the executive director of the harry s truman library institute. i want to welcome you hairiest fromw book white lies. before i introduce aj, i want to make a few comments

and before i introduce aj, i want to make a few comments. make a few halos. i want to thank everyone for joining us tonight. it's going to be a wonderful program. it's nice to be with you. i look forward to working with you in person. hopefully relatively soon as conditions continue to improve. fingers crossed. it's also really affirming to know that despite these unusual circumstances, we can still generate an audience to learn about a really incredible relatively are almost completely unknown story. emanating from truman's administration. and that the audience currently is around 750 registrants and we look forward to knowing how many of you are actually out there with us. i want to say hello to my parents who are joining us from thao's, new mexico.

and there are people from all over the country, most states in the nation. truman is on the rise so thank you for joining us. tonight's program is the third installment of our civil rights series to secure these rights. which is part of the 75th universe reprogram we are offering to honor and celebrate from an civil rights legacy. and his achievements. i like to thank the boeing company for generously sponsoring tonight's book event the series itself as well as other civil rights activities. and i hope i'm not stepping on ags lines here but i have a few comments to make about the closest russia relationship between walter white and president harry truman. a search of the online archives of the truman library returns more than 50 photographs and scanned documents. from letters to memos to detailed analyses of the black

vote in 1948 election. and those are just the digitized documents in the collection. there are many more. it would be impossible to overstate the impact of walter white had on president truman. especially regarding his creation of the president summarize committee in 1946. in the 1948 executive orders desegregating the news dates armed forces and federal workforce. in fact, white began corresponding with the president just months after he was sworn in in 1945. alerting him to the realities in horror of segregated soldiers. and of course, the two stood together 75 years ago on june 29th, 1947, in the shadow of the lincoln memorial or president truman was the first united states president to address the naacp. and that historic speech,

truman declared we can no longer afford the luxury of a leisurely attack on prejudice and discrimination. the way is not easy. we shall need all the wisdom imagination, and courage we can muster. following that historic event, president truman underscored the challenge but also his optimism in a letter to walter white. he wrote, freedom and equality are not easily won. but we will never cease trying to win them. and i for one will never lose confidence that we can win them, and quote. inspiring words, both then and now. our friend, aj blame. has done civil rights history and truman's legacy a tremendous service by bringing the story of walter white to light. many of you know aj, he's been with us on to at least two previous occasions. because he's the best selling

author of the accidental president, harry as truman andy for months that change the world. and dewey defeats truman, the 1948 election in the battle for america's soul. a master storyteller, aj is a regular contributor to the wall street journal and his articles have also appeared in the new york times, popular science, men's journal and numerous other publications. his latest book, white lies, the double life of walter f. white in america's darkest secret was released on february 8th. he is a dear friend of the truman library institute and is our absolute pressure to have him back with us tonight. thank you all for joining us. enjoy the program. aj, thank you and take it away. >> thank you very much, alex. thank you to the truman library institute. the work you do is vital. i just want to say, for people

listening out there, go to the website, check out what they do. become a part of it, it's a great thing. i want to thank everybody at the truman library museum, i spent wonderful times there researching in the years of the past. the work you do there is so vital. the archivist there, as we all know, preservation of documents are how we tell the story of our nations past, the past of the whole world. part of the process of understanding the past is how we create our future. and so the work of the archivist there is absolutely vital. the renovation is incredible at the museum. and courage everyone to see a different local it's worth of light across the country. i want to thank both my kids, klain odds, heavier they both of you. and my mother who i think is watching, alice, she's not just my mom but my it specialist and i couldn't do this value. what am i doing here? i'm here to talk about walter white, this is the book. white lies, came up just a few days ago.

surprisingly, i've been working on this book kind of it's been brewing in my head for close to 30 years. i first came across walter white when my first year of graduate school. and even back then, i remember reading just hits about this man thinking bizarre that there's no way to the story of this man's life can be true. but it is. i can also say for the last four books i've written, two things remain constant. harry truman and walter white have appeared in all of them. so at, when i finished doing if he's thrown a few years ago, i set out to write this book about walter white because i couldn't believe that nobody had written it. there was no real mainstream biography about walter white. walter francis white. and i never mentioned his name, the only thing people thought about was breaking bad. and i thought that's not going to work for me. the first thing i did was i want to yale university, i look at the archives, that's where walters papers are. i want to the public library at the schomburg center in harlem.

i went through most importantly the naacp papers which is a treasure trove of materials regarding walter white. and when i found was more than i hope to and i really learned that the story of walter's life and why we should know about it is really much greater than i even anticipated. so who was walter white? one way to say this, explain in a very short sentence. you might say walter francis white was the powerful civil rights figure, in the first half of the 20th century. and already, you're saying to yourself, how can that be? he's making this up, it can be true. because of that was true, we would all know who was. another way to define walter sesay walter white was sort of the most powerful force for the historic realignment of black voting power in america from the republican to the graham democratic party in the 1930s. and again, are saying, how can that be true if we've never heard of him? the story of why walter's story,

walter white story is lost to history is an internal part of what this book is about. and what i'm going to touch on tonight. so i'm going to give you a lot of information and a whole bunch of photographs. but there's so much more, there's only so much i can do in a few, with the time i have. i don't to give away all of the secrets of the book. let me start here. walter white was born in atlanta in 1893. he was born into a black family. went to a black school, black church. attended atlanta university. which was a black school. but there was something very interesting about him. i should also mention that his parents, george and madeleine white were born into enslaved families. and they were the last of the last generation that could speak of the slave era as african americans from experience. yet there was something distinguishing about walter.

he looked strange. to his peers. at atlanta university and his school in his church. let's take a look and see what he looked like. so we can start here, this is walter. and you might notice that he has white skin. you can tell from this picture but he has blue eyes. his hair is dark blond. here is another photo. this to me is just such a special photograph because a lot of walter's family is gone and a lot of walter's family sort of disowned him. we'll get to that to later in the story. but i can only find one living member of the white family. and that was rose palmer, his niece. and she was 92 years old, living in atlanta. and brilliantly, she was able to dig up this photograph, scan it and email it to me which i thought was really impressive. you'll see walter here on your right. why is this graduating class of

atlanta university so small? in the answer to that is because black americans at this era had very little access to education, certainly college education. coming of age, walter obviously had a choice. he knew that he could go out and live his life as a white man or as a black man. and he had to confront something every time he looked in the mirror. why was the skin, his skin the color that it was. let me read the way i put it in the tradition of the book. this families complexion represented a shameful truth. that the generations of enslaved families were born out of illicit encounters between black women who had no rights to their bodies and white males slave owners who had full legal impunity. walter's great grandmother and his -- birth six children in the 1830s.

bothered by -- her owner william henry harrison who went on to become president of the united states. now walter again he knows he has the choice to live his life as a white man or black man because nobody would know. but something incredible happened to him when he was 12 years old. that said the foundation for his life's work as a sort of maniacal and i don't use this word recklessly, a maniacal seeker of justice in america. and that is when he was 12 years old, he went on his father's male route, his father was a mail carrier and after school each day walter would go with his father on this meal route. and on this day, i think it was september 1906. they witnessed the outbreak of the atlanta race riot of 1906. at the time, photographs didn't really exist. cameras were hard to come by and there's very little photographic evidence of this riot. but it was reported so widely that you can see, this is actually the cover of a french

newspaper. and in france, because photography didn't really working newspapers that time. they would paint the covers and you can see across the bottom and small letters, it says massacre to negros atlanta. and in parentheses, georgia. now walter saw this firsthand. he claims to have seen 12 men killed. and on the second night of the atlanta riot, the white family was in their home and a white mob appeared at the doorsteps with flaming torches and yelling and screaming saying, the white's home was too nice of a home for a black family to live in. and they were going to burn it to the ground. and walter stood there in the window, i want to read to you very quickly right here the way his specific memory of this moment was. because this is, this moment is the foundation of his mythology. his life's work, everything he

represented and everything, not just who he was but who he created himself to be. he wrote, as a boy in the darkness amid the tightening fright, i knew the inexplicable thing. that my skin was as white as the skin of those who are coming at me. the mob moved towards the lawn. i tried to aim my gun. wondering what it would feel like to kill a man. in that instance, they're open up with me a great awareness. i knew who i was. i was a negro. after that night, i never wanted to be a white man. i knew which side i was on. walter goes into activism in 1917. wants to fight for education for young black atlanta. and certain man in new york city takes notice of him. this guy. now you always hear the question, if i could have lunch with anybody in the world, who would i have lunch with? and this guy would be high on my list.

james weldon johnson. newspaper man, poet, novelist, former diplomat. all around genius. james weldon johnson discovers, as you discover and un-found talent, discovers walter in 1917. and convinces him against parents wishes, against walters princes wishes, to move to new york to become part of this organization that few people at that time had heard of called the national association for the advancement of colored people. so walter gets there in the freezing cold day early in 1918. he meets the staff, part of the staff was this man, w. e. b. de boys who had to be the most respected black intellectual maybe even to this day. he offered great books, authored the groundbreaking books -- i know that students in schools still read today. we should all read. this is dubois's editing naacp's magazine, it was called the crisis.

and it was distributed nationally. so walter begins his work with a small organization that you had heard of at the time. there's this amazing cultural force at this time that are bubbling up in america. that begin to shake the world than walter is living in. one of them is this. i find this photo absolutely extraordinary. you can see the man at the front, you might have able to read but it says. his sign at the front says the first blood for american independence was shed by a negro. christmas atticus. what you're looking at is the silent parade of 1917. 10,000 african americans, women and all white, men in black suits, marching through manhattan without a sound. and this parade, this event was really would put the naacp on the map nationally. this is the first time the lot of people really ever heard of

it. so to me, it really symbolizes the coming out of the naacp as this force is going to become extremely powerful in the 1920s. right when walter gets there, this is starting. at the same time, the modern kkk is founded in 1915. the top and cross burning ceremony, a top storm right outside downtown atlanta. where walter grew up. and so, very quickly the kkk spreads through school boards, local governments, police forces, fire departments, women's clubs. all across the south, beginning to creep into the north. so by the time walter starts the naacp in 1917, the kkk is really cementing itself as a force to be reckoned with. and becomes an absolute maniacal of session of walters. and as a matter of fact, he tries to join the kkk, i had this application in front of

me. posing as a white man, he wants to infiltrate the klan. and this is application. is the moving prompting your anger serious, yes he answers. when is your age, 27. what is your occupation, journalist. when were you born, atlanta georgia. how long have you've been resigning in your current personal calorie? three years. are you married, single or without? he single. were your parents born in the united states? he says yes. are you and your gentle? gentle. are you of white razor colored race? he leaves it blank. do you believe in the principles of pure americanism? he says yes, i do. this picture is actually a clan march in washington d.c. 40,000 people. you can see the capital building in the background. one eyewitness said that there were so many clansmen that washington look like a giant snowbank because it was all white. so this is a force that's bubbling up right when walter comes of age and goes to new

york. and at the same time, he arrives in new york. exactly in time to become part of this literary and artistic renaissance we know now as the harlem renaissance. so he begins to live a double life. and we shall see how. that's duke ellen ton. let me set a little scene here. he walter white's first year at the naacp is actually his 12th day, it's his 12th day on the job. he takes the bus with james walden johnson downtown from harlem to work. and they read an article in the newspaper about the killing and burning at the stake of a man name james medical hair. in nestles firings, tennessee. they get to the office and begin to discuss this. typically, this was in the first time this happened. at the end of a soup he would do is write a letter to the

president of the united states, write a letter to the governor of the state, write a letter to the mayor of the city where it happened. send that letter to the newspapers, the black newspapers will publish it. the white newspapers would ignore it. so this time, walter sitting there any says i have an idea. let me go down there and i can investigate. and everybody is against it because they say it's too dangerous. but walter convinces them, he gets on a train, he goes to chattanooga. he poses as white. so he can stay in a hotel. and then he takes another train to estelle springs. and he pretends, he crisis persona, he's going to be a traveling salesman with the excellent medicine company. and in one day of sleuthing, he's able to get all of these people to admit who had committed the crime, what exactly had happened, he goes back to new york and writes an article in the naacp's magazine. the crisis. and it causes a sensation. and this leads walter to begin living a double life which is why the book is called the

double life of walter white. first half is really about walter wagering the 1920s. rising up in the naacp. living outwardly in new york, sorry, as a black man. here is langston hughes, these are all his friends. charles asked johnson. short story writer, brilliant -- second from the right. he becomes living outwardly and part of the harlem renaissance he becomes a novelist. but at the same time, he begins living an undercover life in the south. and he conducts over 40 investigations posing as a white man throughout the 1920s. in my research i was able to find his handwritten notes, his internal naacp memorandums. the newspaper and magazine articles that he wrote about this investigations which costs a sensational headline. and if you think about it, these investigations began to make walter white very famous in harlem. he became known for them. people wanted to give him

speaking engagement so he could talk about his work. and the more famously became, the more dangerous it became every time he went undercover which he did throughout the decade. this picture is of the chicago race riot. which was of the biggest race riot of the red summer of 1919, walter was there investigating. this is tulsa. tulsa's been in the news quite a bit recently. 1921. what you're seeing here is the burning of the greenwood neighborhood in tulsa. what happened was a false accusation of rape of a young man named dick roland who was never even charged with any crime. resulted in the rampaging and burning to the ground of an entire 40 block neighborhood of tulsa. called greenwood. there was actually eyewitnesses of airplanes, rudimentary airplanes that weren't very -- but airplanes flying around over greenwood dropping fire bombs on the side. the walter arrived two days

after and in a bizarre ceremony, in tulsa city hall, he posed as a white man it was actually deputized to go out and was embedded with the crew of white men to police the city of tulsa as the smoke is still swirling. two police against black uprising. and he came back and he wrote a shocking article in the nation. i'll read a tiny piece of it to you. there is a lesson in the tulsa for every american who believes that negros will always be the meek and submissive creatures the circumstances have forced them to be during the past 300 years. dick roland was only an ordinary black with no standing in the community. but when his life was threatened by a mob avoids, every one of the 15,000 negros and tulsa was willing to die to protect dick roland. perhaps americans waiting for a nationwide tulsa to wake her. it's pretty terrifying stuff. okay. i'm going to stop sharing for a

moment. and just talk without pictures, hopefully you can see me. i just want to say a couple of things about when i write these books. a lot of research goes into them. but they're slightly non-traditional. and would i try to do is to make readers understand not just what happened, not just why it happened but if i can, to make the readers feel the emotions of the people that i'm writing about. and i know when i'm writing them, i feel them. sometimes it's fun and it's funny, sometimes it's really not, it's painful. that might be one of the reasons why my books aren't always very well received in the very academic community. because they're not exactly like all other books. i try to take them in different places a little bit. but the story of walter white, would i really want to say is i'm hoping that that comes across.

and there's one specific incident that in the middle of the book incurs a 1925, 1926 and it's the story of a man name -- . and i'm guessing that there is 400 people watching right now. and i'm guessing that there's very few of any who know who dr. suite is. and i think we need to write that. so i'm going to tell the story very quickly. doctor suite was a successful black physician in the city of detroit. who moved into a new family home at 20 905 garland avenue in detroit. he was successful, he had a 14 month old child. his wife and then he moved him in his brother sisters and family. and his wife was cooking a celebratory dinner. and at sundown a mob gathered outside of his home. eyewitnesses said that the mob was bigger than 2000 people. and suddenly rocks and stones

start having the house and breaking on the windows. and a shot was fired. in a white man was killed outside doctor suites home and the police raided the place and arrested all of them and charge them all with murder. and the naacp branch and detroit immediately called the national headquarters in road all the telegrams, i have a couple of here. the w haze mckinney of the dccc branch wrote, it would be necessary to have an experienced investigator to secure evidence to aid in the defense of this case. we are there for urgently requesting the mr. white be sent to detroit immediately. now this case capture the imagination of america. walter figure there was no way that an all white jury was going to acquit this guy or any of them. they were going to go to the gallows. and walter had the idea to hire this man who had just become the most famous attorney in america. this man. clearance daryl. clarence daryl, when he first met with walter and two other

white lawyers, he had heard that one of them was african american so. he turned one of the lawyers and said i understand the suffering of your people. and this lawyer said i'm sorry, i'm a white man. so here is the next one and said i understand the suffering of your people. and this lawyer said i'm sorry i'm a white man. so we turn to walter any said i was told one of you was a negro, that was the term of the time and you look at walter and said, surely it can be you. but what happened next to me is extraordinary. they fought this case, clarence daryl freed the sweet family. they were found innocent. but what's more important in terms of walter what's life is clarence daryl came to give a speech in harlem. and what he said change the trajectory of walter white in set the stage for the second half of white lies. because the second half is about politics where harry truman comes in. clarence terrell says in his speech, in this harlem church. african americans in this country for generations vote

for the republican party without question all the time. and if anyone didn't vote for the african american for the republican party, it would be considered treachery and betrayal. because abraham lincoln had freed the slaves so everybody who's black has to vote for the party of lincoln. and daryl says, you're wasting your vote, and he says the future of black power is at the ballot box. and if you only realize the power that you can have if you organize voting in the northern states because remember, in the south african americans weren't allowed to vote but in the north certain states the organizing up any candidate that was unnecessarily republican. it might hold the balance of power. and people would finally say we have to pay attention to these, to this race of our country. makes up 10% of our country. and walter is dumbfounded, he decides to throw himself into national politics.

and ultimately names is only son, walter junior, walter carl daryl white. because of clearance daryl. so for walter, all roads and at the white house. he realizes he has to get in the white house. by this, time by the way. he is chief executive of the naacp so he starts in 1918. naacp is a tiny organization and because of the efforts of the staff james will johnson w. e. d boys people like mary white overton. who they called the fighting saint. this old white woman who is so dedicated to the civil rights activism that she was a board member of the naacp. but walter became chief executive in 1930 and by the time is the most powerful militant of civil rights organization that had ever existed but he can't get in the door of the white house because fdr realizes that if he makes

any, meets any demands of walter white or support civil rights in any way. he's going to extremely anger a fast and very powerful part of the democratic party. which is the solid south. this is a lot of information in a short period of time. but in the book it's all very clear. so walter can't get into see fdr. but mrs. roosevelt reaches out and they create this incredible bond that i just found so endearing. and of course, eleanor roosevelt had the ear of the president. and she convinces the president to meet with walter. and that begins this relationship in which amazing things happen. and the same time, walter is working politically to reorganize voting power. and he goes out and he says to his people, don't just for democratic or republican. in your community, vote for the candidate that is going to support civil rights. vote for the candidate that is

going to say, yes we believe in the 14th amendment. yes we believe in the 15 amendment. and slowly, democratic politicians in the north begin to realize this. and there's a groundswell. a shift in power. and on point out that a 1932, the year roosevelt was elected, was the first year that there was a -- black host of the democratic column. it hadn't happen in generations. but by 1936, black america voted overwhelmingly for the democrats. it was shocking to many people. but that's where the party vote is still to this day. i love this picture. it just speaks volumes to me. when you're looking at as welterweight in the middle. that's thurgood marshall on your right and rory will consider left, will cans to cover the naacp and let it after walters up for many years. in 1935, walter hires this

young hotshot lawyer, thurman marshall. to launch a new arm of the naacp. and they were going to fight for education rights in the courts. and they are going to fight for voting rights. and thurgood marshall turns i was a genius. and he form this bond with walter, they both have to stay away tonight, they both love to drink a lot of whiskey and smoke cigarettes and steal stories. so while walters working in politics, thurgood marshall is building these education cases that rise up to the supreme court and ultimately climax with brown versus board of education. in 1955. which walter lives, 1954, barely long enough to live, to see. okay, which brings us to harry truman. so by the time harry truman becomes president, walter is a political force in america. he is the face of black power and ask yourself how amazingly ironic that it is. with white skin, blue eyes and

blond hair. he forged his relationship with truman for a very interesting reason. the reasons are obvious but he became friendly with truman. then this happened. now you're looking at here, that's former heavyweight champion joe lewis on your left and that is unknown figure on your right and in the middle is a man named isaac wood and isaac warner stories and credible and indicative of something very scary in america at the time. isaac quarter comes from -- he's wearing his uniform. army uniform. metal print to his chest. he is carrying his papers from being released from the army. with a meal graph signature of harry truman element. and he's empowered all of these are coming back from war, they've served their country. black soldiers and want to go

back to the jim crow south that they had come to before the war. they felt that they had earned rights and they had earned respect and they wanted things like a 14th and 15th amendment to mean something. so maybe as a quarter had a chip on his shoulder but that would've been his only fault. he got in the fight with the policeman and he was permanently blinded. and had no recourse to the law. and had no money, no way to support his family. and he ends up in walter white's office. and walter makes him a cause celeb. takes him on a speaking tour around the country. headlines and all the newspapers because by this time, if walter calls the newspapers, they call the stories. ultimately, he goes and has this extraordinary meeting with harry truman. and this is in 1946 and that's where truman realizes that this is a country where there are black people coming home from war who serve the country in war, who were willing to die for the country in war and were not allowed to sit next to a

white person on a bus. that's one thing. but if they should come home from war and be beaten on the streets of their own country, this was wrong. instead the very next day after walter came to his office and told him the story of isaac winter and others who had suffered similar fates. truman wrote, memorandums never next day to his attorney general. tell -- he wrote i -- some members of the national association for the advancement of colored people. truman it was quote a law armed at the increased racial feeling all over the country. and this began for me when i think of as the beginning of the civil rights movement, modern civil rights movement from mainstream politics. from within the white house. and we know what happened next, truman disagreed the military by executive order. he became the first sitting president to campaign in 1948. spiritual home of black america and harlem. very moving moment that i wrote a bunch of out of my book dewey versus truman.

and here is, walter white convinces truman to become the first president to address the naacp in person. the picture you're looking at as walter on your right, truman on your left, eleanor roosevelt is in the middle. eleanor spoke first, the former first lady. and then walter got up and he introduce the president. he gave this very moving speech that don't have time to tell you that now. but i quote at length and weigh lies. and then he says, ladies and gentlemen, the president of the united states. and then we see this. that is one to look like, you can see truman's back to the camera. speaking to the naacp the first time in a very historic speech. and it was the symbolic importance of this moment is that the white house for the first time in history was going to say, what truman said. which was that this bill of rights in our country shouldn't just exist, people say they

believe in the constitution but they also believe in white supremacy. there is a gap there. it doesn't make sense and it's obvious and when i write in my subtitle the double life of walter white. america's darkest secret. walters living a double if in the 1920s investigating as a white man and member of the harlem renaissance is a black man. in the 1930s, he loves a double life because he's living in high society among high powerful politicians. and powerful white people. but he's the head of the naacp. not everyone trusted him for this but truman did. and truman proved it by coming and giving the speech that the time, walter white thought was going to be political suicide. but it turned out not to be. i'm going to play a tiny little clip of that. >> i should like to talk to you briefly about civil rights. and human freedom. it is my deep conviction that

we have reached a turning point in the long history of our country's efforts to guarantee freedom and a quality to all our citizens. >> okay, which brings a sort of through the end of my top, i'm going to solve the mystery that out of the beginning. why don't we know who this man is today? well, let's answer the question, here you see walter. this is in the 1930s, he's chief executive of the naacp, he's become a political powerhouse. to his reuters his son walter junior, walter carl daryl white. behind is his wife gladys. and they're living openly in harlem as a black family. and the same time, walter was often attacked because of his identity. people like w. e. b. du bois became's nemesis because they claim that walter wasn't black at all. and walter said yes he was, he stood by his identity as a

black man. but people sometimes attacked him for him, call them a fraud. at the same time, he was secretly in love with this woman. i this is walter with poppy cannon. late in his life. and at the end of his life he knew he was dying he literally drank and smoked and worked himself to death. he worked himself to death. and he was dying, he was having heart attacks. and at the end of his life, he decided that he wanted to die and love and left his wife for this woman. and the man who was for most of his life the most powerful civil rights for gun america became a tabloid scandal. and it destroyed his reputation. he remained chief executive of the naacp for towards the end of his life for the next five years. but he was a figurehead and a lot of people paid no attention to him anymore. at the same time, you have to mention, right when he died 1955 is right with the

montgomery bus boycott was occurring. and televisions were coming on the scene. in the new face, the new generation of civil rights leader people obviously light month and luther king was not gonna be comfortable having a man who looked white as the foundation of their movement. and walter's life work was immediately lost to history. because of his marriage, his kids disowned him. and he was destroyed and he just died away. and that's why i think heat nobody knows who yesterday. he was a deeply faulted man. he was ambitious to a fault. he could be terribly manipulative. but his actions and his success speaks for themselves and think people need to know about them. lastly, i will say i want to show the cover of the book and just tell a story very briefly. i remember being on c-span tv beginning my career talk about a book called the arson of democracy. it was on live tv and they said, does anybody in the audience when i ask a question? and my seven-year-old son stood up and asked for the microphone and i was terrified because

they did nobody was going to say. and he grabbed the microphone and he said, dad, and everybody laughed. but then he has a very poignant question. he said how did you choose the picture that's on the cover? and when we chose this cover, this is a real flight that used to fly outside of naacp offices after something the day after something horrible happened. and that's new york in the background. i didn't want people to look at the cover and think it was a biography just a biography of him and they never heard of. i wanted them to know that is about something a lot more. and that's where the cover comes from. now i have 30 seconds more, i just want to say as a sort of awkward cota. i want to thank everybody, i can see there's 400 people here and i know we lost some people because people are reading the newspapers, they're going to their tvs because of the terrible things are happening. and we're all scared and we all feel it. but something occurred to me when i was watching the television last night, i'm going to read a truman quid will be done. truman once wrote in history of

the world has moved in cycles and that very often we find ourselves in the midst of political circumstances appear to be new. but which might have existed in almost identical form and various times during the past 6000 years. in the story that's holding right of this moment on our televisions is very similar to what truman faced in the post and conference negotiating with just all over the government of poland in 1945. that same year, the united nations was founded in san francisco. walter white was at the founding conference how transfixed -- so is harry truman the. us was founded in hopes that it could confront the terrifying issues like are seeing right now. let's hope it works. i'm not a big brain guy. i'm praying. thank you very much. thank you for having me. there's a lot more to this book that i did not talk about. i hope people read it. i think there's time for questions, don't be afraid to ask the hard ones. >> thank you.

thank you for that thought-provoking presentation. if you have a question and haven't added it to the q&a feature at the bottom of the screen, please go ahead and do so now. you can also like a question that's already been submitted that you'd like to see answered. our first question tonight comes from ed. and asks, based on race riots in northern cities and the story you had of the incident in detroit, how free were blacks to vote in the north, i.e., even if better than the south, was there still voter suppression in the north? >> obviously, there would've been voter suppression everywhere. there is today. the difference was immense in terms of what was happening in the north and what was happening in the south. walter when he moved to new york, he was part of something called the great migration. this was the migration of hundreds of thousands of people. a lot of african americans,

from the south, fleeing jim crow. for industrial jobs in the north. where they would be treated better. where they could vote. the answer the question is, yes, people were much more free to vote in northern states. they began to be freer to vote and southern states right at the end of walter's life. specifically the midterm elections in 1946 and 1948. let me point out, the riot that changed walters live in atlanta in 1906, a lot of it had to do with the election of that year. both the candidates, both white obviously, for the governor of georgia, where promising if they were elected to governor that they would make it illegal for black people to vote. that's exactly what happens. in 1908, when walter was a kid, it was suddenly impossible to vote in those states. that happened for 40 years throughout walters life. in northern states, you could vote in new york. you could vote in massachusetts. >> all right, our next question

comes from barbara. barbara says, from when i learned about isaac woodward, he did not get into a fight and policeman. but rather, it was attacked by police. the bus driver asked to come on to bother or arrest isaac for asking to leave the bus to use the restroom when the bus made a stop. can you talk a little bit about the circumstances of isaac woodward? >> that's a great question. you're absolutely right. what happened was, isaac was on the bus. there were other soldiers there who are witnesses to what happened and later came forward. the bus stopped, isaac, there would've been no bathroom in the bus. it was a long ride. he was going to visit, he had been away from his family for a long time, serving in the far east, in the war. when the bus stopped, he asked the driver, if he could use the bathroom. the driver was very disrespectful. i'm saying this as close as i can remember the actual quote.

isaac said something like, hey, talk to me like i talk to you. have respect. something like that. the police officers, sorry, the bus driver didn't like this. he let isaac go to the bathroom. isaac came back on. the police, the bus driver, drove on, found a police officer and went out and called the police officer to take isaac off the bus. these police officers, from what i understand, from quote testimony, which i have an adroit there, the way isaac says, it tells the story, they're moving along, pushing him, he didn't know where. he lunches are behind us. back he was scared. he struggled. a fight occurred. they threatened to shoot him. when the officers had a billy club. at the end of the belief of it got driven into both his eyes. he was blinded, he was unconscious. when he woke up in a prison cell he was blinded. he could. nazi he was charged with a

crime. the officer that the president realized he was injured, he stayed in the hospital, he never gained a site. ended up going home to his mother's home in harlem. he was helpless. i think it was a cousin of his, maybe the naacp could help. there's amazing moment when isaac woodward shows up in walter white's office asking for help, he reaches out as a black man to shake walter's hand, he can't find walter. walter realizes that when it happened to isaac was shockingly horrible. also realizes this could be a case that could explode nationwide with publicity. which is exactly what happens. i hope that answers the question. excellent, all right, our next question comes from evelyn, a quick one. what's the name of the woman that walter left his wife for? >> her name is poppy cannon.

her papers are at yale university. you can read the letters back and forth between them. she was actually a very interesting woman. she was a contemporary of julia child, she was a food header at mademoiselle magazine. she worked in the advertising industry. she had kids, two kids, from two different marriages. a very non-traditional woman. she went on to have her own cooking tv show. at that point, walter had passed on. her name is poppy cannon. she wrote a book about walter, called a gentle giant. i'm forgetting. she read a book about him. it's a really interesting window into his life. also into what was happening at that time. >> excellent, all right, our next question comes from roberta. what is the current or narrative within the leadership of the black community, including the doubt and ali acp about the contributions of

white? >> that's a tricky question. there isn't one. walter whites life is not discuss. it does not appear in the history, books he does not appear in the, news no unquote some. i don't think there's really much dialogue at all. >> all right. barbara asks, could a walter white succeed in undercover work today? >> no. one of the things that made his work so intriguing, it happens in an area before cell phones, so from cameras, before mass media of any kind. that is the reason why walter was able to live openly and become famous in harlem for these investigations he was conducting. with his face in his name appearing in newspapers. and then he could go undercover in the south again. i think it's really important to understand,, when i found

fastening, i want to write about. the fact of the mega metropolis has a creating powerful people. at the same time, the opposite end of that, to look at very insular, rural communities. these crimes tended to happen there. some of these crimes happen and from crowds larger than those at some major league baseball games. these tiny little places. no one would ever be charged for a crime. how could that happen? because there are no cameras, no camera phones, very few telephones, and law enforcement never charged anyone for these crimes. it was not in their best interest. politicians, it was not in their best interest either. in these tiny, insular communities the families of these victims had no recourse, no recourse to the ballot box, no weak response over. >> i'm going to ask the next

two questions together. i think they dovetailed airy nicely. jeff asks, did white ever write about the 1908 race riot and springfield, illinois? john is asking, about the terms we use. isn't it fundamentally misleading to describe organized maskers of afghan americans as race riots? >> no, the answer to the. first welterweight in pretty young at that. time i don't have any record, i never saw him writing about that incident. the second question, that's a very interesting question. walter distinguish between the two. the way he said, the way he talks his career, he conducted 40 undercover investigations of lynchings. investigated six race riots. in his mind, mine too, there's

actually a difference between the two. yeah, i hope that answers the question. i can go on. i think that gets to the pool. >> we have time for a few more questions here. our next question comes from rick who asks, what was the closest call walter had to being found out while doing his investigations? >> that's a great question. walter, he wrote an article describing exactly that. it was published in the magazine american mercury in 1930, 1929. the article was called i investigate lynchings. the first person story talking about these investigations. he addresses exactly that. it was in elaine, arkansas. ble in this, moment walters investigating his undercover, he knows that if his identity is discovered, he's in for real trouble. you have to remember, the crimes he was investigating

were incredibly, incredibly gruesome. i, times a became difficult to decide about writing the book, why should leave and, when actually that. i didn't want to make the crimes themselves seem less appalling. i don't want to make it difficult difficult, too difficult that nobody would read. these decisions are very difficult. the point i want to make, walter white would've known if these crimes were so appalling, what's these people in these chinese communities who could act with impunity would do to him. the closest call he got, he was in the town of elaine. a tiny town. a black man came to him and said, whispered in his ear, they know who you are. you are in trouble, you need to get out of here. if i could flip to the page very quickly, i would, but i can't. he runs, literally runs the train station.

he gets there. he asked for to get out of town. it's such a small town, there's only the trains that come and go. the man behind a ticket window says, man, paraphrasing, why do you wanna leave now? there's -- posing as a white man and the sound, the boys are going to have fun with him. boom, the train comes, he's able to get on the train and escape. that's the moment, that's the closest call. the other thing i found fascinating, one point in the -- in 1930, horrific accident happened in indiana, indiana. it's the first time that he goes, he has this correspondence with the head of the naacp branch in indiana, her name is lucy bailey. he has her straight up.

should i come undercover? should i come as a black man, as the head of the naacp. you should come as the head of the most militant civil rights organization in the country. she did not say why, she thought that would be most effective in gaining justice for the victims. also, this whole sense that walter probably, by that, time was way too famous. he could no longer pass. >> all right, we are going to end on this question from can. kim asks, we're recycling the fight for civil rights now. what will it take to break the cycle of taking away the rights of others? >> that's a fastening question. the first thing i can say to answer that question, i promise i'm not shilling books. it's very important understand that everything we are experiencing now is not new. all these things we're talking about, voting rights, george

floyd, all of this stuff comes from, it's not new. this has been going on in our country for generations. i'll tell you, in walter whites area, it was far worse, we can't go back, there we can't let it happen. the first thing we need to do is understand that history, where all this is coming from. it's not coming out of nowhere. the second thing, vote, vote, if they say you can't vote unless you do this, this, this, this we, have to do everything to fight. the one thing that, you know, i think that if your democrat, your liberal, your republican, your conservative, that's fine. the one thing that i truly believe is that everybody should be allowed to vote, i think the suppression of votes is a tragedy. i just don't understand why anybody want that to happen. >> all right. aj, thank you for sharing this incredible story with us this evening.

thanks again to boeing for sponsoring the series. to learn more about truman's silver rights legacy and the impact of walter white, you can purchase white lies, the double life of walter f. white in america's darkest secret anywhere books are sold, including radio books, right here in kansas city they, do have it in stock.

greetings from the national archives flagship building in washington dc which sits on the ancestral lands of the nekuchi tank peoples. i'm david fer greetings from the national archives in washington d.c.. on the unsuccessful lands of the -- i'm david furrier of the united states and it's my pleasure to welcome here today's conversation with mary sarah