco for a an academic meeting. presented a paper there, but was caught in a bathroom. having sex with someone else and was arrested. and then he was he was he was outed to the civil service where he then had been had been hired. because he couldn't teach at georgetown anymore, but they didn't know the civil service did not know this happened until sometime later when they called

him in and said what happened in san francisco. and but they didn't -- the civil service did not know this happened until sometime later when they called him in and said, what happened in san francisco? and he refused to answer, refused to answer. then he just told them it was none of their business and they fired him. then he on a diet of 20 cents a day -- i mean an allowance of 20 cents a day, because he had no money -- he sold his car to get there -- he began papering washington with this story. and complaining about the legal and moral -- i don't know -- insult this represented to not only him but to other gay men

who at the time were still being fired at a very fast rate because now mccarthy was really in his high moment. so he graduated then to being perhaps the most the most succe advocate for sexual -- the absence of sexual discrimination. and including an appeal to the supreme court on behalf of a guy that was not successful. but actually the chief justices clerk thought it would be, but he knew the court would never take the case. that's what happened. they kept fighting and fighting and fighting for years until finally he was able to go to the

obama white house and the obama white house cancelled, repealed clinton's don't ask don't tell policy. i skipped over the fact that frnk was a decorated soldier in world war ii. an 88 millimeter and was broader than nothing of his infantrymen. which he wore to that occasion. >> but that was after half a century of his battling. >> yes. >> we have a lot of people to cover, but before we leave this subject, could i ask you to read the last paragraph on page 47.

>> their cohorts left the country a priceless had legacy. they lifted the birdie of shame for millions of people who medical profession called psychopaths. and they replaced that burden with every citizen oos birthright. self-respect and the respect of others. no one in the early movement got more recognition in their lifetimes than harry and frank. but what deserved celebrations as much as they won is the model they left behind. he famously wrote, to be nobody but yourself in a world which is doing its best day and night to maybe you everybody else means to fight the hardest battle, which any human being can fight. that is what they did. >> thanks, jim. >> the next section of the book

is about the origins of really americanfect nism in the 20th century or i guess american feminism the voting amendment to the constitution. the key figure in this chapter, there are many women in this chapter who are thrilling figure, but the one who struck me was pauly murry. >> she's finally getting some contract for all she did. but she began life, her mother died when she was 3. she was sent to live with her grandparents. one of them was fought for the union in the civil war. and the other one was the child of -- she was the child of a

black slave, but she was also the mistress, as it were, but she was a rape victim of her owner's son. so she grew up with people on both sides of the south. she was of their skin color, in between race. which was a problem in school when she was young. and then as she became a teenager, she thought she was misidentified as a girl. she felt she was a man. and she kept writing to doctors saying, please help. i know there's been a mistake. so she was in between both racial and gender.

so that was her struggle and that was her weapon against the world as she found it later. >> to me, it's that part of the story really begins when she's in law school at howard university. >> she was well educated. her background was middle clasp. her family were nurses and professional people. so she was going around the country trying to save the sharecropper from the noose. and he had been convicted of murder.

wrongly, but convicted in minutes by a white jury. at one point, she gave her spiel in front of the dean of howard law school and was given as a result a full tuition scholarship to howard. she was the only woman in hr class of all black men. and she found herself laughed at behind her back. she was not called in class as much as the other guys. and she was at the first instance aware of what she came to call jayne crow. it was the combination of sexual discrimination, gender discrimination and racial discrimination.

it didn't her final law school paper was about how the equal protection argument of the constitution could prevail over plessy v. ferguson in the 19th century. her classmates laughed at her, but she prevailed. and her professor got her $25 that it wouldn't be overturned for the next 25 years. in fact, it was overturned by thorough good marshal in the brown decision, which he won in part by reading her thesis, because he was really going for it. he didn't address gender

discrimination until years later. and that was the argument that ruth bader ginsburg used when she was still an attorney to argue -- to write the brief that won the supreme court's decision to declare sexual discrimination to be unconstitutional. that was a huge breakthrough. and it was because of ginsberg acknowledging that by putting her name on the brief. >> her role as a figure in american legal history is enormous. but we know ginsberg and we know marshal. we don't know her. i began to see the nature of the discrimination. very vividly around the time of march on washington. by this point, she's a well known figure within the civil rights legal community.

the march on washington is about to take place. and she's not very pleased with the way it's proceeding. so she writes to one of the organizers. can you read what she say to him? >> by the way, randolph and his march on washington movement from the 1940s hired her. he was her first real employer. and this is what she said to him when rosa parks, daizy bates, all the prominent women of the civil right ts movement were given seconds on the podium at the march on washington. movemen seconds on the podium at the march on washington.movement we seconds on the podium at the march on washington.s movement n seconds on the podium at the march on washington.

>> the time has come to say to you quite candidly, mr. reince fofl, that tokenism is as offensive when applied to women as when applied to negros. that's the word she always used. and that i have not devoted the greater part of my adult life to the implementation of human rights to now condone any policy, which is not inclusive. >> any consequences? >> no. in fact, the day before the march, he spoke at the national press club, which then consigned women to the balcony. i mean, really, it shows you just how complex and really

diseased the relationship was between the black civil rights movement and the women's rights movement. >> but three years after the march on washington, she plays a key role in a very important moment in american feminist hs history. >> she does. she was on the president's commission on civil rights and, specifically, on the issue issue of feminism, especially equal rights amendment. and she was -- i forget exactly what happened, but bthty reached out to her. i know, it was a piece in "the new york times" when she basically threatened on behalf of feminism or women's rights. and they reached out and talked to her. and they droibed to her what she

thought of as an for wimp. and betty picked up that mantle and went with it. paulie helped her, introduced her to her network at the president's commission, and the rest is history except that a couple years later, she quit the national organization of women which she helped to start because of welcome of diversity. it was just not the organization she wished to help. of diversit. it was just not the organization she wished to help.la of divers. it was just not the organization she wished to help.c of diversi. it was just not the organization she wished to help.k of diversi. it was just not the organization she wished to help. she was looking for a movement of murlt presidential discriminations. against indigenous people, people from other countries, a class, race and agendaer. . >> half a >> half a century ago. >> exactly. she was a pioneer of what's now been called intersectional feminism. >> next subject. third section of the book is about the civil rights movement.

obviously, an enormous moment in american history. i wonder if you might begin with back story on this. the history of black men and the military service in this country. >> this is a chapter somewhat different because it tries to rectify the imbalance between -- well it tries to minimize the effect that men coming home from the war had on the civil rights movement and how important armed defense was to the nonviolent movement. when medgar every evers, we know a lot about medgar evers, but not everything. when he came home from service, he served from d day to the battle of the bulge. when he came home, he was on his way home on the back of a bus in

uniform with his discharge papers and full of medals, and when the bus stopped for people to eat lunch, he was left on the bus. >> this is in the 1940s? >> yes, this is 1945, '46. and that year was an election year. and medgar evers and his brother decided they were going to vote, which no one had ever done in their county. and their parents were told don't let this happen. because you're not going to like what happens to them. the parents told them what this white visitor had said, but they did not tell them not to go to the polling place. and they did. where they were turned back by

guns and the threat of violence. they turned back and they got their own guns and walked back towards the polling place and there were met by more guns and decided we don't really want to get killed, so they walked home. they were not able to vote in 1946. and i mean it's striking to me that we're still talking about voting rights. there's going to be a debate in the senate tonight -- maybe it's going on already about voting rights. how could this be. it's disgusting. >> there's a historical precedent relating to this about black soldiers returning from world war i. and there's a quote that i could read the quote or do you want to read the quote? >> either way. >> let me read this. this is a 6-year-old girl

remembering when the last black veterans of world war i kames home to alabama and she never forgot sitting up nights with her grandfather, who kept a shotgun on his lap waiting for the clan. she remembered him saying, i don't know how long i would last if they came breaking in here, but i'm getting the first one who comes through the door. she stayed up with him because i wanted to see it. i wanted to see him shoot that gun. who was that 6-year-old? >> rosa parks. she already had the fire in the belly, as we say. i think -- frederick douglas urged black men to join the civil war. because convinced if they did, their standing in the country would be as regular citizens.

and it would be the same thing in world war i. and neither of them got any credit. in fact, what happened was when they came home in uniform, they were met by white terrorists who said, wear that uniform again and you will die. and that happened to one of the people that i write about. >> do you want to talk about isaac wood ard at this pointed? >> let's do. isaacs went in as a private and came home as a sergeant. he was working with an all-black unit in the pacific theater. and had when he came home, he was on a bus going home to south carolina north carolina where his wife was waiting for him.

and when they made a stop, he had to go to the bathroom. so he told them, driver, i need to go to the bathroom. and the driver said no. and he said no. and isaac said, talk to me like i'm a man. just like you. which i think before the war he would never have said. and so the driver without letting him know went to a phone, called ahead and told the police there was somebody on his bus making trouble. he was met by the entire police force, which was two guys, the chief of police anddeputy. the driver told him to get out and talk to the chief of police. he did. before he could get a word out, the chief of police beat him in the head with a special baton

that was rigged for real impact. >> he's in uniform, right? >> he's in uniform. and finally had he managed to get the baton away from the guy and started fighting and the deputy came around and put his gun on him and told him he would shoot him if he didn't stop. so he didn't stop. and the chief of police kept beating him. at one point, they could tell later that he had ground his baton into woodard's eyes, which indicates that he made the mistake of looking directly at mim him. isaac was blind for the rest of his life. truman took his case up. he was talked to by the naacp.

truman was a real hero when it came to civil rights. really give him credit for it. but he was the first presidential candidate ever to campaign in harlem. truman said to his attorney general, you have to look into this. if necessary, if right, bring charges against this chief of police. that was just in the south in 1946. >> was this around the same time that truman integrated the armed forces? >> yeah, he wasn't the first to try. he was the first to make it a policy. isaac was blind for the rest of his life and never knew that truman had come in for him. that the trial took place and the judge in the trial was absolutely on his side.

and actually set a bunch of precedence for civil rights law. he was alienated from his town. and he never knew about any of this. >> this judge had never particularly shown any interest in civil rights issues. but he was so horrified by this. needless to say, for that period, the jury acquitted the police chief, correct? >> of course, in minutes. he took a walk around town so they couldn't acquit him too fast. his wife burst into tears. isaac never forgot it. >> an incredible story. the last section of the book is about ecology. a word that probably didn't even exist back then. >> it did actually.

>> we know about rachel, who is a key figure in this chapter. who moved from studying to what was happening to our birds and silence to the spring, which is probably maybe the one that comes closest to it as they say. s the book that changes the world's view of something. in this case, there's a second character that you pair her with, even though they never met. and that's norbert weiner. the most remarkable boy in the world. i think page 149. >> yeah, shall i read some? sgri think read that from the bottom of the page. >> he was 12 years old when

rachel carson was born, but he was the most unlikely 12-year-old. while others were in fifth or sixth grade, he was entering his freshman year at tufts university. in 1906, that was the article in the world calling in the most in the world. and it's hard to imagine anyone who better fit that title. he told the world reporter he learned much more from the riddle of of the universe in german than oklahomaer in greek. oklahomaer was just telling stories. he said he's like fun. but i like studying too. when i participated in the boys games, i turned to my spencer. suggestions for them which led my mind to greater things. >> so these greater things. weiner goes to m.i.t. extremely centric character.

pet kuk larceny life. i wish we had more time to read about the peculiaripeculiaritie. what were the greater things? where did he go with his life with that brilliance? >> he got his doctorate work at the university. s it was russell and john duey. he was just a genius. not only for mathematics but the logic of mathematics. it's a time when computers were being developed. at a time when the computer was a person with a slide role and a pencil. that was what they were called. he was put into the war efforts in 1941. in order to deal with which was raining terror over britain at

at time. and which was much higher and faster than anybody knew before the war started. he was famous for work in motion. but he was really interested in the fact and he came to through the wartime work that you can put people and mechanical things including electrical and mechanical things in a single task. so he conceived of antiaircraft as the combination of people on the ground, the gunner, et cetera, and a circle of causality between the airplane in the sky, the speed of the airplane, the maneuvers of the airplane, the ability of the pilot to do evasive maneuvers. and a round circle of information. which was flofs enemy in this

process. it was just a circle of information. which helped the guy on the ground bring that guy down. >> i'm going to push you a little bit because we're going to leave room for questions. but relationship for the military changes radically. and this begins to be the place where he and they never met are kind of coming together. can you talk about that? >> the military was responsible for all kinds of horrible -- the military and the implication cans on the environment. it was a time when science was accomplishing incredible things. among that was the atomic bomb, as well as synthetic

fertilizers, synthetics of all sorts. it poisoned the ground that farmers were to work on. it was a time when actually during the war in los angeles thought it had a chemical attack because the fumes from newly had muscular cars were choking people. and after that, then the military actually started experimenting on the mesh public by dropping radio act tiff materials by finding what dose caused the problem. the extermted on all kinds of people in hospitals, over of schools, over domestic suburbs. it was extremely irresponsible behavior. and we still don't know the extent of it.

>> where does weiner come in? >> when the war was over, he saw some of this stuff happening in the environment, but also the mill tarization of american society and american science, he refused to have anything to do with military science and at m.i. tismt, which was almost completely subsidized, it was almost completely subsidized by military, that was an incredible position to take. and he was thought to be crazy for taking it. they thought he was just being norbert, but he never worked for the military and military science again. and he wrote a book after he wrote a book called cybernetics, which was impossible to understand for most people, he wrote a book called "the human use of human beings." which was incredibly radical for

its time. it talked about the necessity of treating labor fairly at a time when the great strike wave of 1946, 1947 had made basically workers into communists. >> so weiner by taking this very strong and public position against the military misbehavior and domestic life, the parallel tissue if i may read something from your book, you very eloquently state what's similar between what he's doing and what rachel carson in her campaign against ddt, another poison in the environment, what is she doing. you write, by confronting the efgts of science practiced mainly in the pursuit of power and profit and by calling for scientific innovations to be accessible and understood by politicians, policymakers and

the general public before they were deployed, carson and weiner advanced a compelling argument namely that nature was neither a thing apart from human kind nor any longer even holy natural. since it's anointed masters were assertively rearranging the earth. as evidence of the dangers inhrnt in that mastery, they shined a very bright light on the masters at work. and changed our lives, i think, in many ways. we want to go to questions. if you have questions, please put them in the q&a. but before we do that, what better way to end the discussion of a book than by your reading if you would the last paragraph of the epilogue on page 205. >> i'll go back to the way you started the conversation. >> that's the idea.

>> my generation had our victories too, but locking back, i can't help feeling that people like those in this book were the more authentic rebels. in part because they didn't think of themselves that way. in a decade and a nation perhaps readier with a program than ever before, they defied the most powerful forces and conventions of their time just to the people they were and the country they promised to be. they lit a path for the rest of us to a somewhat less imperfect union, which is about the best thing any citizen can do. >> a great way to end the book and the formal part of the evening. i'd like to turn to questions from everybody who is listening. if you have something, please put it in the q&a. here's a question about paulie murray. did she ever resolve her gender confusion?

>> i'm not sure. she had because of her feeling about who she was, the male part of herself, she was disapointed in love many times because she was only attracted to heterosexual wimp. but she did et over to the extent she was a hero how much more can you do with that conflict than what she did. and in fact, at the end of her life, she went to seminary because they had never had alter girls in the church. so she went to seminary and became a priest knowing she would have only three years before mandatory retirement when she was done. that speaks wonders. she also had a companion at the end of her life whom she loved and who loved her.

so she did overcome her conflict. >> thank you. >> here's a question from providence, rhode island. she asks, obviously, this is a different take on this time and various individuals impact on change. what most of all should we take away from the book and what does this teach urs about the way history is written? >> i think it's about extraordinary whose stubbornness and conflict teaches them every day how to make change. without their taking lessons from anyone, it's because they wanted to be who they were and have the rights that they were dough. including self-respect. i think it's about that symbol. >> isn't that just a variation on what's historically been the

great man theory of history. that individuals in that theory they are leaders of nations, but you're kind of saying the same thing. that you don't have to be the leader of a nation to be able to make this change if you are the right person at the right moment or at least to get the change happening. >> i would argue something else. i would argue that the president of the or a senator as joe manchin and sinema are not, the injustice of the position they have been given. and they can gather other people around them and movements start from what they have done. i think those people in power don't come up with those ideas themselves. >> here's a question from jane.

with the dusming town of sensible discussion, what hope is there for genuine movements for meaningful social political change. >> just as it's difficult not to be disgusted by the lack of progress in civil rights, you can't inknowing the progress we have made in gay rights, in feminism, and certainly ecology. we haven't won all those battles, but we're further ahead than then. and the arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends towards justice. it is very long sometimes. >> so these people are here among us now. they are in the process of doing the things that these unknown figures from american history they could move the world. >> yep, that's the case.

>> that's a very positive look on it. >> here's an anonymous question. do you think -- let me try this one. we know the answer, but gregory asks, david did a fairly comprehensive look at the '50s. why did you decide to dig deeper? another way of asking that, how is your book different from david's book? >> his book on the '50s was very good. also, it covered in depth the thicks we knew about the '50s in shallow. and it didn't deal with the people -- it did deal, but

fleetingly over the social issues that this book addresses. >> i don't have any other questions now. but because i think it's always good in any discussion of serious issues to take a moment for some humor, i'd like to read more about norbert weiner. >> please. >> this is weiner after he established as a well-known figure, as a genius. he's at m.i. tflt. he was fluent in a dozen languages. as a colleague put it, a foreigner wherever he was. he got lost easily at his frequent meanders through the lab where is he worked for 45 years. some labs posted lookouts to warn of his approach because weiner was known to cut into ongoing conversations abruptly and out of context. while reading a book or lost in thought, he would walk the halls with one finger tracing the wall. when he reached the open toor of a classroom or laboratory, he was known to follow his finger inside and around its walls back

to the hallway. when he stopped to have a conversation, he sometimes forgot which way he had been walking. once he asked whether he had been walking toward the lunchroom or away from it so he would know if he had lunch or not. >> my favorite is he swam on his back so he could smoke a cigar while he was swimming. >> my father did the same thing. >> did he really? >> he did it with a cigarette. he loved the backstroke. we're moving a little far from the topic. i want to thank you. we are running out of time. and thank the library and thank the box store and all of you who have dialled in tonight to listen to this or those who will be watching us shortly on the recorded version. i'm going to say thank you and turn it back over to marsha.

>> i'm going to add my thanks. more orchestrating such a masterful conversation about the book and all of the readings that we wove in really helped a lot. so important to tell the stories of individuals and elevate them and the power that they have to affect change because that inspires us all. there was some pretty shocking and awful things that folks were battling against that you tribe. so i want to thank everybody who has come for being here and tell you that the program was recorded and will be on our

youtube page tomorrow. and just tell you a little bit about what's coming down the pike later this month and in early february. we will have another program about a book. it's called the last slave ship with ben raines, who discovered the last known slave ship that brought enslaved pictures here illegally. he discovered that ship in the bayou of alabama and he will be talking about not only his experience, but what it means for all of us and what happened to the people who were on that ship. and then later in february, early february, we will be talking about south to america. so all of which is to say i hope

i see that we have the upcoming programs link in the chat and i hope everyone explores that. and join us for more programs later this month and into the spring. we're so grateful to both of you for this fantastic book that doesn't get more pure than to talk about people. and how it affects and changed things. and thank you for digging them up. and thanks to all of you for being here tonight. so on that note, i hope everyone has a wonderful evening and a good night. >> book tv, every sunday on c-span 2 features leading authors, discussing their latest nonfiction books. at 8:00 p.m. eastern, founder and executive director of the

danish think tank and the host of the podcast "clear and present danger" talks about his book. and at 10:00 p.m. eastern, former ambassador to ukraine and author of "lessons from the edge." and her congressional testimony during the first people hearings of donald trump. she's interviewed by staff writer susan glasser. watch book tv, every sunday o c-span 2 and find a full schedule on your program guide or watch online any time at booktv.org. listen to c-span radio with our free mobile app, c-span now. get access to what's happening in washington wherever you are with live streams of floor proceedings and hearings from the u.s. congress.