john glenn's daughter told me one time that they were in africa. many years after the friendship seven mission in a small village. it didn't have a lot of electricity, no television, very little news. and even they recognized there. so neither one of these men could step out of their house without being being having the spotlight shown to them. now, how they handled that was a completely different story did not get along with his fans to not get along with the press. i think he did not like being in the spotlight. john glenn turned down a handshake in an autograph and he was certainly a man of the people. but i think it was something that they really saw well, in one another. this common thread i'm often asked what type of research i did for this book and a lot has been written about both men john glenn and ted williams ted williams, wrote an autobiography came out in 1969, told his whole life story up until the time he was about 40 years old. 50 years old. but many other biographies have been written about him full length, 800 page biography by ben bradlee junior out a couple

of years ago. that was very helpful. me same thing with john glenn. he wrote an autobiography towards the end of his time in the senate several books have been written about john glenn's career and his life. you know, newspaper articles, articles and those were all good for understanding the structure of the story. but i was able to cover uncover a lot of very original archives and details. one of them was i collected two or 300 letters written by people serving in the korean war at the base that john glenn and ted williams served. some of them were written by pilots who served with john glenn ted williams writing home, telling their families, oh, i saw ted on the base today. i flew this mission with ted williams that helped me understand the life over there. what ted williams celebrity was like. i also was able to get about 20 or 30 letters john glenn wrote home to his wife annie and his children the war and then helped again paint of the details about their missions and, what life was like over in the base and. ted williams wrote ten or 15 letters to his mistress during the korean war, and i was able

uncover those. so all these firsthand details of what they were thinking. when i go forward this is actually a letter to john glenn wrote home to his wife in may of 1953, ted flew my wing this morning and was all bubbling over when we got back. what a character kind of summed up john glenn's impression of ted williams some of the other neat archives that i uncovered were command diaries or it diaries from the korean war marine fighter pilot, the squadron. they were in, they kept very meticulous notes of every mission. what planes flew, what pilots flew, what targets they attacked, what weaponry they were carrying, who the missions, whether it was successful. they hit targets. there was a crash, anything like that. so those were really useful for me to what happened on every mission ted williams and john glenn flew. but the missions, they flew together and actually, i was really fortunate to hundreds of pages of navy and marine corps personnel files of glenn and ted williams ted williams underwent some serious health problems during his time the korean war, and these declassified mirroring

marine corps and navy files helped me piece together what was going on with ted williams. so those were all really neat archives, but the best resource i had for at least the korean war time was was able to interview three pilots who flew with both john glenn and ted williams in the korean war. they were still alive. they were in their late nineties, they had very colorful details and colorful and shared a lot of their unvarnished opinions. one of them that really did not like ted williams very much. and all ose details are in the book. but one of them was a man named woody woodbury, was very interesting. he was a comedian he had se success in hollywood. he hosted one of the talk shows, one of the game shows that johnny carson hosted that he left to go host the tonight show when left, woody woodbury took over he had some gold albums in the sixties, comedy albums he and i had many conversations. this is a photo of him in the middle during his service in the korean war on the left is a photo of him attending a birthday for ted williams many years after the korean and on the right is a photo of him with

john glenn at some kind of event the mid sixties. so talking to woody woodbury and a couple of the other people who were actually on missions with ted williams and john glenn was a really great resource for me to recreate these images of these two men flying missions together because i'm a sportswriter by nature and a big history fan, there is a lot of baseball history in the book on later part portions of his career, sort of the post korean war years of his baseball career. and i have been asked i mean on podcast, this baseball sports podcast is ted williams the greatest of all time. there are other claimants, babe ruth, everybody here knows would would certainly be considered the greatest home run hitter, arguably the greatest hitter of all time, barry bonds, who steroid aided made a lot of records and broke the home run record and aually broke a lot of ted williams records for walks and on base percentage or to the younger fans li m kids, maybe who wouldn't know their baseball history.

someone like shohei ohtani you know plays for the dodgers, lots of other clemens through baseball history of who was the greatest hitter of all time. but i want to make the case for ted williams. ted williams, in his rookie seon in 1939, hit 31 home runs. he was 20 years old, hit 31 home runshit 327, had 145 rbi, which is fastill the record for any rookie baseball history. he had 406 in 1941, the last man to hit 400. and no matter anybody tells you, no one has come anywhere near close to surpassing or reaching 400 in the years and the 80 some years since. and not tony gwynn, george brett, not rod carew, the long way from 400. ted williams. and this is his most remarkable achievement opinion. he had three 8816 years later in 1957, at the age of 39 years old, he's still oldest man to played all of baseball and hitting. he had a career average of 344 which is third highest of all time. and the of anyone born in the 20th century at 521 homeruns when he retired it was the third most he won two triple crowns.

he missed a third by mere percentage points in the batting crown raised in 1949. he six batting titles he would have won seventh if not for that mere percentag point win two p's. he really should have won fiv but he didn't get along with the sportswriters to the more modern, sensible fans. his career ops which on base percentage plus slugging percentage was 1.16 second only to babe ruth. and of course he missed five full seasons during his service in the korean war and world war two. he may have hit 700 homeruns. he may have hit more than 714, which was babe ruth's record for many years, had he not five years in the war. so was ted williams greatest hitter of all time? i think glenn would say yes. and conversely, i make case in the book that john glenn is the greatest aviator of all time, or at least in american history. and i'm still for a very angry email, someone or someone to come and tackle me in the parking lot after one of these talks to tell me how wrong i am about. that largely because there are

other claimants just as well, someone like charles lindbergh completed the famous trantltic flight in 1927. i also helped the american military aviation dung world war two a great deal. chuck yeager in 1947 bkehe speed sound barrier fought in rl war two korea and helped out in vietnam or someone like neil armstrong, o s a great korean war pilot, navy test pilot, and of course the first man to walk on the moon. but i want to make the case for john glenn is the greatest aviator all time in world war two. he flew 57 combat missions two distinguished flying cross seven air medals during his two years in the air islands, just during his time with marines in the korean war, he had received four distinguisd flying crosses, 11 air medals, led many missions during hisime there at the end of the korean, he went on temporary assignment with the air force, which is really a dream for any marineorps pilot to fly, something called the f-86 saber jet, which was much superior to f9's panther. he was flying with the marines

and was in june of 1953. the war at the end of july. he really start flying missions until late june. 53. and in a ten day spanish shutdown, three soviet migs. you need five to become an ace. he have been just the second marine corps ace during the korean war the minute the war ended and he didn't have a chance to get those two more. in 1954, he returned, became a navy test pilot, and he broke something called the in jet record. it was it was an unofficial record at time. they were trying to see how fast pilots could climb to 10,000 feet. he went to an air show in ohio one day and someone broke the world record for this thousand reaching 10,000 feet in the air and someone done it and i think 2 minutes and 7 seconds he saw that. he said, i can break that. he went out in his jet the next day, in one minute and 59 seconds. that was just if, you know, try to take away anything from john glenn. that was john glenn a couple of years. he conceived and designed and then executed something called project bullet, which was the

first transcontinental supersonic flight history. he flew from southern california to brooklyn, new york, in 3 hours and 23 minutes, which meant he supersonic speed. no had ever done that record before. and it was a real marvel of modern aviation and it was really all his idea and it required three midair refueling over three cities across the globe, across the states. it was a very difficult and harrowing assignment for him, but it was part of his nature and he achieved it. it's one of the things that really got him on radar of nasa when they were choosing nasa's in the late fifties and helped him get on their radar and become one of the first seven mercury astronaut. and again, five years after that, he went aboard friendship seven three orbits around the earth. first american to do so really got us back in the space race against the soviets. and then, as i mentioned, 36 years later, project stars 95. the discovery he went on board and this not some space tourist cruise like we see today people going up into space for 15

minutes and just being aboard for the ride. john glenn spent eight days in space as a working on this mission as eight days at age 77 years old. he was something of a human guinea pig getting blood taken every 10 minutes and monitoring sleep. but he he achieved that. my favorite john glenn statistic was he learned he really learned his pilot's license in the summer of 1941 before the bombing of pearl harbor and his enlistment in, the navy. and he really didn't stop flying until he was 90 years old. two 2011, when his insurance carrier finally said no more, he he continued for four years, he piloted his own beechcraft baron from home in maryland when he was serving in the senate to home in ohio when he was on when the senate was in recess or in the home they owned in colorado just the image of 89 year old john glenn flying cross-country, annie and in the seat next him 70 years of flying that clinches it for so i think ted williams that agree was john glenn the greatest aviator of all time.

i think he would say yes. i just want to give my great thanks to the savannah book festival for having me and for all you for for listening. and i'd be more than happy to take some of your questions. so my husband's a naval aviator. i'm sorry. my husband. a naval aviator. oh, okay. so he's best and i am curious, in any of your books have any of the family members of your subjects asked you not to write the book or refuse to assist you in any way? that's a great the aside from a few sort of smaller characters in my other books, this is the first book that i've done where the principles no longer alive and. i was very fortunate. i'm not sure i could done the book without john glenn's two

children. his daughter and his son were very and very helpful and they didn't give me unfettered, constant access, but they were supportive and they knew i was telling the story in many ways of what a hero their was. so that was four for the john glenn side of the book, i was very fortunate that they did not ask me that ted williams had three children that were, you know, sort of sole remaining family members. only one of them is still alive. i was able talk with her. she wrote her own book about what it was like to be ted williams daughter, but not a lot about the john glenn friendship or really his time in the military. so, you know, this was a new angle when you're writing about people who have had many biographies or books or lengthy magazine articles, biopics or documentaries about, them. it's hard to do that without just retelling the same story over and over again in this book, in a way, was shedding new light on both these men. it was largely focused on, their military career and this

friendship, because it was sort of covering new territory. i think they were. you know, that's an interesting angle of the story. so they were supportive of it that way. and when you go on a mission, this what do you how you begin and get into the archive. and if you're fortunate to have people that are alive. gentlemen, earlier was talking i was writing a book on people have been dead for a couple of hundred. so how do you go about getting with the family, getting the archive, the pictures, put it all together and then you got to start writing it? yes. well, once you have idea and you know, you structure how the book's going to come out and what things you to pursue and what pieces of research you need to uncover getting the family cooperation is always, you know, someone like that or getting it's a big interview i've done, you know, some other sports books. i did a book on joe montana and, steve young, famous football players, just getting to them, getting in front of them to say, hey, i'm writing this book about you. i want to do an interview is always challenging.

it usually requires groveling and calling in a lot of favors, and that's sort of how it happened with. getting in touch with the glenn family, ted williams daughter. but fortunately, at least for john glenn and i told this to, his daughter, i said, i hope i don't mean to offend you. after when he had one of our conversations, i said, were your parents like pack rats? are they hoarders? and she started laughing. she said that was mom and dad because not when they died, but when john glenn realized he was getting up in age and had already retired from the senate. he started to donate much of his archives to the ohio state, and he helped found a school there, the john glenn school of public affairs. and over time, they collected virtually every piece of paper he ever encountered in his entire life. there. probably 5 million pages of fliers and documents and orders and times the senate briefings and photographs awards. he received hundreds and hundreds of banker's boxes are in storage at the ohio state university. and i was able to go through

those and just the korean war stuff. there were, you know, boxes and boxes, the things he saved the menus he received from restaurants. he went to while an r&r in korea brochures from the silk factories that he went to. so he saved everything. so it was not hard. and i developed a good relationship with the ohio state people. it was not hard to request things and they have tremendously and cataloged. so i would just say, you i need box 118 dash one, dash 2-a would you send this and that was it was very fortunate this is during so they were good about you know scanning and emailing me many things. so that was the best way to get. archives, first hand archives from john glenn, ted williams was a little bit more challenging because a lot of his archives, he didn't keep the of records in archives that ted that john glenn did but the baseball hall of fame had a lot of his stuff. and as i mentioned earlier, i filed a freedom of information requests, mostly with the navy and the marine corps.

and they sent me hundreds of pages of his personnel files. there's also something called the korean war project, started by a father and son, have cataloged every squadron and unit and every branch of the military during the korean war. and they have that source. so it was easy for me to access so a lot of different avenues and then yeah for the people the three pilots who i was able to track down i you know people were interested in their stories. the articles had written about them in the marine corps leatherneck magazine. so i tracked them down and people were it's something i've learned during the course of writing these five books is that if you tell people you're writing about them and it's not a hit job. and it's you're telling a new angle. they're usually pretty open to talking about it, talking about their past, and sharing their history. because does don't forget,

there's another side to ted williams i'm sure you have some internal information about that kind of tender heart. you read the book, maybe teammates. so maybe you could just talk a minute about that other side of ted williams sure. ted williams reputation and i've been asked many times by people was as big a jerk as people said, and i on some days, yes, he was as big a jerk as people said. but i what i learned him over the course of writing this book was that he had a terrible temper. he didn't get along with. he could be cruel and mean some days, but he had a big heart. he cared about people. there are stories his daughter told me this and i've heard other stories he would hear about an old ballplayer played that he knew he was never a big who couldn't pay his medical bills or wasn't was having trouble paying his mortgage or rent. he got the person's and he'd put a check in there or cash. so it was anonymous. he went out of his way to help people all the time. and if you know your boston

history, he was instrumental, helping expand something called the jimmy fund, which is a cancer research center in boston for children. it's that how it's helped thousands of young children from cancer over the decades. and he did everything he could whether it was financially of own money or helping raise money or appearing events or just visiting them in the hospital, spending time with them, donating things, he had a big heart, cared about people and he was rough around the edges and he said the wrong thing at times. someone told me a story that he went to with some friends and family and they just got tired of of everything and walked out in the middle of the meal, didn't check. and that's kind of sums up ted williams is but there's these stories about him where it's clear that he cared about people. and i think i developed a good amount of respect for him. and i think i don't know if it's something john glenn ever really thought about or in him, but there's a probably the the centerpiece of the book is section. later in the book, when is being

honored by the jimmy fund boston in 1988 and they had this event him to celebrate his it was sort a it was sort of a half celebration of he had done for the jimmy fund and a half birthday party for him that the public was invited to and john glenn was one of the six or seven speakers there and think john glenn that that if you didn't already know saw something ted williams about how big his heart was and how much cared for other people and gave back to his community there. there's also a story not to get too far into history, but the -- league players didn't get their attention and the color barrier wasn't broken until 1947. and when ted williams gave his induction speech at the baseball hall of fame in cooperstown. in 1966, he used part of his speech to say we should find a way to honor the -- league players who aren't in the hall of fame only because they were excluded he meant satchel paige and josh gibson. and his announcement that day sort of helped pave the way for a lot the -- league players to get enshrined.

and i think five years later josh gibson wasn't and not long after that satchel paige. so for all the things that ted williams wrong he he write it off a lot of them. yeah. for the book did you talk to of ted williams is red sox teammates or any of the players he managed with the washington senators and did you talk to any of john glenn's colleagues in the senate? yes, i talked to most of john ted williams teammates are no longer alive. i did talk to a few there was one who there's an interesting story in the book ted williams was playing a game in washington when when john glenn was as part of the early days of nasa and he went to a game, griffith stadium in washington. and ted, john glenn was there, the locker room. and i found an article about someone who was there and pete he said at the time he said a couple years after this happened. but right john glenn went to space.

so everybody knew john glenn was and he said something like this this guy was coming telling taiclet terrible about this space stuff and we had no idea what he's talking about. he sounded like a crazy person and i was able to interview him and he shared lot of his details. but because know ted williams rookie season was 1939. so the guys played with him aren't really still alive. did interview a couple guys who he managed with the senators and the rangers, but i didn't do much in the book about his time as a manager. a lot of been written about that and it wasn't really central to the story. his friendship with john glenn, although when he was managing the senators in washington one year john glenn in him went to dinner and they spent some time together and that's in the book. but again, i didn't want to retell a of the baseball story. i think i go through in great depth sort of his post korean war years and how they're overlooked because most people who remember about ted williams either remember the 406 or his homerun in the all-star in 1941 or his homerun that ended career

in 1960. so it was to me to showcase this era particularly 1957 when he gets 388 at the age of 39 years old. and didn't want to do a baseball book because so much had written about his baseball career. but that was kind of the portion of his baseball career that i focused on. i had a great older friend who served with glenn and in the korea war, and he told me so i don't know if it sounds accurate, he told that they would fly their planes to get washed in japan. and over a weekend. and if there were 25 guys in the squadron, 24 of whom would take about 5 minutes upon arrival, shower, shave and hit the town, there'd one guy reading in that navy manual and they'd come back sunny afternoon to.

the same guy would be there. that was john glenn. well, that's about right. i would say that that's probably little bit of an exaggeration in the book. if you pick up, there's a whole chapter on aunt russian recreation, which had another name that i won't share in a church but if you read the book, you'll know what i'm talking about. they did go in order. ted williams and john glenn. there's a really neat story about that, but it's my understanding that john glenn i read the letters he wrote home to his wife about his time in. and even one of his trips on r&r. that's a you bring up an interesting point which was something that sort of dovetails the earlier question. i think american history has of cartoonish images of both john glenn and ted williams like we do with a lot of ultra ultra celebrities from the past. john glenn, not he hated being called, you know, a boy scout like he in the right stuff. dudley do. do-right harry hair. sure. mr.

mr. maureen was with the other astronauts sort of called derisively he wasn't as clean because he didn't you know the image was he never drank. he never smoked. he never swore. stoddard told me that wasn't true. and i even found out there's again, i'm not going to say in the church, i've done one case of him swearing, talking about some some rifle women who tried to shoot down his plane in korean war and he drank and there's even the photo i showed earlier is of him holding a pipe. so he smoked. so he wasn't as quite as clean cut as as history remembers that he would never go out on the town one night during the korean war. i think he was very loyal to his wife. i think he didn't do anything wrong on his our that way. but he was not as as straitlaced as everybody remembered. and he had his ties fun on our i'm sure there's a great about him the he woody woodbury and him decided they needed a new

piano in the in the officers club because woody woodbury would entertain the guys the officers club at night and the piano wasn't very good so they next na na will go over and buy a piano in japan and. it's a great story. what he would write tells it's in the book that they were going. they were waiting for the piano, the waiting for arnold to end. and the plane didn't come back for several days. and john glenn had to just sit guard this piano for three straight days. and he was so angry that he was missing missions and his superiors are going to be mad at him. but i think he probably had a nice time. although, again, i what was remained in the archives of his time in r and r was a menu and a lacquer factory brochure and a china dish set brochure brochure and so factory brochures. and one of the letters home, he wrote to arnie was like, i thought about buying you this. so he was i think he probably did spend most of his time shopping for his family. there's a really neat story. again, there. very not to take too much time. there were a lot of very poor

korean, needy and poor children in korea near their base, which they saw who they saw every day. and one of them made friends with john glenn. and he didn't speak english very well. but he told john glenn that he didn't have enough money to buy a suit for school and he couldn't attend school. he was a little bit older. he was in his early teens. he, john glenn, went to the next he said, next time i go to r&r in japan, i'll get you this suit. and he he and another marine bought the suit for this for this poor korean boy. so he'd go to school. so he was busy during our in our. but i don't think he was sitting reading his book for straight days while the other guys were out on the town town. well, thank you very much. and.

james swanson is the author of the new york times best seller manhunt the 12 day chase for

lincoln's killer. he is an attorney who's written about history, the constitution and popular culture for a variety of publications, including the wall street journal american heritage. smith simonian and the los angeles times. he serves on the advisory council of the ford's theater. abraham lincoln bicentennial campaign and is a member of the advisory of the abraham lincoln bicentennial commission. please give a warm savannah welcome to james swanson. let me just suggest this a little visit. good morning. this pocket me feel like i'm reverend john williams from deerfield saying they're attacking they're coming it's to be back in savannah i think this is fourth time at the santa book

festival so it's always pleasure to come come here and i want to give a special thanks to prickett and his wife, jane. matt, of course, is the founder of the savannah book festival. and i thank them for their years of support and for sponsoring talk this year. and it's hard to believe that it was 17 years ago when i was speaking at the national book festival in washington, dc, when a man introduced us and self and said, hi, i'm matt prickett, i'm a book festival in savannah. would you like to. and little did he know that savannah already one of my favorite cities. so of course i said yes today i'm not going to bore you by reading aloud for my book except for a couple select quotations that really helped set the stage. whenever i tend to book event, i don't enjoy reading it. so i figured can do that ourselves and i'm more in hearing about the author, their lives, their stories, their journeys, why they wrote the book, what them, the research and how they write. i grew up in a family of storytellers. my grandmother worked for

several of the big chicago newspapers the sun, the sun-times, the daily, at the tail end of the hecht's front page era. and i've learned frustrating and the fascinating and crazy stories that newspapers would publish in those days almost impossible to believe. when i was six years old, she asked me jamie, did you know that during the chicago world's fair of 1893, a mad man doctor murdered 100 women and dissolved their bodies in acid and? my mother said, whoever heard this, i know he didn't. but now he does. and that led to later. i might be to my agents saying i have an idea for a book and i said it's about dr. holmes of chicago and it's about and he said, do you know who erik larson? i said, yeah. he said, i happen to know he just started writing book. so think of something else. and i said, well, there was 12 a 12 day manhunt for john wilkes

about the lincoln assassination. he said, i think i could sell that. so write about the lincoln assassination. a few years later, my grandmother gave me a typical birthday gift for a young boy, an engraving of john wilkes booth derringer pistol that he used to kill abraham lincoln. not a not a bicycle, not a baseball net, but an assassination. it was it was framed. a clipping from the chicago tribune newspaper. from the morning of march of april 15th, 1865, the morning that lincoln died and the clipping said hoof assassin kills the president to the stage, runs out the back door and escapes on a horse and then and that's where someone had cut the clipping off. and i was obsessed with reading the rest the story that hung on my bedroom wall for most of my life. i still have it and i thought, i've got to read the rest of the story and it's part of the research for man. i was able to buy an entire run. chicago tribune's from april and may 65, so i now possess the whole newspaper from that

clipping inspired me to write man it and my grandmother's gift inspired me to write that book and ultimately led to apple tv plus mini series. and we enough that's coming out this march and so at random gift to a ten year old boy led into that world of writing that book and executive producing that show. my grandfather was a chicago policeman from the 1930s to the late 1960s. the civil rights and vietnam protests era. when he came home from work one night, he whispered to my mother, don't let jimmy at the newspaper tonight. there's been an awful crime. does anybody in the audience remember the name richard. yes. the who knifed several student nurses to death in their apartment and who vanished and was later captured because one of the nurses hid under the bed and remembered him and they had

a tattoo that said born to raise hell. he forgot how many captives he had and she survived. and that's erika scott. my father was also a great storyteller. he attended lynn tech high school in chicago, the same high school attended by herbert hans haupt, one of the eight nazi saboteurs landed by u-boat on the eastern shore of the united states. 1942. you can imagine the rest of that story years later when i worked at the u.s. department of justice, i did. dad invited my dad to visit my office across the hall it to the wall was a bronze plaque that read in this room were tried the eight nazi saboteurs and it named them all including herbert hans helped. then i took the head down the basement to the bowels of the doj and showed him the room where the nazis were locked up during their trial and before their execution. they electrocuted. then we used to go to a restaurant in chicago on german avenue and on swedish.

a few doors down was a gift j to a duke to greek shop gift shop. my father me in and to see that woman behind the counter pick something he went to buy. i want you to meet her. so i bought a little china lion figure. it was dollar and he said talk her, say hello, buy it and then i'll tell you who she was. we went outside and my father said, that was tokyo rose. i learned later there were several tokyo roses, but. but she was one of the women who did radio broadcasts propaganda broadcasts who convinced soldiers it wasn't worth fighting the japanese empire. and so growing up, i was surrounded by history. when i was six years old, i wrote letter to j. edgar hoover and he back and wanted a future i'm going to write about is what i wrote to him about and what he wrote back to me as a child child. i wrote my book on john kennedy

because my father told me i was a boy. what it was like the day kennedy shot my kept what she called her work. she was a painter. she kept her morgue of clippings in a sliding door closet, her bedroom and that morgue i found magazines to this kennedy assassination and to the hanging execution of the lincoln conspirators. i was transfixed by these images and she found me up there looking through her papers. and i could tell by her tears that something bad had happened to president long ago. and then the hanging photos of the execution were by alexander gardiner, the photographer who took many great photographs, abraham lincoln and years later, when i was working on the book, i acquired an original set of alexander photographs that i had seen in life magazine when i was a boy. and so that's really how i got very into storytelling and listening to wild stories by my family and in fact, my book on

martin luther in his last year was inspired by my memories of assassination. i was a small boy, he lived in chicago, and my father drove me into the neighborhoods where the riots happened because he wanted me to see, as he said, where history had happened. so he drove me to the neighborhoods i visited, the burned out buildings, the signs. and i was so vivid of him being in april 1968. so that's what inspired me to write my book about the death of martin luther king. so i've come to realize that every book i've written has somehow been connected to something. i learned in my childhood or a story was told or an object i've seen and that's the case. the deerfield massacre, the surprise attack of force march and the fight for survival in early america when was in college, i received a historic deerfield fellowship in early american history and decorative

arts. historic deerfield has a mile long street of museum houses in deerfield, and every year they invite about eight college students to, spend an intensive summer there studying. early american architecture, silver ceramics landscape and of course, that's i first heard the phrase the deerfield massacre, and i became obsessed with that story. i visited the graveyard many times, visited the colonial graves. i read the stories. i the cumnock valley memorial association museum, which is a repository of some of the great relics of that era. and so that, too, has fascinated me for decades. so that's really how i got into that. in fact, in memory and myth, i look at this story from perspectives that of the english colonists and the native americans, and i followed the story. 1704 down to the present day and

fact native americans been embraced for hundreds years from their role in the story yes the colonists lost the battle. the natives. had one. but for the next three centuries, until very recent time, the colonists really won the battle of deerfield they won the historical memory. they succeeded in erasing the role of native americans in what happened. so i hope in my book to out and resist the cultural and the stereotypes of the native american role in the deerfield. founded in 1675, deerfield was one of the first new england settlements. it sprouted up as a farming village. it was not wealthy. its had little money and few possessions. it was really a small town of, hardworking people who really had very little compared to boston and other eastern

outposts in massachusetts situated about 90 miles west of boston between the connecticut and deerfield river. it's only asset its only true asset was its rich farmland. in 1675. deerfield not escape the violence of king philip's war. it had escaped the earlier conflict of the pequot war, which happened long before deerfield even existed. and so the first violence in deerfield happened in a place called bloody brook in september 1675, during philip's war. deerfield were supposed to transport wheat in to a nearby town to bring supplies for the military forces in the militia. they were heedless and thought they were safe and there 17 or 18 carts driven by teamsters, along with 60 soldiers and went on their journey of a few miles. they crossed the brook, they

didn't realize that up to 1000 native warriors from several were hiding in the underbrush and hiding in the trees and without warning they struck. the colonists had been so foolish as to notice a canopy of luscious grapes hanging their heads. and so they laid their muskets to pick the grapes and eat them in the warm weather is one of the mantras. red deer and deadly grapes. they to them the indians struck the they had no chance. the indians fired the volley first and then the colonists tried to pick up their arms and fight back by then most of the natives had dropped their weapons weapons and withdrawn from their belts. one of the deadliest weapons on the new england. not the knife, not tomahawk, the war clock. the war club was like using a baseball bat hitting but wielded by a champion hitter.

they were absolutely deadly weapons. and in the book, i show some illustrations of natives carrying clubs and a current war club. also from the 1600s that survived that era. and so they were wiped out. over 60 militia were killed, 718 of the 18 teamsters driving the wagons were also killed. and it was one of the worst disaster areas. and new england history deerfield was abandoned that for several years. of course, the war was not over after king philip was killed and the war ended, it was still a dangerous. multiple attacks occurred through the late 1600s and for few generations the disastrous bloody brook haunted the memory of the people who lived in deerfield. they thought it could happen anytime again. in fact, i'm going to tell you something that john williams

said, but first i forgot to mention the mystery of deerfield in 1937, kind of a can read. aiken wrote this in a wpa guide to master use. it's it's no exaggeration to say that deerfield is not so much town as the ghost of a town the most beautiful ghost of kind and with the deepest and historic significance to be found in america. and it feels that way today. so rumors came to deerfield in paris, maybe 1701, 17, 17 or two, that the french and their native allies, canada, were planning a trek down to new england. where would they? no one, no, no one knew. would they hit them with hit connecticut or were they go to deerfield? deerfield was the most northwest an outpost of the english colonies in massachusetts and it was quite vulnerable. and so rumors kept coming to

deerfield that the attack was looming it was about to happen. it could happen any day. in fact, reverend williams said this about that. he said, i said a part a day of prayer to ask god either to spare and save us from the hands of our enemies or us to sanctify and honor him with whatever. so he should to happen to us. he wrote to the governor of massachusetts and said, i would lay our case as it is. we've been from our houses and home lots into the fort. there were ten houses in the fort, some a few miles away where we have suffered much loss. strangers tell us they wouldn't here for 20 times as much as we do. the enemy having such advantage on the river to come down to us. in the fall of 18, the fall of 1703, in october a people started to relax. the the natives hadn't come yet. winter would be coming soon. the snow and ice should protect them from attack.

little did they realize in january. 1704 the french and native forces were massing canada and the of deerfield really had no intelligence that they were coming and so john williams warned of this, but no one listened to him and. 250 to 300 native warriors from several tribes abenaki, -- from odenkirk, parents, lorette mohawks of kind of rocky penicuik and iroquois of the mountain departed canada on snowshoes, headed to deerfield. they had a march 300 miles in the middle of winter. it was a difficult journey to get there. they marched out of deerfield few days before february 29th, 1704. leap year. no one had detected them. the indians maintained a code of silence. they didn't fire their weapons. they didn't hunt. they didn't fires.

so the night before. they were encamped a couple of miles deerfield and ready to strike. and they did they came in around maybe three in the morning when it was dark. snow had piled high up against palisades. they climbed and dropped into the fort. there was only one guard and they didn't notice them or had fallen asleep. their myths about what happened? to the guard the first warning of the attack was the firing of muskets, the lighting, torches, and the attack began. the people of deerfield really had no chance. there were 300 of them and they first were roused their beds when their windows were broken, when the indians attacked their doors and shot them. axes and hatchets and tomahawk. they hit reverend williams house early. they seized him, bundle them in his clothes. he fired a pistol that misfired. they almost killed him for. it they took his two youngest children and smashed their heads on the front doorstep and killed

them in front of him. then they killed his female black slaves for trying to protect the children. and then they did that to every house in town, they set them on fire, drove people into the street. there was no organized resistance. the colonists didn't have time to organize and create firing lines, fight back. and it was over pretty quickly. two houses resisted to fortified houses. one, the george sheldon house, which went down in legend, is the old indian house. it had a huge double think oak door and they tried to chop it down and chop it and they cut a hole and and a musket through and fired a random shot and killed a woman in the house. they could not break down that they couldn't burn it down. they couldn't chop it down. and it looked like everyone that house would survive. but then an occupant afraid and he fled from a secret rear door and left it open him. so the natives all rushed in and captured everyone in the house.

then the last surviving house that hadn't been captured yet was the servants house, but now only stebbins, and about ten people inside opened a withering fire against. the natives shot and killed several of them and the door would not them. a little later, a relief force from hadfield rode into town. they had seen the glowing sky in deerfield direction and knew the town was under attack and under the cloak. the old code of the frontier. they were required to get their guns, mount their horses and rush to the aid of deerfield not. knowing how many natives were there, how serious was the attack? it was their duty felt to risk themselves and rush to the deerfield and help people as they were riding town. some of the natives are still there and they saw that the hatfield relief force come and they started fleeing the taking their captives with them they took 112 people captive, including the reverend john

williams. they took babies captive, five year olds, 12 year olds, adults, men and there's no one who was spared from being taken captive, including pregnant women and. so as they fled to the river, she crossed to the other side via the relief force, was heedless and pursued them with abandon, kissing aside their garments, hats to catch up to them. the natives laid an ambush and another ten colonists on their way out of town. and that led to the march. 112 captives were taken on a march to canada through the snow, the ice in the middle of winter in february, the natives had brought extra mustard moccasins, snowshoes for some of them to help move because the old english footwear was not useful for that kind of thing. and then that began more than month long journey to canada. they were captured for reasons

in native american culture. there was something called a morning war. muir nanji or the idea was that captives could replace people from the tribe who had been killed or died, especially prized, were younger, younger children who could be adapted into native culture, taught the language, taught the ways young women were, especially prizes captives because they could marry into the tribes and then even have children with with members of the tribe so people were killed in that meadows fight. 41 were killed or smothered in the town with fires and hundred 12 were captive. the captives included half of them were under age 1840 of the captives were not yet 12 years old, and the march took about a month. and reverend wife eunice was slain. one day after the march, she was killed by tomahawk after she fell into a river and really couldn't walk much more.

19 captives were slain in the march. well, prize captive was reverend william. a seven year old daughter of eunice. younger children were the candidates for conversion to native and also in the jesuits were very involved in the raid on deerfield. so on one hand the jesuits wanted to acculturate the children into the catholic faith and the natives wanted to acculturate into the native faith or the native beliefs. and so both sides, the french and indians were to convert the young captives. after 1000 days of captivity. reverend williams and many of the captives returned to deerfield on november 21st 1706, and in the spring of 1607, sorry, in spring of 1707, he published his famous book, the redeemed captive, returned to zion. it was an account of the raid, his captivity the efforts of the

jesuit to pay him huge sums money to convert to catholicism it would be considered a great triumph. if they could get one of the most prominent ministers of, new england, to betray his faith and betray people. but he wouldn't do it. they were more successful in trying to recruit units. william and his seven year old daughter. he was allowed to see her a few times a day, most they mostly kept her secluded from them and ultimately in end, she never came home again. so one of the great pains of his life was his missing little girl who he could not bring home in february 17, 1729, deerfield the 25th anniversary of raid and william died on june 10th, 1729, and he was a minister in deerfield for more than 50 years, and he was a true spiritual guide and leader of

that town. in fact, when he died, a neighboring minister, reverend chauncey, read this epitaph about him and he said this john williams was one of the pillars of the land. he was redeemed from the flames, passed through the wilderness and a sea of danger and reached the temple eternal in the heavens. so that, in a nutshell, the story of what happened during the deerfield raid, a little known episode from anne's war when during the war of spanish secession, where european countries were fighting over who could take over the spanish throne, and it rolled across the ocean and landed in deerfield. so the main story of what happened that night but also this i also want to talk about the memory myth of the massacre and what happened. 1804 was the 100th anniversary of the massacre, and that's the first time it was ever called massacre. in a sermon by reverend john

taylor, the people who experienced the raid of 1704 called it the sacking of deerfield, the mischief deerfield the attack your field. none of the victims of that attack ever called it a massacre. in 1838, a monument was erected a bloody book took to the at the graves of the men who were killed in that battle in the 1840s. the cult of the gold indian house started it became a revered place and it was considered an emblem of the mission in. new england. and so that has stood until 1847 or 1848. there was an effort to preserve it. a circular went out saying that building in the house is in bad repair. the owner wants to sell it. we must save it. it's a symbol.

our faith and origins. it didn't work. the appeal failed and then in 1848, the house torn down and it was considered a great loss and a great tragedy. one man who witnessed this whole figure importantly the story was a man named john sheldon, and it seared his memory of the loss of history and. he decided to do something about it. the door survived, the alderney door survived, and it was sold in 1863 by one of the people who inherited it from hoyt family. it was done secretly. privately, the deerfield elders did not learn it, and they they were crushed that this happened and deerfield had lost its history again, the elderly door really was was a survivor of the effort to preserve mount vernon. the deerfield preservation effort is the oldest in house and door preceded the mount vernon ladies associate and the

door was considered an incredible symbol of what it meant in terms of deerfield culture. the house and the door symbolized something that will last, like the english colonies in america were supposed to do. the house and door were plain and unadorned and suggesting the honest simplicity of the people who built them. rugged and raw. they were designed to withstand the harsh new england winters hot, humid and sun drenched summers. they proved strong and impervious to assault the characteristics of the house, and the door suggested the durability and resilience of the english people. and so deerfield tracked the door and bought it from the crazed collector who was to purchase it. and the door was then brought back to deerfield in a great ceremony of triumph parades, ceremonies dressed in costumes. the symbolism of that door and the tomahawks, cutting it and

slicing it made the door the most iconic relic in the history of early new england. and actually, you can visit it today in deerfield in the cumnock valley memorial association, there is a room there called memorial hall, which cemented the myths of deerfield george selden became obsessed with preserving deerfield past one obsession. he didn't have was to keep the natives and native americans in the story. he was instrumental in embracing them from the history of the massacre. and in fact, he would excavate their graves and desecrate their graves and not even keep records or not indicate where found them. they were meaningless to him. and so a principal role of his was to the colonial white new england past, but to disregard the native american past. and he really triumphed in that for a long time. then really to george shelden.

he was a living legend. he became really a symbol of deerfield and he became the spokesman for the values his colonial forebears. as the 19th century came to a close the story of the rate of 1704 had become fixed as a north star in deerfield history and sheldon had won the narrative and now control the next century and how that story of would be told. his history, his and through memory and myth, his writing and research. and so that really opens a new of the myth in memory of deerfield story. sheldon wrote a book called the history of deerfield two volumes. he the company failing memorialization to preserve the relics of their time. and then he took over memorial hall and building that used to be the deerfield academy and made it a gigantic museum of colonial revivalism. and in that chamber with door he

created a special wall of marble cenotaph slabs, naming all victims of the so-called massacre and their fates. and it became one of those celebrated locations in early new england. people came to visit. it created an obsession with colonial revival, and he was there presiding the whole story. and it was not until decades later into the 1920s, one single native american woman who's descended from the story came to deerfield and gave a talk at. george sheldon's museum, the first native to even come to deerfield give a talk like that. no talk is recorded. then deerfield really became a center of tourism maybe about 1900. a woman named mary p, will smith wrote a book that was a huge bestseller that's in print today. the boy captive, robert deerfield. and then published a series of books about young englanders

making their way in the new world, fighting the natives, building the colonial culture and symbols of what deerfield then. in 1910, thomas edison made a movie in deerfield little known. now the silent film was called an uncle's vow, and it was a myth. it perpetrated various stereotypes, unbelievable stereotypes of the natives. no natives were allowed to appear in the film. of course, they were represented by white actors. had putty applied to their faces, faded to give them crooked noses. their their faces were painted red. red washing was not new to history. it was done at the boston tea party when the raiders posed native americans. and the story is essentially this. it depicts bloody brooke massacre in the deerfield massacre and in a nutshell, an indian chief with a son in monaco sacrificed, his life to

save the white colonists. then he tells his son, you must take care of them and man, he sacrificed his life to save. of course, a beautiful daughter. and that daughter is taken captive by natives, and they're about to kill her with tomahawks and hatchets and strip her and torture her and burn her alive. and then a narco shows up on the scene. the son of the and narco invokes the ancient right of indians to sacrifice himself for the white maiden and save her, of course, has no basis of native american culture or myth and then there's a great scene where he escorts ruth and her father and her her white boyfriend to the edge of town. and i have to tell what what does at the end. and so he escorts her there and he says, you go and i go,

prefiguring the indian policy of the 1830s and 1840s, i go west and narco is being vanished from his own homelands and he represented the noble savages trope of the of the loyal indian who had vouchsafed the protection of the white family. the movie might have a different ending today. a contemporary article said perhaps an echo in his breast. the handsome, savage had some gentle thought of the girl he had saved, but as nobility of character permitted him to entertain that thought only for a moment the movie might have a different today with ruth abandoning her solid, stolid boyfriend ebenezer fleeing deerfield and running with romantic and willing an uncle, hollywood's all about endings. so, so lacking in history. then the memorialization began more in 1913 through 1916, deerfield started a deerfield

pageants every two years. these descendants of the people of the original town dressing up colonial costumes, creating reenactments, having ceremonies, having these things photographed in interesting as indians. there's a great photo in the book of a little white girl sitting on the of a mohawk warrior, a white man dressed as a mohawk, being toted on the shoulder and she reverse. she represents seven year old eunice so is is totally of native traditions then the pageants really transformed and mythologized what happened in deerfield it it became a victory of the colonists they may have lost in raid they may have had many people killed and taken. but at the end the white was triumphant and that was represented in the of the deerfield pageants.

then there was a massive appropriation of native american iconography. it became commonplace and it happened in deerfield pop culture appropriated indian names to place names, movies, programs, comics, summer camps, professional sports commercial products, steam restaurant tourism, souvenirs, advertising, art, children's toys, and more. a few were based directly on the deerfield story. a woman in deerfield, the old deerfield townhouse dollhouse, and she made little paper dolls representing the captives. and in deerfield attack, indian remained a popular theme. the book drums along the mohawk inspired the 1939 motion picture starring henry fonda in the revolution, and then another novel based on captivity in the hands of the senecas represented a blond white woman wearing a low cut blouse and shredded short sleeves, bound at the wrists behind her two bare chested indians to beat her fate, quote, would would she be

tortured, sold or forced to marry as the lurid cover copy indian captivity literature joined enjoyed a long life from mary robinson to john williams for the captive and even to the 1956 john wayne film the searchers. then finally, native voices returned at the covenant memorial association for the 300 and the first year the massacre. the curator designed new clothes to drape over the engravings of the old cenotaph tablets. for example, one tablet read sarah field captured an indian. she married a savage and became one. the new panel read married and adopted by the culture and customs language in her new community and kind of wacky and

of the tablets were covered with new information about that and then finally in thousand and four native tribes were invited to come from canada and participate in the memorialization of things. dancing song finally they were given voices in the deerfield story from which they'd been raised essentially for almost hundred years. if you go there today, you'll find evidence of the deerfield massacre or the raid or any evidence of it is buried deep down below the posts. the iron door latches the charred are all underground, and you'll find now a more revolutionary style town beautifully restored, but really representing 75 years after the raid, even hundred years after the raid and i attended a commemoration in 2001 and watched costumed french and indian warriors fighting there

for muskets, reenacting the meadows, fight a few hardy visitors, including me, stayed up here at midnight and moonshadow was illuminated by the silver and dark frozen pearl panels crackled beneath their feet. and we walked to the north meadows and held a vigil under the sky with orion and the big dipper. and listen to the sound of coyotes crying in the fields. it was same night, but that night. in 1704, the sky had glowed brightly from the fires. we walked down through the streets, found the route of the raiders through town, and stopped in the deerfield to warm ourselves by the fire. we peered outside the windows, a frosty window pane, and if had been 74, we could have seen the attack march right past the location of the deerfield and we could have it all. and then we went to the town common and stood at the spot where the fort palisades once stood. and we looked at the houses of

the stones that indicate the houses were the seventh house that young sheldon house, the john williams house. and tonight the common was deserted. then we went on to our final destination, the old burying ground there from a distance. we saw the grass mound topped with the simple stone. 1704 that allegedly indicated where all the the dead 1704 had been buried, but recently. ground penetrating radar has proved that no human remains under that mound. so the bones of the dead of 1704 have vanished. and then we look for two tall gravestones in the cemetery. it was dark. and so the lower stones were treacherous and could trip us. so we used a flashlight beam to find them. and so i walked to the graves of john eunice williams and just looked at them for a long time. and then we touched the stones and walked down to the river. and if you walk down there

today. you can still it the. riverine music is still there. the colonists that the river and the native had heard for thousands of years was still lapping banks over the centuries melting snow and ice had changed the contour of the river many times torrential rains and rising floodwaters had reshaped the river banks. the geography is ever changing but it's impossible to pinpoint the exact spot where the colonists in the cross, the river and their north to canada. but the same waters still flow as they did in the morning of february 29th, 1704, when the captives the river to the other side on their perilous journey to a strange and hostile land, not knowing when, if ever, they would return any questions. i'll be happy to take.

no questions. everyone of the bitter enders must to leave. one. well, i could speak. they need to record it. go. the people of deerfield today take hold of the combination of native or indians and the early settlers or is it still controversial? no, it's really not controversial anymore, because at the various reunions, natives come many times and participate. a great native of naki march roszak has been instrumental in pointing out the failings of george shelton and how he's

tried to erase the natives from, the history. and recently i a conference last summer in deerfield and it focused on native american culture appropriate in lands, museums and the phrases recolonize museums and spaces now and telling the native american story in a proper, more expansive way. so in deerfield the native point of view is sought after and widely accepted. also is the african american point of view. there were slaves in new england. there were slaves in new england, even in deerfield williams had two of them, and he had purchased a few more, both of both of his slaves, frank and christina, were killed by the natives the night of the raid. and then the next night, and also lucy terry, prince preceded phillis wheatley, the first african-american poet. and so deerfield is now also

marking the locations and places where we're both native american, had an important center field and were black. americans had an importance in deerfield. so the deerfield is very open to all this is in the conflict filling memorial association and memorial hall were really in documenting the black presence and the indian point of view in deerfield and that's really my favorite standalone museum in america. so i recommend if you're passing through deerfield, go to that for company memorial association, it's it's fun and very illuminating. yes, sir. thank you very much. mr. swanson. there's a great talk and i enjoyed your first book and look forward to seeing the mini series. whatever happened to eunice. do you know the reason i. because empire, the summer moon. you want to. they had a you know girl that

they captured and she was there and assimilated for ten years. they got her back and she wanted go back. so whatever happened, use eunice williams never went back home. she met her father a few more times. she became friendly with her brother stephen, who became a minister to follow in his father's footsteps. she corresponded with him and the last from her to him said she's now too old and she cannot visit again. and she probably was the surviving deerfield resident of the massacre of 1704. so she was the last living witness. from the colonists point of view, who who had suffered through that night, she married a native harrison, and they enjoyed life together in canada. she came to new england few times and one wonders what she felt if she in deerfield the old

indian house that had survived the raid or the old indian door and so we don't know what impressions she had in the end, but she never reunited with her father till his dying day. he her terribly many of the questions. yeah, thanks. terrific work as always is were you able in working on this project to find any information perhaps on the canadian or kept quayside or the jesuit side about the ultimate fate of some of these folks. so there was echo the ultimate fate of what? of the people that that either survived or passed at the after were taken care of. yes. yes. well, one of in the 1920s, one of george sheldon's proteges and a cousin of his went canada and a pioneering trek to interview jesuits to go to monasteries took a look at old records and she did a two volume book on

fate of new england captives. it just was the deerfield people she researched hundreds of people were taken captive during the native wars in early england, and she did her best to document people. it was a pioneering act of amateur that others have expanded, and so there's still remains a lot of research to do on the captives and in the captivity narratives and generally were the only long account of what happened that night. there were few other accounts, but his is the longest and classic classic one. so there has been research from, the 1920s on intensive research look through old catholic and jesuit documents and in fact she photographed some of the places they lived in canada. and so that that research was very pioneering and so we know a lot of what happened to those some came home some married canadians some very natives some never wanted to come back. stephen williams, who was a

popular captive, the natives never went back to deerfield. he became a minister in new england nearby. but he said the deerfield itself was a melancholy place. me and wonder why. okay, thanks, jim please join me in thanking again. james

on about books. we delve into the latest news about the publishing industry with interesting insider interviews with publishing industry experts. we'll also give you updates on current nonfiction authors and books. the latest book reviews. and we'll talk about the current non-free ocean books featured on c-span's book tv. joining us now on booktv, it's meg medina, the national ambassador for young people's literature at the library of congress, meg medina. what does the national ambassador for young people's

literature do? well, i would say basically it is being the nation's book friend, book friend to the children in the u.s. that's how i explain it. when i go to schools and i meet them. it's to promote reading. it's to help kids sort of discover their reading lives, find book joy and just be a cheerleader for their literary lives. how long is your term as ambassador? it's two years. and at the beginning you think that's going to be a very long time and it goes in the blink of an eye. so it's two years of traveling the country and, you know, creating different programs and platforms that will invite kids into, you know, the world of reading and books. so your ambassadorship ends in early 2025. what measure will you use to determine whether it was a successful ambassador ship? oh, my gosh. i don't know it for me.

when i took the job on, you have to go into it with this idea that for two years you're not going to be thinking so much about your own work, your own work moves into second place and what has to be at the forefront. are our kids right? what are kids reading? how do we help them fall in love with reading? how do we keep our eye on creating lifelong readers? right. especially and beginning in childhood. so when i think about that, what did i contribute to make that happen? so what i wanted to do was connect kids with book joy, especially post pandemic. when it felt like so many kids have sort of detached from school, from the habits of reading and so on. i wanted to reintegrate reading into their lives. i wanted to dimmest ify

libraries and make them the center of community again. so whether it's like this beautiful library, the library of congress or the library, that is your little local one, you know, it at home. i want families to use it as a resource and so on. and i just wanted kids to connect with new readers, new authors who are making books for them now. a lot of times, you know, kids will know or are guided to the authors that their parents read right, or that their teachers read. but there are so many incredible authors making work now. so when i think about success for the ambassadorship, i'm thinking, did i introduce kids to new authors for them to explore? did i invite them and remind them of all the incredible things that libraries do and did i talk with them about books in a way that did not involve a

book report, a vocabulary test of, you know, an end of year exam? any of those things book, joy. you mentioned book joy in when you first became ambassador was a ceremony here at the library of congress. you you said this that kids should read books that feel like cotton candy on your tongue and books that sometimes feel like a punch to the gut. yeah, that's true. i think we need to read all kinds of things. i think we need to read books about people that feel familiar and people who feel completely unfamiliar to us. i think it's okay to read a book that is a simple beach read that you'll forget the moment you finish that last page and the book that stays with you for a long time because it named something really hard and important about growing up. all of it, i think all it's like. it's like how we eat food, right? you need broccoli. you also need tootsie rolls in

your life. i mean, you need all the things. so i like for kids to be allowed to read across all kinds of things that might interest them moment to moment. how many students, how many kids have you met with so far in your ambassadorship? oh, my gosh. ballpark, i'm sure that there are thousands. there are, because i when i visit schools in the ambassadorship, i schools apply and i asked to go to communities where the public library and the school library can demonstrate that they were doing something dynamic together. i don't think that kids just need books during the school year and i think libraries, both public and school libraries can team up to really create some dynamic stuff for their communities. so i'm visiting the school, so that's several hundred students there. then the library event in the evening with the parents and family and community members.

so i, i do maybe four, four or five targeted visits, visits like that every year. so it's several hundred students there. and then the national book festival and all of the other sorts of travels that i normally do as an author. you know, there's no way to divide it really cleanly. they always asked me to talk a little bit about being ambassador, and so on. it is a lot of traveling. is this a paid position being the ambassador? it is a paid position and it is a lot of traveling. i would say. that's the hard part. i think, because it is very exciting to see this country and places you wouldn't normally go. right. communities that you wouldn't say, oh, yes, i'm going to go to, you know, kent washington or i'm going to go here or there. so that feels exciting to be able to travel. but by the same token, you have to pack your bag all the time. you have to be away from your

own family. you have to be your public self. and sometimes you want to be sitting at your kitchen island and making your peanut butter sandwich and you know you want to be home when you're meeting with these kids right now. do you have a go to book that you recommend? say, for an elementary school kid? oh, my gosh. i read it. so i book talk. i have about. 12 to 20 titles that i can pull from. and when i'm going to a school, i ask myself, how old are the kids? what's this community? what might they want to hear about? so one book that i have talked a lot is nonfiction because i feel like we don't do a lot a great job of using nonfiction in schools, but it's called whale fall. and it's by melissa stewart. and i start the book talk by saying a whale is roughly the size of three city busses and and it can weigh more than 65 cars put together what happens

when something that size dies in the ocean? the kids are like, snap. i hadn't thought of that. and we start to talk about that because melissa stewart tells us what happened. a whale fall for 70 years as a whale to send us through all the sections of the ocean and comes to rest at the bottom for 70 years, that carcass will feed an entire ecosystem in the ocean. and it it has wonderful and notes. it's just an incredible book. so that's one of those books that i can book talk whether i'm talking to kindergarten kids who suddenly are really afraid. right. there's something that big in the ocean and with older kids as well. but really, when i select books to book talk, i select them a way. i think teachers and parents should be thinking about how we select books like who's the child? who are the children you're talking to? what are they interested in? what might pique their interest

like? be thoughtful about what you're selecting to share with them because the thing about book talking is this when you book talk a book with kids, you're telling them about the book. you're also telling them about what excites you about who you are as a person and a reader. and when the kids book talk back to me, which they always do at every school, there's always three dentists who talk books. to me, they're telling me about themselves as well, not only about the books. they're telling me about the things that matter to them, what their longings are with the things they fear, the things that bug them, the things they find funny, and invariably, what happens inside the first, you know, a few exchanges, we're suddenly finding common ground like, oh, yes, my mother used to say that about my hair, too. and yes. and and we start making these

connections and any teacher will tell you that the recipe for success in a classroom. sure, it has to do with the subject matter, but what is essential is relationship. the relationship between the teacher and the kid and the relationship that you can help those students build with each other. as a community of learners. and in my case, of course, in community of readers. so i think book talking works that way where were you, a kid? where did you grow up and what did you read growing up? i grew up in flushing, queens, you know, the land of i always when people look at me blankly, i say, you know, like the nanny. yeah, flushing, queens. there was something in the water in flushing, queens. i think because my my best friend who lived two blocks away was rj palacio, who wrote wonder. right. that, you know, international

sensation. and i think there was a for a while a woman named maria russo who used to be the editor of the book review of four children at the new york times, also was from flushing, queens. so i don't know, something good was happening in flushing. what did i read? what did we read? i read a lot of nancy drew. i read a lot of judy blume. i read a lot of those books of of the seventies when we were kids. a lot of greek mythology. thanks to raquel, we used to act these things out all the time. i didn't have in those pages a lot of latino characters and it didn't stop me from reading. but i will say that later in high school and in college, when i did tap into sandra cisneros house on mango street and start to discover latino writers, it was like a revelation.

that people that ate the food that was on my kitchen table and sounded like the and usually espagnole and all these things that that was worthy of being in a book. and i'm sad that it took that long for me to have that experience. and so i'm very glad that now we don't have nearly enough books by people from variety of of backgrounds, but we have more. and every year more so. so that feels like a really good movement. one latino character that's out there right now is mercy suarez. who is mercy suarez? mercy suarez is 12 years old. she's mercy. this suarez. she is a a girl who lives in south florida with her family, her extended family. she lives with her mommy and papi and her genius science brother, rolly.

next door, her grandparents, lola and abuela, and on the other side is dia, inez and single mom with two twins, tomas and axel, who are a handful in kindergarten already. this, you know, a rap sheet on those two. but it's an intergenerational family story. it's about how bananas, middle school is from fifth grade to eighth grade. but it's also an exploration of a relationship between mercy and her grandfather, lalo, at really key points in both their lives. and you wrote this book in 2018? i did. i did write it a newbery medal winner in 2019. yeah. and how many mercy suarez books have you written now? now there's three. because when i finished the sixth grade year, i said, well, i have to know what happens in the seventh grade and is she going? and what's going to go on with

this girl? edna, in her life and what's she going to do about like all these feelings of love that start to come up when you're 13 and then when i finished the seventh grade with mercy suarez can't dance, i said, well, wait, she's got to finish middle school. so i did the eighth grade year. mrs. suarez plays it cool and that one was hard hardest to write for me because i had to bring all of the, you know, all the threads, the narrative threads together and knit it all together at the and especially the issue of her grandfather's illness. so, you know, when i write books for kids, i'm writing the truth. i'm writing those moments that punch them in the gut and that feels hard sometimes because you're bringing two children moments that are really sad and some of them are living through moments like this.

some of them are going to use this moment in your book as preparation from when for when they do have to face a moment on their own and so i don't know, unlike writing for adults, when you write for kids, you have this extra duty to them to also respect their growing up and their maturity. and you know what they have. i want to come back to when you were named the ambassador for young people's literature, when you received the medal around your neck. yes. look at this. the day that you received, what does it say on the medal? it says, national ambassador for young people's literature. and it has my name and 2023 and 2024 and a lot of comments that day in that ceremony about how heavy that medal is. it is heavy metal. well, you mentioned in that ceremony that when you talk to authors and you interview authors, you ask them to read me the best minute of your book.

so mercy suarez changes gears is your newbery award winning book. what is your your best minute of this book? gosh, this makes me regret asking authors to do this because it is hard. i was going through this book on the train up here saying, well, what is my best minute? and so i decided that i would read you a little bit of the moment when just a slice of her relationship with her grandfather, they go to the bakery every sunday to pick up bread for the family dinner and so on, and they ride their bikes out and something is off about lolo. so here it is. chapter six. i don't know how it happens. one minute lolo and i are pedaling home from al-khateeb on the shady side of the street and the next minute he's gone. at first i don't even notice that he's disappeared because i'm caught up in my latest story and then edna said, okay, mercy

can bring her dumb buttons like she was a queen and doing me a favor. can you believe it? lolo she said i was a pain as usual. we have taken the long way home so we can catch up without anybody listening to our conversation or telling us what chore we have on our list. that day. but when he doesn't say anything, i look over my shoulder and that's when i see him sprawled on the street. lolo i tossed down my bike and raced back to him. what happened? are you all right? he looks just too stunned as i am as he tries to untangle himself from his bike. in all the years that we've been riding, he's never fallen. in fact, lolo is the one who taught us all to ride, including papi and dennis. when they were little, he showed me how to balance with no hands, fix a slip chain and lube gears to keep things smooth with a trickle of blood drips down from

his eyebrow. where's new glasses of doug? in there. crooked now. and the lenses are scraped, pebbles are stuck against his bloody palm to. it's nothing, nothing. he winces and gets to his knees. i hit a sandy patch that all the tires are old on this thing but i look around for this kid and there's none. would it ruin the book to say what the disease is that lolo is dealing with? no, not really. he has alzheimer's and he has had alzheimer's for a number of years. but the family has not at his request, the family has not shared this with mercy. but now as she is entering the sixth grade and she's trying to understand all of these massive changes in her own life with friends, with her body, with boys, all the things she now has

to notice and and come to terms with the fact that lolo is is, in fact, declining. he has alzheimer's and now the symptoms aren't so little. they can't be ignored. are there topics that you don't think kids are equipped to handle in children's books. really a way to address any topic? no, i, i, i actually i think we could address anything with tact and with respect for children's developed mental readiness for things. but i, i don't feel that anything that's human ought to be talked about. if it's something that, that a child can experience or see in their family, in their home or whatever, in their community, i think there's a way to talk about it, to give them tools in

this debate that's happening in this country right now about what books that should and shouldn't be in in school libraries. what would you say to the parents in those debates who who think there might be a topic that's too old for their children in a school library? how should they approach that? yeah, well, you know, i think shelving books is is a smart thing. and i trust librarians to know where to shelve books and meaning, where to physically put them in the library, where to put them and what to how to decide. this is a book for an elementary school. this is a book for a high school, right there. there are differences. but here in general, what i say to appearances this the the position you most want to be in with your child is one of open communication, and that's hard to maintain as they move, as they get older, as they're moving through their teen years and so on. being in converse sation with kids about what they're reading,

even if that conversation is i don't really love that book. here's what i don't like about that book. here's what makes me uncomfortable about that book followed with the question what do you think? that's a powerful place. that's a place of learning. that's a place of sharing information. when we start creating obstacles, you may not i don't allow this is not allowed. i think you create an obstacle to reading, but more you create an obstacle, a between the in the trust that you have with your child around reading. you have three adult children. i do what did you read to them growing up and how did you deal with some of these issues that you're talking about in your own family? yeah, i had three very different readers. i have one daughter who is intellect, fully disabled. she's 33 now and she was reading, you know, henry in much books still when she was 14.

for those of you don't know, henry mentioned they're like first grade sort of readers. i had to get out of the way of judge what she was reading. she she developed an interest in reading all of them. disney channel, you know, those programs had books and she really wanted to read them. and how were you judging them? oh, because i used to go to the bookstore and buy them like this. you know, i was thinking i meant i'm so embarrassed. i want her to buy. i want her to be reading a book with these shiny little labels on it or good literature, good children's literature, not something, you know, from iraq. but guess what happened? she knew those characters. she knew she knew what the plot was going to be. and then she started to predict the story and suddenly print unlocked for her. and she is a reader today she reads about middle grade reading level and she's in the next chapter books book club, which

is a book club for young adults with intellectual disabilities. my other two children were i never i never stopped them from from reading anything, whatever they read was okay. and we talked about it. we read a lot of things. you and i were talking earlier about reading with our children. we we read the harry potter series before it was a movie. so that was really fun doing all the voices you said you liked the greek mythology books. did you read the percy jackson books based on the greek mythologies to them? i didn't, because my kids are older than them, that they predate that. but we read so many things and it's interesting because my son now is a he was he was a nonfiction reader for a while. then he stopped reading for a long time and i was heartbroken. i thought it was going to be a permanent condition. and he's returned to reading.

he's in a book club with his fiancee now and my middle daughter is often trading books with me and talking with me book talking to me like i think when she comes to visit, i think you might like this one and she'll toss it my way and i do the same thing for her. i think that's really key in families with readers, like talking about what we read, whether it's a magazine article, a newspaper article, a new book, a book you hated, a book you loved. like those covers, stations, key how many books have you written? written? oh, my gosh. i think it's ten right now. but i have a new picture book coming out in in the fall called no more senora me, wch is about a little girl who fires her babysitter, which i did myself in life. and then i am doing i've written a fantasy and middle grade fantasy very new for me, which comes out next summer.

what age group is your favorite group to write for? each one of the groups has an a law for me. there's something about the open heartedness of picture books that is really attractive to me. i love the comedy potential of writing middle grade like those 8 to 12 year olds have great sense of humor and they also have like they're opening up to like deeper things inside themselves. so you can really have this chance to mix it, mix things up in there and y oh, my goodness. just like when you're, when you're annoyed and you're taking names right away, a novel like you can leave it all there. it's it's fun. so all of it i think, calls to me. but if i had to pick one, like, you're never going to write anything else, i would say middle grade. do you know which book that

you've written in your career is your kids favorite? each one of your kids? have they told you, oh my gosh, juarez? no, i don't. i it probably isn't. mercy suarez i would say i, you know, i have never asked them this question. you've given me homework. they've, they read my work, but mostly for them. i've been mom and i like it that way. i'm not meg. the meg medina the author to them. i'm the person who, you know, nags and and ed spends time with them and all the other things. as we come to a close, i want to come back to meg medina, the national ambassador for young people's literature and what you said at that ceremony when you became the national ambassador. you said, we are at a time when we need to help our young people find their way back to joy. we are at a time when we need to reset and find a path back to understanding and respecting one

another. and i believe a reading life can be part of that solution. i stand by it still. i believe that the first day of my ambassadorship and i'm leaving my ambassadorship with that same commitment to it, we have as a nation had such, you know, this four year span that has been so difficult. and we continue to struggle with each other. i feel like reading and sharing the deep things that we can find in a book, the light moments we can find in the knowledge. that's the way that we can stay connected with one another. yeah. meg medina is ambassador to 74 million children in this country under the age of 18. the national ambassador for young people's literature. thanks for the time with booktv.

thanks so much.

lizanne is an award winning and the new york times best selling author of five books, her narrative nonfiction aims to inform readers by providing a compelling take on important parts of history that have long overlooked. she's today to talk about her latest book, the sisterhood. please give a warm savannah welcome to liza mundy. thank you so much for that kind introduction. and thank you all so much for being. this is my first trip to savannah it is all that my and i walked around the city yesterday and just so beautiful and i'm so thrilled to be here i think this is my first time speaking in a

church and a house of worship. and i do have an overwhelming urge to a prayer of thanks and particular to thank you all for showing up this morning. 9:00 is very bright and early. it is really thrilling to see all of you here and. i really wanted to stress how often charming it is for authors to be invited to a festival like this. i want to thank the organizers and all of the sponsors for making this happen. author don't often have a chance. get together with each other. and that is also thrilling. like you, i'm a fan. so many of the other authors who are here and there are such a wide range of authors and it's really thrilling for us all to be able to get together because writing is a very solitary endeavor. you know, it can be years of feeling like you're sort of trudging through desert by yourself, trying to find your way. and so come to an event like this to be in fellowship, in

true fellowship with readers, with people who love books, who love reading to be able to walk around savannah and and get a cup of coffee and, say, oh, i'm here with the festival. i'm one of the authors. and people say like, oh, you're one of the authors. i mean, you don't, you don't have that experience in everyday life a lot. and so to be in fellowship with all of you reaffirming the importance books and of reading is, is, is a great privilege and and and really helps keep us all going. i so you thank you for just sending these waves of energy and affirmation to all of us authors who are here and those of you who were fortunate enough to be in the audience last night when jeannette walls spoke in her really extraordinary talk, which was inspirational, i'm sure, for of you and certainly for me, she talked about the power of storytelling and in her case, particularly with her memoir, the power of telling her own story, having the courage to

tell her own story about her past and her upbringing that she had been ashamed of for much of her life, and realizing that when she put it out, when she had the courage to put it out in that it it took away all of that, that shame and reluctance to talk about it and created fellowship and with all of her readers, i was thinking about that aspect of nonfiction, you know, having the courage to tell your own story and. the other aspect of nonfiction that has been really one of the defining experiences of my career is, persuading other people tell their stories to have the to come forward and talk about their life and, their experiences in the case of the sisterhood, the challenge was to persuade women who had served undercover as spies and intelligence officers for the

american and tell our leading intelligence agency the central intelligence agency to talk about their stories to talk about the clandestine that they had lied their enormous service to our national security and our democracy and way of life to trust that their story would be fairly told and and that they were we're safe to put themselves in in my hands as an author and also before that with my book before this girls telling the story of women code breakers during world war two. that book entailed tracking down women who were in early to mid nineties, spending a lot of time in assisted facilities, eating a lot of tuna fish and cottage and butternut squash and and

persuading who had come to washington as very young women to work in a top secret code breaking operation who had arrived in washington and were told that they would be shot. they told anybody what they did. she had been told after the war. thanks very much for your service, ladies. now go back to your regular lives. never tell anybody what you did and and and had never informed that that story had been declassified in the mid nineties. nobody ever track them down to tell them that it would finally be okay to tell their families what they had done. and so that entailed sitting in conversation with number of women and convincing them, no, it is okay to tell your story. and not only is it okay, but it is a service to all us to understand our american history thoroughly, to understand who has served our our our democratic freedoms and our way of life, and to expose our

understanding of our collective story as a nation. so that that was sort of a delicate task that involved very, sincerely expressing my desire, tell their story again to expand our understanding, finding of where we come from. and i think as a country, the way that jeanette jeanette was talked about, you know, having the courage to face up to your own personal history your own life story, i think it benefits all of us as readers and citizens to fully understand and our story as as nation, as a country, to understand our history, who has served it. and i think that we are in a wonderful time where that understanding is being expanded with every book on this topic that gets written when. i was working on code girls. i i the book hidden figures

published a little bit before my book, code girls came out. you know tells the story, extraordinary story of the black women mathematicians who who ultimately powered the space race. and i think that book and other books like the 1619 project and so many others now we're at this wonderful moment, this flowering of literature and this newfound willingness of publishers to publish these stories, often collective stories of service and achievement, to really help us understand where we've come from and where we're going so. so i again, i loved listening to her talk last night, thinking about again, the power of storytelling when someone is telling their individual story. as a memoirist and and when for those of us nonfiction writers who are fortunate enough to be entrusted with the stories of others, which is which is a responsibility that i take very seriously when i'm writing my books and one of the things about being a nonfiction writer

is that the people in your book are real and and still with us, fortunately and have after since this book has been published the sisterhood i've i've had occasion to the podium and panels with some of the women in my and i'm just always very relieved they're still talking to me after the book is published because none of them had the ability to review. i do fact check my work, but they don't have the ability to review the book or, comment on, you know, on what. i've written as the author and nor did i ever work for the cia. and so the the that agency did not have the right or ability to to review and advance what i wrote and am surprised and relieved that there that i will be speaking at the cia during women's history month specifically on international women's day. it's nice that they us a day and a month and and so is you know

it's affirming also to know that the story of these women's service and these women's challenges is being is being heard within the institution as well. and being honored. so i like to i know there's nothing more exciting on a on a saturday at 9 a.m. to be treated to a good powerpoint presentation. and i assure you that that it will not be a lot of graphs and and and tiny little words you can't that you can't read just enables me to share some of the images my book that i that i truly love many photos that were shared with me of women spies who had who had done this clandestine for four decades and with me some photos of their training that that really very rarely get get seen in public. but i always like to start this slide because, you know, when you think a spy when you think of someone who works undercover, exciting intelligence work, you know, you always think i think

of a or often think of a white male with, you know, hair that be varying shades of brown he, you know, sort of generally looks alike with with small you know, maybe the of tuxedo that he's wearing there might be some slight but when we of a spy we think of somebody who's often a tuxedo who spends a lot of time in casinos and on ski slopes always carries a weapon and very good looking. and and when we said that so that when we think of a a man in intelligence james bond generally the person that we think of and when think of a woman in intelligence, the person that we think of i think most often is, of course, miss moneypenny, either in herrior incarnations or her recent incarnation. the actress naomi harris in skyfall is our modern miss moneypenny. you know, courageous incredibly

smart, a great support for james, but who generally her time behind a desk keeping james's schedule straight you know communicating back with headquarters on his behalf in the case of the earlier miss moneypenny, you know sitting in his lap flirting with them. but general lee doing sort of the support work and the paperwork work needed to help, you know, spy understand his next mission and and his schedule back when he's at headquarters and and serving as sort of an administrative support person. so i think that that idea of the division of labor in intelligence gathering work is has been ingrained in our consciousness now for for many. so with that in mind, i would invite you to try and guess this is an photo of an actual debutante ball that took place inin brussels, belgium and there areutantes and their escorts from all different in in

and they are they are there you know the women are they are to sort of make their debut in the american women who are they're there to represent the united states and so one member of this crowd in 1966 was being avid. lee recruited by the cia, a graduate, brown university, fluent in chinese, spanish, french. very, very in french. had grown up overseas as the child of american diplomat working to implement the marshall plan after world war two. at a time when america was the leading, you know, representative of democracy and freedom around the world so had grown up in in foreign settings very very comfortable with life in foreign countries so this person being avidly recruiting upon graduate from brown to work not only for the central intelligence agency but to train for one of the top up top job agency which at the ti asigence

now was really the leading spy agnd intelligence gathering agency in the world and at the cia. then, as now, the top position is has the bland name because are often the most exciting jobs are given very sort of bland and mysterious names. the name is case officer to be a case officer at the cia really is to be a spy. it's like the fighter pilot job. it is the most prestigious job. your job is to live overseas undercover to yourself, to secrecy and a life of clandestine covert intelligence gathering to serve in locations the world with a covert job, with a corporation or the u.s. state department. so you have a day job that you're doing, but you have a secret night job where it is your job to pry the secrets that. other countries don't want the united states to know out of people who are natives of that

country, foreign nationals who live in that country, persuading these people to commit treason to to to tell what they know to pass secrets or documents to to you as a case officer so that they be passed to the intelligence community and the president of the united states. it is a job for which people are select it based on their you know, their their ability to move unseen and disclosed throughout the world and also their ability to manipulate it, to persuade, to pressure to to get people to commit trees and through all sorts of means it's a very small, very elite of intelligence officers. and so it's a very tough job, a very elite and a very sought after job. if you're the kind of person who's capable of living in that moral gray zone, living a lie, all day long in order serve american intelligence gathering

and american national security. so if you look at this picture and think, well, who might been recruiting? well, i mean, there are a lot of there are a lot of white guys tuxedos in this crowd. so it could be this guy, you know, lies bond, he's a beautiman on his arm. certainly looks the part. or it could be this guy, you know, a sort of a little bit more back there in the shadows, not quite as noticeable that that be a good candidate. but in fact the person who was being recruited avidly by the cia was a young woman named lisa manifold, the daughter of an american diplomat had grown up in france. she spoke french she spoke french more fluently than english, but she had also picked up along the way mandarin. she had lived all over the world with her parents as they served the u.s. state department. her dad was a diplomat. she was being avidly courted by the u.s. state department, which would love persuade her to follow in her father's footsteps. but she knew that she had grown up in these foreign

environments. she was very comfortable walking the streets of foreign countries. she had visited her, her parents, their service in vietnam. she was comfortable in all sorts of settings. she was fluent in so many languages. she was very at working a cocktail party, working a diplomatic function, playing a part. her parents had often sort of trotted her and her brother out at diplomatic gathering and said, you know, you're here to represent the united america is the representative of democracy and freedom around world you all even as children if you fall on your bike, you mustn't cry. you must show everybody that americans, courageous americans are brave. so she had been raised with this sense of public service and a true belief in american exceptionalism. so, so she, even as she was being competed for by the state department and, the central intelligence agency, she knew that her that her true and strengths would lend themselves to an intelligence work on

behalf of the central intelligence agency. and the reason that lisa was being courted to do this work and the reason that i am so interested in this story, does go back to world war two and to the fact that our shocking lack of any kind of intelligence gathering ability was for all the world to see, and all the country to see. on december 7th, 1941, when we were attacked at harbor by the japanese, had no idea that that attack coming lost thousands of american servicemen. and that was the event of that launched america into this global war for which we were unprepared in in many ways, and particularly with regard to our ability to know what the enemy was planning to do to us both in the atlantic ocean where the german wolf packs the submarines waiting to try to sink the convoys that were now being sent to europe and in the pacific

where young men were now shipping out fight on aircraft carriers and destroyers in the pacific and to try to retake back much of the territory that was captured when the japanese invaded pearl harbor, as well as other islands and landmass was in the pacific ocean. it was a terrifying time for the american public. we look and we think, well, of course we won that war in 1941. there was absolutely no guarantee that the allies going to prevail in that conflict. and all of a sudden, we have had we had hundreds of thousands of young men signing up to fight at the time when we needed to build our ability to gather intelligence and to understand what was what was going to happen in the war. and so that was a light bulb moment that went on over military commanders, diplomats had. well, if the young men are signing up to fight, who is going to build our codebreaking? who's going to build our espionage? women. let's call in these women. these who have been to to college, these women who are teaching school.

let's if we can train them to be code breakers, let's see if we can train them to espionage officers. let's what the ladies can. and world war two was this we don't often think of it this way, but it was a moment of what we today would call inclusion, not only with women, but with the navajo code talkers in the pacific, with the tuskegee airmen. it was this moment where was understood that we needed all hands on deck. we needed every citizen who was willing and capable step up and serve the war effort to do so and so citizens who might not have even had the motivation you know, who had been discriminated against in american life, did that they stepped up to show that black could fly planes, you know, that women could learn how to break codes and program computers and designs. so of the stem technology that came out of the and that women could could could conduct spy craft so it was this terrible moment, you know, of tragedy around the world but it was this marvelous moment in which women

were for in a way that they had never been competed for before in american history. and this was personally interesting to me, i grew up southwestern virginia like jeanette wells. i thought of last night when she was talking about you know that as a kid she would read anything she would read any words on any page. and i was that kind of kid, too. you know, that book as a kid, you would go to slumber parties and. you would like look what's what's the reading in this house and and and i remember i would read anything at my parents house. and one day i told my mom, god, mom, i'm reading this really interesting book called the exorcist. and i was like 13 and she said, oh, you're reading the exorcist, huh? and so that was my it. she was she was great. you know, she's great. i was like 12 or 13. i picked up a paperback, but that was also my introduction to that. you mispronounce a word it means that you've read it, you know that you picked it up and reading so there's no shame in

mispronouncing word you've read it because you're a reader, you just haven't had the opportunity to utter it yet. so if you ever mispronounce a word? just remember that that there is no shame in doing so. so i was a bookish kid and growing up in southwestern and when i was looking for a book topic, lo many, many, many years later and came i came across across a class of a document that that that had been released by the nsa, the national security agency, which is our inheritor agency, the wartime codebreaking that on and it was about a group of southwestern virginia schoolteachers who had been recruited during world war two to come to washington and in their case, russian codes and ciphers and i thought, you know, my god mean, these women sounded like my mother. they like my grandmother. how was it that these schoolteachers had and come to washington during the war and how they found their way to washington. and that was my introduction.

then i went on to talk to nsa historians to the codebreaking project that went on during the war in which more than 10,000 women came to washington learn how to break the codes and ciphers. not only of russian our allies. we weren't supposed to be breaking their, but we were because that go on. but also the germans and the japanese. so when i was when i was research ing that book code girls, i also knew that there had been a parallel effort to recruit women into espionage we didn't have a cia yet. we didn't any intelligence agencies. we have 18 now the space force is our most recent, but we had nothing like that in world war two. and so women were recruited. the spy effort there, there were recruiting posters that went around. this is a report that was written about how how the cia had to learn how to assess people to do work. you know, they had never people to do this kind of work. the report called assessment of men.

but they assessed women as well because ultimately several thousands of women would contribute to our early intelligence gathering efforts. and they assessed differently than men with assessing men. they would put them in imaginary situations where they were commanded. they were imagine themselves as commandos who had to persuade a group of their colleagues to cross a raging river. in fact, it would be like a brook, you know, a stream out in northern virginia. they were to imagine that they were commandos and they were going. i had to get the whole across the raging river with a machine and, you know, evade the gestapo was how they assess the men to for leadership with the women. they called all of these really well-educated did really often employed high earning women and and they they gave them a task of filing the memos to to see how well they could create a oss-reference system of filing memos using three by five cards, but to also see how they could put up with being under

estimated and underused and discriminated against in spy service because the psychology doing the assessing already saw that that was happening that that was going to to women and they needed to have a particular kind of frustration tolerance in order to make it in the spy service so you can see the amount of paperwork during the war that women had to contend with. this was a mapmaking group of women working for the office of ragic service, as that was our predecessor agency to the during the war. like we didn't know anything about foreign coastland so we were going to be we were to be invading all of these pacific islands had really it's hard to overemphasize size how parochial we were as a in the 1940s and how much we had to learn how we had to build our collective intelligence. so these were women who were doing that work. and just to talk about one woman in particular wore is an accelerant it accelerates medicine, it accelerates technology and it did accelerate some of these women's careers. this a woman name who was named

at the time mcwilliams. she a graduate of smith college. she during the war she had tried join the women's army corps, the newly formed group of wacs she was too tall to be admitted into the u.s. army and and so she found way to the work for the ss as the clerk to wild bill donovan who was the former wall street lawyer who the head of the ss but ultimately from being a clerk was sent to china. she took a boat to china to to the far east and then a lot of scary plane rides in china was very jolly. she was very well-liked by her colleagues, male and female. she met a state department mapmaker in in china named paul child. and then after the war after she served the intelligence agency. like so many of the women, she was told. thanks very much for your service you know, time to go back to your regularly scheduled life as a you know, as a housewife and and get married. and so she did marry paul child

and she traveled with him to france where she famously had a fabulous meal. learn just how good food could taste at a time when that was not always here in the states. and and she became known to the world as julia child. so she's one of the most famous graduates of the oscars. and and she's of the many things that world war two gave us, our freedom, democracy, a lot of our stem technology and computers. it gave us a lot better food than than we had experience up to today. so so the wartime service gave women a chance to sort of reboot. reboot life trajectories, you know, to meet people and have experiences that they otherwise wouldn't. but then writing sisterhood in particular i have chapters on world war, but i've also been always been very interested in what happened after war. what happened after the war? two women who served during war or two women who wanted to follow in footsteps.

and so that is part the story that i endeavored to tell with the sisterhood following, the stories of the women who had served our intelligence gathering during world war two. some of the women who stayed on after the war we thought we were going to close down our intelligence agencies after world war two. but lo and behold, we're now in the cold war. we need to ramp it up. we need to new agencies, a new the national security agency, the intelligence agency, you know, all of these agencies that we have to really build our ability to be the world leader and gathering and intelligence and analysis so that we are never again surprised as we were at pearl harbor. so what will happen after the war is that women will fight to stay included in intelligence gathering and national, despite the fact that these big bureaucratic institutions now being created where they are very bureaucracies competing with each other for money and

prestige and the people within them are are competing for the top jobs. right. to be director of the cia or to be a division chief or a station chief running berlin station. london station. you know leading our intelligence gathering efforts in countries around the world at a time when an american cia station chief director america's spies given buckets of money to dispense in these countries. you know for the contest with communism the soviet union is a great, great job. so the women have to fight their way to prevail in this environment. and and you can see allen dulles, one of the most famous early directors of the cia, as portrayed on the cover of time magane. the cia decades was given pretty free reign to do whatever it needed to do. allen dulles oversaw a lot of that. he was a graduate out of the ozarks, and that was a very powerful network for the men.

the cia was a very network, a place where you needed someone to mentor you, to push your career, to get you. that london station chief job and the women were largely shut out those networks. and so over period of years, when i was doing my research for book, not only interviewing women, but reading documents to support their stories, i read a number of over the years, over and over and over. there would be studies done periodically. why aren't women advancing the cia? why aren't the women, you know, alumni of the office being given same opportunities that the man answers know studies will be conducted. and the first study that allen dulles conducted probably at the behest his sister, eleanor dulles, as well as some of the women who were legacies of the west, who did make the decision to stay on. it was, called the petticoat panel. like a bit belittling title you know is hard to imagine i think it might even be because there were early spies were said to carry letters and messages in their petticoats and and so it

is possible that there was a sort of historical resonance it that it still was very belittling and the only way in which the female panel was even permitted to the study about why aren't when they being advanced was they were told well you know this is all top secret classified information. so after report itself it has to be very closely held and closely held us like agency for it. nobody is going to get to read, okay, except like the people at the top. so it was a report that was done and then it just sort of died and nobody out about it until it became declassified. so there were a number of studies done in which incredibly stereotypical pronouncements about women were freely shared by the guys at the top, by the station. and so part of my a big part of what i was attempting to achieve in the sisterhood was to show the stereotypes afflicted women for decades in this incredibly important incredibly agency and the ways in which the personal stories that the women told me

about their careers show how they they those stereotypes. you know really unfair and laugh able the stereotypes were even as they were very at keeping women back in the bureaucracy. so one was that women can't run agents women can't persuade what we call the what they call an asset or an agent, a foreign national to spill these women can't be rainmakers. they can't be dealmakers. they can't make that ask to ask to commit treason in cia, the agent is not you, the spy. it's not james bond. actually it's the person who has committing, you know, who is running the real risk the person in the foreign country who is passing secrets. the thinking was that women just can't do that. they can't be persuasive and they won't be taken seriously. and so some of the i just wanted to share some of the photos of the station chiefs, the cia station chief during this time, the guy in the speedo david whipple most veteran dartmouth

football player wasn't the one who uttered that particular. but gives you a sense of the kind of guys who just had such free around the world to sort of to run agency and to conduct operations clandestine operations here who were who, you know, harboring these prejudices and freely uttering them. people conducting periodic surveys. another one hans jensen and you'll see his photo in a second this idea that women were very good with their research, that women were really good at, women were really good at paperwork. and that may or maintaining a routine like like moneypenny and sort of keeping the guys, you know, straight and knowing wt their mission was and what they needed to do. so this is hans jensen, another cia station chief. and you can see that these guys were sometimes somewhat in need

of somebody to maintain their routine. you can also see the liquor cabinet behind him, and that was a big part. american spycraft also overseas, because you spend a lot of time in lonely outpost things and liquor was very cheap and flowed very freely at american peaks, to which the the spies had had free access. just some other stereotype a women can't work under the pressures of urgency. so one of the women you'll meet in the book heidi august was a woman who as a child at the cia had written them about a job they hired her as a clerk even though was a college graduate. she ended up working overseas in a number of very dangerous places handling airplane hijackings among things, women can't. let's see, women in many. oh, they they women women seldom have access to important information. and so if women spies go over, they're going to try to get the information from other women. women don't actually know anything which is couldn't be further from the truth the

female secretaries female clerks had access to everything that was in you know, foreign offices. and so one of the things, heidi august did was women in other countries you can see her working at the u.n. that was her day job. she was scoring shirley temple black, who was who was making a presentation to the u.n., was a young case officer. so she was working nights. this is lisa harper's training. you remember lisa harper, the debutante? i loved these photos. training at the farm, which is the cia's fabled, fabled training facility in in virginia. you can see her right there in the middle. you can see her into disguis in disguise class in the middle. and so the women over a of years would fight these stereotypes. oh, that women won't travel and important a really important part of the book to was was commemorating the service of wives of unpaid spouses both for the cia for the u.s. state department. this oirley sulak, who traveled her case officer husband to moscow the women,

were expected to serve to fully serve the cia unpaid to help their with the tradecraft that has to be done on the streets with retrieving messages as with meeting with with assad. that's shirley was an enthusiastic and very very intrepid and very very effective cia spouse and so that those are some of my favorite chapters in the book so you can see that women the course of decades would would work to disprove these these stereotypes. this was the woman who tracked down the u.s. spy, aldrichmes who was passed ing secrets to the soviets. i identifying our soviet assets who were then executed by the kgb. so the idea that women aren't a objective or aggressive was just proved over and over. so you might say, why does any of this matter if women are being discriminated against at a big institution like? this we know that that sort of went on for decades. we've seen mad men. you know, that's a that's that's

sort of a relic of our american past. but, you know, we did a pretty good job. cia did pretty good job. but but let it not be forgotten. there was a group of women analysts who were back at headquarters assessing all of this intelligence that's who were writing reports. there was a group of women at the cia who as early as 1993, were very aware that, a man named bin laden and a group al qaida were were were were hatching a new kind of plot. america were presenting a new kind of threat. after the collapse of the soviet union, after the apparent defeat of communism in the soviet union. and so this woman, gina barnett, was part of a group of female analysts who had been channeled into a non prestigious kind of office where they were looking at terrorism around the world and, writing reports and trying to get their voices heard. so and having doing it because

one of the things that women discovered was if you're a spy working overseas is being underestimated. and is a great asset. it is exactly. you want you don't want to be a in a tuxedo, standing out in a crowd you want to be somebody a housewife who nobody thinks is gathering information. but if you're a cia analyst, job is to make sense of this intelligence and write it up for the president. it is not an advantage to be underestimated, ignored in a government bureaucracy. and that is what went on in the 1990s. so as a result on september 1st, 2001 a day that i remember being in washington, we were by al qaida. and in a day that we will never forget very pearl harbor like in the history of our country. and and that proved that that it does matter when when you aren't using your brains to the fullest, when you aren't listening to the people who are paying to a new threat and and

the the happy ending is the wrong word. but i will say that the lesson was learned after that terrible disaster after and the institution does recognize and does understand that it was a group of women who were trying to call attention to threat. so almost ten years later, during the hunt for bin laden, it was a group of analysts and female targets. those are three of the key members of the team. were mothers of young children. and that is also what the institution had to learn to do was include mothers, include parents, include people with children in, the in the ranks of analysts and that and for many many years women who did serve in these intelligence gathering capacities were expected to not marry and to not have children. there was a belief that you could not be dedicated to your work if you also had a family life. and so the other lesson that the

institution had to learn was that it's important, again, to use all of your skills and talents to listen to them. so when the decision had to be made, are we going to attack this compound in abbottabad where we think bin laden is hiding to, you know, achieve justice to stop to stop power of this terrorist group? it was a group of largely women who used data gathering skills that they had been developing over decades to pinpoint where he was located. and this time they were listened to. so at the end, i endeavor to tell story as well so we can understand we forgot the importance of inclusion a while. we have we learned that message. so thanks very much. fascinating. oh i hate i hate to stop her at this point it was so interesting but we do want to have some questions and there are just a few minutes. so if you do have a question,

come down to the microphone and we will get at a few in the next couple of minutes minutes. i'll try to keep my answers short short. hello thank you so much for speaking with us. so i am a current graduate student, i'm an aspiring journalist and i'm really interested kind of in exactly what you're doing, which is the nexus of journalism in security and gender so i'm curious how you arrived at that intersect of those topics. well, i think as i i stumbled upon this the story of these women who came from my neck of woods, you know, at a period in history where where you just wouldn't have expected that. and and the fact that their story hadn't been, you know, particularly with the codebreaking, but also with espionage, that you think of all the number of the books have been written about spycraft and about war, two codebreaking movies like the imitation game, their story had just been written out history. and so my my reaction was, you

know, who wouldn't want to tell that story and and it just, you know, caught in my imagination not not imagination just just really committed to the power of telling that women's stories to see them got recognition for their to see some of them go both with the code girls and with the cia women at cia to see them go on their own book tours, you know, to be celebrated their communities, to have their work recognized and to really change their understanding of themselves and their contribution to our history is very meaningful work. so carry it on. what are some of your favorite? what are some of your favorite fictional portrayals of women in espionage? it's cia, osama say. and also i'm a proud sisters. great. and i'm so proud today of. thank you. thank you so much. yeah. favorite shows. well, i'll just share one anecdote about that when i was meeting with the cia public affairs to try to enlist their

cooperation in making people available to me for the book they called in some of these target or some of these women analysts. it was very intimidating conversation, but one of the things they said was, well, we want we want the to understand that this work is not at all like homeland. you know, like if you watch homeland and you see carrie mathison. mathison, this sort of tortured analyst who lives this wild life. you know, it's not like that. we're just people, you know, we're working mothers and and and so i was like, you know, you'll say anything sort of at that moment, like, yeah, i'm sure it's not at all like homeland and and and i'll be sure, you know if it to to to make clear but when i was interviewing these women case officers who had worked as spies overseas, describing their surreal nature of their lives, it is such a real work. one of them one of them said to me, she said it. just like home. and thanks for bringing these great stories to life. i'm curious in all these women, was there a pattern and how they felt about not being able to share with family, friends and

with prospective employers the stories of what they were capable of? i mean, were they angry or were they resigned? i mean well, what are the things that they get tested now is the ability to do their work without credit for it. i think it's important it's hard to assess how people feel it, although i must say that i think there are people who sign up with the cia for spy life because they want to write a memoir afterwards, you know, because they want to describe. i do think that's true. and others have said it not the majority but you know, if you if you've worked as a spy, you can write a memoir after you've been. but it has to be reviewed by the cia and they will redact a lot of information that was not true for me. my book did not have be read by the cia and and so i, i think you know particularly for the women the women codebreakers, you know, it was so it had been very frustrating for them not to get to talk about their war service and their contribution to the war. and i think for the people more recently who served as well, it is frustrating not to be able to correct the record. one of the things that was very

traumatic for the cia after 911 was being told you failed you failed you failed being told by congress having reports come out. how did why didn't you know why, didn't you know, being blamed and feel a sense of failure, the sense of the collective sense of failure was enormous but the women analysts who been calling attention, you know were called in and warned, okay, the congress is going to come out with this report, going to be we're going to be accused of not connecting not connecting the dots, not being persuasive, not being compelling, being able to get your story out there. when they had been trying to do that for years. and that was a source of enormous frustration. and i think it was important and meaningful for the women to be able to tell their story, their their several chapters in the book that tell that story of their attempts to get this this new message heard that was very frustrating and hard for them to lose. welcome to savannah. thank you for writing this book. i think we can i can speak for everyone here. it's really exciting to have a

new history brought out where a forgotten and overlooked are centered and their stories are really meaningful. i have a question about it. i mean, bigger crises. so everyone that you feature is obviously a proud patriot has done amazing public service. the cia is flawed bureaucracy. like so many americans, bureaucracies like tell us. about that, if you can. i mean, one of the more extraordinary parts of the book i remember is that, you know, people bought into the bureaucracy. they bought into the bureaucratic values, even though they were treated shabbily. so of all the cia failures in intelligence over the last 50 years, like, can you can you inform us a little bit more about the opinions of of your characters, your people, and what they feel like after the service? oh, after service, yeah. yeah. no, it's certainly a bureaucracy in general are flawed institutions can be hard to navigate for anybody and in terms of their life after, their

service. i think i think that that it is still a very meaningful career for the people are very much so for the people engage in that kind of work and they do have to sort of just accommodate themselves to the of not always being able to tell story. so and i think, you know, one of the, one of the positive aspects of that is we do have a number of you know, particularly for the women we do have a number of women serving in high office now in washington and also serving in congress. abigail spanberger, a congresswoman, virginia, several members of congress who are now on intelligence committees and national security committees and who have a real background, this kind of work and, a real knowledge ability and a real credibility to be able to speak this domain. you know, you have for however managed to survive the bureaucracy to survive the frustrations and the flaws and to prevail.

and for example, abby, abigail was very open with me. i interviewed her for this book and talking about the continued frustrations of the work. she said she was working overseas as a case officer that during that kind of fighter pilot work, you know, the tip of spear and meeting with assets and long, you know, long routes to get to a clandestine. she had one child while she was doing she found that pregnancy was was a great way hide the fact that you're wearing a big money belt that you're carrying around like tens of thousands dollars to pay this person. and so she found that pregnancy was an unexpected advantage. you can and also she said she was meeting with assets as a pregnant as a mother. she she that it conveyed to them this person you're trying to protect and keep safe that she was also who wanted safety who wanted security who wanted safety for her children and safety for her country and safety for that asset. she was working. so she found her gender and even her motherhood and pregnancy to

be an asset in that situation. but when she had her second child, a supervisor, her. well, don't you think it's time for you to be a reports officer now that's the mismatch penny job that's the person who at the desk and receives report from the case officer. so kind of frustration even as recently as she served was present and she talks about it openly now but that that part of her curriculum vitae her resume is now is now part of what i think gives her credibility in really one of the most masculine of congress, you know, intelligence and national security are still very important and very prestigious committees sit on. so it a it takes a strong person to withstand the frustrations your break up of a bureaucracy and big institution. and that's true of men and women and sorts of people. but there are, you know, specific frustrations that that

come with the job that do seem to still exist. yeah. a question to short, please. we are running, as i remember, ron was secretary. sit on meetings with him when he was hiring people and he'd say, boy, that guy was great. and the secretary of saying something something we sometimes make fun of women's intuition but george blake was here about four years ago in his book betrayal in berlin, and he talked about how president eisenhower saw how poor our intelligence service was and needed to build it up. and why did we not learn that lesson after world war two, especially? why did we have to, was for. yeah, well, there was a great of the intelligence agencies after war two and so i think we did learn that lesson but with you know with the expansion of intelligence community and bureaucracies comes lot of competition and a lot of competing for the top jobs and what that's what people in these bureaucracy had to contend with. i grew up hearing a lot about my

father's experience in world war two, and only after my mother's passing did i hear her name associated with code. i'm looking for it tip on where to begin. summary search. yes. and i get that. i get that question at every talk. i mean, it's amazing few degrees of separation there are between us and the people the women who served during world war two. and it's always so wonderful to see adult children of of particularly women who served who were so proud of their mothers service and curious about it. so if you go to my website site which is liza mundy dot com, i have a tab that that provides information about how you can research your mother's wartime service. believe it or not, personnel from world war two are public and anybody can request them. they don't all exist. but the ones that exist can be very enlightening so if you go to my website, i wish you well on your journey because it yield some really fascinating information thank you.

michael thurmond is the chief executive officer of dekalb county, georgia. he's the author of freedom. georgia's anti-slavery has. heritage 1733 to 1865, which received georgia historical society's leila hawes award, the georgia historical records advisory council awarded thurmond a lifetime achievement award for his contributions to the research and preservation of african-american georgia history. thurmond has previously served in the georgia legislature as director of georgia's division of family and children services and as georgia labor

commissioner and as superintendent of dekalb schools. please give a warm savannah welcome to michael thurmond. good morning. first let me express my sincere appreciation to ms. rachel young fields, the president of the savannah book festival, the board of directors. i think she's here to give a round of applause. thank so much, rachel. tara setter and mickey and all the staff. it is truly an honor and a privilege to have been invited to this book festival, which is one of, if not the most prestigious book festivals in these united states of america. come on in, savannah.

give yourself a round of applause. delighted to be standing in the historic pulpit of trinity church. it is a unique honor to be here at this mother church and briefly, i will draw a connection between methodist and oglethorpe and a young evangelist's name, john wesley, who has the coal to come to this wilderness is called georgia to christianize and is enslaved people, native indians as well as british colonists. i won't waste my time, but i must acknowledge a historic figure in the history of savannah, and that is the former mayor. mayor otis johnson. dr. johnson, where you. give him a round of applause.

thank you so much. he has been a friend and a role model who was able to marry political ambition with intellectual prowess. he's a brilliant person and i'm just honored he's in the room. october 7th,. 1996. gray, low. hanging clouds greeted us as we entered the paris church of all saints in the village of cranham, which was located about 90 miles outside of london. it was the last stop on a four day pilgrimage to celebrate the throne hundredth anniversary of the birth of general james edward oglethorpe. as you know, general oglethorpe and his beloved wife, elizabeth,

a buried beneath the floor of this venerable church, 700 year old church, and near his tomb following his death, his wife, elizabeth, commissioned a marble plaque. and this plaque contains a long list of accomplishments and platitudes of this man's long and illustrious career. having served in parliament, military hero, advocate for british subjects who have been in press in the royal navy, he fought against debt of prisoners and passed legislation that resulted in the release of 10,000 british to us. and on. and on. and on. for any of you like myself who will educate it in the schools,

public or private here in georgia. these were things we were familiar with that we learned in junior high school or middle school, but then literally my mind was riveted to eight words. one passage carved in the white marble, words that i first read. and process says in disbelief amidst all of those accomplishments, i saw something in that literally stunned me. eight words. he was the friend of the oppressed --. the father of georgia james oglethorpe, according to his

wife, who commissioned the plaque. he was the friend of the oppressed --. i rejected it. i thought it to be puffery, but i could not move from that spot. the rest of the 57 of 56 member delegates then were ushered to a meeting hall. and i stood motionless, encased in the silence, reading and rereading that passage. he was the friend of the oppressor. this --. thus began a 27 year journey. and by the way, to one person who was with me every step of

all 27 years, my wife zola, she's here. give a round of applause. only here, but that stunning assertion, that stunning assertion has literally changed my life. the prevailing narrative of oglethorpe and the trustees and their attempt to prohibit slavery in the georgia colony was that? yes, they sought to prohibit slavery, but it lacked concern for enslaved blacks. their only real goal was to protect the safety and the moral of white colonies. and generations of historians have promoted that particular narrative. well, i set out i wish i could say i set out to write a book that would come to a conclusion that james oglethorpe made this

journey from slave trader to abolitionist. but i would not be telling you the truth. i really set out to prove that that eight word statement was a lie. how could the father of georgia care about black people? i spent a week or so almost two weeks trying to understand the early 18th century, meaning of the word friend. because obviously, you know, we unfree and and free and people with the touch of a burden. so maybe oglethorpe didn't have that ability. so we start on this journey. but one of the things that i wanted to share with you, because the prevailing narrative was so powerful and so pervasive that that carving in order for

me to begin to engage this narrative bodies journey. one of the things i've learned is that unlearning is more difficult than learning. equally as important, but much more difficult because throughout our history, some things we assumed to be incontrovertible. facts or not facts. they are basically opinions, general it from what facts? so what are some of the points in history that we really have to come to grips with? understand this journey of james oglethorpe. and by the way, one of the things i've said over and over again, i don't come here today to do to to argue that james oglethorpe or this perfect guy, this saint, he was not he didn't begin or start out as an

abolitionist. the arc that he travel is james oglethorpe, deputy governor of the royal african company. the royal african company was the principal slave trade, an enterprise in early 18th century britain. they this company themselves, transported over 200,000 captives to the caribbean and to the north american colonies. but this book really is about is this journey. but the subtext, if a nonfiction book can have a subtext is not what he became, but his journey in becoming who he became. we live in a world today where the one thing a politician can't do in james oglethorpe was a politician, a member of the the

british parliament, the one thing you can never do is it. you are what wrong. because if you admit you are wrong and if you try to change to a more correct position, you are then -- as being weak. that was one politician of hill nationals who told me mike is better to be strong and wrong, then weak and right. but james always demonstrated the ability to change, to evolve, to grow. when he was here, he was anti-slavery and by the way, prohibiting slavery in in any jurisdiction is anti slavery doesn't necessarily mean you want it to abolish slavery, but you wanted to create, as he said, a zion in the wilderness. well, hard working people

through their own labor now sweat could earn a living to support themselves and their families. he detested slavery. he simply because he didn't think people profit. unjustly from the weight, from the work of others. we all know about underground railroad. it is the cornerstone of african-american history that the johnson and we know about those brave and courageous african-americans seeking freedom who follow what the freedom the north star. right. and you would end up either in a free state or work nation. canada. out of south carolina and later out of georgia. once slavery was legalized.

what this book teaches is that underground railroad did not run north primarily. it ran sound. so. if you and i have been living in an enslaved society in south carolina, in particular, and later in georgia and if we will, seeking to go south to freedom, where do we go to florida, let's say a florida get a man who had he said florida. florida. people go there now for low taxes. but originally. why was florida a destiny nation of choice for freedom, seeking black folk in spanish so the florida georgia border was an international border, right?

so just how canada was an international border, the georgia, florida border was what international? and what was unique about the spanish. the spanish florida, the northernmost outposts and oglethorpe that greeted him, too. they all foot land, freedom and sanctuary to any enslaved british person. black enslaved by the british who could make it to florida would be given land, freedom and sanctuary. but you had to join the catholic church. and if i am an enslaved black person. i would take them the any day. right. not just scores, not just hundreds, thousands. but i would look and i would be

surprised if there were more than a handful of us who had a myriad into the stories of the freedom seekers who went south. but that was the nation you could get to even before you arrived in florida. so that. hmm, what's the little tune on jeopardy down in in what other nation existed between the georgia colony and spanish controlled florida? seminole. south georgia. north florida was seminole territory. the seminole were a fully assimilated tribe of native american and black people. now, my black for years,

grandmama always told you what she would do. grandma, what you got? what. native? what bit america and blood flowing in your veins. okay. phonology is not a greek word. it. is not a cherokee word. okefenokee is a seminole word. so why would the greeks go down in name was swamp in the middle of? it's a seminal word. what i'm saying to you, we have to unlearn before we can learn. what triggered oglethorpe journey from being adapted? a governor of the royal african company to becoming what i believe before with dev was one of the first abolitionists being

one of the first white british colony owners in north america to speak out against chattel slavery. what triggered it was a young man named diallo who was enslaved, captured on the west african coast, enslaved in maryland in a maryland colony who convinced his enslaver to allow him to write a letter to his father, who was back on the west coast of africa. that i feel your man turn it right. number one. how was he able to do what right. a letter and number two was fedex and ups running. how is he getting the letter? well, he was educated.

those who study world history know that some of the greatest and the earliest universities were actually established in africa in timbuktu, some of the first libraries. he was educated. his father was a wealthy cleric. so he wrote a letter in arabic. and believe it or not, it passed through the hands of several white men on a 4000 mile journey from maryland back to london. and as fate would have it, this arabic letter fell into the hands of guess who james atwood oglethorpe would overthrow. it could not read arabic, but he had a friend who was a professor at oxford university. he had the letter interpreted to translate. he is so affected by the contents of the letter he arranges for diallo's passage from maryland to england, where he is ultimately man made and set free.

diallo becomes what he describes was described as the roaring lion of british society. he becomes lebron james, michael jackson all wrapped up into one. he ends up having dinner with the king and queen of england in my british friend's in a british. british? yes. give them up. british people are unique. they're special. give them a round of applause. they are special. they understand these things. so he and he ends up back home in modern day senegal. oglethorpe resigns from the royal african company, severed all ties with the slave trade trading firm and begins his journey towards abolition. is what oglethorpe saw in the letter was number one. if you can write, that is a characteristic of what civilization, what he saw in the letter was of a husband and a

father who would express a love for his family. that's the characteristic of civilization and he saw that dialog was monotheistic. he was pious and very devoted to islam. the great narrative of james oglethorpe as a close is that he became one of the first humanists. he saw human beings. he embraced as fellow human beings, native americans. thomas. you know the story. who? he also asked for it back to england. he, despite a prohibition, allow jewish colonists to migrate to savannah. third oldest synagogue in america. he embrace back in england, the

intellect of women. there was a group called the blue stockings and hannah moore was a member and they were reviled and criticized by misogynistic. i won't go there because i have a daughter, mia, although one of the few who rose in their defense. so i suggest to you and i hope you read the book, but read it with this in mind, georgia, your niece james oglethorpe today, america needs james oglethorpe today. we need leaders who are not afraid to when they are wrong, admit you're wrong, but work towards not just changing yourself. because if you can change yourself, you can ultimately change the world. which is what james oglethorpe did. we need james oglethorpe to teach us to be a bridge is to

see humanity. the original motto of our colony became a state was not for self, but for others, not for political persuasion. who but for others? not for my church or my synagogue or my mosque. but for others, not for the people who look like me and vote like me and think like me. but for others. the ultimate humanitarian who, as i've said, will face original vision that we have in here in it. he's told us not to be bystanders to your own life. he told us to respect other people regardless of race, colloquy or social status. he told us to always pursue, even in a wilderness surrounded by enemies, deer lurking around every corner.

he told us to always pursue our bitter angels. thank. thank you. terrific. mr. thurman, we're going to take some questions now here. but first, do you have any more questions for us? never had a speaker ask us so many questions. all right. if you have a question, please come down to the microphone. but again, please keep it succinct. well, i do have a couple of more question for you, not just.

a great speech. thank you. i was wondering if you could speak a little bit about all the thoughts, relationship thoughts that always come as kind of a symbol of the man and coming here, giving our other people's relationship with native americans. you seem to be pretty enlightened about it. yes. and by the way, i want to acknowledge professor james brooks at the university of georgia department of history. he is the i think, one of if not the most respected experts on native american native indian history in our nation. yes, but that grew out of old thoughts, understanding of people and see, think about this. this is 17, early 1700s where african americans are so like cattle and considered to be so of human, not in possession of a redeemable soul.

native americans are considered to be savages. uncivil liars. james oglethorpe had the ability with all of his flaws, to embrace talmadge geechee, to embrace the people, to spend time with them, to leave him. you just read what he said. that was one statement. he said that in my heart, i think i'm a rich man. yes, sir. i i'm wondering how oglethorpe dealt with. i think it was after five years when the south carolina slave economy was beating georgia and the prohibition against slavery sort of evaporate. how he dealt with that? he reinvented himself, which is a great trait that we all should have. right. if you fail, he went back to england and the narrative is that once the trustees voted to repeal the prohibition against slavery, james oglethorpe lost

interest in georgia and lost interest in the fight against slavery. not true. what james oglethorpe really did was he became a mentor to three emerging abolition and is one was granville sharpe, who is credited with being one of the founders, if not the principle founder of the british abolitionist movement. the second one was equiano, who became the most influential black man and an abolitionist in 18th century england, and last had a more who was an author and a writer who wrote the poem slavery that helped to stoke abolitionist fervor. in the end, british empire oglethorpe continue the fight where we were. history is missed is that we focus only on those years here in georgia. he did not give up the fight. and he and in my book and some of his i thought fail my theory, my thesis is oglethorpe did not fail. oglethorpe wanted to create a

slave free georgia. we live in a slave free georgia. he did not feel his vision. his dream became the reality. and you see it in december 1864, when william tecumseh sherman shows up here. slavery is dead and oglethorpe had predicted that in his society to build itself out the backs of enslaved laborers can cannot survive. oglethorpe did not fail, and we should celebrate him for his speech. thank you. you know, one of the ultimate for authors is to be on the new york times bestseller list in books like this sometime to do well regionally or something like that. mr. sherman but what do you think that something like this that we ought to be teaching more history in our schools and books like this ought to be in the classrooms and that this ought to be a runaway bestseller

and people like you who write nonfiction, how much more difficult is it than a previous author at least got to interview people who were still alive and or people who have been dead for a hundred or 200 years. i think i heard you question the audio as a little bit, but i agree. hopefully it will become a new york times bestseller. but that's okay. but that's okay. you know, i spent 24 years just researching and writing. i never proposed to publish. them first. it was for my edification. this is my state and i wanted to have a better understanding of the man who played the role here. if through media and others, we can share with others, that would be great. but we need more history in our public schools. we just do. and let me do one of the things i think that this narrative can show is that we live in an environment where history is so toxic and divisive, who can't

who can't celebrate james oglethorpe. now, this is what i say isn't interested. hamilton the broadway musical the great given. hamilton not a great musical. and one of the reasons it's being celebrate it is it has a diverse cast, right? james oglethorpe lived a diverse life in my estimation. james oglethorpe will be the knicks hamlet. yes, sir. you present a beautiful and very convincing case for oglethorpe. the journey being a journey of the heart. but i'm guessing it was also a journey of the head of the brain. it sounds like he was a very shrewd man. i wonder if you could elaborate. thank you for pointing that out. he was brilliant. he was obviously one of the most, if the first to make the

enlightenment case against slavery. just the issue i raised about civilization. if people can read and write, if they have family as if they are monotheistic, then these individuals cannot be subhuman beast of burden. they must be human beings. and there was other james john wesley that i'll mention since i'm standing here at trinity, one of his closest in the pew, people who fought against slavery, john wesley spoke out and noted he was anti-slavery. he became an abolitionist where the thing was that enslaved blacks possessed redeemable souls. the prevailing notion in christianity was that black people did not have souls, so they should not be christianized and the precursor to a movement that preceded it was that equality of the soul would equal access to the kingdom of heaven. if i'm equal in heaven, then you could lead to the conclusion that i should also be where

equal on earth. and so those are the type of reason. and the other thing i'll stop. james the idea was that black people were docile, that they did not fight against their enslavement. and oglethorpe, in a dairy, scots in particular, dan and aryan, constantly warned the pro-slavery group that black people will take up arms the first chance they get and they will ally themselves with your enemies. they fought with the seminole hulls against the enslavers during the american revolutionary war. blacks in georgia aligned with the british because british offered them freedom. they were free here in savannah due out octopussy about five years during the war of 1812, some 3000 blacks from cumberland and st simons and coles went out to cumberland and joined the british evacuation army and joined the royal marines and then in civil war, first chance at him, 200,000 black men

volunteer to fight for the union. oglethorpe won slave holders that if you enslave people they will fight with your enemy against you. to your point, thank you, sir. were there any specific people who attempted to stop oglethorpe attempt to not really stop, but contain slavery? sort of. that's a great question. give them a round of. oh, that is a wonderful question. that's an excellent question. absolute. they were called the malcontents and they were male contented because they believed that georgia could never be a place of consequence without enslaved laborers. and they despised james oglethorpe up. and they started an 18 citrus

smear campaign that basically destroyed his reputation at the time. and in july 1743, oglethorpe was forced out of georgia in disgrace, headed to england to face court martial for a charge of treason. primarily because prose slavery, georgians recognized that the only way we can get legalized slavery is that we have to undermine his authority and his reputation. the great question. mr. mayor. thank you, sir. thank you for allowing me to have an advance copy of the book. well, i do. i will come into the van and know the only way i'm going to make it in here is. and one of the most striking things for me was the journey of oglethorpe from the anti-slavery

to an abolitionist. and i'm not so sure that the majority of the people in i'm assuming, kind of understand the difference. the real difference between being anti-slavery and being an abolitionist. so if you could just make that connection again and that was one of the major takeaways for me, and i'm going to buy the book. they thank you. thank you, mr. mayor. typically, we conflate the words term anti slavery and abolition, right we see them as one of the same. historically, they're very simply are distinct and different. they are distinct and different. anti-slavery means that i'm opposed to slavery, but i do not support general abolition of black people. anti-slavery efforts included

furs with black people who fought against who fought for their own freedom, who purchased their own freedom, who joined the church. those are anti-slavery strategies among the white population. i mentioned the christian evangelists who sought to evangelize enslaved blacks. that's anti-slavery. that was an effort to regulate the slave trade. that's anti slavery. then abolition. anti-slavery was a precursor to abolition. oh, let me tell you who won the great anti-slavery advocates in a uga graduate. uga folks go down. okay. robert finley, a former president of the university georgia, founded the american colonization society. he despised slavery. he wanted to free enslaved blacks. but one caveat he didn't want them living here in america.

so he to colonize africa and south america free black. but not just robert. there's another person that i guarantee all of you know that was this other man, abraham lincoln, who anti-slavery, who sought to colonize as enslaved americans before the january 1st, 1863, when he became an abolitionist. and if you read, why did lincoln go from anti-slavery to abolition? well, to compassion. maybe read the last paragraph of emancipation proclamation. he authorized the enlistment of black men in the union army. he believed that if a man could fight, then he deserved be free. thank you for your remarks, sir. i'm going to buy your book as well.

you know. do you have as an attorney, do you have any comment on the prohibition of attorneys in this? the original charter. well, i thought about it and i'll serious and it may be prohibition of attorneys rum and black people. i would just catholics on three of them. i'm out right. but it was an interesting ending on the tedious society where people suing each other, but they got the law use right next door in south carolina. they never hesitated when they needed a legal opinion because there was this debate about allowing free blacks to come to georgia. it came up twice and they saw a legal opinion from the british

attorney general. was, okay, no slaves. but we think we ought to allow black, free black people come to georgia. the trustees. but the british government said no. but lawyers on all their. thank you. yes. may i let question one more. thank you so much for finding writing something on oglethorpe. it's a book we've been needing. as you said before, he was sort of drummed out of georgia when. when did he sort of become back? the father of georgia to savannah as kind of someone who we do admire. well, savannah has kept the flame alive. savannah james oglethorpe and i celebrate for that. what i would hope. and i told my wife, i told my friends that if the book doesn't resonate is the banner dead?

i'm just telling you. and so thank you all for holding the flame of james oglethorpe alive. i was at oglethorpe university. i spoke there for oglethorpe day on tuesday, and what i shared with the president i believe that at this point it is time in the history of our nation james oglethorpe will become a beacon of hope, of opportunity, of humanity for not just savannah, but for georgia and his nation. and i told her that in years to come, there will be people who make pilgrimage to oglethorpe university to learn about his philosophy and how he was able to rise above the hatred, the distrust, the racism, and to embrace people as part of the human family. that's my dream.

victor luckerson is a journalist and author based in tulsa who works to bring neglected history to light. the book he's discussing today built from the fire on the history of tulsa's greenwood district, also known as the ameri because black wall street

was the new york times editor's choice selection. victor is a former staff writer at the ringer and a business for time magazine. he was nominated for a national magazine award for his reporting in time on 1923. rosewood massacre. he also manages an email newsletter about underexplored aspects of black called run it back. please give a warm savannah. welcome to victor lucas and. thank you all so much for being. this is a really packed house then this is the biggest crowd artists that i talked to jared actually about the book. so thank you all so much for

being here. thank you to this event. a book for hosting me. at the sheri jacobson and joe and carol young. again thank you. we have to have a lovely dinner like after party last in downtown savannah, which is really fun with sponsors. so thank you so much for that. it's been a really great time here. and you know, for me, actually this is my first book that i've written and my first time actually speaking at a book festival actually came to the savannah book festival, a guest last year sitting in the pews on that side of the audience. and so it's kind of an amazing experience to be seeing how big this place is from this vantage. you know, i'm going to be here talking a little bit about the history greenwood. i don't know what everybody knows about the story yet, but hopefully after this you'll have a clearer sense of what's going on in this over the last 100 years. and i'm going to begin with a really short excerpt from, the book, it's actually the first paragraph of the first chapter. you know, i remember these words coming to me actually when i first began the actual writing process of the book and about early 2021. and so this is actually one of the first parts of the book that

was really like, well, when i began the process and this is how the book opens, they called it the eden of the west. when boosters crafted tales of the land as the creek nation indian territory and eventually oklahoma, they wrote a fertile soil that could grow any crop yielding shoulder high, acres of wheat and melons ready to and their succulent ripeness. they described a righteous realm where any newcomer would have chances with the white man or those who remain in the old world, the deep south, where slaves ought to be killed at any time. most important to henry and kali goodwin they spoke of good schools for colored children, places where the seeds of prosperity could be sown, and the one terrain that cannot be burned, stolen or erased by interloper. the terrain of the mine. these are the opening words in my book on the history of greenwood built from the fire, and i've been reflecting on them a lot as i've traveled around the country discussing work over

the last six months. today i like to take a journey through the terrain of the mine. the question of movements, righteous and rage will begin the pleasure of school boards and library readers are currently battling over the future of american education in the place where the memory of greenwood is spoken in and out of the national consciousness. the last 103 years. now we're going to do a little of imagining today, and i've been a partner with me a little bit on this, and i ask you to imagine something. just close your eyes a little bit. go there with me if you can. so i want you to think about me in 21 years old. just imagine where you were in your life when you were that age and think about your favorite hangout then. oh, there was a bar, a restaurant, your best friend's front porch, maybe even the library you guys shot from across the country to go to a book festival. so it's very possibly a fairer place in your 21 years old with the library know? i don't know. whatever it was, it was probably something like it on greenwood avenue in tulsa, oklahoma, in the early 1900s, oklahoma was a

place where black people thought they could have a fresh as jim crow party sees the deep south with, an ever tightening grip. oklahoma promised better schools, bountiful crops and socially quality. it was like the bright sunshine of the morning of may. i met mississippi, man said after reading about life at west greenwood, it became like oklahoma's brightest star of all imagine living in a place where most of the teachers there high school had master's degrees. that was true. greenwood imagine living in a place where black people own their land than renting it, that was true. greenwood imagine living in a place where wealth was not the defining metric of success, but community involved. that was that was true in greenwood. if we were in the old greenwood right now, i'd be tech talking to you now at trinity united methodist church at mount zion baptist church, which is built in the heart of the neighborhood with 70,000 bricks and a countless number of prayers after this talk.

we did a dinner at susie, those cafe 106 north greenwood avenue, where my mother chicken was neighbor delicacy. once the meal was done, we catch vaudeville, show the dreamland theater, where the line snaked around the block every and just maybe that we swing into a dim like the zulu lounge or ragtime dominated the piano and a substance called chuck beer looked like juice. it tasted like a good friday night. would you bet we'd meet women? lulu williams, the famous amusement queen who owned the dreamland theater and a leopard print coat to match it. men like j.b. stratford, owner of the largest back hotel in the united states. maybe a little beautician who was so good with her hair. she even gave us a few men she could save. the receding hairlines and j.h. goodwin help though tulsa's first black hospital. what a community. what a community contributed to you. goodwin once wrote can only be measured in terms of what you give back that community by

1921. greenwood. greenwood filled with doctors, attorneys, writers hoteliers and shop owners here the terrain of the mind was his burden. at the spring meadow, as greenwood championed black independence black entrepreneurship, black strength. mary jones, parrish, a local typing teacher, was one of the first people to call it the -- wall. but more than riches was you, parrish greenwood was, quote the wonderful cooperation, observed our people just this terrain. but this terrain, the agreement it cultivated, it was contested neighborhood success starts on the in the minds of many white oklahomans. oklahoma, at its founding a declared that black ambition and intellect were at odds with the white agenda. as a rule, -- are failures as lawyers, doctors and other professions. william murray, a future governor, governor of oklahoma, said of the state's constitutional convention.

it is an entirely false notion that the -- can rise to the equal of the white man. not long after murray speech, the state showed a show to segregate train cars, even phone booths in tulsa, interracial baseball games were banned. harper hateful rhetoric and dehumanizing laws inevitably lead to violence and so it was in these united states during the 19 tens. lynchings became regular occurrence across the deep south and its appendage. oklahoma race riots spread across the country during a period so bloody became known the red summer. the violence seem to be creeping closer to green greenwood with each passing year and the nearby town of wagner, when a black woman was lynched, hanged on main street. the local white press declared that the lynching gave the community a peaceful and helpful appearance. now we're going to imagine. i want you to imagine they were back on greenwood avenue.

it's may 31st, 1921. the streets are once again torn with people, but the energy is different. fear, anxiety, anger. a black shoeshine boy named -- roland has been falsely accused of attempting to rape a woman. a salacious, salacious headline in the white newspaper reads nab -- for girl in elevator. everyone in greenwood and, in white tulsa has seen the story or the accused boy sits in the county jail house where it is a group of white men and women, even are headed to the jail to rape him from his cell and lynch him on the streets of. men are gathering weapons and planning a march to the courthouse where. they will protect the boy and face down any white who gets in their way. no, the cost. do you stay or? do you go? ultimately, a group of about 75 armed black men marched, the jailhouse. many of these men, world war one

veterans who have served their country abroad and returned new notions of black equality when they reached the jail the black veterans demanded the release of rolling, but the police refused. soon a black soldier and a white man scuffled over a gun. and then went off and all hell broke loose during the night, black and white men shot at each other through the streets of downtown tulsa. the violence was brutal. one black man was jacked behind a car with rope around his neck. another was shot, ran out of a downtown alley, then surrounded by a mob brandishing knives. members of the white mob broke into a hardware store and attempted to seize a national guard armory. many of them are deputized by the tulsa police department. a white man named laura buck recalled going on the police station and being told by an officer, quote, get a gun and get busy and try to get a --. the black man who escaped the initial shootout retreated to

greenwood to defend their home. but the mob has something worse planned. at dawn following morning, as many as 5000 white oklahomans invaded the greenwood district, brandishing guns, kerosene and matches. fires were set systematically. a team of white men, some of them deputized by police, would enter, chosen home and blow the lock up the door if necessary. they smashed the inside. wrenching open drawers, tearing down window drapes. after gathering the bedding, furniture and other flammable items into the center of a room, the men doused objects in kerosene. then a ladder match. each blaze conjured in the twilight tone its own story. over the next several hours, white also laid siege to greenwood, destroying more than 1200 homes, razing hundreds businesses and killing as many as 300 people. the most harrowing statistic

there were six stillborn babies lost in the chaos of the invasion, the tulsa race massacre. as the event was later known within the worst racial acts of terror in the history, the united states. now, if you're sitting with me in this room today, there's chance chances are high. you've already heard about the broad strokes of this story. in recent years have been featured in television like watchmen, lovecraft, country documentaries. it's been caused a sitting u.s. president. president biden came tulsa 19 2021 and acknowledged the race massacre. history the fact that event is no longer completely buried is progress. for a nation that often refuses, understand itself and its history. but i'm here to argue, the greenwood story is much bigger than those 36 hours of destruction. black life cannot be defined by the mob. and so i hope that by the time we finish talking today, when you think of greenwood, you won't think of angry white men wielding, torches and shotguns.

you think of the people who call this place home and rebuild their lives a cataclysm. my mind always goes back to a meeting that took place about two weeks after the massacre. greenland looked like a war zone. all the buildings have been reduced. rubble and all the trees of their foliage. one of the few structures left standing was baptist church, where neighbor leaders held an emergency meeting. j.w., who was the principal of the elementary school. some up greenwood's mentality when. he got up to speak. you said, i'm going to hold what i have until i get what i lost. despite the odds, greenwood rebuilt. a barber took a chair out to the burned out district as the rubble still smoldered and offered to cut hair. dreamland theater became a makeshift amphitheater showing films in an open air on muggy summer nights. attorney b.s. franklin fended off a scheme to seize greenwood land while working a tent working out of a tent. he set up amidst the destruction. he on with a lone wooden desk. a few salvaged logbooks and a

single typewriter. within weeks of the the neighborhood with a sea of white canvas. by christmas, those tend to be replaced by hundreds of reconstruct buildings. by 1925, greenwood was once humming with hotels, storefronts and the proud dreamland theater. when w.e.b. dubois greenwood in 1926, he said, quote, scars are there for the near but impudent and noisy. it believes in itself. greenwood enjoyed a second heyday at a stretch from the 1930s to the 1950s. more than 400 businesses filled the district. musicians from count basie, the b.b. king's, etta james all performed back on venues in tulsa steak and frog legs, where a local women in skirt and mini bermuda shorts started down the stroll every friday night. residents proudly referred the neighborhood as little harlem. and, yes, the -- street greenway story was a black america story. let me give you an example.

so in this book that i've actually, for one family in particular, the goodwin family, they came to tolson, 14. they survived the race massacre. and this man, ed goodwin, actually was a senior high school at the time of the race massacre. he survives the massacre. he goes up at this university. he goes by the tulsa to greenwood to become an entrepreneur. and so i found out that he been owned a shoeshine shop in greenwood. he became an attorney. its family bought, a black newspaper, the eagle. but i also found out that he was really involved. might be underwrote of greenwood, which is kind of surprising to me. and the greenwood there's a game called the numbers that was very popular and anybody here familiar with the numbers or the policy anyhow play the number you can admit you play the numbers. anybody. so the numbers was a sort of by the lottery back in the day basically you know the numbers basically there would be one between 76 are the numbers if your number hit between that range, you would get a payout. and so ed goodwin became the kind of policy king of greenwood, this gambling kingpin who kind of ran gambling in greenwood. he was alive and bootlegging and

all that kind of activities. and so know when i was doing my research, i always thought that my mom was on my research all the time. what i was finding out. and so one day i called my mom and i said mom, this guy had given what i thought was like a civil rights hero and really upstanding. he also was involved in gambling and bootlegging and this is kind of crazy, don't you think? and then my mom said, well, you know, your granddaughter did same thing, right? and so that was a big shock for me. and alabama. we were known to my son to i didn't know that. but it was actually a really good lesson because it really illustrated to me that especially black folks in that era, there was direct path to the middle class. you know, there was no there is the red carpet. you had to get there how you get there. and so i think everybody maybe taken to your family's path, you might find a surprise like i did. right. that's terrific. these guys are programed. so greenwood's ability to come roaring back, destruction, it can not escape the gears of so-called progress at century war on. in the 1960s, a slippery new

term called urban renewal remedies wormed its way into government lexicon. the idea was to revitalize urban communities and revive better living for residents. but in reality neighborhoods like greenwood labeled as blighted and the people living there, were forced to move miles away, to make room for serving whiter, wealthier residents. goodwin's family was forced to leave their home on richmond avenue, while the newspaper office demolished to make room for an interstate highway. by 1975, only half a block remained of what it once been, one of the most successful black business districts in all of the united states. it's reign of the mind and the physical terrain are deeply intertwined with without preserving the physical spaces that honor the past. it's easy for the to slip out of living memory. that almost happened in greenwood. for decades, the white press ignored every anniversary of the massacre in the 1970s, writing right writers as tried to uncover the truth about the event. death threats.

many survivors didn't tell their children what had happened to them. having been robbed of generational wealth, then they didn't want to pass on trauma as an inheritance. now we're going to imagine one more time. i want to imagine once again the young greenwood avenue. it's may 31st, 2018. a small group of about 25 people have gathered for a vigil to acknowledge the 97th anniversary of the race massacre and mourn those who perished. the roar of an interstate highway looming above drowns out any attempt at qui q reflection. and all around the vigil, hundreds of people are streaming past us toward the sports stadium that recently built on this very block. the tulsa drillers are putting the san antonio missions and minor baseball. the juxtaposition might be funny if it weren't so obscene that day in 2018, with my first day stepping foot on greenwood avenue. i was a young journalist working

in l.a. and i've missed my editors. i mean, it's also trying ask about the famed black wall street and over me, how i enjoyed this story initially. i remember that i was having lunch with a friend when lived in atlanta, working as a business journalist and. we came up, we started talking about the film the slave. you may have seen the movie 12 years a slave. she laughed at. so my friend, about my age, we're both by 27, 28 years old. my friend was saying he hadn't seen the movie. he didn't want to see it because he was tired of seeing black folks only to pick the historical undergoing trauma. you know, you think about most of the black narratives that get fed through hollywood movies, or even when you learn about a history books often as black being whipped as slaves before the civil war, sick vidal's in the civil rights movement, and we don't really get outside of those depictions. and so i asked my friend actually, have you ever heard of black wall street? that's a story about us successful. my friend. never heard of black wall street. this is before watchmen, before president trump or president biden visited greenwood, you know, before all of this national attention it happened.

and so for me, the motivation was to be able to tell this about black success of black solidarity to my friend and others like him. that was really what guided me to convince my editors to let me out. an article about black wall street, which would have me go to the neighborhood on that day 2018, when the vigil coincided with with this baseball game, seeing how much the neighborhood legacy been diminished depressed me, angered me, even. but it also gave me the motivation to want to go far beyond just writing one article about a year later i quit my job pegged to my life, made black country music playlist and west to tulsa. that was the old town road job. road wrote that song. that was the year i moved to tulsa and the year i'm leaving tulsa the obvious job in the country. album sales like both full circle moment so but really you know i knew that the only way to really tell greenwood story and authentic way was to become become part of it in a way. when i moved to greenwood, i

soon learned that it was a place of contradictions, part hallowed ground, part tourist destination, part black business district, part gentrified, playground, walk the streets and you would find plaques placed on the sidewalk. what was destroyed? susie bell café destroyed in 1921. never reopened. but these plaques about luxury apartments and why don't restaurants they had little to do with greenwood's heritage? instead of having the black owned stafford hotel, we had the holiday inn, and yet the people of greenwood continue to depend to defend and honor the train they have left going the newspaper, the oklahoma eagle still has now some greenwood avenue, the last piece of property in the area owned by a black family ed son, an 83 year old attorney has been charged with publishing a paper for more than 40 years and his granddaughter, regina goodwin, is represented in the oklahoma legislature and represents the greenwood district today, there

are two known living survivors of the tulsa race massacre, lesley benefit randle and fletcher, both 109 years old. they are spry, strong and they'll smile warmly when you say, hey miss fletcher or hey miss randle, i'm going to spend a lot of time with both these. and it really is amazing how how whether they are you know, when i first approached them, i was kind of doing it with like the porcelain gloves, like, you know, i hope don't break. i'm not going to break. i'm here. i'm on alert, you know. so it's been really a pleasure to get to know those folks. but their time on this earth, like all of ours, is limited. they're living survivor. he's been ellis passed away last october at the age of 102. the survivors are part of a new reparations lawsuit seeking justice. justice on behalf of the entire community. several massacre descendants were originally of the lawsuit as well, but tulsa county judge recently ruled the notice this could be part of the suit.

that means when these survivors pass away, their pursuit of justice goes with them. and tulsa and oklahoma and america, the arbiters of so-called justice, are patiently eyeing the hourglass and their understanding of time. it's backwards and untreated wound, not here as the years go by. if festers and on payday is not wiped from the books, it accrues interest. greenwood's ancestors, the ones who witness its creation and cataclysms, must all eventually silent. yet their soul still stir in the voices of their descendants and their growing number of allies around nation. what they led to be 100 or tonight is my last night. there's going to be a generation after me. regina goodwin once told me. as long as folks are being born, we to make sure people understand what we've got to fight and why. we've got to present one word. the story of greenwood has been quiet for far too long. finally, people are listening.

you're now carriage. this story was not just black history, american history. the terrain of the mind is under attack. our country today. but the denizens of greenwood could defend land and their people with such courage. the least we can do it depend their legacies. thank you all so much. you. in the questions? let me let me just ask to come up. all right. we certainly were transported, weren't we, in our imaginations. and it was a terrific presentation. if you have questions. now is the time and the microphone is here and i'm sure mr. lucas will enjoy answering your questions.

okay. i'll be the person brave souls. victor. hello. hi. margaret coker, lydia and savannah. but i. i'm a military brat. we to oklahoma. when i started high school in ninth grade. you had to one semester of oklahoma history and one semester of world history. and we did not learn a thing about greenwood in my oklahoma class 30 years ago. could you speak to how the state as curriculum or as a state? schools, public schools are now teaching. oklahoma is about this. yes. yeah thank you. the question was about how much students in oklahoma learn about the race massacre. to your point, i talk to people all ages from greenwood white, black or far from tulsa, white and black. and so many of them have told me that they never learned about this in school, let alone any of

us who grew up outside of oklahoma. there's been, i think, some technical things done to make that more prevalent. so for example, teaching about the race massacre as part of the oklahoma state standards. now, however. so it varies from teacher to teacher. and also now the state superintendent named ryan walters, who is very kind of on a crusade against critical race theory. at one point a while ago, he was questioned about tulsa massacre and had a quote along the lines of, well, it wasn't really about race. and so it's kind of a situation where though technically the state is required to teach students, there's a lot of pressure, teachers feel, to not teach the history. and i can also say, actually, that i spoke to some at oklahoma state last fall read my book in the class. so a lot of those who are from oklahoma and they had not learned about it in their schools, that's current, you know, 18, 19 year olds are not getting this history, unfortunately. i was at greenwood two years or so ago. how did the area become this sort of upscale, artsy, you

know, very, very artsy. thank you. the question. so, as i mentioned in my talk it is definitely a space that's transformed a lot. so a lot of areas that are don't really serve the shop or bring the community. there's kind of two steps to how it transformed the first with urban renewal. so the vast majority, the neighborhood was actually cleared in the 1970s doing urban i know process and you know in some cities in urban renewal you would have the black land be replaced by like a civic center or a stadium or that kind of thing and greenwood going actually made empty. so they actually were more than 200 acres of land in green where they were just empty 30 or 40 years. and and 2010 is when they decided to build a baseball in the neighborhood. and that baseball essentially spurred a lot of really rapid gentrification. and so if you go there now, there are two or there is open eagle and two other old buildings that are built after the race massacre that still have some black owned businesses in them. and most of the neighborhood is baseball stadium holiday inn, luxury apartments.

i would say probably the vast majority. the neighborhood actually does not serve the history of greenwood or the black folks who are from there. because it's know. but my question, what do you hope that people will take away from your book? what is the message that you're delivering delivering. in terms of message? i would really encourage folks when they read book and are going through it to think about the parallels to wherever you're from, no matter what of aspect greenwood you're looking at, it actually reflects of of all of black america. like i said so there are lots black communities with thriving business districts in the jim crow era, for example, racial violence and the time of night around 1921 hit more than 50 cities across the united states. urban renewal decimated black communities. no matter you're from the interstate highway that goes through the city and probably cut through a black neighborhood back in the day. and so i really think more about

thinking about how these things in greenwood, what's going on in your own. and at i was wondering if you could tell story of lula williams and her rings. one of my favorite things about the book is that although it is a history and i'm learning a lot about redlining gentrification there are these really personal narratives that you were able to get from family members. i just think everyone would like to hear thank you. thank you for the question. so i mentioned lulu, angela earlier, my talk and she definitely was one of the most interesting people to research the lou williams owned the dreamland theater and i that my first sort of point to her was this photograph of lula, her husband john, and their son w.d. they were in this norwalk car, which is kind of like the royce of like the model tierra, basically. so they're this really fancy car and they're wondering what avenue. but lou is in the passenger seat and is in the driver's seat. and i made a lot of assumptions,

the relationship, to be honest with you, based on this photo. but my family were quickly disrupted by the my research. and so as of my research for the book, i did a lot of looking at the property records of places. and so when i looked at the property records of the dreamland theater, i actually found the sign affidavit by lula. and lula had gone the courthouse and put out this affidavit that said, i, lula williams, myself on the dreamland theater. i owned the projector i owned the popcorn machine. i owned the seats. i owned all of this down. was nothing. yeah. and they they essentially they separated their assets and lula was really the owner of that property. and everything inside of it. and so that really compelled me to really transform how portraying her in the story. and so when you read the book, you get to learn a lot about luis independence. however, what's really sad about her story is the fact that lula's family is one of the hardest hit by the race massacre. the dreamland itself was destroyed and she also owned a confectionery that was destroyed their home was destroyed. and afterwards, the dreamland

was rebuilt. but lula never fully recovered. she had a lot of mental and physical that are pretty consistent with post-traumatic stress disorder. and she actually passed away in 1927, shortly after the massacre. and so through her story, you sort of see all of the of greenwood, but also the tragedy, what unfolded in 1921. could you say something about significance of the oklahoma eagle holding that community together through all those years of those changes and the fact that it's still operating? oh, yeah. yes. so on same trip that i went to the first time with the baseball game, i also got a chance to go to the oakland eagle office. so if you're if you're going to imagine one more time, if you're in greenwood and you're looking like northridge, where the interstate is right to your right. there's like an old kind of beat up looking out garage with the oklahoma eagle name on top of it. and so i remember the time i went to go visit the eagle office because there's an auto garage. there's one side of the building

has like the big like engines for cars, basically. and so i went to that and just i was like trying to call jim goodwin, who was a paper. and i kept like i was like, i'm here. he was like, you know, you're not like, you're late. i'm like, i'm here. i think right there is an anomaly just on the other side of the building that he was at. and so he finally in, he's like, you're late. i'm i'm sorry but luckily he was actually really generous with his time and his story. and ultimately, it was jimmy really helped me understand how important the it was to this neighborhood. the oakland itself actually started in 1922, right after the race massacre and the goodwin family purchased, the eagle in 1938. and i've owned it ever since. and for me as a journalist researcher having access to that archive vital because you really get a good of both the sort of big picture civil rights that were unfolding and all that kind of stuff. but also just like day to day life. so you would have like on the front page of the eagle about like the sit ins going on in, but inside the paper you'd have column called scoop on the scoop, which is a gossip that

everyone's wife, jean, wrote every week. and for me, it was really important to have both that high stakes battle over future of america that i think bycatch is often a pawn to convey with. but i think to be able to show that day to day rhythm, heartbeat of black life and the eagle has both, which is great. are you working another book at this time? no. right now i'm trying to just on the time tell the story of greenwood to a lot more folks. the question i have, i have i have another project coming up yet. i do have ambitions to do and more books. but i think for now just the story of greenwood around the country is the goal. so i a local media cover what happened right after. thank you for the question. so the rice massacre was covered in the white press in tulsa. however, there's certain unsurprisingly, a lot of mischaracterization of what had happened. for example, let's called a race riot the time which sort of

portrayed things as being an even handed battle between blacks and whites. and actually, there was actually a column written in the tulsa tribune. so that's the newspaper that wrote the first article that kind of sparked everything. three days after the race massacre, they wrote a column which they said that old place called -- town should never be rebuilt. and so that was where the mentality of the white press, they were covering what was happening, but they were doing in a really skewed manner that made it seem like greenlee, responsible for its own destruction. you enjoy being an artist in residence at tulsa university of tulsa? oh, yes, i'm also an artist in residence or writer in residence, rather, at the university of tulsa. that's been a really good opportunity to have the students and actually shared a lot of my research documents with them. they're my research, actually. i able to get a list of all of the lawsuits that race massacre victims filed in the 1920s. at the time, more than 200 property owners filed lawsuits against city of tulsa and the insurance companies seeking restitution. it's kind of funny. i was able to get this stuff

because it's kind of one of those thing in my here try to do research. we really been involved in journalism a lot of times. like what can get is a kind of based on who you know. and so these documents been sitting in the one, they really analyze them before, but they're basically sitting at the tulsa county courthouse and. all i had to really do, what i had to do would be rent a court name kizzy. and so when i met kizzy, keith was able to give all these documents on a cd-rom. i didn't have a city on fire anymore. i had to find a cd rom player, then upload documents. but i was able to, after a lot work, i was able to get the documents and i've shared those with law school students at, the university tulsa, and so they're actually like taking those losses and diving deeper. why that happened and why i think it justice when they is. well, thank you very much. thank you.

dayton duncan, an award winning writer and filmmaker. he's an author of 14 books and for more than years has collaborated ken burns as a writer producer of historical documentaries, including the west, lewis and clark, the journey of the core discovery, the dust bowl, country music and the national parks, america's best idea for which he won two emmy awards. personally, i wanted to thank him because we took my husband. i took a spirited the desert tour fall and here that's on the whole trip they showed us that he and ken burns had produced

and it was absolutely spectacular. his most regret excuse me his most recent collaboration with burns is a documentary, the american buffalo. duncan has also been involved in many conservation organizations. president bill clinton, him chair of the american heritage rivers advisory committee and secretary of the interior bruce babbitt, appointed him to the board of the national park foundation. and in the spring of 2009, the director of the national park service named duncan as an honorary park ranger, an honor bestowed on fewer 50 people. his on the boards of the student conservation association and the national conservation lands foundation, and is a member of the advisory committee. the 2016 centennial of the national park service. please give a warm savannah. welcome to dayton duncan.

thanks very much. can everybody hear in the back? good. i was given a speech one time and i could tell that i'd kind of lost the audience. and so i said, is there a problem? someone in the back said the speakers got a screw loose. anyway anyway, thank you very much for the introduction. thank to the sponsors of my appearance here and thank you all for coming is the savannah book festival is a great festival. i've diane and i live the year here not in this but here in savannah and we love it and we love this festival very much.

i'm not accustomed to standing at a pulpit, i have a tendency to be a little preachy. so, you know, buckle up. i guess i'd. i do want to mention three people before i start. the first is scott and scott mamadi, the pulitzer prize poet novelist, appears in our film, became a friend of ken's and mine. 30 years ago when we were doing a film on the west who had just died about three weeks ago. we miss him and if you haven't read any, scott mamet, i encourage you to. i really love his last. he wrote a very short meditation, almost called earth keeper. so if you have copies that i'll sign it on his behalf, my son will is here. he is served as my research

assistant for this film. the film and book, as he did for the film that ken and i did on benjamin franklin a couple of years ago. i'm very proud to say that some of his music is in the soundtracks of both of those films and i need to mention wife diane, who's first reader of everything i write write, puts up with a lot lot for any spouse of a writer, and as right at alice mcdermott's. presentation presentation, she's heard everything going to say. and she also wants the writers workshop with allison in italy. 15 years ago. so she's i'm happy that she's

over hearing something she might not have heard before my book blood memory our book blood memory was done in connection with the pbs film called the american buffalo that appeared on pbs last fall. duncan and i, along with julie dunphy, a long time florentine films producer. the film the book have an incredibly long gestation period. in the early 1980s. i was out retracing the lewis and clark route writing my first book out west chronic. my experiences compared to their experiences, the history of the west in between and noting the changes. and then needing to explain what those were or how they occurred. and one of the most glaring changes was they were running into buffalo. so every day through the great

plains, i was in a wildlife desert in the 1980s and i had to go search long and hard to find a couple of buffalo herds just to just to see them when and i wrote about that in my in that book, but it's just one little piece of one chapter when. ken and i, who were friends, he was making his early films. i was writing my early books. he'd read my books before they're published i would come in and sit on his and give my comments to him about. the films he was working on, which then developed the friendship developed into collaborations of a list of film ideas that i gave him. and he said, if doing this, i'd like you to be involved. and. 32 years later, it we have had a great collaboration that i feel

very grateful and lucky to to have had with him in those collaborations. we touched on buffalo in our film series on the west we focused on the dramatic and traumatic destruction of them in the 1870s in the west, we covered them a little bit, lewis and clark encountering them in our film. lewis and clark in the national parks film, we have a short scene or more than a short scene about how the buffalo in yellowstone national park, despite the theoretical protections that had were being poached and and the people who came to the rescue of that to the laws changed and to get proper enforcement in place to save them from extinction. and in the dust bowl film while buffalo don't make a specific

appearance, the buffalo plains does and which we covered what happened when in the 1920s in a flurry of power the great plow that was called during unusually wet times on the great plains, that buffalo grass, the short grass with the routes that it evolved over thousands and thousands, thousands of years and had it in a relationship with with the animal itself when that got plowed up, how that set the for the greatest environmental catastrophe manmade environmental catastrophe of our history so we covered that but we always wanted to do a little bit fuller story least i did and i think i infected ken with that desire as well with the buffalo at the center of the story and he bought that real early but other projects that we did just kept interfering with it. and finally the space opened and

and did it. so in some ways, this book and film a culmination of well, whatever the that is 40 some years from the first encounter or to print it's a biography, if you will. we've done biographies of twain, mark twain and ben franklin that i wrote and produced. ken stand one's on thomas jefferson, jack johnson, ali, others. this one's of a shaggy big animal. but like the others, quintessentially american, i should say at the start, i am aware that the scientific name is bison. bison, and we use it we use bison and buffalo interchangeably in our film and in the book because they are actually if you're going to have a dispute with me on this fight it out on telfair.

they don't allow duels there anymore, but they both correct the buffalo describes a specific animal that also has a scientific latin of bison. bison. they weigh a ton or can weigh up to a ton to six feet at the shoulder. huge, the largest land mammal on the continent, but incredibly agile and fast they can get range of speed of 35 miles per hour, almost that of a racehorse. but they can hold it for a longer period of time than a horse. they can jump six feet vertically. they can jump seven feet horizontal. willie, steve steve rinella, who is in our film and i quote in the book, says, they're like a souped up hot in a minivan shell. but they're also the keystone species of the great plains.

they're grazing habits of moving constantly nibbling and moving nibbling and moving. and with their feet churning up things a little helped make great plains what it was they the fur on their feet can pick up seeds of, certain plants and they transport it and it gets dropped someplace else and it helps the propagation of that their poop fertilizes the the soil and. they have a habit of wanting to scratch their on anything that's handy. and there are trees or other things handy on the great plains. so they do this thing called wallowing. they roll around on their sides and back and they create this big circular depression which, then becomes a basin. when it does rain of more moisture, which encourages birds, which then encourages other types of plant life. so that's why they're called the keystone species.

and so we deal with that in the film in the book, but basically it's also for us, it's a human story because if you follow the tale of the american buffalo. you find yourself intersecting with many of stories, an important moment in our history. so there are a keystone of respect and that way of themes and issues from our nations complicate good past, our failings well as our triumphs. it's a human story about. the collision of two opposing views about, the proper human to natural world that occurred on this continent, when the first europeans arrived and, met the people who had already been here for tens of thousands of years. and it's also a human story about our nations relations ship with those people who have

inhabited this land the longest. at the center of that is. well, a profound tragedy. how a magnificent species that once numbered in uncountable numbers, perhaps 50 to 60 million, was systematically relentlessly taken to the brink of extinction from uncountable to actually easily countable by the end of the 1800s, there were. perhaps 500 left scattered, different places. and each of them endangered in their own right. and about the terrible consequences that followed that, it's actually a triple it's obviously a tragedy for the

buffalo it was tragedy for the great plains ecosystem and. it was a most profoundly a tragedy for the native people who had coexisted with them for so long and relied on them so long. it's a tough, tough and heartbreaking story, but it's a story that needs be told and told must be remembered. fortunately, my kids call me the waterworks. so. sorry, will. fortunately but equally important, the story doesn't end there because it introduces this motley crew. the collection of of americans who in very different places and for very different reasons, set out to point things in a

different direction in new direction, and work to bring the species back from brink. so in my mind, it's always been this is a parable or a morality tale with two parts paused before i tell you what those are. i think it shows us dramatically, powerfully as a story. i know our capacity, our nation's capacity to heedlessly destroy the natural. it's not the only, believe me, but i think it's sort of exhibit a in that long list from going from those numbers to near extinction in the space of 100 years. it raised me so it's it's it's there that's that's that's one part of that moral detail. are we capable of being heedlessly destructive of the

earth itself? you bet are and we have lots of different examples of of that tendency. but it also shows, i think, that we're capable of changing directions before it's too late. some of that is in our national parks film and book that at least some places as the nation moved west and steadily turned into trying to, do it could to the natural environment. there are places that they said. no, not here and those became our national parks and. that's why we call it america's best idea. so it's those two parts of the parable in starting on this week, particularly on this project of ken and i learned very on that this this was a

much deeper story than we've been able to tell previously about the buffalo as long as we allowed native people a bigger presence and voice in the story we were telling and for that we were guided the late scott mohammadi and many other native people. we consulted interviewed, had them look at early versions of our script and our film and listen to their their comment. and we learn from them to finally get to set how deep and how intertwined story of the american buffalo is with the story of indigenous people. those stories are inseparable literally inseparable.

a woman named germaine white from northwest montana pointed out that people have been there for 12,000 years, 12,000 years, and she said, if you take that 12,000 years and you wrap it around 24 hour clock, but means is that christopher columbus shows up. at 11:28 p.m. and louis and clark show up at 1145 p all that other time is just them and the continent and, its natural world and its animal life and plant life. so for ten more than 10,000 years, we to make sure we we told that story but also that you can feel it in. the luckily the people that we interviewed think get that across the with the buffalo

relied on them for everything. used every part of the buffalo so obviously important for their food important for their clothing their hides could be used to teepees. there if you left the fur on, they could keep you warm in the winter, then every other single part. it's a long, long list. ribs could be made into sleds for little kids. dried tongues could be used for hairbrushes the tail be used to swat flies or to dip into water. if you're in a sweat lodge to, make the steam rise. my friend gerard baker, a man and a dancer, said even the waste wasn't wasted out on the great plains. there's nothing better where there aren't many trees, buffalo chips, the dried makes for good

fires. so we get to understand how they relied on them, their physical existence. but in turn revered them or many tribes. the bison and the people you know were equal. they could talk. in the old days to one another. one could change form to another to help the other understand. in some instances they had, you know, contests to see which species would eat the other. and with the help of a magpie, the humans won on a race around the black hills and the buffalo said, okay, you've won. you can eat us and we will you the sun dance. and part of that was the other part of this is this spiritual

relationship that involved and the buffalo were the represents of the sun. they ate the grass that grew from the sun and the sun was the represent you know was connected to walk on tonka in the lakota mythology or cosmology gee, the great unknown, the great you know, the great connectedness of things. they were the most visible and important but not the only representation of that important connection. they gave themselves to the people as part of this understanding, that if they were respect, not, you know, not wasted. and certain ceremonies were done to renew that relationship, then they would show up again and and give themselves for the food and all the other things that they wanted. they had special ceremonies were

songs that they native people would sing that would call the buffalo wild. and sometimes they did something wrong. and in those those periods, the buffalo would be hard to find. it was believed that they probably went back to where they came from in the first place, where they had emerged to earth like human beings in certain set. what places for the lakota cheyenne? it was when the cave in the black hills for the comanches and the kiowa and some others. it was from the inside of what is now known as mount scott in the wichita mountains of oklahoma. but these ceremonies were important and if they didn't show up, then it took extra to show them the buffalo that we've learned our lesson. we violated something of this covenant. and we're going to set it right now. and then they would come back. and so we had to spend time

telling about that and trying to help us feel that then strangers arrived from europe and, they brought with them a very different of the relationship of human with the natural world, one that and its bounties, one that the humans are. two are in charge are two different level and the natural world there as a resource to be used and in later times history then also than used to as commodities for the market and that was the start of a new viewed the but these newcomers all were fascinated by this huge animal spanish were in the saw in the southwest spanish explorers french explorers saw them in the midwest and the colonies saw them here in the in

atlantic colonies, which was one of the more surprising things for me in the research. i never really thought about it in 16, 13 jamestown colonies sailing up the potomac came to what is now washington, d.c., and got off his boat and encountered a herd of buffalo. and i want to read a little just a brief portion from the book, because being here in my alternate hometown of savannah, savannah plays a part in it through the though the greatest of bison were found on the grasslands of the great plains their range extended northern mexico into canada from west of the rocky mountains into parts of what are now idaho? oregon and washington and all the way to the atlantic seaboard from florida to lake erie.

the cheyenne had had lived with them so long each tribe obviously had their own name for in their own language, for the buffalo or bison. the cheyenne had been with them so many for long. they had 27 individual names for buffalo depending on its age size sex, physical condition and, everything but the newcomers then gave the strange animals names. some spanish explorers called bacchus horror bodies for humpback cow. the french referred to them as the savage lay bison and sometimes buffalo. to some, the animals looked like the curly haired and humpback version of the cape buffalo at tip of africa. english adopted the name buffalo and it stuck regardless of their name numbers. the buffalo east of the mississippi, perhaps 3 million or more steadily dwindled almost

from the moment british colonies established along the atlantic. georgia is a case in point in 1733, shortly after landing at what is now savannah, the colonies founder james ogle. held his first treaty meeting with chief toma of the accra, who gave him a buffalo skin decorate it with the painting of an eagle two years later a different chief presented oglethorpe with another buffalo hide on which the creek migration legend had been depicted and oglethorpe sent that to london to be exact exhibited at westminster in 1759. georgia's commons house of assembly found it necessary to make hunting buffalo illegal in some parts of the colony. no one apparently enforce the law and by 1763 the native tribes were complaining that the bison and other game were being

driven off their land by settlers and their livestock. multiple places named buffalo creek. buffalo dotted maps of georgia and the treaty of augusta. in 1773, designated great buffalo lick as a key boundary point between the colony and native nations. yet by the time william bartram returned from his extensive tour of the south in the mid 1770s, he reported he hadn't seen any living buffalo despite having been told how plentiful they once were daniel boone he crossed over the cumberland gap from virginia into what's now kentucky was actually what was called and the now nice whiskey is named for it a buffalo trace of the animals had been crossing that and that became the well-worn path that native people did george washington hunted them on the ohio river in

1775. he asked for some to be captured and brought to his virginia plantation. but by the early 1800s, nearly all the bison east of the mississippi were gone. but in the great plains, an estimated 30 million buffalo still roamed. i don't know how many of you seen the film? we we made. i hope if you haven't that you that do. i'm not going to give you the whole story. we the 1800s in the shorthand is when the united states moved west buffalo became a commodity very precious for use to be able to be used to the machinery make the belts that the machinery on the east coast an insatiable demand was created for them. thousands of buffalo hunters out

and started killing indiscriminate taking only their hides and the carcasses to rot on the prairies. it was as one of environmental historian that we know dan flora said that there is no story anywhere in world history that involves as large a destruction of wild animals as happened in north america in the western united states in particular. between 1818 90. it is the largest destruction of animal life discoverable in modern world history. he said it was a catastrophe obviously for the tribes who have this 10,000 year connection been severed. but then there was this you know quirky things change there enough left in enough few that people from people some former

buffalo hunters guy named buffalo bill cody you know needed live ones too for his extravaganza so he had a little had a little herd an old indian fighter and cattleman named george goodnight. his wife persuaded him to save a few calves. they started to herd and he changed his mind about buffalo and actually changed his mind native people and provided some of his buffalo for them for their sacred ceremony journeys. he was part of the salvation. the dupri a couple of indian families on two different reservations were important. and i did i do want to mention one of who we've all heard of as an impulsive young man who rushed west from new york city in the 1880s after he read these alarming reports. the buffalo about to disappear.

so he got on a train and her distress occurred to get the dakota territory got off his mission. he wanted to make sure he could kill one and have a head mounted on his wall before they're all gone. his was theodore roosevelt and he wrote a book about his adventures in which he said that while the extermination of the buffalo was, quote, needless and brutal, it was also, in his words, a necessary it was necessary in relation to helping solve the, quote, indian question. and he said it was a quote for the advance what he called white civilization. he became a friend of another conservationist by the name of george bird grinnell. his view of the natural world. and this broadened. and he became the greatest of conservation. president in our history,

including writing the making it possible for there to be buffalo preserves in. montana, but also in wait for it the right now outside of the holy of mount scott, the comanches and kiowa where they believed. the buffalo had gone when they disappeared and were for human beings to wise the hell up admit they'd made a mistake and promise to do better. and the first federal preserve for bison was their around that mountain when 55 buffalo were taken put on a train at fordham station from, the bronx to.

and trained back to home to the plains. scott mama day talks about that return and he gets teared and but he says it makes the story whole. i want to one of my favorite quotes from one of my favorite writers was from wallace stegner, a great historian and a great novelist. and if you're looking for more recommendations of things to read, read anything that he wrote, he we are the most dangerous species piece of life on the planet and every other species, even the earth itself, has cause to fear our power to exterminate. we are the most dangerous species life on the planet. that's a true story that's a

true fact and hard fact. but it is a true fact. but he added, we are also the only species which, when it chooses to do so, will go to great effort to save what it might destroy. i talked wallace stegner wrote that in the 1960s, but he might as well just given us the template for the story we were telling about our to destroy at sometimes our habit to destroy. but if we choose, if we choose to, we will go to great effort to save what it might destroy. so the title the subtitle of my book is the tragic decline improbable resurrection of the american buffalo. and it is of those things. it's tragic. and their rescue was improbable.

it's a totally despairing story, but for much of it, it also offers hope and even some inspiration that we choose to save what we might destroy. we're still capable of that, which is a message for today about a lot of other things going on. it's not just the buffalo that we need to choose to do right to save things. thank you. so we had time for a couple of questions. i think there's a microphone set up here. so if anyone has a question, please come up to the mic. we have no yes, we have questions these come up either

come up the phone or just it out and i'll repeat it. good. okay. so given your exhaustive, expansive knowledge them, if you had all power and know beyond anything, we probably have in law what steps or actions would you take to try and further restore the buffalo and many other megafauna in the united states? what would your solution or proposal look like and what would that produce as result? well, unlike some people talking to microphones, not looking to be dictator. but we are we this is a democ and but there are exciting things happening right now. there. a lot of different tribes working with the federal government are now have programs of they're trying to restore by

some to their large you know to to larger land areas that allows them to have herds of their own allows them to have some food sovereignty for some of the from some of the buffalo meat allows them to restore their spiritual connect to them. it's tremendously exciting. there's about 350,000 buffalo now. most of them are in ranches, but of the and you know it raised more or less like cattle but there's things going on on reservations, some nonprofit groups are trying to give more space to do to bring back native grasses, to try to make least some portions of the great plains. what they once were. and i think that's very exciting, very hopeful. but also, obviously, it's not certain. you know, there there's opposing actions to it. if you want to know.

however, what the trajectory what i consider the most hopeful factoid of it is in 150 years ago, the secretary interior during a debate over they'd pass a law to protect the buffalo. they were all exterminated said that he would not so i would not be disappointed at the total elimination at the total disappearance he called of the buffalo because would help make native tribes, particularly on the plains, more dependent on the federal government and more less like a more willing to stay on the reservations that they're being can confine to and the bill passed actually giving protection but president grant listing i think to his secretary of the interior paco vetoed pocket veto that he just refused to sign it. congress adjourned until never became law. that was hundred and 50 years ago.

150. so now the buffalo is on the official of the interior department, the buffalo president obama signed the bill that it the official mammal of the united states and the secretary of interior is a native american herself, deb haaland, who is instituting a lot of a lot different programs to try to get more buffalo in more places in a larger area. so i you know like i say that's hopeful and it's all it's also if we choose to continue i think that's you know headed in the right that that all right of declining i declined the wreath of the of the monarch thank you the retired several years ago i was were reintroduced into i it was yellowstone and what was was that ecology that was dying was

brought back to life. what do you anticipate would happen if buffalo bison was to allow to go back to normal with the ecology of those lands change? yeah. the you know of course the longest you know, in yellowstone is the the one place in the united states that has the longest history of, a free roaming herd there, particularly once they stop the poaching that almost brought them down to two dozen. so the wolves are added to that, you know, added to that making ecosystem more like it. that once was in places where there are few places in montana that i know of. and in it's either kansas or oklahoma right on the border. there were non profit groups have large areas. they are similar tenuously.

you know restoring buffalo, their bison there but also native plants are also in montana the kit fox is coming back they had a i think they had a bear there, a grizzly there, which grizzly on the plains is a big thing. so those things, you know obviously they took millennia for it to become what it became it didn't take that long to undo it it'll take some time and a lot of effort but the the way that they graze and everything on the places doing it they see remarkable rejuvenation of the prairie system. and just picking up on your final comments, what parallels do you see between the story of the buffalo and debates we're

having today or energy policy? you know, was a need we learn from that history? well, you know, in the i guess i'm trying to think about in terms of the debate there really wasn't that of a debate. you know, while this was going on, the slaughter, the united states government didn't necessarily did the government and the army did didn't destroy the buffalo because it was already happening. i mean they were happy, they were they approved of it, but they didn't order it themselves. so it was a private enterprise. i guess it would be what you're suggesting is the it was the driving market and demand for those belts sometimes buffalo tongues and things like that is what set it loose.

only stopped shooting them because there any they couldn't find anymore. i think it was more and i think the other thing that was about it is that for most of the people the public, there was something way out there on the great plains. i mean, it's even today people don't you know to flyover country and the great bulk of population doesn't really consider what's going on much out there that was particularly true then in the mid 1800s and and so a sort of facto well maybe that's a shame but you know it doesn't affect me right and so it was hard get them galvanized until it was almost too late and i think in terms of us and global warming, which i think is probably what you're

meant mainly it yeah you know people say well it's tired you know standard worrisome maybe or or or whatever but it doesn't really affect me, you know, until the forests are burning and water is coming up, you know, flooding miami, you know we have hurricanes, you know that are worse and the droughts that are worse, stuff like that. we're at point that were when the buffalo when they holy smokes these things are almost aren't they at with with proper and others set about trying to trying to correct it. i, i think we ought to be at the point now where we say is it too late.

i mean, holy smokes, you know, this is something's going on here. and i guess the question is the political will to create it. and i can you know, i can go back and forth part norwegian. so i've always i always anticipate the worst that way i'm never disappointed disappointed. and but part of me also is scotch-irish. and so i, i want to fight to make it better. but we'll see. but we're right at that point. we're you know, the buffalo reached a tipping point and they're brought back from and i think we're at a tipping point and we'll see. we'll see that. thankamy kurzweil is us today

courtesy of rachel young fields and sean fields and bank, south amy kurzweil is a new yorker and the author flying couch, a graphic memoir. she was a 2021 berlin prize fellow with the american academy in berlin, a 2019 sharing fellow

with the black mountain institute, and has received fellowships from macdowell, djerassi and and elsewhere. she's been nominated for a reuben and an ignites award techno philia, her four part series with the believer magazine. amy has taught widely for over a decade. please give a warm savannah welcome to amy kurzweil. i everyone. hi. it's great to be here. this is first time in savannah and i'm obsessed with your trees and also you're very kind people. so thank you so much to everyone at the book festival who made this possible just there's so many of you helping out and i really i'm really happy to be here so i'm a graphic memoir and

i'm a cartoonist and so what means is that i write and draw about myself and my family. and i always like to warm up with some single panel cartoons. single panel cartoons are, like a humorous story in one screen. so make sure you can see the screen. and with single panel cartoons, i invite you to laugh, but it's not required. you don't have to laugh. right? you can just nod like, oh, yes very smart, amy. yeah. so here we have executive mfa the poetry of powerpoint. this is a new yorker cartoon. this is my proof that i actually have a degree in powerpoint presentations. so you can rest assured that i plan to entertain you. so. this is one woman show. i'm really we have more than one one woman show, but you never

know with book events. you know, sometimes. so i put that one in there. like in case that happens and we make a joke about it. yeah. okay. books. so some book themed cartoons, 3 p.m. meet the author, 3:10 p.m. tweet negative reviews the author 3:25 p.m. meet the authors disappoint good parents 3:30 p.m. meet the author spouse who has raised the author's children on a single earner salary. total fiction. nothing true about that at all. another literary one you'll never believe who's here. so i'll let that. this is a moby--- cartoon cartoon and this is going to be us after. the author cocktail party like looking the white whales in the room. yeah. the very stressed cat. a pillar. that's with apologies to eric carle.

yeah. i wanted to throw a love themed cartoon in there. this one is. i never knew what love was until you came along and explain it to me. my partner, who's a character in my book, you'll get meet him very briefly. he's a philosopher and i've literally said this word for word to before. and then i just put it in a cartoon. okay. so am i. cartoons. we're getting to the good stuff here. self-driving car, self conscious. would i look better in red and self-actualized car going back to school. so that's actually the first cartoon i ever sold to the new yorker. and yeah, our last cartoon here, it's a little dark. remember, humans. okay. let's let that go right.

we're moving away from the robot apocalypse, and we're going to talk about memory and humanity and also a little bit about a.i. so that brings to my book artificial love story. sohis book is a family memoir. it's about three generations of creative people in my family. there's me my father, ray kurzweil, inventor and futurist and, then my grandfather, fred who is a pianist conductor who was born in 1912 in vienna, austria he fled the nazis in 1938, moved queens, which is where my father was born. and then he died in 70 before i was born. and this book asked the question, how does technology help us preserve and communicate with past? what does it offer? and does it leave out? and to introduce the book before i say more about it, i'm going to let you watch this animated

trailer that i made. that's the thing. have trailers now or you know, moving into the digital age. so and in this book trailer, you're going to hear my father talk about his father and about the project that artificial revolves around. so going to hear me and my father's voices and then in the background you're going to hear a recording of my grandfather from 1946 playing brahms. okay, here we go. the whole philosophy of life is that information is precious and vital and well, i am trying to bring my father back using artificial intelligence intelligence. tell me your father's story. he was born jewish in vienna. in 1912. he was a musician and his piano playing was absolutely

marvelous. so wealthy american luxury came to vienna because i was a music capital of the world actually, heard him and she was very, very impressed. so she gave him her card, said, if you ever need anything, just let me know. the very next year, in 1938, the nazis marched into vienna, took it over. so he actually wrote her and said, will you sponsor me to to the united states? and she agreed. so his music actually saved his life. when i was 16, he had his first heart attack and he became ill. and i very much hope he would live because it was clear that his condition was life threatening. but he died when i was 22, so if you could talk to your father again, what would you want to say to him. how are you doing? a lot's happened since you've been gone.

and. yeah. thank you. so you may have caught the central project artificial, this chat bot that my father has built. so i'm going to tell you a little more about it, but going to start here in storage unit. so my father has been guarding this epic unit full of boxes and boxes of my grandfather's things since my grandfather fred died in 1970. and it's full of photographs and newspaper clippings and lectures and notes and letters and also many official documents. and the project that father embarked on was to take all of my grandfather's original writings saved in this storage unit, and to marry it with an alga them that understands natural language in order to

create a computer program that simulates conversation. my grandfather and so this is where artificial began with me in the storage unit, spending a lot of time with my grandfather's archives. so i want to talk about that experi ence before i talk more about the job. but you know, my father is somebody who thinks a lot about the and i'm somebody who thinks a lot about the past. and so i saw this project and also this book as really a story about the future of the past and i was also really curious about this compulsion one that we have in my family to save everything, this compulsion to, you know, take the past and bring it into the present so that it can have a future life. last night, jeannette walls said artists are hoarders because they see the beauty and value in everything. and i really love that i'm to take that into my heart and like feel seen by that quote. but i think there's, you know, there's another reason in my

family why save so much? there's sort of another i came to see through spending time in the storage unit that there's a another story for that kind of family, that hoarding. and, you know, my father said in that video that my grandfather's was saved by his music because he impressed this wealthy benefactor, this american woman who able to sponsor him. that's how fled the nazis. so it's just like the story of you artistic genius saved his life. that's the story i grew up hearing, which is a really moving story. but there's another piece of story which is that documentation saved his life. right? like the piece of paper, the visa that allowed him to emigrate. and i learned, you know, as i was looking in the storage unit and also doing some research about jewish history, especially --, and that that time and place that in order to leave nazi

occupied austria or germany, you had to have so much paperwork like paperwork was what saved your life because the nazi regime was just so obsessed with documentation and you know just like paper after, paper after paper. and so that's the thing that got you out. and that was a new realization for me. i found that really interesting and that gave like new resonance to this storage unit full and full of pieces of paper. so here's one example of a document that saved my grandfather's life. this is my grandfather's passport, which bought him entry into the u.s. and you can see the real passport is on the bottom and. then my recreation of it is on the top and i'm showing you that because in artificial i was, you know, obsessed with recreating documents. that's kind of one of the themes that comes up in the book. and whenever i drew official

document, i would recreate it in this really style. it's kind of laborious style, which i can talk more about if you're if you're about how i do that. and there are these style shifts in the book also that you might notice, as i'm showing you images from it. there's this like super realistic style and then there's this more cartoonish. and i was fascinated in particular by this document because of the way this various stamps on the document told the story. my grandfather's escape from vienna. so for example, this big red jay says to the authorities, this is a jewish person. they're leaving the country. and there's this i don't know if you can see, but there's this handler written ten, 1038, right on the side of that j and learned that that's most likely the date my grandfather fred passed out of austria and i had to show this and discuss this document with a historian in

order to get that and i was like i was just really interested in the particular details of the fact that that date was handwritten like that brought this whole scene to my mind, right? of a person like my grandfather's document, you know, a nazi taking my grandfather's document and writing the date. and so it's like i didn't have that scene in my mind. i have anything like that. i didn't have access to anything like that. and holding this document, it's like all of a sudden this this sort of this image of something my grandfather experienced, you know, some version of it, some sort of imagined memory came to me, came to my mind. so this document and my interpretations of it, my research around it, talking to the historian, these kind of imagined memories, that is what formed the basis, my understanding of how my grandfather escaped europe and escaped the nazis.

and it's actually the only thing had that gave me any insight into what that experience was like. and that was really interesting to me that i had so little information about that experience because my, my first book, flying couch, revolves around my, the side of my family, my maternal grandmother, her. this this book tells the story of her holocaust survival. and so i was just i had just come from project where i was spending a lot of time with like an actual oral history that my grandmother on my mother's had given with all this detail exactly what she experienced. and then to turn to my grandfather's side and see that i was missing, that piece, that that's like sort of where i was at the beginning of artificial. so i'll tell you just a little bit about saying ouch for that context. so this book was published in 2016. i started working on it when i was in college because my mother

gave me this transcription of an interview that my grandmother mother had done with the holocaust. historian and basically in that story, my grandmother tells you know, in a lot of detail, with a lot of emotion. she tells the story of escaping the warsaw ghetto as a teenager and surviving the war on her own, losing her family, and then disguising herself as a catholic and escaping, escaping the ghetto and then spending time in these farms in the polish countryside, she was the only person in her family who survived. and in flying i became obsessed with lack of documentation about specifically about my grandmother's members. you know, she had a whole family. she talked about them, but we had no photographs of them. we had no official documentation of. them every scrap, their existence was completely lost.

and i started to realize that like the proof i had of these people's experience of living was in my grandmother. there was nothing outside of my grandmother that could point to the existence of these people. it was it was in her. it was in her voice. it was in her body. it was in her memory. and consequently, it was also in me and in my mother and in our bodies. and that's part of why drawing became so important to me, because drawing is connected to the body and drawing is therefore connected to to emotion and to feeling. but it's also connected to this place that, like, you can't prove. right. but it's like the proof of this whole family legacy is like in my body. and this is the only proof i have for it. so these these last couple of images you've seen her from flying couch. this is my attempt to draw my grandmother's memories. this one is my grandmother

escaping the the wall around the warsaw ghetto. she snuck out through some bricks in the wall. and, you know, i had this realization, like, well, i'm not able to represent my grandmother's story with this sort of capital, a accuracy, because i didn't have any proof of sort of what she experience. no photographs, etc. i felt i was able to draw her story with this capital t truth, right? because of the way inherited her, her memories, her experiences and my sort of firsthand knowledge in my body, of what she'd what she'd gone through. and so with my grandfather fred back, back to thinking about artificial, i had the exact opposite problem that i had with my grandmother on my mother's side, my lily with fred. i had storage unit full of documentation, but unlike my grandmother and i should mention my grandmother on my mom's side is still.

she's 97. so, you know, unlike my grandmother who i had her as a resource and she also lived through this age where were, you know, well, she lived through an age of video recordings and voice recordings and also through an age where people were really interested in documenting stories about the holocococ so, you know, her story is in my book fine couch, but it's also online in this online archive. and, you know, people can go and listen to, unlike all of that, fred never wrote anything about what he experienced in europe with anti-semitism. he never wrote about what it was like to leave. there was a sort of like a a crucial time when he was there in vienna where stuff was happening and. he just he never talked about it. he never wrote it down. and this is all relevant. what fred did or didn't write down is really important to this i project that my father was working on because fred's recorded language became form

the corpus of text that built this chat bot that writes in his voice. so here i'm showing you two examples of my grandfather's writing from the storage unit. so these are like the actual documents that went into building this chat bot and i'm showing you this because there's a big range of what kinds of writing we have preserved of my grandfather. some of his writing was scrawled really quickly on like pieces of paper that were ripped, you know, and tucked away and like, you know, there's a whole plot point in the book about me not being able to read his handwriting, which is a really interesting and then some of his writing was typed up on a you know, official letterhead. this is from queensborough community college, which is where my grandfather got finally got tenure a year before he died. so there was like more public writing and then there was also more private writing. and you know, all of that was

sort what we were working with with this corpus of text and the way the chat bot worked is that unlike chalkbeat, which you may have played around with, which generates new language, like it's just constantly generating new language, unlike this chat bot was what's called a selective chat bot. so when you asked it a question, it reach into its archive and you an answer that came from writing. so it wasn't generating new answers, right? it was like you'd ask it a question and it understood, it, you know, we can put that in quotes, but it understood your question and then it go into the archive and serve you and answer. so like if you'd ask, you know, who's your favorite composer, you'd be offered a passage about, you know, brahms or about beethoven. and then you could sort of like read what fred had to say about those composers. so ultimately my father and i knew that the more examples of my grandfather's writing we had

the more dynamic this chop bar would be. so the role that i played in all of this was to collect and digitize my grandfather, his writing. so in some cases that was challenging, like that manic handwriting scrawl that you saw and but that challenge of sort spending time with this language that was sort of like somewhere in between language and image, which again is really interesting for me as a cartoonist right like the sort of struggle to decode what was left behind and then translate it into a digital space was really instructive for me because it reminded me something i'm really interested as a memoirist, which is that the human hand plays a significant role in constructing history and something hope. my book communicates in a really visceral way. like if there's anything i have to contribute to the conversation about a.i., it's

that a.i. is also built by human. and i like history and like love and many human endeavors is an act of human construction. and sometimes we think of ai as this like monster force outside of us. and i don't mean to downplay the fearsome of ai, and we can definitely talk about that, but this project did help me think about ai more as an art form. something that we ultimately build and something that we create from our own human legacies and that therefore it's something we can direct towards human goals. so i started book because i was interested at an ai and i was interested family history, but ultimately it was the more personal question that propelled me through it.

and one of the things i started to wonder is, can i really get to know my grandfather through his artifacts? and could i even say that i came to love grandfather even though i've never met? and what role was technology going to play in that love story and that question ended up being relevant to other love stories in my life? so there are a lot of other love stories, the book and lots characters in the book. so like you'll meet partner, you meet my mother briefly, you meet my grandmother on my, my father's mother, you meet my aunt and i really wanted this book to contain a complete network of relationships because like what is a person, not the complex network of people that they love. and yeah, this is a it is a complex book i don't know if you've seen it. it's also like physically heavy. there's, there's a lot in the book. it's quite dense. but i also wanted the density of

the book to sort of be its own message because if there's anything that this project, this like audacious of my father's to sort of resurrect the person, right? like if there's and i'm putting that in quotes, right? resurrect a person but if there's anything that the project sort of being a part of that project taught me, it's the or taught me to appreciate it's the infinite complexity of an individual person. like we are really not fully knowable because we are so as individuals infinitely complex. but that doesn't mean that can't try to know each other. and for me it was like this process, trying to know that a manifestation of love. okay, so before i open it up to questions i'm going to read a

section, the book and this is we're just yeah, we're just jumping right in with chapter one. this should introduce you to the themes, you know, and sort of show you give you an example of how i'm kind of like swirling all of these ideas together. and another thing i like this section is that there's a lot old machines and they're like lots of computers and computer programs. so you might recognize some of them. that was a really fun aspect of the book was drawing old machines and drawing old websites and like seeing sort of how much has changed the way we interact with technology and. the other thing i'll say is that you'll also notice that the book jumps around a lot in time and space. and i just want to invite you to sort of let that wash over you and like don't need to read all the fine print right? you can get the book and study it just kind of it's kind of go with the non-linear journey and and yeah, enjoy. so we are reading chapter one pattern recognition nothing is

stranger to man than his own image. my father has championed many robot artists. the kurzweil synthesizer works with its human host to mimic the sounds of full orchestra and. here we have stevie wonder playing the kurzweil synthesizer piano. the kurzweil poet writes verse this is a poetry algorithm from from the eighties. and you can read this at these poems. if you get the book, they're they're fun. there's aaron, the cybernetic artist. is anyone ever heard of aaron? just curious, you know. okay, this is one of the first i artists, one of the earlie examples of generated art here is my recreation, an aaron aaron

drawing drawing. and then then there's me. this. is what robot. she's a robot. you're a robot robot. robot. look, she's charging her batteries a robot. the robot comes from karl tropics. 1920 play rossum's robots about a group of artificial people

made factory style from synthetic flesh. they serve human overlords until the script. i'm a robot i'm the robot going to cry. those girls were so mean what human tech had i left show show from a young age i'd learned that my compulsions revealed something about my nature. that i'd better keep to myself. some activities seemed more than others. i wanted soul. i didn't want to be a robot. being a robot meant i was

predict. uncool. click, click. so now i'm going to talk to one of the first computer chop ups, who's who's talked to eliza in here? anyone? yes. okay. eliza is a mock brazilian psychotherapist type to talk about your problems. eliza please tell me what you are feeling. tell me what you're -- face. why are you interested whether or not i'm feeling -- face. because you're a stupid robot. charge your batteries. robot that what makes you think it's the case that i am a stupid robot and that i should charge my batteries robot. my father taught me that someday

robots would made of memory. this unit stores the pieces of my grandfather's memory, the data for my father's next i'm here to help my father find his father's writing. he'll feed those words to an algorithm that will write in my grandfather's voice. i've never met my but i know his mythology well. his name was fritz in america. they called fred. he was short and dark, quiet, a brilliant and pianist. he was born in vienna, a --. and then came the war. his life was saved once by an american benefactor. she'd heard him conduct a choral concert. in 1937 and the next year she sponsored his salvation.

remember sing is a lonely art. i suspect. we save objects because they can shared if the memory. my father's father had a body. if had a hand, i could shake. i would find it here. but this is me screaming because i just discovered what appears to be a man in the storage unit. all of this happened so. oh, my god. it's george now. i remember. okay, i'm taking you back to the nineties. there's my mom, and she is bringing me to my father's office. where i first met george. any guesses on what george's.

sort of. you met george? he's our receptionist. come on, i'll give you tour. my father found george in las vegas sitting in a hotel gift, an impulsive purchase but not surprising. my father is a collector with certain obsessions. all right, so now i'm texting my partner, jacob. hello. i'm still shaking. he's made of wax. george, my father named him after a character from one of his books and i from the future. he actually looks a lot like fun fact freud almost was my great grea grandfaer has it his grandson proposed to my mom.

well, i. but ahi'll try other one now. love you too too. some seem alive. they resonate. i don'believe in ghosts. was it a radio job still to make somewhere. i got used to the music in time.

i'll get used to many things more strange than a song in the dark. thank. so all of that all of that really happened. there was music started playing in the storage unit. the time that i visited it, there was this wax figurine of george like, can you imagine? like the old in the storage unit when i'm going to, you know, meet my grandfather's artifacts. but the music that started playing the thing that i feel like i need to tell you is that it was not that music. but i did record the music that started playing on my phone

because i was like, am i going crazy? so i recorded the music and then in the actual book i did notate the music of the actual song that played. it was a jazz song and that song that you that you just heard, you know, for the purpose of the presentation is, my grandfather playing chopin so. yeah. all right. so now we're going to take questions. yeah. anything you want to ask. and, uh. yeah. first, thanks for your creative, very thought provoking work. i know you're focused on the past, but could you offer your views about what we're likely to see in the future with artificial intelligence and in particular, the singularity? sure, yeah, yeah. let me just call my dad real. well, you know? i mean, it's i thank you for that question. i appreciate it. i, i don't think as far into the future as my father does. that's you know, i think when

you're like memoirist or when you're in when you're a writer, you're it's like my brain can only fit. so information into it. and i'm so interested in specific of what's happening right now. so like i can i can't talk about the super far future. like i can't talk about if robots are going to have consciousness, know i'm they're going to wake up but but i can talk about what think is coming like you know in the in the more short term and sort of what i think maybe we should we start to think about i do think that ai's already and is going to get even more proficient in so many different kinds creative tasks. right. so like we were worried about a.i., you know, taking jobs like truck drivers and like, you know, checkout counter. like we're worried about a.i. sort of taking those kinds of jobs. and as it turns, a.i. is actually like getting, better at these jobs. don't involve a body. right?

so like anything that involves a kind of like mechanical exchange is actually much more difficult. it turns out, than natural language processing. and so that's been surprising for some people and scary for people. this idea that like ais are going to be able to write they already can write pretty well, like not, you know, not perfectly, but like they're they're getting really proficient in those kinds skills. and i think that that is going to be really disruptive for industry is that used creative image and text and video in order to sell like anything that of in the marketplace that's kind of measurable right like how well did this perform anything that you can measure? i think that ai is going to get a lot better than humans and that has really disruptive consequences for how we structure society. but the question that i'm interested in is like is a.i. going to replace human artists right, or i shouldn't i'm not so interested in that question.

but that question is really relevant to me. and my answer to that is, i feel like technology has kind of already replaced human artists in a way, but that but but only and to the extent that like the sort of market forces have had a real effect on artists. so that's like i don't think that that's a new phenomenon. i think that already artists have been sort of pushed out by the sort of metric driven nature of our system. but that has not meant that people stop being artists. right. like it just means that maybe we're artists in different kinds ways and that we are increasingly having a difficult time making a living. and i think that's already started like. you see with social media, i wrote a piece, if you're interested, it's published with the verge about how social media put certain pressure specifically on cartoonists to change their work in order to fit the algorithm right. that kind of stuff has already been happening and i think that like there's just going to continue to be a sort of

replacement in the marketplace of artists and then what do we do about that? i think it's a it's a big problem. so one potential solution is to think about how we can human artists and, you know, create systems so that we support them outside of the marketplace i think that's one important feature of future that we need to consider is that going to happen? like, i don't know. i'm not a you know, i'm in politics, but like, are we going to to prioritize that, you know, in our sort of political systems of power? we'll see. but i think if we want if we decide we care about human art and i think we all do. that's why you're here, right? you're like, you want to see me because you care that i'm a human being. i think everyone in this room cares about that. i think most people care about that, who care about arts. so if we care about that, we have to make it explicit and have to find some workaround around the marketplace in order to make sure that we support human artists. and so yeah, so like, i don't

know if that's going to happen, but i that i hope it does and part of the you know part of my motivation writing this book is it's wanting to reintroduce the sort of like prioritization, human values and human art, you know, over other sort of metric driven ways of of setting priorities. yeah. oh, well, thank you. i, i haven't read your book yet. i just started it reminds me of, alison bechdel, who influenced by her. yes. or talked to her yet. yeah. thank you for that question. yes, i'm very flattered. so thank you so much. she's probably one of my biggest influences. so very astute of you to make that make that connection. yeah. so, alison, i don't know her. i did email her and she responded and i was like, yes, you know and i sent her my book. hopefully she reads it. yeah. so for those of you who know alison beck does work, she's

really well known for fun, which is a memoir about her father, her father's death and uncovering his sexuality, his closeted homosexuality as she's her own sexuality. and part of what i was influenced about in her book is the way it's structured as this kind of swirling like her plot goes over, over the same stuff. it doesn't progress linearly. it's kind of like traversing memory. and she goes over a lot of the same memories and she structures her book thematically. so each chapter is sort a different lens on kind of the same material. and that's how i wanted to structure this book. so i would say that's the aspect that was most influenced by alison bechdel is the way that all of my chapters focus on a particular kind philosophical theme. so the one i wrote from was the theme was patterns and pattern recognition. the second chapter, the theme is immortality. the third chapter, the theme is

knowledge and how we get to knowledge and. then i'm kind of going over different material with that lens in mind, which is not how most comics are structured. but i, i was really influenced by alice and victor. yeah. you mentioned creating chat, but, and making the choice to specifically make sure that it was selective and then it wouldn't generate new information. i'm curious if afterwards, if you've thought at all about generating another one with the same digitized information, then yeah, generates new information. so if not, why not? yeah, yeah. i mean, that's the question. the reason for it being selective was that generative didn't really exist yet. when we started this project. so i've been writing this book for seven years. when i first started it, nobody knew what a chat was and i mean, not nobody, but like general audiences weren't familiar with what that was. now technology is, you know, totally outdated and like, you know, we could, you know, come up with something that had different features that available. and one of those different

features is this ability to generate text. okay, so it's it's a really good question and i'm not sure i have an answer yet, but it is something i'm actively thinking about and that writing the book sort of helped me about do i there's value to a chat bot that informed by the patterns of my grandfather's speech in the past or i should say, writing in the past generates new language. i think evaluating sort of the state of the technology right. i don't know if i would want that, because i'm not sure what it would teach me. you know, like i'm primarily interested in this chat bot because of the way it helps me interact with history and the way it helps me sort of get this sense of my grandfather was life by revisiting parts of his life, i started to think about this chat bot as kind of like a time travel device like i was back in time to see what he said about

this to see and i was getting surprising answers like it's different than being in a storage unit where you're finding the thing yourself and you're kind of like having this experience with artifacts. it was like a role play, you know, the value of the value of kind of like theatrical experience of talking with my grandfather and i found all of that really valuable. but if i, if i was having a conversation with new language and i'm like, where is this coming from? i think for me would be distracting, not useful for my particular for what i want from this project. but i could see somebody maybe like a grieving person sort of going through the process, the stages of grief, right. wanting something that feels a little more present, you know, something that could could have imagination in the way that it responds. i see a value and a use for that. i know that's controversial, but i think within certain parameters, that kind of that kind of use of technology could be meaningful and useful.

but me like i'm not grieving grandfather, right. so i'm not needing the experience to be like quite so in the moment, yeah. any other questions don't be shy. yeah, you can come and perhaps you could just hear. oh yes i can. yeah i'm just interested specifically in the relationship between moms and. the new world. mm hmm. yeah. thank you for that question. so a question about the relationship between my memoirs and my work for the new yorker, i guess i will say i started after finished flying couch, the first graphic memoir i worked on. i that book took eight years. it was really the book that taught me how to draw and taught me how to be a cartoonist. and i decided that i wanted to finish something in less than eight years.

so. so i met liana, who is a cartoonist for the new yorker, who also writes memoir and she told me about, you know, the the fact that anybody could submit the new yorker. and actually, at that time could, like, go in person and show your work to the editor who at that was bob mankoff and you could actually sit down with him and would give you feedback on your work. and that was a really rare thing in publishing. you know to be able to have an editor even respond to you alone, sit down with you in person and. so when she told me about that, i was like how? i was very intimidated like, i don't know if i can do this. this is going to take over my life. it turns out it did take over life, but it was great. so, you know, i went well, first i spent a summer drawing a single pound and liana told me something that i never forgot, which is she said, single panel cartoons are playing scales. it's like practice for your longer work, you know? and it's just sort of like constant practice of those muscles of like word and image

and image, how to get a story happening really quickly, like how to make an impact, how to use space, how to get the reader to have a reaction in the things you're not giving them. so, you know there's, there's so many skills that i learned through single panel cartooning. and that's something about that concept of like it's like scales, like, okay, i can sit down, you know, and i can do a cartoon. like i can just have a complete thing that i finish in a day, let eight years, you know. so i did that for a summer and then i into the office and i sat down with bob mankoff and if you know him, you know he's quite a character. he likes to insult. but then he also he ultimately really cares about you and to, you know, he, like insults you just enough that you're like, hey. and then he's like, come back, come back, you know? so i kept coming back and then eventually sold a cartoon. and so i would say the relationship is like i'm using the single panel cartoon space to work out a philosophical or an observation i have about

human life. and i'm also exercising these these skills, you know, that i that i then implement in my longer work and yeah i went i and did write, you know, writei just wrote prose and i wrote short fiction and i had a fiction teacher telling me like, you have too many ideas. so yeah, so cartoons are where i can out all of my ideas. yeah. thank you. continuing the the comedic part, your life and your cartoons, i'm interested in whether your father or your grandfather also had comedic streak. do they do they see funny is it that did that come down through the system as well? that's such a good question. well, my father has a specter jocular sense of dad humor, right so he repeats, repeats the same jokes over and over.

there are many of those in the book. i think i got all of his his dad jokes in the book that was that was a goal of mine and he was interested the theme of repetition and also that as humans we have these scripts right that we repeat and humor is a big script i would say in my family like the same jokes know and they like i my father was like why do you you know, like why do you say the same jokes all the time and he's like, well, if it's a good joke, like i know it's going to work. so like, just keep reusing it. why not? that's like, yeah, something i learned from my father that, like, you don't always need to be reinventing your material. you can just let the same thing keep, keep, keep it moving. and my grandfather, they're like, i would love be able to answer that question. i, i knew if he had a sense of humor yeah, i don't know that, i don't think that was as big a thread of his life because i

think so much of his life was about music and one of the ironies of this project is that my grandfather was actually a somewhat shy person. so, you know, he didn't have all that much to say in a social situation. so yeah, but what what did he find funny? i don't know. i wish i knew. thank you. yeah. thank you so much much.

i adam lazarus is an author specializing in nonfiction books featuring iconic and compelling figures in american history, including chasing super bowl monday, best of rivals and hail to the redskins as gibbs the diesel the hogs and the glory days of disease dynasty.

he holds a bachelor's degree in english from kenyon college and a master's degree in professional writing from carnegie mellon. please give a warm welcome to adam lazarus. thank you very much for having me. as you just heard, i'm a nonfiction from atlanta, georgia, with few sports history books out in the last years. but i want to tell you about my latest book, which in some ways is a sports history book, but about a lot more than that. as you heard from no doubt from the title there, two main figures in my book, the john glenn, ted williams. i want to open up and give you a little bit of on both of them. so who was john glenn. john glenn was born in cambridge ohio on july 18th, 1921. he was a marine corps fighter pilot in two wars, world war two and the korean war. he flew a 147 combined missions, received 18 air medals and six

distinguished flying crosses. he later became a military test pilot at patuxent river naval air station in maryland he helped create, conceive and execute something called project, which i'll tell you about a little bit later. he was one of the first american astronauts part of the mercury program, became the first american to orbit the earth in february of 1962. he later became the united states senator from the state of ohio, serving four terms and in 2012, he received the presidential medal of freedom from president barack obama. here's a photo of john glenn receiving his medal of freedom. but i want to give a little more background on john glenn's military career or major glenn, as he was known during the korean war. john glenn enlisted in the navy's v5 aviation cadet program march of 1942. he actually in the army air force program, but they didn't call him back in a couple of weeks later. he decided to stop at a navy recruiting station. and so history might have been a little bit better, might have been a little bit different if the army air force had called him back. he earned his marine corps pilot's wings in march of 1943.

he flew 57 combat missions in the marshall islands for vmm f 155 between 1944 and 1945 during world war two, his after the war, he earned his career marine commission in march of 1946 and spent the next several years serving at a variety of bases across globe in china, guam and texas and virginia. during his time at quantico in virginia, the korean war broke out and he was not sent to service. he was absolutely just apoplectic that he wasn't being sent to service during the korean war. he pleaded with his superiors to be sent and be given combat orders eventually writing months of letters to superiors. they told him to stop writing letters, but we'll send you to war anyway. so he received his orders for the korean war in the fall of 1952, and he arrived in early february 1953, at pohang at k3 a base in pohang south korea. there's a photo of john glenn the day he left for service in the korean war with his wife and two children. david and lynn was, really

interesting about this photo as it was taken port columbus airport in columbus, ohio, not far from john glenn's hometown, about a little more than 60 years later, port columbus airport was renamed john glenn international airport. the other main figure in my book is ted williams. so who was ted williams ted williams was born in san diego, california, on august 30th 1918. he played left for the boston red sox from 1939 to 1960. he was 19 time all star. he's probably best remembered for being the last man to hit 400. he had 521 home runs, won two most valuable player awards to triple crowns. he was elected to the baseball hall of fame in 1966. he later became manager of the washington senators and texas rangers a few years. he often said that his one goal in life was to be able to walk down the street, have people say, there goes the greatest hitter that ever lived. a little bit more on that later. he too, received his presidential medal of freedomn 1991 from president george h.w. bush, a photo of him receiving his presidential medal of freedom from president bush. and first lady barbara bush.

but a little more on ted williams background or captain ted williams. he was known during the korean war ted williams, enlisted in the navy's v5 aviation cadet program in may of 1942, just two months after john glenn, he earned his. two years later, he mostly was an instructor at pensacola's naval air station in florida. he did not serve in combat during world two, actually played a little bit of baseball, played outfield for a tune called the bronson bombers, a team in the naval air training, auxiliary bases, baseball circuit after world war two, he was discharged to the volunteer reserves. he promptly returned to playing baseball for the red sox, helped lead them to their first pennant in over 30 years, almost 30 years in 1946, won the mvp that year, but he was recalled to active service in the marine corps in january of 1952, at the age of 34, after doing all he could to get out of serving in combat again during the korean war, he finally realized he was going to have to go abroad and serve. so they celebrated ted williams day at fenway park on april 30th, 1952, fittingly at a home

in his final at bat, he promptly left, fenway park began retraining at a couple of different bases across the united states, learning to fly jets he had only flown propeller planes, mostly the f for u corsair world war two. and this was the beginning, the jet age. so he had a lot of catching up to do. he trained on a couple of bases and eventually was given combat orders. and he arrived. k3 pohang south korea, february third, 1953. just six days before john glenn is a photo in his hut they lived in these small tropical huts were actually from there were left over from world war two and they were for the tropical climate. and if you know anything about the climate in north and south korea in february, it was freezing cold. so these tropical huts didn't much protection from the warmth and. there were three men to these tiny little huts and were stacked next to each other. this is ted williams, his tropical hut. the one next door to his was was john glenn. so they weren't roommates, but they were neighbors. i've been on a book tour the last months talking about this book, the wingman, and rather

than just keep talking at length about book itself. i thought i'd share with you of the frequent questions i got astro in the course speaking at book festivals, on the radio and podcasts and things like that the first question i get asked most often is. where did the idea for this book come from? and it's very simple. it comes from this, which is inside the book photograph appeared on a twitter account about three years ago on veterans day. it's a baseball twitter account that shows photos of lou gehrig and willie mays and mike schmidt and on veterans day a couple of years ago, they decided to dedicate that day's post to baseball players that served in the military and. someone and the author of the the count posted this photo with a simple tagline something like did you know that during the korean ted williams served as john glenn's wingman and i am huge baseball history fan. i grew up knowing all about ted williams statistics and 406 so my family visited cooperstown every year so i knew all about baseball history.

i knew all about ted williams. this is actually a photo, that image of ted wliams was a poster put out produced by upper deck, the early nineties that actually hung on my bedroom bedroom wall as a kid. so knew a lot about ted williams. and conversely, i'm ohio. you don't grow up in ohio without knowing who john glenn is and my dad who is a big naca history space program fan used to sit me and my down to watch the right stuff as kids even though we didn't really understand it. and so i knew all about john glenn and so i knew a lot about both these men, and i had no idea about this connection. it turns out they flew combat missions together. they were part of a very small fighter squadron, both 25 pilots go in the air at a time only 40 pilots were in the squadron the time. and so i thought it was actually very remarkable to learn about this connection. and i did my research and did some reading and yeah they flew missions together some very interesting, harrowing including one in which ted williams crash landed. and this is all in the book. but at the time i didn't know if there was a book there. i thought it was a very interesting story and. it was something that john glenn

covered in his autobiography. and when ted williams died, reporters wrote about it in his obituaries. but i learned more about their friendship that had spanned decades, weren't best friends. they didn't spend summer vacations together with their kids playing in the front yard and going doing barbecues together. but had this friendship that lasted sort of ebbed and flowed over the decade and when i found this story that when john glenn back to space in october of 92, you probably remember at the age of 77 years old, 36 years after friendship seven, he went back to space. and one of the people he drove first, people he told about the mission was ted williams. he drove to his house in florida personally said, i want you to be there ted williams wasn't in very good health. he was in a wheelchair he'd had three strokes, but he wasn't to miss john glenn's return to space. so it was sort a heartwarming story about friendship to me when glenn actually launched up in his discovery shuttle, ted williams was rising out of his wheelchair from the launch pad at cape canaveral.

i thought it was a great story. he was going was bragging all about how he knew john glenn and served with him. and this photo here is, actually, they had a welcome home party for john glenn when he returned from his eight days in space. he was in cocoa beach, florida, and one of the first people to greet him, greet him there was ted williams and this is a photo of them seeing each other after. john glenn's first time returning to space another. i get asked is what is the title of the book mean? people who know their military aviation or any kind of aviation probably what a wingman is, but in the marine corps during this time in the korean war, squadrons were made up of groups of sections and a section is comprised of a leader and his wingman and the leader leads and the wingman follows. and whatever the leader does, the wing man's job is to respond. and john glenn long he ever met ted williams was writing a report for his superiors after the world war two. but before korea, he said in his report, the wing man's first and primary duty ahead of everything else is to stick with his section leader. so in the marine corps, during this time in the korean war, the leader always a career marine,

someone who had much more experience, had had combat training, combat experience, someone like john glenn and the wingman was often a reservist, either was very young and didn't have experience or was a reservist and hadn't flown in years. ted williams so after a while john glenn and ted williams got paired together as a whole story about how that happened, it's in the book. but john glenn was the leader and ted williams his wingman. but there's another definition of wingman which i think maybe a younger crowd knows sort pop culture definition about maybe guys in a bar helping one of them helping his buddy talk to a talking.t he has no business webster's described it as a male friend or partner who accompanies and supports a man in some activity. and if you read the book, i think you'll see that john glenn ted williams, the sean glenn's wingman during the korean war in the air and combat during service. but later in life, particularly when ted williams really later in the early 2000s he was dying was in the hospital in san diego and in florida. john glenn was by his side several times calling him, visiting him in the hospital.

and i came to understand and this in the book that towards the end of their friendship john glenn was ted williams wingman people who know a lot about either mananan especially about both men would be probably to learn about ted williams john glenn's. they were total opposites every way ted williams was loud. he was kind of a handsome guy with long, wavy hair. he was very conservative. his big supporter of the nra, republican big friend, good friends with richard nixon, even helped get both george bush's elected president. he was married and divorced. three times. he didn't have very good relationship with his children. he never met a four letter word. he didn't use very often and everything i just said was pretty much the complete opposite of john glenn. john glenn was married to the same woman for 73 years who he knew since they were together in a playpen he two children who he absolutely adored he was a devout presbyterian. williams was something of an atheist or agnostic.

he was a republican. john glenn was a democrat. maybe not the most liberal democrat, but he was a democrat and they were polar opposites in every way, whether it was their politics, their worldview, their religion, the way they had handled their personal life and their family. so friendship is very as the of the book suggests, unusual. so how did they become friends? and the simplistic separation is that they served together in this war and. there is this band of brothers mentality, a photo of them discussing some maneuvers or some situation on the runway at their base in korea. so i think their friendship was born of their service together. and if you read the book, see that they had at least one very harrowing mission. it was their first mission together, john glenn believed it was going to result in his court martialed. so their friendship had something of a baptism by fire. so that's how their friendship and these are just some details of their missions together. this one mission i outline here where these stars on map indicate where their targets were and, the circled area in redhere, the details of a

mission that mission that wound up with john glenn, he was going to get court martialed. but what i learned was their friendship grew out some similarities and most people wouldn't understand and wouldn't recognize. and this book, i think, help outlines that ted williams was absolutely obsessive everything he did hitting baseball, fishing, hunting flying an airplane, all of his passions was if you've ever picked up his book the science of hitting, which came out in 1971, which players still read and is still a part of baseball training lore is so and academic and tech basically too complicated for a layman to understood. i understand half of it talks about the cosine and the angle and he breaks down the swing rip hip rotation elbows and rotation. he was obsessed about the details and even his manager said later, one of the things that made him a great hitter was not just his batting practice and understanding the game, but

he obsessed about how tight his shoes were and has his shoe laces and he broken his jerseys in his pants weeks ahead and broken bad months ahead time because he was so obsessed with the details and fine tuning everything. and that's exactly how john glenn went about his military career is nascar career, his time in the senate was actually something that hurt his political career. he was obsessed with the details, writing bills and particularly arms treaties was very active in developing the assault to arms treaty. and it really irritated a lot of his fellow senators because he slaved over the details, the the mundane, the nuances of things that most people probably overlooked and. i think this is something that maybe it's not something they talked about, but i think it was a sensibility shared and that they they understood one another that way. and the other thing that i came to understand how john glenn and ted williams grew in the years after the korean war. ted williams was really a national figure. at the age of 23, he joined the boston red sox about age 20.

he was probably their best hitter right away. he was other. than joe dimaggio. he was the best player in baseball. and very early in his career. and he was a national figure he was certainly a big figure from the day he joined boston red sox in the massachusetts in new england area. but he was on the cover of life magazine at age 23. this is this photo here is of him on the cover of life magazine. so for the next about 60 years, he couldn't walk down street without peop wting an autograph ophograph or to shake his hand or to talk to. so he understood what it meant to be in the spotlight all the time. for john glenn, it was a little different. really didn't become a national figure until he joined the nascar program, particularly, he returned from his three orbits in space. he was 41 years old at the time, but here's a photo of him on the cover of life magazine, and that's sort of the way his life changed forever. and he was a national figure for the next 50 or 60 years because of his service and aca. and i think they both understood they belonged to the public. john glenn's daughter told me one time that they were in africa. many years after the friendship

seven mission in a small village. it didn't have a lot of electricity, no television, very little news. and even they recognized there. so neither one of these men could step out of their house without being being having the spotlight shown to them. now, how they handled that was a completely different story did not get along with his fans to not get along with the press. i think he did not like being in the spotlight. john glenn turned down a handshake in an autograph and he was certainly a man of the people. but i think it was something that they really saw well, in one another. this common thread i'm often asked what type of research i did for this book and a lot has been written about both men john glenn and ted williams ted williams, wrote an autobiography came out in 1969, told his whole life story up until the time he was about 40 years old. 50 years old. but many other biographies have been written about him full length, 800 page biography by ben bradlee junior out a couple of years ago. that was very helpful. me same thing with john glenn. he wrote an autobiography towards the end of his time in the senate several books have

been written about john glenn's career and his life. you know, newspaper articles, articles and those were all good for understanding the structure of the story. but i was able to cover uncover a lot of very original archives and details. one of them was i collected two or 300 letters written by people serving in the korean war at the base that john glenn and ted williams served. some of them were written by pilots who served with john glenn ted williams writing home, telling their families, oh, i saw ted on the base today. i flew this mission with ted williams that helped me understand the life over there. what ted williams celebrity was like. i also was able to get about 20 or 30 letters john glenn wrote home to his wife annie and his children the war and then helped again paint of the details about their missions and, what life was like over in the base and. ted williams wrote ten or 15 letters to his mistress during the korean war, and i was able uncover those. so all these firsthand details of what they were thinking. when i go forward this is

actually a letter to john gln wrote home to h we in may of 1953, ted flew my wing this morning and was all bubbling over when we got back. what a character kind of summed up john glenn's impression of ted williams some of the other neat archives that i uncovered were command diaries or unit diaries from the korean war marine fighter pilot, the squadron. they were in, they kept very meticulous notes of every mission. what planes flew, what pilots flew, what targets they attacked, what weaponry they were carrying, who the missions, whether it was successful. they hit targets. there was a crash, anything like that. so those were really useful for me to what happened on every mission ted williams and john glenn flew. but the missions, they flew together and actually, i was really fortunate to hundreds of pages of navy and marine corps personnel files of glenn and ted williams ted williams underwent some serious health problems during his time the korean war, and these declassified mirroring marine corps and navy files helped me piece together what was going on with ted williams.

so those were all really neat archives, but the best resource i had for at least the korean war time was was able to interview three pilots who flew with both john glenn and ted williams in the korean war. they were still alive. they were in their late nineties, they had very colorful details and colorful and shared a lot of their unvarnished opinions. one of them that really did not like tedilliams very much. and all those details are in the book. but one of them was a man named woody woodbury, was very intesting. he was a comian he had some success in hollywood. he hosted one of the talk shows, one of the game shows that johnny carson hosted that he left to go host the tonight show when left, woody woodbury took over he had some gold albums in the sixties, comedy albums he and i had many conversations. this is a photo of him in the middle during his service in the korean war on the left is a photo of him attending a birthday for ted willis many years after the korean and on the right is a photo of him with john glenn at some kind of event the mid sixties. so talking to woody woodbury and a couple of the other people who

were actually on missions with ted williams and john glenn was a really great resource for me to recreate these images of these two men flying missions together because i'm a sportswriter by nature and a big history fan, there is a lot of baseball history in the book on later part portions of his career, sort of the post korean war years of his baseball career. and i have been asked i mean on podcast, this baseball sports podcast is ted williams the greatest of all time. there are other claimants, babe ruth, everybody here knows would would certainly be considered the greatest home run hitter, arguably the greatest hitter of all time, barry bonds, who steroid aided made a lot of recordanbroke theomrun record and actually broke a lot of ted williams records for walks and on bas percentage or the yng fans like my kids, maybe who wouldn't know their baseball history. someone like shohei ohtani you know plays for the dodgers, lots of other clemens through baseball history of who was the

greatest hitter of all time. but i want to make the case for ted williams. ted williams, in his rookie season in 1939, hit 31 home ns. he was 20 years old, hit 31 home runs, hit 327, had 14rbi, which is far still the record for any rookie baseball history. he had 406n 1941, the last man to hit 400. and no matter anybody tells you, no one has come anywhere near close to surpassing or reaching 400 in the years and the 80 some years since. and not tony gwynn, george brett, not rod carew, the long way from 400. ted williams. and this is his most remarkable achievement opinion. he had three 8816 years later in 1957, at the age of 39 years old, he's still oldest man to played all of baseball and hitting. he had a career average of 344 which is third highest of all time. and the of anyone born in the 20th century at 521 homeruns when he retired it was the third most he won two triple crowns. he missed a third by mere percentage points in the batting crown raised in 1949.

he six batting titles he would have won seventh if not for that re percentage point win t mvp's. he really should have won five, but he didn't get along with the sportswriters to the more modern, sensible fans. his career ops which on base percentage plus slugging percentage was 1.16 second only to babe ruth. and of course he missed five full seasons during his service in the korean war and world war two. he may have hit 700 homeruns. he may have hit more than 714, which was babe ruth's record for many years, had he not five years in the war. so was ted williams greatest hitter of all time? i think glenn would say yes. and conversely, i make case in the book that john glenn is the greatest aviator of all time, or at least in american history. and i'm still for a very angry email, someone or someone to come and tackle me in the parking lot after one of these talks to tell me how wrong i am about. that largely because there are other claimants just as well, someone like charles lindbergh completethfamous transatlantic flight in 1927.

i also helped the american milita aation during world war two a great deal. chuck yeagern 1947 broke the speed sound barrier fought world war two korea and helped out in vietnam or someone like ne astrong, who was a great korean war pilot, navy test pilot, and of course the first man to walk on the moon. but i want to make the case for john glenn is the greatest aviator all time in world war two. he flew 57 combat missions two distinguished flying cross seven air medals during his two years in the air islands, just during his time with marines in the korean war, he had received four distinguished flying crosses, 11 air medals, led many missions during his time there at the end of the korean, he went on temporary assignment with the air force, which is rlly a dream for any marine corps pilot to fly, something called the f-86 saber jet, which was much surior to f9's panther. he was flying with the marines and was in june of 1953. the war at the end of july. he really start flying missions until late june.

53. and in a ten day spanish shutdown, three soviet migs. you need five to become an ace. he have been just the second marine corps ace during the korean war the minute the war ended and he didn't have a chance to get those two more. in 1954, he returned, became a navy test pilot, and he broke something called the in jet record. it was it was an unofficial record at time. they were trying to see how fast pilots could climb to 10,000 feet. he went to an air show in ohio one day and someone broke the world record for this thousand reaching 10,000 feet in the air and someone done it and i think 2 minutes and 7 seconds he saw that. he said, i can break that. he went out in his jet the next day, in one minute and 59 seconds. that was just if, you know, try to take away anything from john glenn. that was john glenn a couple of years. he conceived and designed and then executed something called project bullet, which was the first transcontinental supersonic flight history. he flew from southern california to brooklyn, new york, in 3

hours and 23 minutes, which meant he supersonic speed. no had ever done that record before. and it was a real marvel of modern aviation and it was really all his idea and it required three midair refueling over three cities across the globe, across the states. it was a very difficult and harrowing assignment for him, but it was part of his nature and he achieved it. it's one of the things that really got him on radar of nasa when they were choosing nasa's in the late fifties and helped him get on their radar and become one of the first seven mercury astronaut. and again, five years after that, he went aboard friendship seven three orbits around the earth. first american to do so really got us back in the space race against the soviets. and then, as i mentioned, 36 years later, project stars 95. the discovery he went on board and this not some space tourist cruise like we see today people going up into space for 15 minutes and just being aboard for the ride. john glenn spent eight days in space as a working on this

mission as eight days at age 77 years old. he was something of a human guinea pig getting blood taken every 10 minutes and monitoring sleep. but he he achieved that. my favorite john glenn statistic was he learned he really learned his pilot's license in the summer of 1941 before the bombing of pearl harbor and his enlistment in, the navy. and he really didn't stop flying until he was 90 years old. two 2011, when his insurance carrier finally said no more, he he continued for four years, he piloted his own beechcraft baron from home in maryland when he was serving in the senate to home in ohio when he was on when the senate was in recess or in the home they owned in colorado just the image of 89 year old john glenn flying cross-country, annie and in the seat next him 70 years of flying that clinches it for so i think ted williams that agree was john glenn the greatest aviator of all time. i think he would say yes. i just want to give my great

thanks to the savannah book festival for having me and for all you for for listening. and i'd be more than happy to take some of your questions. so my husband's a naval aviator. i'm sorry. my husband. a naval aviator. oh, okay. so he's best and i am curious, in any of your books have any of the family members of your subjects asked you not to write the book or refuse to assist you in any way? that's a great the aside from a few sort of smaller characters in my other books, this is the first book that i've done where the principles no longer alive and. i was very fortunate. i'm not sure i could done the book without john glenn's two children. his daughter and his son were very and very helpful and they didn't give me unfettered,

constant access, but they were supportive and they knew i was telling the story in many ways of what a hero their was. so that was four for the john glenn side of the book, i was very fortunate that they did not ask me that ted williams had three children that were, you know, sort of sole remaining family members. only one of them is still alive. i was able talk with her. she wrote her own book about what it was like to be ted williams daughter, but not a lot about the john glenn friendship or really his time in the military. so, you know, this was a new angle when you're writing about people who have had many biographies or books or lengthy magazine articles, biopics or documentaries about, them. it's hard to do that without just retelling the same story over and over again in this book, in a way, was shedding new light on both these men. it was largely focused on, their military career and this friendship, because it was sort of covering new territory. i think they were. you know, that's an interesting

angle of the story. so they were supportive of it that way. and when you go on a mission, this what do you how you begin and get into the archive. and if you're fortunate to have people that are alive. gentlemen, earlier was talking i was writing a book on people have been dead for a couple of hundred. so how do you go about getting with the family, getting the archive, the pictures, put it all together and then you got to start writing it? yes. well, once you have idea and you know, you structure how the book's going to come out and what things you to pursue and what pieces of research you need to uncover getting the family cooperation is always, you know, someone like that or getting it's a big interview i've done, you know, some other sports books. i did a book on joe montana and, steve young, famous football players, just getting to them, getting in front of them to say, hey, i'm writing this book about you. i want to do an interview is always challenging. it usually requires groveling and calling in a lot of favors, and that's sort of how it happened with.

getting in touch with the glenn family, ted williams daughter. but fortunately, at least for john glenn and i told this to, his daughter, i said, i hope i don't mean to offend you. after when he had one of our conversations, i said, were your parents like pack rats? are they hoarders? and she started laughing. she said that was mom and dad because not when they died, but when john glenn realized he was getting up in age and had already retired from the senate. he started to donate much of his archives to the ohio state, and he helped found a school there, the john glenn school of public affairs. and over time, they collected virtually every piece of paper he ever encountered in his entire life. there. probably 5 million pages of fliers and documents and orders and times the senate briefings and photographs awards. he received hundreds and hundreds of banker's boxes are in storage at the ohio state university. and i was able to go through those and just the korean war stuff. there were, you know, boxes and boxes, the things he saved the

menus he received from restaurants. he went to while an r&r in korea brochures from the silk factories that he went to. so he saved everything. so it was not hard. and i developed a good relationship with the ohio state people. it was not hard to request things and they have tremendously and cataloged. so i would just say, you i need box 118 dash one, dash 2-a would you send this and that was it was very fortunate this is during so they were good about you know scanning and emailing me many things. so that was the best way to get. archives, first hand archives from john glenn, ted williams was a little bit more challenging because a lot of his archives, he didn't keep the of records in archives that ted that john glenn did but the baseball hall of fame had a lot of his stuff. and as i mentioned earlier, i filed a freedom of information requests, mostly with the navy and the marine corps. and they sent me hundreds of pages of his personnel files. there's also something called

the korean war project, started by a father and son, have cataloged every squadron and unit and every branch of the military during the korean war. and they have that source. so it was easy for me to access so a lot of different avenues and then yeah for the people the three pilots who i was able to track down i you know people were interested in their stories. the articles had written about them in the marine corps leatherneck magazine. so i tracked them down and people were it's something i've learned during the course of writing these five books is that if you tell people you're writing about them and it's not a hit job. and it's you're telling a new angle. they're usually pretty open to talking about it, talking about their past, and sharing their history. because does don't forget, there's another side to ted williams i'm sure you have some internal information about that

kind of tender heart. you read the book, maybe teammates. so maybe you could just talk a minute about that other side of ted williams sure. ted williams reputation and i've been asked many times by people was as big a jerk as people said, and i on some days, yes, he was as big a jerk as people said. but i what i learned him over the course of writing this book was that he had a terrible temper. he didn't get along with. he could be cruel and mean some days, but he had a big heart. he cared about people. there are stories his daughter told me this and i've heard other stories he would hear about an old ballplayer played that he knew he was never a big who couldn't pay his medical bills or wasn't was having trouble paying his mortgage or rent. he got the person's and he'd put a check in there or cash. so it was anonymous. he went out of his way to help people all the time. and if you know your boston history, he was instrumental, helping expand something called

the jimmy fund, which is a cancer research center in boston for children. it's that how it's helped thousands of young children from cancer over the decades. and he did everything he could whether it was financially of own money or helping raise money or appearing events or just visiting them in the hospital, spending time with them, donating things, he had a big heart, cared about people and he was rough around the edges and he said the wrong thing at times. someone told me a story that he went to with some friends and family and they just got tired of of everything and walked out in the middle of the meal, didn't check. and that's kind of sums up ted williams is but there's these stories about him where it's clear that he cared about people. and i think i developed a good amount of respect for him. and i think i don't know if it's something john glenn ever really thought about or in him, but there's a probably the the centerpiece of the book is section. later in the book, when is being honored by the jimmy fund boston in 1988 and they had this event

him to celebrate his it was sort a it was sort of a half celebration of he had done for the jimmy fuy half birthday party for him that the public was invited to and john glenn was one of the six or seven speakers there and think john glenn that that if you didn't already know saw something ted williams about how big his heart was and how much cared for other people and gave back to his community there. there's also a story not to get too far into history, but the -- league players didn't get their attention and the color barrier wasn't broken until 1947. and when ted williams gave his induction speech at the baseball hall of fame in cooperstown. in 1966, he used part of his speech to say we should find a way to honor the -- league players who aren't in the hall of fame only because they were excluded he meant satchel paige and josh gibson. and his announcement that day sort of helped pave the way for a lot the -- league players to get enshrined. and i think five years later josh gibson wasn't and not long after that satchel paige. so for all the things that ted

williams wrong he he write it off a lot of them. yeah. for the book did you talk to of ted williams is red sox teammates or any of the players he managed with the washington senators and did you talk to any of john glenn's colleagues in the senate? yes, i talked to most of john ted williams teammates are no longer alive. i did talk to a few there was one who there's an interesting story in the book ted williams was playing a game in washington when when john glenn was as part of the early days of nasa and he went to a game, griffith stadium in washington. and ted, john glenn was there, the locker room. and i found an article about someone who was there and pete he said at the time he said a couple years after this happened. but right john glenn went to space. so everybody knew john glenn was and he said something like this this guy was coming telling taiclet terrible about this

space stuff and we had no idea what he's talking about. he sounded like a crazy person and i was able to interview him and he shared lot of his details. but because know ted williams rookie season was 1939. so the guys played with him aren't really still alive. did interview a couple guys who he managed with the senators and the rangers, but i didn't do much in the book about his time as a manager. a lot of been written about that and it wasn't really central to the story. his friendship with john glenn, although when he was managing the senators in washington one year john glenn in him went to dinner and they spent some time together and that's in the book. but again, i didn't want to retell a of the baseball story. i think i go through in great depth sort of his post korean war years and how they're overlooked because most people who remember about ted williams either remember the 406 or his homerun in the all-star in 1941 or his homerun that ended career in 1960. so it was to me to showcase this era particularly 1957 when he

gets 388 at the age of 39 years old. didn't want to do a baseball book because so much had written about his baseball career. but that was kind of the portion of his baseball career that i focused on. i had a great older friend who served with glenn and in the korea war, and he told me so i don't know if it sounds accurate, he told that they would fly their planes to get washed in japan. and over a weekend. and if there were 25 guys in the squadron, 24 of whom would take about 5 minutes upon arrival, shower, shave and hit the town, there'd one guy reading in that navy manual and they'd come back sunny afternoon to. the same guy would be there. that was john glenn. well, that's about right. i would say that that's probably

little bit of an exaggeration in the book. if you pick up, there's a whole chapter on aunt russian recreation, which had another name that i won't share in a church but if you read the book, you'll know what i'm talking about. they did go in order. ted williams and john glenn. there's a really neat story about that, but it's my understanding that john glenn i read the letters he wrote home to his wife about his time in. and even one of his trips on r&r. that's a you bring up an interesting point which was something that sort of dovetails the earlier question. i think american history has of cartoonish images of both john glenn and ted williams like we do with a lot of ultra ultra celebrities from the past. john glenn, not he hated being called, you know, a boy scout like he in the right stuff. dudley do. do-right harry hair. sure. mr. mr. maureen was with the other astronauts sort of called derisively he wasn't as clean

because he didn't you know the image was he never drank. he never smoked. he never swore. stoddard told me that wasn't true. and i even found out there's again, i'm not going to say in the church, i've done one case of him swearing, talking about some some rifle women who tried to shoot down his plane in korean war and he drank and there's even the photo i showed earlier is of him holding a pipe. so he smoked. so he wasn't as quite as clean cut as as history remembers that he would never go out on the town one night during the korean war. i think he was very loyal to his wife. i think he didn't do anything wrong on his our that way. but he was not as as straitlaced as everybody remembered. and he had his ties fun on our i'm sure there's a great about him the he woody woodbury and him decided they needed a new piano in the in the officers club because woody woodbury would entertain the guys the officers club at night and the

piano wasn't very good so they next na na will go over and buy a piano in japan and. it's a great story. what he would write tells it's in the book that they were going. they were waiting for the piano, the waiting for arnold to end. and the plane didn't come back for several days. and john glenn had to just sit guard this piano for three straight days. and he was so angry that he was missing missions and his superiors are going to be mad at him. but i think he probably had a nice time. although, again, i what was remained in the archives of his time in r and r was a menu and a lacquer factory brochure and a china dish set brochure brochure and so factory brochures. and one of the letters home, he wrote to arnie was like, i thought about buying you this. so he was i think he probably did spend most of his time shopping for his family. there's a really neat story. again, there. very not to take too much time. there were a lot of very poor korean, needy and poor children in korea near their base, which

they saw who they saw every day. and one of them made friends with john glenn. and he didn't speak english very well. but he told john glenn that he didn't have enough money to buy a suit for school and he couldn't attend school. he was a little bit older. he was in his early teens. he, john glenn, went to the next he said, next time i go to r&r in japan, i'll get you this suit. and he he and another marine bought the suit for this for this poor korean boy. so he'd go to school. so he was busy during our in our. but i don't think he was sitting reading his book for straight days while the other guys were out on the town town. well, thank you very much. and.

james swanson is the author of the new york times best seller manhunt the 12 day chase for lincoln's killer. he is an attorney who's written about history, the constitution and popular culture for a

variety of publications, including the wall street journal american heritage. smith simonian and the los angeles times. he serves on the advisory council of the ford's theater. abraham lincoln bicentennial campaign and is a member of the advisory of the abraham lincoln bicentennial commission. please give a warm savannah welcome to james swanson. let me just suggest this a little visit. good morning. this pocket me feel like i'm reverend john williams from deerfield saying they're attacking they're coming it's to be back in savannah i think this is fourth time at the santa book festival so it's always pleasure to come come here and i want to give a special thanks to

prickett and his wife, jane. matt, of course, is the founder of the savannah book festival. and i thank them for their years of support and for sponsoring talk this year. and it's hard to believe that it was 17 years ago when i was speaking at the national book festival in washington, dc, when a man introduced us and self and said, hi, i'm matt prickett, i'm a book festival in savannah. would you like to. and little did he know that savannah already one of my favorite cities. so of course i said yes today i'm not going to bore you by reading aloud for my book except for a couple select quotations that really helped set the stage. whenever i tend to book event, i don't enjoy reading it. so i figured can do that ourselves and i'm more in hearing about the author, their lives, their stories, their journeys, why they wrote the book, what them, the research and how they write. i grew up in a family of storytellers. my grandmother worked for several of the big chicago newspapers the sun, the sun-times, the daily, at the

tail end of the hecht's front page era. and i've learned frustrating and the fascinating and crazy stories that newspapers would publish in those days almost impossible to believe. when i was six years old, she asked me jamie, did you know that during the chicago world's fair of 1893, a mad man doctor murdered 100 women and dissolved their bodies in acid and? my mother said, whoever heard this, i know he didn't. but now he does. and that led to later. i might be to my agents saying i have an idea for a book and i said it's about dr. holmes of chicago and it's about and he said, do you know who erik larson? i said, yeah. he said, i happen to know he just started writing book. so think of something else. and i said, well, there was 12 a 12 day manhunt for john wilkes about the lincoln assassination. he said, i think i could sell that.

so write about the lincoln assassination. a few years later, my grandmother gave me a typical birthday gift for a young boy, an engraving of john wilkes booth derringer pistol that he used to kill abraham lincoln. not a not a bicycle, not a baseball net, but an assassination. it was it was framed. a clipping from the chicago tribune newspaper. from the morning of march of april 15th, 1865, the morning that lincoln died and the clipping said hoof assassin kills the president to the stage, runs out the back door and escapes on a horse and then and that's where someone had cut the clipping off. and i was obsessed with reading the rest the story that hung on my bedroom wall for most of my life. i still have it and i thought, i've got to read the rest of the story and it's part of the research for man. i was able to buy an entire run. chicago tribune's from april and may 65, so i now possess the whole newspaper from that clipping inspired me to write man it and my grandmother's gift inspired me to write that book

and ultimately led to apple tv plus mini series. and we enough that's coming out this march and so at random gift to a ten year old boy led into that world of writing that book and executive producing that show. my grandfather was a chicago policeman from the 1930s to the late 1960s. the civil rights and vietnam protests era. when he came home from work one night, he whispered to my mother, don't let jimmy at the newspaper tonight. there's been an awful crime. does anybody in the audience remember the name richard. yes. the who knifed several student nurses to death in their apartment and who vanished and was later captured because one of the nurses hid under the bed and remembered him and they had a tattoo that said born to raise hell. he forgot how many captives he had and she survived.

and that's erika scott. father was also a great storyteller. he attended lynn tech high school in chicago, the same high school attended by herbert hans haupt, one of the eight nazi saboteurs landed by u-boat on the eastern shore of the united states. 1942. you can imagine the rest of that story years later when i worked at the u.s. department of justice, i did. dad invited my dad to visit my office across the hall it to the wall was a bronze plaque that read in this room were tried the eight nazi saboteurs and it named them all including herbert hans helped. then i took the head down the basement to the bowels of the doj and showed him the room where the nazis were locked up during their trial and before their execution. they electrocuted. then we used to go to a restaurant in chicago on german avenue and on swedish. a few doors down was a gift j to a duke to greek shop gift shop. my father me in and to see that

woman behind the counter pick something he went to buy. i want you to meet her. so i bought a little china lion figure. it was dollar and he said talk her, say hello, buy it and then i'll tell you who she was. we went outside and my father said, that was tokyo rose. i learned later there were several tokyo roses, but. but she was one of the women who did radio broadcasts propaganda broadcasts who convinced soldiers it wasn't worth fighting the japanese empire. and so growing up, i was surrounded by history. when i was six years old, i wrote letter to j. edgar hoover and he back and wanted a future i'm going to write about is what i wrote to him about and what he wrote back to me as a child child. i wrote my book on john kennedy because my father told me i was a boy. what it was like the day kennedy shot my kept what she called her

work. she was a painter. she kept her morgue of clippings in a sliding door closet, her bedroom and that morgue i found magazines to this kennedy assassination and to the hanging execution of the lincoln conspirators. i was transfixed by these images and she found me up there looking through her papers. and i could tell by her tears that something bad had happened to president long ago. and then the hanging photos of the execution were by alexander gardiner, the photographer who took many great photographs, abraham lincoln and years later, when i was working on the book, i acquired an original set of alexander photographs that i had seen in life magazine when i was a boy. and so that's really how i got very into storytelling and listening to wild stories by my family and in fact, my book on martin luther in his last year was inspired by my memories of

assassination. i was a small boy, he lived in chicago, and my father drove me into the neighborhoods where the riots happened because he wanted me to see, as he said, where history had happened. so he drove me to the neighborhoods i visited, the burned out buildings, the signs. and i was so vivid of him being in april 1968. so that's what inspired me to write my book about the death of martin luther king. so i've come to realize that every book i've written has somehow been connected to something. i learned in my childhood or a story was told or an object i've seen and that's the case. the deerfield massacre, the surprise attack of force march and the fight for survival in early america when was in college, i received a historic deerfield fellowship in early american history and decorative arts. historic deerfield has a mile long street of museum houses in deerfield, and every year they

invite about eight college students to, spend an intensive summer there studying. early american architecture, silver ceramics landscape and of course, that's i first heard the phrase the deerfield massacre, and i became obsessed with that story. i visited the graveyard many times, visited the colonial graves. i read the stories. i the cumnock valley memorial association museum, which is a repository of some of the great relics of that era. and so that, too, has fascinated me for decades. so that's really how i got into that. in fact, in memory and myth, i look at this story from perspectives that of the english colonists and the native americans, and i followed the story. 1704 down to the present day and fact native americans been

embraced for hundreds years from their role in the story yes the colonists lost the battle. the natives. had one. but for the next three centuries, until very recent time, the colonists really won the battle of deerfield they won the historical memory. they succeeded in erasing the role of native americans in what happened. so i hope in my book to out and resist the cultural and the stereotypes of the native american role in the deerfield. founded in 1675, deerfield was one of the first new england settlements. it sprouted up as a farming village. it was not wealthy. its had little money and few possessions. it was really a small town of, hardworking people who really had very little compared to boston and other eastern outposts in massachusetts situated about 90 miles west of boston between the connecticut

and deerfield river. it's only asset its only true asset was its rich farmland. in 1675. deerfield not escape the violence of king philip's war. it had escaped the earlier conflict of the pequot war, which happened long before deerfield even existed. and so the first violence in deerfield happened in a place called bloody brook in september 1675, during philip's war. deerfield were supposed to transport wheat in to a nearby town to bring supplies for the military forces in the militia. they were heedless and thought they were safe and there 17 or 18 carts driven by teamsters, along with 60 soldiers and went on their journey of a few miles. they crossed the brook, they didn't realize that up to 1000 native warriors from several

were hiding in the underbrush and hiding in the trees and without warning they struck. the colonists had been so foolish as to notice a canopy of luscious grapes hanging their heads. and so they laid their muskets to pick the grapes and eat them in the warm weather is one of the mantras. red deer and deadly grapes. they to them the indians struck the they had no chance. the indians fired the volley first and then the colonists tried to pick up their arms and fight back by then most of the natives had dropped their weapons weapons and withdrawn from their belts. one of the deadliest weapons on the new england. not the knife, not tomahawk, the war clock. the war club was like using a baseball bat hitting but wielded by a champion hitter. they were absolutely deadly weapons. and in the book, i show some illustrations of natives

carrying clubs and a current war club. also from the 1600s that survived that era. and so they were wiped out. over 60 militia were killed, 718 of the 18 teamsters driving the wagons were also killed. and it was one of the worst disaster areas. and new england history deerfield was abandoned that for several years. of course, the war was not over after king philip was killed and the war ended, it was still a dangerous. multiple attacks occurred through the late 1600s and for few generations the disastrous bloody brook haunted the memory of the people who lived in deerfield. they thought it could happen anytime again. in fact, i'm going to tell you something that john williams said, but first i forgot to mention the mystery of deerfield

in 1937, kind of a can read. aiken wrote this in a wpa guide to master use. it's it's no exaggeration to say that deerfield is not so much town as the ghost of a town the most beautiful ghost of kind and with the deepest and historic significance to be found in america. and it feels that way today. so rumors came to deerfield in paris, maybe 1701, 17, 17 or two, that the french and their native allies, canada, were planning a trek down to new england. where would they? no one, no, no one knew. would they hit them with hit connecticut or were they go to deerfield? deerfield was the most northwest an outpost of the english colonies in massachusetts and it was quite vulnerable. and so rumors kept coming to deerfield that the attack was looming it was about to happen. it could happen any day. in fact, reverend williams said

this about that. he said, i said a part a day of prayer to ask god either to spare and save us from the hands of our enemies or us to sanctify and honor him with whatever. so he should to happen to us. he wrote to the governor of massachusetts and said, i would lay our case as it is. we've been from our houses and home lots into the fort. there were ten houses in the fort, some a few miles away where we have suffered much loss. strangers tell us they wouldn't here for 20 times as much as we do. the enemy having such advantage on the river to come down to us. in the fall of 18, the fall of 1703, in october a people started to relax. the the natives hadn't come yet. winter would be coming soon. the snow and ice should protect them from attack. little did they realize in january. 1704 the french and native

forces were massing canada and the of deerfield really had no intelligence that they were coming and so john williams warned of this, but no one listened to him and. 250 to 300 native warriors from several tribes abenaki, -- from odenkirk, parents, lorette mohawks of kind of rocky penicuik and iroquois of the mountain departed canada on snowshoes, headed to deerfield. they had a march 300 miles in the middle of winter. it was a difficult journey to get there. they marched out of deerfield few days before february 29th, 1704. leap year. no one had detected them. the indians maintained a code of silence. they didn't fire their weapons. they didn't hunt. they didn't fires. so the night before. they were encamped a couple of miles deerfield and ready to strike. and thd did they came in around

maybe three in the morning when it was dark. snow had piled high up against palisades. they climbed and dropped into the fort. there was only one guard and they didn't notice them or had fallen asleep. their myths about what happened? to the guard the first warning of the attack was the firing of muskets, the lighting, torches, and the attack began. the people of deerfield really had no chance. there were 300 of them and they first were roused their beds when their windows were broken, when the indians attacked their doors and shot them. axes and hatchets and tomahawk. they hit reverend williams house early. they seized him, bundle them in his clothes. he fired a pistol that misfired. they almost killed him for. it they took his two youngest children and smashed their heads on the front doorstep and killed them in front of him. then they killed his female black slaves for trying to protect the children.

and then they did that to every house in town, they set them on fire, drove people into the street. there was no organized resistance. the colonists didn't have time to organize and create firing lines, fight back. and it was over pretty quickly. two houses resisted to fortified houses. one, the george sheldon house, which went down in legend, is the old indian house. it had a huge double think oak door and they tried to chop it down and chop it and they cut a hole and and a musket through and fired a random shot and killed a woman in the house. they could not break down that they couldn't burn it down. they couldn't chop it down. and it looked like everyone that house would survive. but then an occupant afraid and he fled from a secret rear door and left it open him. so the natives all rushed in and captured everyone in the house. then the last surviving house that hadn't been captured yet was the servants house, but now

only stebbins, and about ten people inside opened a withering fire against. the natives shot and killed several of them and the door would not them. a little later, a relief force from hadfield rode into town. they had seen the glowing sky in deerfield direction and knew the town was under attack and under the cloak. the old code of the frontier. they were required to get their guns, mount their horses and rush to the aid of deerfield not. knowing how many natives were there, how serious was the attack? it was their duty felt to risk themselves and rush to the deerfield and help people as they were riding town. some of the natives are still there and they saw that the hatfield relief force come and they started fleeing the taking their captives with them they took 112 people captive, including the reverend john williams. they took babies captive, five year olds, 12 year olds, adults, men andndnd there's no one who s

spared from being taken captive, including pregnant women and. so as they fled to the river, she crossed to the other side via the relief force, was heedless and pursued them with abandon, kissing aside their garments, hats to catch up to them. the natives laid an ambush and another ten colonists on their way out of town. and that led to the march. 112 captives were taken on a march to canada through the snow, the ice in the middle of winter in february, the natives had brought extra mustard moccasins, snowshoes for some of them to help move because the old english footwear was not useful for that kind of thing. and then that began more than month long journey to canada. they were captured for reasons in native american culture. there was something called a morning war. muir nanji or the idea was that

captives could replace people from the tribe who had been killed or died, especially prized, were younger, younger children who could be adapted into native culture, taught the language, taught the ways young women were, especially prizes captives because they could marry into the tribes and then even have children with with members of the tribe so people were killed in that meadows fight. 41 were killed or smothered in the town with fires and hundred 12 were captive. the captives included half of them were under age 1840 of the captives were not yet 12 years old, and the march took about a month. and reverend wife eunice was slain. one day after the march, she was killed by tomahawk after she fell into a river and really couldn't walk much more. 19 captives were slain in the march. well, prize captive was reverend

william. a seven year old daughter of eunice. younger children were the candidates for conversion to native and also in the jesuits were very involved in the raid on deerfield. so on one hand the jesuits wanted to acculturate the children into the catholic faith and the natives wanted to acculturate into the native faith or the native beliefs. and so both sides, the french and indians were to convert the young captives. after 1000 days of captivity. reverend williams and many of the captives returned to deerfield on november 21st 1706, and in the spring of 1607, sorry, in spring of 1707, he published his famous book, the redeemed captive, returned to zion. it was an account of the raid, his captivity the efforts of the jesuit to pay him huge sums money to convert to catholicism

it would be considered a great triumph. if they could get one of the most prominent ministers of, new england, to betray his faith and betray people. but he wouldn't do it. they were more successful in trying to recruit units. william and his seven year old daughter. he was allowed to see her a few times a day, most they mostly kept her secluded from them and ultimately in end, she never came home again. so one of the great pains of his life was his missing little girl who he could not bring home in february 17, 1729, deerfield the 25th anniversary of raid and william died on june 10th, 1729, and he was a minister in deerfield for more than 50 years, and he was a true spiritual guide and leader of that town. in fact, when he died, a neighboring minister, reverend chauncey, read this epitaph

about him and he said this john williams was one of the pillars of the land. he was redeemed from the flames, passed through the wilderness and a sea of danger and reached the temple eternal in the heavens. so that, in a nutshell, the story of what happened during the deerfield raid, a little known episode from anne's war when during the war of spanish secession, where european countries were fighting over who could take over the spanish throne, and it rolled across the ocean and landed in deerfield. so the main story of what happened that night but also this i also want to talk about the memory myth of the massacre and what happened. 1804 was the 100th anniversary of the massacre, and that's the first time it was ever called massacre. in a sermon by reverend john taylor, the people who experienced the raid of 1704 called it the sacking of

deerfield, the mischief deerfield the attack your field. none of the victims of that attack ever called it a massacre. in 1838, a monument was erected a bloody book took to the at the graves of the men who were killed in that battle in the 1840s. the cult of the gold indian house started it became a revered place and it was considered an emblem of the mission in. new england. and so that has stood until 1847 or 1848. there was an effort to preserve it. a circular went out saying that building in the house is in bad repair. the owner wants to sell it. we must save it. it's a symbol. our faith and origins. it didn't work.the appeal failen

1848, the house torn down and it was considered a great loss and a great tragedy. one man who witnessed this whole figure importantly the story was a man named john sheldon, and it seared his memory of the loss of history and. he decided to do something about it. the door survived, the alderney door survived, and it was sold in 1863 by one of the people who inherited it from hoyt family. it was done secretly. privately, the deerfield elders did not learn it, and they they were crushed that this happened and deerfield had lost its history again, the elderly door really was was a survivor of the effort to preserve mount vernon. the deerfield preservation effort is the oldest in house and door preceded the mount vernon ladies associate and the door was considered an incredible symbol of what it

meant in terms of deerfield culture. the house and the door symbolized something that will last, like the english colonies in america were supposed to do. the house and door were plain and unadorned and suggesting the honest simplicity of the people who built them. rugged and raw. they were designed to withstand the harsh new england winters hot, humid and sun drenched summers. they proved strong and impervious to assault the characteristics of the house, and the door suggested the durability and resilience of the english people. and so deerfield tracked the door and bought it from the crazed collector who was to purchase it. and the door was then brought back to deerfield in a great ceremony of triumph parades, ceremonies dressed in costumes. the symbolism of that door and the tomahawks, cutting it and slicing it made the door the most iconic relic in the history of early new england.

and actually, you can visit it today in deerfield in the cumnock valley memorial association, there is a room there called memorial hall, which cemented the myths of deerfield george selden became obsessed with preserving deerfield past one obsession. he didn't have was to keep the natives and native americans in the story. he was instrumental in embracing them from the history of the massacre. and in fact, he would excavate their graves and desecrate their graves and not even keep records or not indicate where found them. they were meaningless to him. and so a principal role of his was to the colonial white new england past, but to disregard the native american past. and he really triumphed in that for a long time. then really to george shelden. he was a living legend.

he became really a symbol of deerfield and he became the spokesman for the values his colonial forebears. as the 19th century came to a close the story of the rate of 1704 had become fixed as a north star in deerfield history and sheldon had won the narrative and now control the next century and how that story of would be told. his history, his and through memory and myth, his writing and research. and so that really opens a new of the myth in memory of deerfield story. sheldon wrote a book called the history of deerfield two volumes. he the company failing memorialization to preserve the relics of their time. and then he took over memorial hall and building that used to be the deerfield academy and made it a gigantic museum of colonial revivalism. and in that chamber with door he created a special wall of marble cenotaph slabs, naming all

victims of the so-called massacre and their fates. and it became one of those celebrated locations in early new england. people came to visit. it created an obsession with colonial revival, and he was there presiding the whole story. and it was not until decades later into the 1920s, one single native american woman who's descended from the story came to deerfield and gave a talk at. george sheldon's museum, the first native to even come to deerfield give a talk like that. no talk is recorded. then deerfield really became a center of tourism maybe about 1900. a woman named mary p, will smith wrote a book that was a huge bestseller that's in print today. the boy captive, robert deerfield. and then published a series of books about young englanders making their way in the new world, fighting the natives, building the colonial culture

and symbols of what deerfield then. in 1910, thomas edison made a movie in deerfield little known. now the silent film was called an uncle's vow, and it was a myth. it perpetrated various stereotypes, unbelievable stereotypes of the natives. no natives were allowed to appear in the film. of course, they were represented by white actors. had putty applied to their faces, faded to give them crooked noses. their their faces were painted red. red washing was not new to history. it was done at the boston tea party when the raiders posed native americans. and the story is essentially this. it depicts bloody brooke massacre in the deerfield massacre and in a nutshell, an indian chief with a son in monaco sacrificed, his life to save the white colonists. then he tells his son, you must

take care of them and man, he sacrificed his life to save. of course, a beautiful daughter. and that daughter is taken captive by natives, and they're about to kill her with tomahawks and hatchets and strip her and torture her and burn her alive. and then a narco shows up on the scene. the son of the and narco invokes the ancient right of indians to sacrifice himself for the white maiden and save her, of course, has no basis of native american culture or myth and then there's a great scene where he escorts ruth and her father and her her white boyfriend to the edge of town. and i have to tell what what does at the end. and so he escorts her there and he says, you go and i go, prefiguring the indian policy of the 1830s and 1840s, i go west

and narco is being vanished from his own homelands and he represented the noble savages trope of the of the loyal indian who had vouchsafed the protection of the white family. the movie might have a different ending today. a contemporary article said perhaps an echo in his breast. the handsome, savage had some gentle thought of the girl he had saved, but as nobility of character permitted him to entertain that thought only for a moment the movie might have a different today with ruth abandoning her solid, stolid boyfriend ebenezer fleeing deerfield and running with romantic and willing an uncle, hollywood's all about endings. so, so lacking in history. then the memorialization began more in 1913 through 1916, deerfield started a deerfield pageants every two years. these descendants of the people of the original town dressing up

colonial costumes, creating reenactments, having ceremonies, having these things photographed in interesting as indians. there's a great photo in the book of a little white girl sitting on the of a mohawk warrior, a white man dressed as a mohawk, being toted on the shoulder and she reverse. she represents seven year old eunice so is is totally of native traditions then the pageants really transformed and mythologized what happened in deerfield it it became a victory of the colonists they may have lost in raid they may have had many people killed and taken. but at the end the white was triumphant and that was represented in the of the deerfield pageants. then there was a massive appropriation of native american iconography. it became commonplace and it

happened in deerfield pop culture appropriated indian names to place names, movies, programs, comics, summer camps, professional sports commercial products, steam restaurant tourism, souvenirs, advertising, art, children's toys, and more. a few were based directly on the deerfield story. a woman in deerfield, the old deerfield townhouse dollhouse, and she made little paper dolls representing the captives. and in deerfield attack, indian remained a popular theme. the book drums along the mohawk inspired the 1939 motion picture starring henry fonda in the revolution, and then another novel based on captivity in the hands of the senecas represented a blond white woman wearing a low cut blouse and shredded short sleeves, bound at the wrists behind her two bare chested indians to beat her fate, quote, would would she be tortured, sold or forced to

marry as the lurid cover copy indian captivity literature joined enjoyed a long life from mary robinson to john williams for the captive and even to the 1956 john wayne film the searchers. then finally, native voices returned at the covenant memorial association for the 300 and the first year the massacre. the curator designed new clothes to drape over the engravings of the old cenotaph tablets. for example, one tablet read sarah field captured an indian. she married a savage and became one. the new panel read married and adopted by the culture and customs language in her new community and kind of wacky and of the tablets were covered with new information about that and then finally in thousand and