tonight on c-span. >> in partnership with the library of congress, c-span brings you books that shaped america. our series explores key works of literature that have had a profound impact on the country. in this program, thomas payne's common sense from 1776. as the american revolution entered its second year, many colonists were divided over whether to reconcile with great britain or seek independence. but in january 1776 a pamphlet

titled common sense was published in philadelphia. it penned anonymously by an englishman the author was thomas payne, a recent immigrant with connections to founding fathers benjamin franklin and benjamin rush. the pamphlet laid out arguments and persuasive language for not only resisting british rule but casting it off. payne argued the colonists had an opportunity to create a new nation based on self-rule. the cause of america is the cause of all mankind payne wrote adding that the nearer any government approaches to a republic it -- republic the less business there is. common sense sold hundreds of thousands of copies and was distributed widely across the 13 colonies, it was off and read aloud in taverns and meeting houses which helped spread the patriot cause. in july 1776, six months after common sense was published, the continental congress signed the declaration of independence. host: welcome to books that

shaped america a special c-span series that looks at how throughout our history, books have influenced who we are today. this 10 week series will focus on different eras, different topics and different viewpoints. we are glad you are with us, joining us through this walk through history. tonight our focus is thomas payne and his 1776 common sense. joining us is richard bell, a university of maryland history professor who teaches common sense in his classes. professor bell it is january 1776, what is going on in the american colonies. >> it is a busy time, thank you for having me here. we can go all the way back to the stamp act of 1765 but that seems too far back so why don't we say 1774 it might be where we want to start this conversation. there has just been the boston tea party in december of 1773,

and the british king of parliament who retaliated with a series of very coercive draconian responses against the people of austin, the people of massachusetts. a set of acts known as the coercive acts or the citizens of boston call them the intolerable act. that is caused a lot of uproar, not just in boston massachusetts where these acts are being enforced but in many other colonies as well. so a sense of grievance spreading in 1774. in 1775 we saw the outbreak of hostilities, armed hostilities from lexington and concorde in april of 1775, the battle of bunker hill, the formation of the continental army and in november of 1775 two months before common sense hits philadelphia bookstores we see a royally appointed governor in

virginia by the name of lord dunmore offering an extraordinary proclamation to enslaved men of fighting age if they come and join royal forces to cross -- crush these rebels. now calling themselves patriots and he will grant them lifelong freedom so gradually slowly but surely tensions have been ramping up and what began as some modest political disagreements now seems on the verge of breaking open into something much more trying. peter: how strong was the loyalist sentiment at the point when common sense was published? richard: it is been hard to get a that question because we know what happens next, we know that the patriots will rise and rise and gather and we know that they will win by 1783 when the treaty of paris is signed it so it is important that we scroll back and realize that when this is all starting, it is no sure thing that a movement for

separate nationhood, for american nationalism, for independence is going to gather any supporters at all. we don't have accurate estimates of how many patriots are loyalists or neutrals there were. any single moment in time, but in january of 1776 when tom payne will publish this extraordinary pro independent pamphlet, very few other american colonists were talking openly, let alone loudly about independence. so the default position was for those who felt aggrieved by all of britain's policies, that something must be done. but that something did not yet have a name, and that name was not yet independence. so a redress of grievances was perhaps the order of the day for most aggrieved american colonists. peter: so professor richard

bell, this 48 page pamphlet was published. how was it published and what did it contain? richard: oh my goodness. it was published by a publisher with a very similar last name to mind, robert bell, no relation. unlike robert i am a u.s. citizen. robert bell was a philadelphia publisher with a reputation for publishing things which might make some of his competitors are customers angry. a sort of broad agenda politically speaking. thomas payne it had been scribbling the document we now know to be common sense in the fall of 1775, and shopped it around. robert bell was happy to publish it in part because thomas payne had developed a reputation very rapidly in recent months. as an anti-british flamethrower. agitator. so robert thought he probably

might cause a little stir with a pamphlet with such a prominent thesis. he certainly did not know a war for independence would be carried on the back of this pro independent pamphlet but he certainly hoped to make a buck or two. peter: let's read from common sense, in short monarchy and succession have laid not this or that kingdom only but the world in blood and ashes. small islands not capable of protecting themselves are the proper objects for kingdoms to take under their care, but there is something absurd in supposing a continent to be perpetually governed by an island. how subversive was this? richard: in so many ways very subversive indeed. there are people on both sides of the atlantic ocean who have criticized their king or queen before. there are people on both sides of the ocean who have criticized

the monarchy as an institution before. but rarely with the vitality, the energy, the command of the english language, the confidence that this relatively unknown writer thomas payne brought to the task. it is a rare and unusual thing for a public print like this pamphlet, this 48 page un-staged, unbound pamphlet, to say not just that the author has a bone to pick with the king but that all kings everywhere are and by nature will always be illegitimate. and a moral and unscrupulous. it takes extraordinary confidence at the very least to say something like that in public albeit anonymously when the pamphlet was first published. peter: so thomas payne was not writing abstract political philosophy. richard: it is a great question

because he is drawing i think on an intellectual, political, cultural well of what we might call republican with a small r, anti-monetary -- monarchy, stretching back 100 years. there have been an english civil war in england in the 16 40's which seemed anti-monarchist, the cut off the head of the king there. charles the first and that produced writing about why he would do such a thing. it's a pain it may or may not have been familiar with the some of that anti-monarchal writing of 100 years earlier. we certainly know that ever -- other revolutionaries like jefferson or reading and drinking and that well of ideas but i think you could also see payne's own personal politics coming through as well. peter: professor bell, was common sense a common phrase at that time? richard: i'm going to leave it to our friends at the oxford english dictionary to put a particular date on that sort of

usage but one thing i did learn in reading some of the wonderful scholarship on thomas payne is that in an earlier phase of his life when he had been a journalist and debater in england he sometimes published pieces in local newspapers in britain. he did not use his own name to sign those pieces, he used a pseudonym. a made up name or phrase. for the federalist papers for instance. but the one he chose back in england in the 1770's was common sense, so he saw that as a name to plume. a pen name. richard: what was the immediate reaction when common sense hit philadelphia? richard: if found a readership very quickly. we know that not because everyone who bought one wrote down what they bought one and told historians, reading documents in the labors of congress with a thought. but because we know from printing records just how many

copies were printed and how many more additions had to rapidly be rushed into print. not just by robert bell in philadelphia but by rival printers basically ignoring any sort of copyright claims in publishing their own bootleg versions in philadelphia. and then printers in other towns and cities from boston and providence to new york and charleston rushing their own bootleg versions of common sense into print within a matter of weeks. and lots of pamphlets by lots of different authors were published in 1776 but none have the sort of rapid take-up in sales that common sense did. by the end of that first year, 1776, it was published in january, it was the best-selling political pamphlet of the year. there were plenty of readers who hated it and plenty who did not want to read it at all but among those who read it, many found that they were very sympathetic to it. peter: when you read common

sense it reads kind of like the declaration of independence. here is a statement and then a diatribe against the king of england. richard: i love that observation. i am hoping we can talk more about the declaration of independence in this conversation because that is a parallel i've been thinking about as well. when we think about the declaration of independence written after common sense in july of 1776, we often think about that list of grievances that thomas jefferson wrote about king george. all those 25, 27, however many grievances. that he has, he has, taking one charge and leveling it to the king of england after another. i would argue that jefferson must have gotten that idea of personifying the enemy from thomas payne. as you point out, to read common sense is to watch thomas payne say all of the grievances the american colonists are experiencing. they are one man's fault.

in that one man is george the third. so there is a same sense of prosecuting in a murder trial in both of those documents. peter: we are talking about 1776 and common sense. we want to give you a snapshot of what the colonies, america was like in 1776. common sense was published in january of that year, about 2.5 one million, or if you estimate the population of economies -- colonies, with economies based on for trapping -- the second continental congress governed them at the time and john hancock was president of the congress. the revolutionary war started 4/19/1775. an independence from britain was declared six months after common sense on july 4 1776 and the taxation rate, this is the number that surprises me, was 1.5%. and there was protest against that. richard: times have changed

somewhat haven't they? we could talk in depth about taxation and british policy but i -- let me make two points about the taxes. one is why is britain imposing all of these taxes over the previous 10 or 13 years on these hapless american colonists who don't like having their taxes raised? one thing to bear in mind is that britain in those colonies had just fought a major global war in the 1750's and 1760's called the seven years war. we in the united states sometimes call it the french and indian war which is its local name. but this global war against the french empire had almost bankrupted the english treasury and so there was a massive national debt in britain. as far as the ministers there were concerned it needed to be paid down. taxation is a way to do that. what many fakes -- folks may not know is it was not just the american colonists who were being handed new taxes to pay down this imperial war that.

20 a british subjects in england itself, scotland and wales were facing higher taxation to but they did not have the same tools at their disposal as people 3000 miles across the sea to register their discontent about taxation with inadequate representation. peter: so nearly 250 years later richard bell, does thomas payne's common sense hold up and still have an impact? richard: of course, i reread it today. and you did too. there are passages, so many which leap off the page as if they are the sort of political writing that would animate people at any time in any place. the document has some different sections serving different purposes, one part early on is the writings of a very animated constitutional scholar.

and they may strike some readers without any familiarity with english constitutionalism as less vivacious as other parts but once you get into the heart of this document, especially the long section were pain dismantles monarchies as legitimate institutions, then pain seems to find his vibe. his groove in the writing really starts to soar both in terms of his rhetoric but also interestingly in the language choices he uses. he starts to talk at you much more directly and clearly. you feel like he is next to you and you are talking with someone very smart and very opinionated who is going to win you over. that is payne's genius. to use the plain spoken language of a tavern go are really to engage ordinary people. he is not writing for the thomas

jefferson's of the world he is writing for the man and woman in the street who can be persuaded by a well reasoned yet clear and accessible prose. peter: take it forward, where would you put him on today's political spectrum? richard: his politics are completely fascinating. to understand his politics you need to realize that common sense is not all there is to thomas payne. i would argue that tom payne wrote three masterpieces for which he is remembered. in some ways they are very different from one another their names are common sense, the rights of man, and the age of reason. he wrote the other two in the 1790's about two years apart and they have a lot to do with the context of the french revolution which was unfolding by that time. what we can say at the general level is that payne knew what he thought and that his ideology was consistently pro-republic

with a small r and pro-democracy. of course with a small d. he wants ordinary people to have responsive, elective, accountable, transparent, representative -- he is suspicious of organized or ancient power structures like monarchies and organized religion. and so he was one-of-a-kind but i see a lot of lead during any in those ideas. peter: good evening and thank you for joining us for the this book shaping america a kick off of a 10 week series here on c-span looking at books that shaped america. shaped our history, made us who we are today. this list from a longer list put up by the library of congress in 2013. we chose 10 books from that list , you can find all of this information on our website dedicated to this series

c-span.org/books that shaped america. this is an interactive series and we want to hear from you. tonight we are talking about thomas payne and common sense will put the phone numbers up on the screen in case he would like to participate in our conversation here with professor richard bell of the university of maryland. 202798 -- for those in the mountain and pacific time zones and if you can't get to the phones and would still like to make a comment or question try the text number. this is for text messages, 202, 748 8003. if you do send a text please include your first name and your city. we will begin taking those calls in just a few minutes. i have mentioned that our partners in this endeavor is the library of congress we are using

some of their materials. we are going up and shooting some materials of first manuscripts etc.. a lot of the books that we will be covering in this series and we want to show you this video. this is one of their archivists with an original copy of common sense. >> i am a curator in the rare book and special collections division at the library of congress. we have here thomas payne's common sense. the first edition. it was printed in january 1776 in philadelphia. it is a 47 page pamphlet in which pain who was a recent immigrant to the colonies, argued for separation from great britain. up until this time americans consider themselves to be part of great britain. even though it there had already

been some battles between the american colonies and great britain, most americans wanted reconciliation. this pamphlet change their attitudes towards the monarchy and the abuses of great britain towards the american colonies. and encouraged and persuaded them to establish a new government. it's divided into four parts. the first is on the history of government and the second part deals with monarchy and hereditary succession. the third part deals with the current state of american affairs, and the fourth part talks about the ability of america to govern itself into form a navy that could challenge the royal navy.

this is a first edition and i don't know exactly how many copies were printed in the first edition. there were several additions printed very quickly because it was a very popular pamphlet. there have been estimates of around 75,000 to 100,000 printed within the first few months. eventually i have seen figures that suggest there were around half a million copies printed in total. at the time, the colonies consisted of about 2.5 million inhabitants and that makes it the best selling book in all of american history. they would have purchased this pamphlet from local booksellers or the printer, in terms of the technical production it uses probably handmade paper that was created on a chain line type

paper. and it would have been issued without its binding. it is a pamphlet. people were expected to bind their own books at the time. this particular book or pamphlet is part of our american imprints collection. with this collection at the american imprints collection, we tried to document the early printing history of the united states and preserve that for posterity. peter: richard bell, are curator at the library of congress was talking about the four sections of the book. why is it important to note how thomas payne divided this book? richard: we don't have payne's own inside baseball account of why he structured it this way. we are sort of left to read the tea leaves a little bit. but i would say he is sort of taking us back to first principles.

the first section talks about what governments are for which is not a question many would pause to reflect on. he takes us back to basics and he says governments are intended for a limited number of purposes. one of which is security, that they have resources to protect us from external threat and quickly and his survey of the history of governments across this planet over several thousand years, which is all done very tightly in a few pages, he makes the argument that governments -- most of them have lost their way. they have exceeded their original purposes and responsibilities and in some way or other, either become bloated and inefficient or become tyrannical and dangerous. those are the two choices.

that is setting himself up to then look at one particular government which is the british government under charles the third which he will do in the third part but in the interim he tackles monarchies. a particular form of government and it would be quite the understatement to say that thomas payne is not a fan. i would be happy to lay out a little more of that, pain sees hereditary monarch is as fundamentally problematic. again in ways that many of us today, especially those of us with a british accent may not always reflect upon. he sees what is unnatural, what is odd about hereditary monarchies. that we concentrate lots of power individuals who we then do not let it in parliament directly would have to sit outside of parliament therefore not knowing what the other hand of government is doing.

necessarily. the royal families are people who in payne's words have come to those positions of power not by any great intellectual advantage or political acuity, but because either they were born into a dynastic line by accident or birth they end up ruling millions of people. or because they are the upstart young man who has killed the previous dynasty of kings and said i think i can do better. which is how every new dynasty at least in the british royal family is often started. so payne appoints all these things out to american readers and labels them and frames them as absurdities. so problem is sizing the conventional wisdom, the status quo and saying we don't have to accept the way it is, we have it in our power to begin the world over again. which of course then takes us into the current state of

affairs between america and the british government, which by january of 1776 -- these two sides leads to open arms hostilities. we already had lexington and concord and bunker hill so the question pain is asking by section three of this short punchy pamphlet is are we going to keep taking more abuse, more perceived here any more tax policies, are we going to cope -- go cap in hand with a list of grievances that the king can reconcile for us? or are we going to break away and say enough is enough and seek independence? as an alternative and then in part for he makes the case that we can and that we will win. peter: let's hear from some of our viewers and let's begin with dan in bridgewater new jersey. good evening to you at your on c-span, please go ahead. caller: as a refugee coming to this country i read this thomas

payne pamphlet many times and i have to say i don't see what's the big deal. i don't think it's a major item of historical importance or political science importance or analytical importance. it seems to me it was more serving interests in the real american revolution to my mind came around the 1960's when the debate over the individual and his rights in his well-being were so predominant. but at that time, and if you look at what happened in this country afterwards it was not really democracy as freedom to rule but rather democracy as a political and economic interest for several classes. richard: peter: we're going to leave it there and get a response from our guest. richard: thank you for the

comment there. it is certainly true that to seek independence leaves a lot of unanswered questions about the nature of the governmental system. the republic that may follow it and who is going to be enfranchised to vote and who is not. and pain as someone who considered himself a friend of a broad participatory democracy was certainly disappointed and disillusioned to see that not as many people, not even every white man, got the vote in the american republic. that immediately followed the end of the war in 1783. we could debate of course for a long time whether common sense is the most important political pamphlet and i think people with different interests would reach different conclusions but people at the time certainly thought that it mounted an explosive challenge to the conventional

wisdom about monarchies as an established institution. but it did so in the form of putting forward an argument for separate nationhood and political independence that had not been quite so crystallized by anyone out loud before. and then it use the plain spoken language of a tavern keeper, of ordinary folks in the street, to drum up support for a political program. in those ways i think it was in arguably revolutionary. peter: and here is another example of thomas payne's writing and common sense. why is it that we hesitate from britain we can expect nothing but ruin. if she has admitted to the government of america again, this continent will not be worth living in from the errors of other nations. let us learn wisdom.

well ian ruskin is an actor who impersonates thomas payne and here he is talking about thomas payne's writing style. >> i wrote it in short simple sentences and i wrote it to appeal to my readers best in higher self. i also said the greatest military power on earth, we could win but in short simple sentences. 'tis not in -- but in unity that our great strength lies. yet our present numbers are sufficient to repel the force of all the world. the cause of america is in great measure the cause of all mankind, in america the law is king. society in every state is a blessing, the government even in its best state is a necessary evil. in its worst state and intolerable one. let me expand on this because it

causes much misunderstanding. we are all society and in an ideal situation we would all aid and support each other each contributing to the common good. a blessing. but since we have not yet reached such an enlightened state we must turn to the necessary evil of government to restrain our vices and to provide the support that we cannot provide ourselves for the common good of the people. peter: that was thomas payne impersonator ian ruskin talking about thomas payne's writing style. back to calls. robert in connecticut. good evening. caller: good evening thank you for c-span. you ought to mention there was a one and a half percent rate of tax, what was that assessed on? property. income. what was the tax rate 10 years earlier? and what was the tax rate of

other jurisdictions of the british? thank you. peter: richard any answer for the echo richard: just a quick one at the outset historians continue to debate and refine with the rates of taxation were for any colonial jurisdiction and how they changed over time. so i don't think there is actually an agreed-upon consensus rate that every historian would sign off on. at this point. what i can tell you is that taxation via the stamp act was on the commercial use of paper in the american and caribbean and canadian colonies. so think of all of the stuff we buy that is made of paper. folks back then used by a lot of the stuff made out of paper, newspapers, prices went up. we could be talking about a pack of playing cards. the price just one up. we could be talking about a liquor license, the price just went up, or a court document, the price just went up. the stamp act really outweighed

a large cross-section of the american colonists not just folks in the colonies but also the caribbean colonies in the canadian provinces. and then town should duties came next after appeal of the stamp act, they were handed down in 1767 and they did not only tax paper they also added a whole plethora group of other manufactured imported goods. cloth. fabric. tea and and painters -- all of the things you brought off of a ship cotton -- suddenly all of the things were more expensive. and tea actually lower the price of legally imported tea but the stamp act and the town should act certainly raise the price of the stuff we buy. so it is not being imposed on land or savings accounts or wealth or income it is being imposed to the point of sale is what we would call in the u.k. a value added tax.

richard: peter: did the pamphlet mention anything about violence or rebellion and/or revolution or was it just an elucidation of ideas for the people to read and consider? richard: great question. we should be clear here that pain here is advocating that the purpose of continuing military conflict should be the singular goal of political separation. he is not advocating starting a war because awards already started. lexington and concorde is widely considered to be the outbreak of the american revolutionary war and that was nine months old by the time this pamphlet dropped in january. i am not going to put causing a war on thomas payne's shoulders but he wants that war to mean something. he wanted to have a purpose. he wanted to achieve something tangible and meaningful that he hopes will last forever. peter: what was his relationship

with the elite of the american colonies? the other founding fathers, we have one quote we would like to share which is john adams called common sense a poor, ignorant, malicious, short sighted crop he was mass. thomas payne is said about john adams it has been the political career of this man to begin -- proceed with arrogance and finish with contempt. they do not have a close relationship obviously. but what was payne's relationship with the other? richard: difficult intense sometimes. the founding fathers we think of immediately, washington and adams. jefferson and madison, hamilton, franklin. folks like that. they're all on the same team if i can use a sports analogy. they all by the middle of 1776, around the time of the declaration would see themselves as in favor of independence which is exactly the political

project that thomas payne is advocating for in common sense. but like the members of any team it does not mean they all got along or that there was not any nuance in that particular individual agenda. thomas payne is a friend of working people in a way that few other founding fathers were intuitively. let's just say that. think about, we could go deep of course into the different biographies here but tom payne is the son of -- is the immigrant son of an english corset maker. a manual laborer. with the possible exception of ben franklin who was a printer i think he is the only founding father who ever worked with his hands and got them dirty. he was a member of the working class. so he has a bone deep sympathy for working people in a way that college graduate john adams,

patricia land didn't like jefferson and washington, had to struggle to really connect. that means their relations were often tense and difficult and i think adams in particular who always fancied himself as a voice of the people, often found he was being upstaged by someone with greater talents for speaking in the language of the working class than himself. peter: thomas payne did have a relationship with a lesser-known founding father dr. benjamin rush. in philadelphia, biographer stephen freed talked about their relationship and the importance of that relationship in getting common sense published. >> hi my name is stephen freed we are here at the american philosophical society in philadelphia in the center of the historic district in philly. in front of me is the autobiography of benjamin rush, handwritten by his kid in 1800. -- for his kid in 1800.

one of the things he described is how he met thomas payne and how common sense came about. when thomas payne moved to philadelphia to be a writer and hopefully a teacher, rush was a well-known intellectual and physician and was friends with the people who would come for the first continental congress with john adams and others. and he was interested in writing about independence himself but he was afraid. he had written about slavery and had lost many of his clients because he was against slavery. he knew that somebody needed to write an explanatory piece explaining to people why independence should not be scary to them and why it was important to understand that. he believed in explanatory writing. so he thought when he met thomas payne, payne was a really good writer. and if it all went bad for pain it would not be as bad as if it all went bad for him. and he actually wrote this to his kid. let me read a little from what he said. he said about the year 1774

certain thomas payne arrived in philadelphia from england with a letter of recommendation from dr. franklin. he was waiting for employment, he started running for united states magazine. he did this with great ability and in one of my visits to the bookstore and met with mr. pain and was introduced to him. his conversation became most interesting i asked them to visit me which she did a few days after. our subject of conversation was political, i perceived that he realized the independence of the american colonies upon great britain and that he considered the measure as necessary to bring the war to a speedy and successful issue. before this interview i put some of my thoughts on paper about the subject and was preparing to address the inhabitants of the colonies upon it but i hesitated at the time and shuddered at the prospect of the consequences of it not being well received. mention the subject to mr. pain and asked him what he thought about writing a pamphlet and suggested to him if he had nothing to fear from the popular odium to which such a publication might expose him for he could live anywhere. basically rush saying i have to live here but you could leave

town if you write this and that would be ok. so they made this deal that they would do this piece of writing together and pain began coming to russia's house with pages during the fall of 1775 and by the end of the year they had finished a draft. rush instructed him to show it to him including dr. franklin and then got a printer. they change the name, pain had originally wanted to call it plain truth rush convinced them to call it common sense and in early january of 1776 it was published. no one ever could have predicted what an unbelievable publishing phenomenon it would have become overnight. peter: richard bell as we were watching that you started chuckling. why? richard: the title story is one that is lovely. we think of common sense this pamphlet by thomas payne, to be this manna from heaven. at the sky pops into the story of the coming of the american

revolution, actually an english immigrant. he is aggrieved with great written for personal reasons and righteous -- writes this anti-british diatribe and to put it mildly moves the needle. yet as we heard from steve friede who wrote this excellent book about regimen rush that it was slightly more collaborative than that. benjamin rush is one of the people suggesting that pain turned to the subject matter for a standalone pamphlet. he previously had been an editor of the literary magazine, the draft may have gone to benjamin franklin for review and edits although that is hard to cooperate. and then it was benjamin rush not thomas payne who even came up with the amazing title for this pamphlet. i do not know whether or not benjamin rush knew that tom payne had used to publish under the pseudonym common sense but i expected they became friendly and that was a little detail that came out in that

conversation and that is why rush said how about your old nickname? how about common sense? because the great genius of common sense is that it is not actually common sense. people don't know this stuff already, they have not put -- put two and two together but thomas payne's genius is to make them think it is the only way to think from now on. it becomes common sense but it is not common sense when they open the cover and get started. richard: peter: bev in ohio. caller: thank you for the series and taking my question. as someone who is currently teaching a class on the founders i wanted to ask the professor since he did already mention about the fact that basically the war had already started, lexington and concord and bunker hill or whatever, how much we compare the influence of thomas payne's pamphlet to the argument presented by robert parkinson in the common cause and 13 clocks

that it was the fear that the newspapers were presenting throughout all of the counties that the british were promoting slave insurrections and indigenous people going to rise up and they're going to support them and richard henry lee who actually made the proposal for the declaration, he actually said after dunmore proclamation about offering the freedom to slaves who abandoned their patriot masters, in the words of henry lee himself he said dunmore united, every man in the colony of virginia so was that -- it had to be unanimous. it was that fear -- how much of a role did that play in really convincing all of them to ultimately agree to independence

as compared to how much influence payne's pamphlet had? peter: tell us a little about your class. caller: it is called the founding fathers of america, the role and impact of compromise so discussing -- peter: where do you teach? caller: it is an adult organization called the institute of learning in retirement. here in the area and southwest -- suburbs of southwest cleveland. so that's what i'm currently teaching that in, i am including this because it's amazing. as i have already mentioned common sense, so thursday when i returned back to class this is going to be pretty exciting being able to mention to individuals that i did get my question on here. peter: good and two things were going to get an answer from richard but i want to point out our website again.

c-span.org/books that shaped america, if you go to the top of that website you will see teacher resources up there. it might be something else for you to check out. so, richard what would you like to say? richard: it is such a great comment from bev. the first thing i would say is i am here as part of the series to talk about a book that shaped america. the book we're talking about tonight is common sense which i think certainly shaped america in some of the ways peter and i have started to talk about back-and-forth and hear from other people in video segments. it does not diminish payne's achievement, common sense achievement in moving the needle towards independence to say that there are other factors moving that needle at the same time. bev referenced two excellent books by robert parkinson who teaches at binghamton university. one called 13 clocks in one called the common cause and they

both make the argument that it's actually newspaper coverage of certain hot button cultural issues over the previous 12 months or so before july of 1776. that would predate common sense, that moves those 13 clocks to strike it once and parkinson's argument is a controversial one. is that it is racialized fears and anxieties about enslaved people freeing themselves and staging revolts with the kings help. that so-called savage natives are battering down our doors and that the kings dispatched german mercenaries, the haitians, to torture and murder every american colonist. that those fears at the door are what pushed people to think about separate nationhood as an alternative to remaining under the kings purview.

i think parkinson can be right and i think thomas payne can be read at the same time. and by the way one more thing, tom payne does mention dunmore's proclamation, this royal governor in virginia who threatens -- who does encourage enslaved men to flee to the british army. so that is actually mentioned in tom paine's common sense as a crossover moment between what bev is talking about and what thomas payne is talking about. peter: michael from san francisco, did thomas and david hume and david human in the scottish enlightenment have an influence on thomas payne and his age of reason resembles book three of hobbs leviathan? richard: there is a lot we don't know about what thomas payne read. i think many sophisticated readers of his work have spotted shadows and influences of other political theorists and scientists.

david hume being an obvious to chronological contemporary. also british in origin. i think hume was scottish. we don't have tom paine's reading diary. we don't have his grade school teachers leaving a summer reading list so we do not know what he read in what order or what he made of it. it has been up to sophisticated scholars to try to parse those details but certainly he had a grammar school education back in england that equipped him with not just literacy skills but a voracious intellectual curiosity. peter: speaking of back in england at what point did you find yourself interested in the american society? [laughter] richard: i grew up in england not ever being taught anything about the american revolutionary war which is probably because england was the losing side in that conflict and i think every nation has a habit of reflexively telling its schoolchildren stories in which their home nation looks good.

so i learned a lot about world war ii when of course britain single-handedly fought the nazis without any help from any other country. that is the help -- the history i learned when i was small. so i came late to the subject of the american revolution. of course a founding moment for the country that i now call home as a naturalized citizen and the more time i spend with it the more complicated and fascinating and intricate i find it. i just want to learn more and more every day about this conflict which i was in grammar school in england. peter: how do you teach thomas payne at the university of maryland? richard: he is taught pretty widely in many departments i teach in history so in the context we are talking about tonight. but i would wager some of my colleagues in political science or in rhetoric and communications would talk about it as well. politics philosophy and economics. when i teach thomas payne i talk

about how it works, how as a piece of writing payne is able to make arguments which if anyone else made them would seem preposterous and prone to being dismissed but payne somehow gets away with it. i talk about his confidence on the page as a writer. i talk about his calculative simplicity as a stylist of words. and i share one passage in common sense, which i would encourage all of you watching to take a look at one of these days, in which thomas payne imagines what we in america would do once we declared independence and embraced a republic. he says that every year, he does not say every july 4 but it might as well be, we in america should get together for a ceremony reminding us of why we are different from the people we separated from who are still committed to constitutional monarchy. he said we should all gather in a central place, think about the

national mall in washington dc which definitely did not exist at the time, and we should have a ceremony on a stage where somebody brings out the bible, to show we are a nation of christian faith. someone else brings out the american charter, think about the constitution which had not been written when thomas payne wrote this. and you should put the constitution on top of the bible to show that the constitution as a system of law is divinely rooted in the judeo-christian tradition and then someone else should come out with a crown. may be a real crown that they have stolen from a king somewhere like george the third or maybe a burger king paper crown they got from the local fast food restaurant. they put the crown on top of the constitution which is on top of the bible and this symbolizes that in america the law is the king not the king making the law. it is a wonderfully symbolic ceremony he is imagining and at the end of that ceremony he imagines we do every year someone else will bring out a

giant hammer and smash the crown into a thousand pieces and everyone gets a piece to show that they are the center of republican power. it is astonishing to me. peter: a little more writing from common sense to me. of more worth is one honest man to society than in the sight of god than all the crown ruffians that ever lived, until independence is deared the continen will feel itself like a manho continues putting off some unpleasant business from day to day yet knows it must be done, hates to set about it, wishes it over and is continually haunted with the thoughts of his necessity. jerry, largo florida. good evening thank you for joining us. caller: thank you, hello gentlemen. i just have a brief comment and the question. earlier mr. bell mentioned charles the third. i think he misspoke and probably meant -- richard: thank you for the correction. caller: in our nation right now

everybody agrees we are a divided nation. it might be time for it common sense to --2 to be written from either side because the time might be right. we do have wild mom saluting our cities and contested elections and maybe the time to consider some type of separation has come. thank you sir. peter: anything you want to weigh in on there? richard: certainly powers of political persuasion are certainly always in high demand in times of national stress. peter: mark in bridgewater massachusetts. caller: good evening to you and good evening to your esteemed guests. professor bell, you must agree with me that thomas payne was probably one of the most provocative writers that ever existed ever and all of history.

he must have had access to certain information from some of the people that he connected with in england back in the day. when he came up with statements like king george was receiving 800,000 pound sterling annually and that he and the ministry were giving large tracts of land away to their cronies in the colonies. even before 76. my wife and i just visited baja this summer and i realized that one of those prizes went to governor hutchinson who is a master suit -- massachusetts governor back in the 60's. he had been awarded the entire peninsula which comprises baja -- could you possibly make a comment about where thomas payne

was gaining access to some of this information? thank you very much. richard: thank you mark for the question. certainly graft is a feature of any bureaucracy in the british empire is certainly an example of a bloated bureaucracy at the end of the 18th century. i think of british india at the time when humble english civil servants will go to india on a tour of duty, effectively in the embassy over there, but would come back astonishingly wealthy. where had the got all of that money? opportunities abound in organizations like an empire. some of that was public knowledge. the british newspapers, and thomas payne lived in england until 1774 remember, the british newspapers were not the governments pocket like some of them still today. they were often fierce critics

of government for waste and abuse. it is entirely possible that payne was a consumer of british newspaper reporting and aware of some of that stuff. the fact he uses numbers to get that point across is also not surprising to me. payne had a great head for numbers. he was in -- a tax collector for several years while he was living in england. that may also have given him some degree of privileged information although i would not want to over egg that. and when he wrote common sense you are probably well aware that that section of it is full of numbers showing that we have the math on that side we have got enough trees, we've got enough men, i got enough wood. it got enough hemp and we can pay for it all to actually fight and win this ongoing war for independence.

so what you are referring to, i think is actually one of the core features of pain as a writer. he's not just good with letters and words he's also good with numbers. peter: you mention thomas payne was a writer and had other books published quickly. here's a look at works by thomas payne, common sense 1776. the american crisis, a series that came out from 1776 to 1783. rights of man 1791, post war. in the age of reason, his last book 1794. sylvia and cary north carolina asks how did people in england regard common sense? the fact -- was the fact that many colonists reading it of concern to people in england? richard: that is putting it mildly. yes. the british government officials who left the thickest records for us to read said quite a lot

about common sense when it was published. they knew from their correspondence in the american colonies want to smash hit this pamphlet was. they wanted to read it for themselves, copies of the pamphlet were circulating in london and within two months of it being published in philadelphia -- and that was someone put some copies of it on a ship and sailed it there. so british government officials could read themselves. it is a matter of national security at think, they wanted to find out what was in this political pamphlet and when they read it they were suitably concerned. so we have a report that circulating in london that march that >> we have a rip court that circulating in london that says that readers back in america are reading it voraciously and people who have been publicly

against the cause of independence up to that are reading the pamphlet and being converted to the carts of independence like it's magic. like harry potter is casting a spell on you which is overstating the reaction of many american readers. it communicates the fear and paranoia this is something incredibly important and beyond our control and spiraling fast. >> david in las vegas, good evening. >> thank you. thank you c-span. i want to briefly issue a quote from thomas paine saying, quote, a body of men holding themselves accountable to nobody should not be trusted by anybody. i invite everyone to make the relevant comparisons. my question is, thomas paine was good with numbers and he was estranged by the elite but

still on the same team. his writing was profound and had an impact on world history to this day. my question is why did he die broke -- >> to tell our readers as david well knows when thomas paine died , he died nearly alone and he had left they will asking to

be buried in the burial ground owned by quakers in new york. the quicker church was the faith he had grown up in back in england. the quakers refused that request which you may be surprised to hear about. when he -- his executors took him up to a farm outside new york to be buried in this was a farm given to him by the state of new york for his services as the author of common sense, he was buried with perhaps only six people attending his funeral. where i for comparison 20,000 people attended ben franklin's funeral. that is quite the dichotomy. he died in something approaching poverty in physical

torment most likely suffering from alcohol addiction and acute depression. most important your question, he died is a political pariah who had found no home in the two-party system merging in american politics. i hope we can get into why that extraordinary transformation occurs. >> nicole in dallas did common sense influence. any construction of the constitution or his arguments discussed during the constitutional convention ? >> i think that the fact of the constitution what he called the charter, system of laws to govern the newly freshly united states is very much an idea we should write it down and specify who has what power so people who think they have lots of power can check the receipts

and check to see if they have the power they think they have. by 1787 which was the year the constitutional convention meets, paine is gone to england by 1787. certainly to europe. certainly not working at that national level of politics at that time. he does have a role in pennsylvania state constitution in 1780 and scholars debate whether he had a role in the declaration of independence or not. >>.-- talked about teaching paine. we want to share video. this is from ryan. he teaches ap courses at troy high school in troy, michigan. here he is talking about how he teaches common sense. >> students need to have more sources to learn about country during the revolutionary era

and declaration of independence for looking at different documents and different writings and books. it's going to provide them a toxic of the mood of the american people. thomas paine early where he is providing context and really stirring the pot and common sense is a great example of that. it's pretty clear early on when you read common sense that paine despises monarchy. when you look at thomas paine's writing, he's pulling in a lot of the enlightenment thinkers and their theories. that's something as a companion when you look read the operation of independence uc jefferson utilizing a lot of the same topics in his writings. you can see those enlightenment thinkers and the influence they have on writers, thinkers, scholars from that era.

that will help students make that connection. as much as it pains my heart as a political science teacher, i love political theory. i think it's fascinating but maybe it's not the favorite thing of teenagers. learning about the social contract theory and natural rights. there are other things going on. we do have an opportunity to learn about social contract theory or natural rights. maybe pulling and exit from common sense would be useful to sit we learned this concept, how is it relevant here ?

students have difficulty with some of those similar challenges. it's really having to take the time with students and deep dive into what things mean and once they start to make those connections, that's something that you can get beyond. once they understand the style and format and text it's workable. the other thing is thomas paine gets into presentation of his ideal forms of government. i note that john adams really thought that paine's ideas were terrible. they are not the best but that's something that all the different suggestions he's making could really present students with difficulty if they can't see or not mapping out what paine's ideas were to set up an ideal government. >> as we export, spins common

sense, here are the other books. part of the list of 100 books that shaped america from the library of congress. the base psalm book from 64 it was the first book published in america than ben franklin is on the list with exponents and observations on electricity published in 1751. at the way to wealth in 1758. in 1783, noah webster's the grammatical institute of the english language was released. and isaiah thomas printed a curious hieroglyphic bible in 1788. here are more books from the library of congress is list of 100 books that shaped america. christopher colleagues produced the first road map of the united states in 1789 with a survey of the roads of the united states of america. ben franklin's autobiography was published in 1793. the first american cook book was released in 1796 by emelia simmons. finally, the new england primer

was published in 1803. you can see the light america at loc.gov. check the website for more information on the books featured. >> some of the other books on the library's list from that era in talking about some of thomas paine's other books in you want to make an additional comment. >> these are the missing pieces in response to my brief response to the callers question a moment to go as to why he dies alone and unloved. not because of common sense. he loved common sense. it made him some friends among the founding fathers. jefferson seem to have greatly admired tom paine through his life. the rights of man in 1791 aimed

to endorse the revolution. a sister struggle to america's own revolution. lightning is struck once in america, let's see it strike twice now in france. he was a cheerleader for the french revolution and its early phases. he wrote in written the rights of man hoping his endorsement of the american revolution and french revolution would start up in english, british social revolution and turned out the folks from buckingham palace and the rotten bars of the british parliament. and in still genuine egalitarian democracy there. did that make him any friends in england ? well, among readers of the rights of man where there were many working people. yes. among political authorities, absolutely not. he was effectively chased out

of england over the next few years and charged with sedition and treason try to bring down the empire from the inside. england, the land of his birth would never be -- the revolution run amok. he thought it was bloody chaos by this time. i made the mistake of telling french revolution they should not execute the king. he wrote a second work in the 1790s called the age of reason in which he laid the blame for

atheism and that cost him many other friends and allies. >> would you call him a christian ? >> he called himself a christian and weathered all sorts of being an atheist. he wrote a book denouncing atheism that accused him of being an he then et cetera. he believed in organized religion. >> here are books that shaped america here with richard bell. >> thank you for taking my call. i was wondering what sort of influence did thomas paine or if any did thomas paine's writings have on future revolutionaries i e a gandhi in

india and also different locations. i'm thinking of the revolution in haiti. also, why did the quakers reject him ? >> thank you. >> great question. thanks for that. i'm not the right person to answer the first part of your question. i will refer to others. tom paine and slavery and other political -- he was antislavery. in his newspaper writings in philadelphia, he published an essay which we think he wrote denouncing slavery. we can also see the more general level a commitment to making a democracy that works for as many people as possible.

sorter -- sort of broader human rights agenda. the women's rights campaign. some of the writings we previously attributed to paine as a supporter of women were anonymously published and can't not be sure he wrote them. a bigger influence than just on the narrow question of separate nationhood. >> right now in the conversation, we want to reduce you to nora. what is the institute ? >> thank you for having me. the institute for thomas paine studies was founded to study the life and legacies of paine. he lived his the last years of his life in a shell.

we look at these issues not only from historical past but connect them to the present through studies of humanities and public history as well. >> a few years back, there was new research that came in of the institute for thomas paine studies. what did you find ? >> over the last decade there's been a lot of exciting research about creation and thomas payne. as you noted several years ago a member of our research team learned of a previously unknown draft of the declaration. possibly attributed to roger sherman who is one of the five established contributors or committee of five. a bit of his score detective work to this day. we are still learning about fragments of mentors from the

18th-century that were tech between pages of book or in someone's attic and this was one of those instances. there's a small number of working graphs of the declaration preserved by the library of congress and other archives. this document which is held by private collector was recently added to the phenomenal declarations resource project and what the research team observed is this copy contains the notation or reference to atp which led them to examine if that meant thomas paine. as everyone has heard over the last hour, he was an influential figure in american independence. he was a key part of the communication network in philadelphia and around north america and the broader atlantic world. from one vantage, you can see paine as a 18th-century equivalent of social media in closer. he was in close contact with the contributors to the declaration and had an impact to use the content.

common sense was published six months prior in its own form of declaration. this menu spit raises the raises the idea he had more of a hand in the process. >> our guest here from the university of maryland. richard bell has a question. >> great to talk to you about this exciting research. as you said, it suggests the promise of overturning what we thought we knew that paine did not have fingerprints on the declaration as it was being crafted , created, revised et cetera. if you are able to demonstrate he did, what's at stake in that revelation ? >> great question. wonderful to hear all your insights on his publishing. i -- enjoyed listening to the show. when we think of authorship, it's most often as a singular

or proprietary entity. it's a writer or artist who makes their own to stick expression and has granted rights to it. that concept is more nascent in the 18th century. authorship and writing were fluid categories and understood to be extremely collaborative and often anonymous. one of the most intriguing aspects of this research for my perspective is that it helps us better understand those collaborative processes across time and space. i believe this can shed light on the relationship between democracy and media today. our colleague at the i.t. ps was working on this project recently retired but the research is still ongoing and going through the peer review process through the thomas payne national historical association. a very short answer is stay tuned. we will see what comes next.

>> what is in your view the legacy of thomas payne and why should we study him today ? >> that's a demand this question. our conversation in these last few minutes alone shows that historical knowledge is not static. that's very the manic is no evidence, ideas and ways of understanding emerge and paine and is writing is very blue medic of that. he's far from elite. quite the opposite as professor bell described. he had a deep knowledge of history and how it informed how he approached the promises of documents like the declaration and where those principles fell short. there's beliefs from the position that learning is for everyone.

>> you mentioned thomas paine's legacy. here are other things. we've all heard that quote before. there are more's to thomas paine in england. representative jamie raskin, a democrat from maryland introduced legislation to build a thomas paint memorial here in washington. public schools are named after thomas paint including in urbana, illinois, orange county, california, cherry hill, new jersey. a few plays have been written about thomas payne. president obama quoted him in 2015 quote asylum for the persecuted lovers of civil and religious liberty. the no labels movement is using

common sense majority as its motto. several biopsy of thomas paint have been written including by the late christopher hitchens. that's a little bit more about thomas paine. back to your calls. andrew in new york city. please go ahead. >> thank you for taking my call. what a privilege and pleasure to be on. thomas paine he and john adams -- he also wrote some what critical of george washington and his leadership. it brings me to the question he died also with relatively little money and nobody at his funeral. was he as a person dislike during his time ? he may have written great work but how was

he perceived by the people ? >> thank you. >> excellent question like all these questions. it depends which people you are talking about. you may say as a sweeping generalization working people had a lot of affection for tom paine. they regarded him as one of their own which he weiss. they also regarded him as having their best interest in most of his writings. there are limits to that. political partisanship. we call polarization was starting to emerge as a fact of american politics in the decades after the american revolution and before paine died in 1809. by the time he comes back to this area, baltimore, washington area in 1802 being away in europe for 15, 16 years, he is not welcomed

everywhere. there are plenty of working people who see them as a champion. buy him a drink at the local bar which he's happy to accept. also politicians usually associated with what's called the federalist party which was the party in the tradition of -- as it political liability.

too extreme. too closely associated with the violence of the french revolution. his name became mud and american political circles. his own social live diminished and diminished and people spattered him on the street and yelled terrible things as he walked by. >> one more quote from common sense. society is produced by our wants and government by wickedness. the former promotes our happiness positively by uniting our affections, the latter negatively by restraining our --

>> what was great for me is the way he was connecting the dots. having the revolution because of the numbers i read of the navy. they were not as available as they seem to be. i commissioned ships were being fixed. he left the impression it was powerful we could indeed do this. is it true that -- did you say or was it mentioned whether his name was on the declaration of independence ? i do not believe it wise. two thank you. professor bell ? >> tom paine's name is not on the declaration of independence. new research suggests he may have shown a draft. someone wrote the letters for tp on a draft of the declaration as if they were

going to show to someone with the initials tp. would that have been thomas paine ? >> final question. the legacy of thomas paine in 10 words or less ? >> 10 words or less. a commitment to republicanism to democracy. transparency, accountability and the rights and liberties of ordinary people. >> if you read common sense, we get that message ? >> tom paine worked hard to make sure you do. >> we have been talking about common sense and the first in our series of books that shaped america for the last 90 minutes. we appreciate you being with us. the list the library of congress came out with in 2013 is not a comprehensive list. there's 100 books on there. it is not a comprehensive list. it is not the best sellers. it is not the best books ever written.

they are books that shaped our history and had an impact on public and social policy. you may have your own selection of books that shaped america. if you want to include them, go to our website. go to c-span.org/books that shaped america. you will see viewer input. click on there and you can send us a video of what you think is an important book or books that you won have included. already we have at least 100 videos posted plus the 100 or so we've received that we have not put up. if you want to include your voice, we will put up your video as well. here's a selection of some viewers who have sent in their selections. >> i'm jason from washington, d.c. the book i feel shaped america is called repentance

and repair. this book is very important and i think it can shaped america because her so much shame and labeling and stereotyping that we've done as a country and it can help us find that piece. >> one of the books that shaped america in my opinion will be the effeminate mistake by betty freedom. since the first research that questions the belief the women's fulfillment must be her role as a mom and housewife. i think it shaped america because this publication is considered to be the one that sparked the second wave feminist movement. >> my book that i choose is soldier written by:power. secretary:power. great individual from the beginning up to the end of his service and what that wise. that was the benefit for me as

a servicemember in the united states marine corps. i use all those elements of leadership and i applied it into what i do and how i carried myself. >> my name is matthew. i'm from virginia. i think the book that shaped america is dr. seuss cat in the hat because it inspired a generation of readers. >> the one book i think influenced america was phyllis whitley's first book of poetry. even george washington read her poetry. she was the first african american woman what a book published. it showed the world that slaves were smart.

>> you can send us your video. maybe we will play it on the air. our guest for the past 90 minute talking about common sense and thomas payne has been richard bell at the university of maryland. history professor. we appreciate your time. we will see you next week on books that shaped america.

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>> thank you. thanks for joining us in person and those you joining online welcome. it's an honor to host any head of state. former head of state. it's an on her resume imagine if you remember the heritage foundation fondness and great friendship with the women we think walked in lady factor steps and that's former prime minister liz truss whose one of my great friends and closest friends across the atlantic. you are in for a treat. having read 10 years to save the west, this wonderful book that is being released in the united states now, i can tell you for those of us who remain hopeful about the american and british features but also understand in the short term perhaps the medium term that both our countries have real challenges. this is a must read book. i will tell you if you reasons

why. they will have a wonderful conversation but from this adopted texans point of view, my greatest frustration with washington and london is not of course the american people or british people but the fact that where there is concentration of power it is always use as a cudgel against individual americans and individual brits. this book is a diagnosis of how that came to be, what we need to do to fix it and a call to arms. a call to political arms on what we need to do. in short, to give you a summary, and obviously the former prime minister or be much more eloquent than i. it's all about sovereignty. it's all about returning that power from whatever institutions have accrued that and have over centralized that authority back to the people

will. i think for those of you who may be occasionally wake up discouraged about the present day, we at heritage did so this morning but we are still undeterred and fight for another day. five years from now, 10 years from now, 50 years from now, we do so because of the principles not only liz writes about in the books but there i say it she has personified in her long service not just just the british people but importantly to free people around the world. i will welcome her here to the stage momentarily but let me say once again, liz truss. not just on behalf of heritage but on behalf of the entire united states of america. thank you for your service to freedom and sovereignty into this special friendship that our two countries hold. please join me in welcoming her.

>> i am delighted to be here at the heritage foundation for the official united states launch of 10 years to save the west. the heritage foundation now under the leadership of kevin roberts and with gardner features significantly in the book for the first time in 2015 when i seek to go to the heritage foundation. i warned against it by the british ambassador. he says to meet you've got to be wary of this organization. they've spoken out against president obama. they've even been critical of prime minister cameron. are you sure that you want to see them ? i said, i am sure. i'm a conservative and they are

a conservative think tank in the united states of america. eventually i prevailed because i am a determined person. the car from the embassy dropped me off two blocks away from the heritage foundation. i say that that the british flag would not be sitting outside the building. i was back in heritage in 2019 when as the newly appointed trade secretary i was determined for the united kingdom was going to strike a trade deal with then president donald trump. i gave a speech at heritage and said the time is now quoting the old reagan campaign about the fact we needed to get on with this trade deal. that created massive consternation back home in the

united kingdom because the products in downing street did not want to do a trade deal with the united states and president donald trump. i outlined in my book the fact that deal would have happened if it wasn't for that resistance. >> if you look at what is going on in our societies, first of all the brexit exit in 2016 and

the election of president donald trump later that year. you can see the same desires of our people for change and the same desires for those conservative values in that sovereignty. it's not the old-fashioned left who used to argue about the means of production and economic equality dish

equality. it's the new left that has insidious ideas that challenge our way of life. whether it's about climate extremism that doesn't believe in economic growth or whether about challenging a man and a woman of biological sex. whether it's about the human rights culture that's being embedded into our society that makes it unable to deal with illegal immigration. those new ideas have been promulgated by the global left and they have been successful in infiltrating quite a large proportion of society and a large part of our institutions. let's look at the states that have economics. we saw it work under reagan and thatcher. yet, we've seen the domination

of economics in recent years bloated size of government and huge debts in both our countries. on the immigration and human rights culture, look at what's going on now on american university campuses where it's not safe to be jewish. all the -- or the streets of london. another appalling protest. or the fact that we cannot seem to deport illegal immigrants either from your southern border with a small boats that are crossing the channel.

>> we now have president joe biden which means that girls can see biological boys in their changing rooms and locker rooms and in their school restrooms and not be able to do about it. if they complain about it, they could be the ones guilty of harassment. how on earth cannot be happening in our society ? or the climate extremists. who are not satisfied with just stopping coal-fired power stations here in america. up tht

after the turn of the millennium, despite the fact that we have many conservative intellectuals and politician, why have our institutions has so >> after the turn of the millennium despite the fact of intellectuals and politicians, why have our institution, why has much of our public discourse shifted to the left ? first of all, too many conservatives have not been making the argument. i call them conservatives in name only. in america you call them rhinos. these conservatives in name only. rather than taking on those ludacris ideas, instead have tried to appease and meet them

halfway. why have they done this ? first of all, they don't look mean. they don't want to look like there against human rights. they don't wanna look like there against the environment. they didn't want to be mean to transgender people. they've allowed those arguments to affect their views on what is right and wrong. it's also more cynical than that. if you want to get a good job after paula six and if you want to get into the corporate boardroom, there are acceptable views and opinions that you should hold. most of them are on that list. if you want to be popular and get invited to dinner parties in washington, d.c. or london, the reviews on that list that you should hold. people have chosen dinner parties over principle.

the other thing i think we've missed on the conservative side of the argument and i put my hands up to this. the rising power of the administrative state. the fact that power which previously lay in the hands of democratic reelected politicians has now in the hands of so-called independent bodies. whether it's -- roles. i saw this hand and one of the key points book is about is my battles i had with that institution or mindset and

there's a phrase that we use in britain called consent and >> quite often the officials will be very polite on the request but it would take a long time to do if it's something like helping deport illegal immigrants. whether it's something they like like dealing with climate change that will be expedited. i think it's difficult for people who have not worked in government to understand just how cumbersome and how to like it has become. i don't know if that's a product of the modern era or the product of the online society but it is very difficult now to deliver conservative policies. i did many jobs in many

government departments. i was in the justice department, treasury, i was in trade, the foreign office and faced battles against activist lawyers, against environmentalists, against left- wing education lists. what i saw when i ran to be prime minister in 2022 is i saw the opportunity to change things. that was surely the apex of power. i have not been able to change the environment or or trade sector he as prime minister that was the opportunity for me to really change things. a bit of a spoiler alert about the book. it did not quite work out. i ended up being the shortest serving british prime minister. as a result of trying to take on these forces.

the particular thing i tried to take on was the whole issue of our economy. britain's economy has been relatively stagnant for a long period of time. our taxes are at a 70 year high. we are spending 45 % of our gdp on the government. what i want to do is i wanted to get our growth rates up and start dealing with a massive national debt. cutting taxes and by restraining public spending and by getting on with supply side forms like fracking. we put this forward in a budget. little did i know the night before that many budget was announced in the house by the chancellor that the governor would announced he was selling 40 billion pounds of government bonds.

and raising interest rates as much is the market expected. the second thing i did not know was that we had eight tinderbox in the financial market with liability driven investments the uk was uniquely exposed to and were sensitive to changes in guilt rates and interest rates i gave it the story of the book but to cut a long story short, the governor of the bank of england and economic establishment in britain successfully shifted the blame on to our economic policies even though to this day i believe they were the right policies and would have resulted in higher growth in the united kingdom. they were able to shift the blame and furthermore the office of budget responsibility which is a bit like a

supercharged version of the congressional budget office leaked to the press there was a $70 billion -- seven -- 70 billion pound. at my heart, i'm a patriot. could not sit there allowing things to melt down. i had to reverse the policies in order to create that stability. ultimately, i had to stand down for my job. i get questions from the press about what was going on, what did i do wrong ? i have not seen the governor of the bank of england for the officials in the economic establishment. i think we've got a big problem when a leader of the democratic mandate is not able to deliver a set of policies that would improve the country's economy and yet the elected officials

undermined the policy go unquestioned. it wasn't just british institutions. it was the imf who didn't criticize it for financial reasons but because it was unfair. why is that relevant to you ? what democratic elected politicians decide in britain ? joe biden criticize my policy from an ice cream parlor in oregon. he said cutting the top rate of tax was wrong. even though the top rate of tax in britain after my proposals was still higher than the top rate of tax in the united states. i think the fact these

international bodies got involved in the pilot is very significant. i think this shows a resistance not just in the british economic establishment but in the international economic establishment to these supply- side policies that would make our economies more dynamic and help us in our fight against authoritarian regimes. i come today with a warning to the united states of america. i fear the same forces will be coming for president donald trump if he wins the election this november. there was a huge resistance to progress supply side helices that will deliver economic dynamism and help reduce debt. what the international institutions and economic establishments want to see is they want to see higher taxes, higher spending and more big

regulation. they don't want to see that challenge. we've heard noises from the congressional budget office and elements of the united states market about the financial stability situation. what have i learned from my experience ? what have i learned from my time in office ? i have learned that we are facing really quite challenging forces of the global left. not just in terms of activist making extreme documents but also the power they hold in our institutions. that leads me to believe what conservatives need is what i described as a bigger bazooka. what do i mean by a bigger

bazooka ? first of all, i mean we need really strong conservative political and for structure to be able to take on the left. they are well-funded. they are activists. the second thing we need to do is ministered to stay. there are lots of people i speak to who say it's just because you ministers are not bold enough. if you had more political will

you would be able to deliver. those people are not great. until we change the system, we will not be able to deliver conservative policies such as the depths of resistance in our institutions and bureaucracy that we do have to change things first. what does that mean ? your ahead of us in the united states and that the president gets to appoint 3000 people into the government positions. in britain it's only 100 people. i believe we need to change that. we need to properly appoint people in our bureaucracy. we need to deal with the proliferation -- there has to be a real fire of congress.

even here in the united states, policies like schedule f will be very hard in order to deliver a conservative agenda. the project that heritage is sponsoring project 2025 is another vital part of building that we deliver conservative policies. having seen what i seen on both sides of the atlantic, both thinks are vital in order for conservative policy to deliver. we can't just deal with it because we also have the global. we've got the cop process. one of the things i tried to do was stop britain posting cop. i failed. i want to see in future abandon

that process. the best people to make decisions our people that are democratically elected sovereign nations. it's not people sitting on international bodies who are divorced from the concerns of the public. the final thing conservatives need to do is end appeasement. by ending appeasement, i'm talking about the appeasement of will or will some home as well as the appeasement of totalitarianism abroad. we have to do both of those things. both of those things are threatening our way of life. totalitarian regimes like china, russia and iran have to be stood up to. the only thing they understand is strain. the mother tree aid budget has been passed through congress. there needs to be more clarity about how russia can be

defeated and how china and iran will also be taken on. in order to achieve that, we are going to need a change in personnel at the white house. i worked in cabinet while donald trump was president and president joe biden was president and i can sure -- showed the world felt safer when donald trump was in office. 2024 is going to be a vital year. it's the reason i wanted to bring my book because getting a conservative back in the white house is critical to taking on the global left. and i hate to think what life would be like with another four years of appeasement of the woke left in the united states, as well as continued weakness

on the international stage. but my final message is that winning in 2025, or winning in 2024 and going into government in 2025 , is not enough. it is not enough just to win. it is not enough just to have those conservative policies. there will be huge resistance from the administrative state and from a left in politics that has never been more extremist or more valence. and that is why we will need all the resources of the american conservative movement, think takes lake heritage, and hopefully your allies in the united kingdom to succeed. but you must succeed because the free world needs you. thank you.

>> i think you are going to be in that seat over there. thank you very much. good morning. thank you very much for joining us here at the heritage foundation. i am the director of the center for freedom and i am delighted to host this year at heritage today. i have to say this. your book is actually a tremendous read. it is a very robust conservative book that really does standup, i think, very forcefully to the left's nefarious agenda. i also think it is a very, very gutsy book, and it is a book that is very courageous in some respects taking on the ruling left-wing establishment here in the united states as well and that is a very important thing. so i very much enjoyed reading the book. yes. i do plead guilty in being a

critic of the obama administration and also quite critical at the time of mr. david kamron in those fronts also. i would like to ask a few questions, liz, especially on the current political debate here in the united states. the world superpower. i would also like to address and big picture foreign-policy issues and also i would like to dive into the current political situation in the uk as well and things looking somewhat challenging, as we said, for the conservatives. and i would like to get the latest. we are kicking off with a discussion of the track record

of joe biden. joe biden, as you noted, sharply criticized your tax policies while eating an ice cream. and it can be said that his intervention was very unhelpful. it was an extraordinary attack upon the policies of america's closest friend and ally, but not unusual, of course, for joe biden. and he has a very controversial record when it comes to dealing with the united kingdom. in your view, liz, what does the future hold if we have for more years of the biden presidency in office? what does that mean for the world superpower? what does it mean for american leadership in the world? what does it mean as well for the u.s.-uk special relationship?

>> well, i believe that four more years of joe biden would have, first of all, a negative impact on the u.s. internally. we can see what is happening in the streets and major cities in the united states. we can see what is happening with the promotion of left-wing ideology. i talked about the appalling situation were girls cannot use the locker room or the bathroom at school in privacy. there is the immigration and the southern border. and we still see no solution to that. no new policies to pursue that. i understand this because we have the same issue on our border. you know? with the english channel and the fact we are getting these small boats in. our problem in england is to deal with the legal system and

our judges have blocked our ability to deal with the policy. in the united states, this is a political pursuit that could be sorted out by the president if he so wished. so i think four more years of this would be a disaster for the u.s.. i think bidenomics has been a failure. all it has done is increased the debt and put, you know, maybe not the american economy more competitive. the british economy also needs to be more competitive as well. i would like to see the continuation of those domestic policies. but, also, i don't believe that china fears joe biden. instead, we have seen cozying up. we have seen american corporations encouraged to seek more investment from china. i think that is the wrong approach. i cannot imagine during the cold war when reagan called out

the ussr as an evil empire. that type of approach being taken. so i think a new approach is needed. as for the special relationship, there will not be a u.s.-uk trade deal under joe biden. that is absolutely fair. and i know president trump wanted to do a trade deal. so we need to fix that as well. >> to follow-up there with regard to the huge crisis on america's southern border, it has become the number one political issue, i think, in the fourth time presidential election, and roughly 10 million illegal migrants have crossed into the united states, actually staggering figures. and if you had this situation in europe, it would probably bring down a government, such as the level of outrage over the massive levels of illegal

migration. do you believe that under strong conservative leadership that this crisis can be effectively addressed here in the united states? and in your view, why -- why is joe biden so -- so weak-need in the face of this crisis? >> yes. it can be addressed and it was addressed under donald trump. so absolutely it can be addressed. likewise, our problem in britain can be fixed if we deal with problems like the european court of human rights. if we deal with the human rights act in britain. but why have these problems emerge in both of our countries? the answer is that the human rights lobby has not been taken on. if you look at what has happened in the legal profession, if you look at what has happened in the, sort of -- i talked about the data party

circles. they would be accused as being racist and being cruel to migrants and that motive attitude has informed the policy. the elites are hugely out of touch with what the average voter thinks on these issues. that is what is going on. you have got elite who aren't affected by it. don't care. don't have their wages being suppressed by high levels of migration. and you have a population that are very, very concerned about the issue, and in my constituency of norford, that is the number one issue that comes up on the doorstep. that is immigration. >> and, from what you have seen of donald trump and his record in the first term administration, do you think a

second trump presidency could effectively deal with the migration crisis here in the united states? you see potential for very strong leadership dealing with what is an immense challenge for the u.s.? the u.s. is not going to deal with the massive levels of illegal migration. this is fundamentally on the mind of the united states for decades. do you think that donald trump really had the leadership drive, determination, to be able to effectively deal with the immigration crisis? >> i do think so. it is clearly a very difficult issue. and we now have our enemies actively using migration as a way of pursuing their end. so russia has used this with belarus and poland. we are seeing things like social media make it easier to communicate. it is easier to run a people-

trafficking operation. but all of these things, these things have to be solved. don't they? otherwise, if you cannot control your borders, how are you a sovereign nation? >> exactly. exactly. what would a second trump presidency mean for the united kingdom? and what are the implications for the special relation? especially bearing in mind that joe biden has been viewed by many in the uk as quite possibly the most anti-british president of the modern era? what is your assessment of the impact of a second trump presidency on relations with united kingdom? >> well, the most important thing for me about a second trump presidency is getting conservative leadership back in the free world. the subtitle of my british edition is called "the only

conservative in the room." is only britain that has a conservative government. we have biden in the u.s. we have trudeau in canada. have micron in france. we have scholz in germany. for me, it is the fact that conservative leadership is absolutely important. i think we are more likely to see a trade deal taking place. i think there will be more working with allies. one of the things i advocate in the book is an economic nato, were together we take on china. we take on russia. by having common policies on what technology they should be able to invest or export or all of those. in the same way we did during the cold war. so i would like -- i would like to see closer working with allies.

>> and donald trump, of course, has been very critical of the nato alliance. and unwillingness among some nato allies to invest in what they need to on defense. do you think that trump will really shake up your again potentially with a second term? and will europe be listening to his message? after all, these are incredibly dangerous times with russia potentially threatening nato territory in the years to come. will the european leaders be waking up to the reality, and what would be the impact of another trump term? >> europe needs to spend more defense. there are still far too many european countries who aren't even spending the nato 2%. and the nato 2% is not enough.

we should be raising it to at least 3% in my view as a minimum. and there are too many countries free writing at the moment that are in serious threat. if putin succeeds in ukraine, he will not stop there. he will move further, and this is the ultimate short-term is him of europe who spend more and more money on welfare states and less and less money on things like defense and policing, which are very important for the security of our country's. and i think donald trump is right to say to europe, you need to pay up. in a recent interview, he said i am what percent committed to nato but european countries need to pay up. that is right. i make the further point that if putin were to succeed in ukraine, that would send the most terrible message to china and president xi. if these totalitarian regimes are successful, it will have

huge implications for the united states, as well as europe. >> yes. absolutely. and talking of totalitarian regimes, enemies of the free world, the iranian regime of course poses a deadly threat in the middle east, but also to europe as well, and potentially the entire free world as it becomes a nuclear weapons power. israel responded recently to the iranian attack on israel, which fortunately did not -- the iranians did not succeed in any kind of strategic advantage there. the message coming from both london, washington, and also many european capitals is one of restraint towards israel. the term used is, the israeli response should be limited.

joe biden has been, in many ways, more critical of the netanyahu government in israel than it has of the iranian regime. and, which we view here at heritage as absolutely disgraceful, and at the same time the british government has echoed a lot of the language that the biden administration has been using towards israel. what is your view of this? what does israel need to do in order to defend itself and to stand up to the iranian regime, and also what does the west need to do to stand up to iran and send a clear message that the free world will not accept the kind of barbarism that we are seeing right now from the world's biggest state sponsor of terror? >> well, one of the things i

talked about in the book is how i would often find front office officials trying to change the text in my speeches. and i suspected, and it was confirmed after calls from the state department, that there was a certain amount of coordination between officials in both united kingdom and united states. it is no surprise that the same message is merging. the -- taking the sanctions on iran and hoping that iran would sign a nuclear deal was a mistake. and it has been left for too long without action against iran. and this is essentially appeasement. and what it has resulted in is further bloodshed in the middle east. most particularly in israel. and i cannot see how, when israeli hostages are still

being held, that people can still expect israel to behave in any other way apart from defending their national interests. and i -- i think it is important that israel are given the freedom that they need to do what they need to do to protect their nation. and they are under x essential threat, and we know that iran would love to see the end of israel. >> yes. without any dealt , we are dealing with a genocidal regime. that is explicitly said they want to wipe israel off the map. we have to take this all seriously. >> the same is true with putin in russia. we are not dealing with some rational actors that can be compromised with or you can achieve a deal with. these people want to end our way of life in the west. that is what we have to understand. and the only thing that will stop them doing that is by us

showing strength in the face of that. >> absolutely. and as your message to both the biden administration and also to the british government that the western powers should completely consign the iran nuclear deal. comprehensive plan of action. >> yes. i mean, i don't think we should have tried to do it in the first place. i was very much under instructions as far as secretary from boris johnson to proceed with it, but clearly the iranians had no intention of signing it. and also the other signatories were china and russia, which does not fill me with hope. >> yes. probably one of the worst agreements put together in modern history. and we were suddenly very supportive of president trump's decision to withdraw, which

reviewed as a fundamentally dangerous act of appeasement towards iran. and, on the home front in the uk, you have seen large-scale protests by palestinian groups. quite frankly, many of these protesters have even been supportive of hamas, and you have seen numerous individuals supporting not only hamas but an array of islamic terrorist organizations. central london has become, in the eyes of many, as a -- as a de facto no-go zone. a lot are free to even go in because of these menacing, frequently violent protests. a great deal of criticism of the handling of the protests,

but, also, criticism of the way in which the british government has responded as not being tough enough. after all, this is a conservative government. it is seen by many in the uk is far too weak in terms of dealing with the process. in fact, the french and german governments have been significantly tougher now. they have addressed these protests, in some cases bargaining barring with with the situation on the ground protests. but the british government's approach has been very, very light in contrast. what is your view on what sort of needs to be done with the situation on the ground though? after all, you do have an environment where many jewish persons feel afraid to walk the streets of london. during these protests. >> it has been appalling.

every saturday, these protests are dominating central london and jewish people cannot walk freely around central london, and that should not be allowed. that should not be allowed. and we also have been seeing where there have been messages projected onto the house of commons, and i think the approach is not right. the approach is not right to policing these protests. and you said that we are not as tough as the french or the germans. the same is true with environmental protesters as well. and it would be easier to count the number of days that isn't a protest going on in parliament square in london. i just want to sort of say two people in this audience, this is in no way a reflection of the british public. if i speak to constituents, they are 100% supportive of

israel. it is a small minority of extreme left-wing activists who are promoting this view. it is not a reflection of the general public of britain. but the tail is wagging the dog here. and it is back to the point i was making about institutions. you know? what is the difference between britain and france and germany? i think our institutions are less accountable than institutions are in other countries. i think i have talked about the rate limited number of political appointments we get. i have talked about the number, there are 500 of these unelected bodies. it is actually very difficult in the current circumstances for the government to effectively change the policy, and politicians never want to admit they are impotent to do something. but i think we have to look at the overall system and structure and say how are we going to restore proper demographic accountability?

otherwise, these type of things keep happening. >> yes. yes. and on the uk front, we are likely to see a general election later this year. it has been held in january 25. but, most likely, another true election and say november. the polls are possibly pointing to a labor victory. these are of course immensely challenging times. and perhaps we can see rishi sunak rising. although yours are far more conservative and interesting i have to say. and -- but on the election fun in the uk, labor has been out of power for 14 years. they haven't really outlined much of an agenda as far as i

can tell. and it is hard to say if keir starmer really stands for anything. surrender to the woke left. and, liz, from your perspective, just how dangerous potentially is a labor government actually for britain and for british leadership in the world? >> and you say we do not know what keir starmer stands for. i think we do know what he has done. when i am talking about the human rights culture that has developed in britain and things like the human rights act and the constitutional reform act. i believe keir starmer who is one of the people who was backing those changes. he is a classic left-wing

liberal voyeur. and you said labour have not been in power in government, but they have been in power in a lot of british institutions since blair actually gave more power to lawyers and bureaucrats and et cetera. i think we will have more of that. you know? whether it is the extreme gender ideology, whether it is the integration and human rights policies, extreme green policies. i cannot see things like fracking happening under keir starmer or energy bills getting any cheaper.

and the economy is in a serious situation. we have got a debt problem in britain. and although the labour party talks about economic growth, they have got absolutely no analysis of why we haven't had significant economic growth for the past few decades. and the answer is we are overtaxed. we are overregulated. anything they get into office. and we will just see any increase in -- increase in the sort of declinism narrative. >> yeah. it sounds absolutely ghastly. >> i want conservatives to win in britain. i think the way we can win is by laying out a conservative

agenda and being honest why we have not delivered enough of it in the last 14 years. that is what we have to do. we have to say, yes, we should have dealt with the climate change act from tony blair and all these woke policies into our corporations and institution. we put our hand up, but please don't vote for keir starmer, because things will get a lot worse. that is what we have got to say. >> and would your message to the prime minister today be, the uk should immediately withdraw from the european convention for human rights? >> yes. but that is not enough. that is not enough. we should learn the lesson of what happened when we left the european union but kept all the european laws on our statute books. the problem is we got rid of the bureaucracy in brussels but we did not get rid of the bureaucracy in britain. so -- >> yes. >> so a lot of our problems lie

at home, and they lie with the fact we have outsourced to unelected bureaucrats too much decision-making, and that is what we have to address. >> if you were still prime minister, liz, would there be any eu laws still on the books in the uk? the administration has declined to remove vast numbers of them. under your leadership, would you have completely put them on the bonfire? >> well, yes. and i promised to do that in the leadership election. i am somebody who makes promises and seeks to fulfill them. i don't believe you can make promises and not deliver them. that is why even though i knew there were negative forces towards what i was seeking to do in the many budget on corporation tax and fracking, i promise to do that. we should do that.

and it does require taking on quite major bureaucratic forces to get rid of those eu laws because institutions like the treasury, you know, they did not like breck said in the first place. they wanted to keep as much of the eu regulations as possible and they have to be challenged. >> in their hope for the future of the conservative party? do you believe the party will return to its roots? are you concerned about the long-term future even though the immediate future looks very grim and there is a lot of what we will call in the uk wets running around in key positions. about really returning to take

back control of what has been the most successful political party in history? >> i think it is possible, but i think we will have to fight for it. it is not going to be easy. and americans are very experienced with crucial battles that go on in the republican party for the heart and soul of the party. that is what is happening in britain. and the difference i would describe between people in the conservative party is some people who explicitly say, yes, it is true that these institutions in britain have moved to the left. yes, it is true they have adopted these extreme climate change policies and wokery human rights and we have to accept that because as conservatives we believe in institutions. i don't agree with that. i think we have to reshape our institutions to reflect the values of the public. and i think that is a boulder

-- a boulder agenda that conservatives need to back. and i don't believe that britain will return to economic dynamism until we do that. i think it is just a question of how long we have to wait. >> very well said. and we just have a couple minutes remaining. we are nearly out of time. but, liz, perhaps a final message for u.s. audience about why -- why you believe that there is hope for america and why you believe that the united states really is the hope for the free world? >> so you are the hope for the free world. this election taking place in 2024 is, i think, one of the

most consequential elections. we have already seen what is happening when there is an absence of united states leadership. and, by that, i don't just mean security leadership in the world. i also mean cultural and social leadership in the conservative world. and that is what we need to see. and my messages that you are going to have to fight for this. i don't think this year's presidential campaign is a done deal at all. and it will need the energy, commitment, and the determination of conservatives to win. and it is not just about winning the election in 2024. it is actually about winning the administration in 2025. >> right. it has been a tremendous discussion. thank you very much. and your book is a -- it is a

wonderful read. and i think it has a very powerful message for the united states, and it has a very powerful message also for the uk as well. both sides of the atlantic. and we are most grateful to liz for joining us. and we have come to the end of our program. we are unable to do the book signing due to supply chain issues. and your book has already sold out in the uk, and it has been republished for a second and third time. we, unfortunately, did not get the copies in time due to intense competition for them. but it is a -- it is a thrilling read. it is a tremendous book. and i hope that all of you will be able to read this -- this wonderful message to the american and the british people. and, liz, we are most grateful

to you for joining us today. we look forward to hopefully seeing you soon here again in the united states. we wish you well in all of your very important work on the ground in the united kingdom at this time. new efforts to save the conservative movement in the uk is a very, very worthy cause. and a big thank you to everybody for joining us both here in person and online. i would like to ask the audience if they could remain in their seats while the former prime minister exits the stage. but a very big, warm thank you for everybody for joining us today. >> if you are enjoying book tv, then sign up for our newsletter using the qr code on the screen to receive a schedule of upcoming programs, author discussions, book schedules, and more. book tv, every sunday on c- span2 or on booktv.org.

television for serious readers. >> as the 2024 provincial campaign continues, american history tv presents a series, historic presidential elections. learn about the pivotal issues of different eras. uncover what made these elections historic, and explore their lasting impact on the nation. this saturday, the election of 1960. >> and for those millions of americans who are still denied e quality of rights and opportunity, i say there shall be the greatest progress in human rights since the days of lincoln 100 years ago. >> we stand today on the edge of a new frontier. the frontier of the 1960s. the frontier of unknown opportunities. the frontier of unfilled hope and unfilled tracks.

>> democratic senator john kennedy defeated republican vice president richard nixon. watches start presidential elections, saturdays at 7:00 p.m. eastern on american history tv on c-span2. >> the house will be in order. >> this year, c-span celebrates 45 years of covering congress like no other. since 1979, we have been your primary source for capitol hill, providing balanced, unfiltered coverage of government. taking you to where the policies are debated and decided, always supportive americas cable companies. c-span, 45 years and counting. powered by cable. now, it is my particular pleasure to introduce my old friend ali velshi who is an award-winning journalist and msnbc host . he is an immersive

on the ground reporter. he previously was an anchor and corresponding, and he is everywhere. and not just with msnbc, but prior with al jazeera and cnn. ali was born in miro be. he was raised in toronto. and he -- his new book, the small acts of courage, a legacy of endurance and the fight for democracy courageous journey to freedom starting in india. then to south africa where they escaped apartheid. and later emigrating to kenya and ultimately moving to canada and the united states. ali, welcome. >> thank you. >> so the longer piece of this and the reason why i am doing this -- ask why a canadian consul general is interviewing ali velshi on the stage? because ali and i go back , god, what? 38 years.

>> yep. >> and we are a kind of species of people who emerged on canadian shores in, you know, the 1970s and 1980s. and you see sort of residence in the united states of this species of people as well, which is the broader -- a particular generation of people who would rather not head back to the indian subcontinent. and the story that ali tells in this book, you know, it is part memoir obviously. so going to his remarkable family history. but it also touches on many of the fanatics that most of us care about over the course of the last century which have been, how has democracy evil? what have been the fights for individual rights? and collective and group rights within pluralistic societies and how can we keep those pluralistic societies together?

we were at university together, and ali was somebody who, as you see him, and you wonder how does a 20-year-old, you know, come out this well- informed. how does a 20-year-old come out with this set of ideas and this set of desires for change? and the reason is this remarkable back story. so maybe we can start with that remarkable back story, ali. >> thank you. i cannot believe my good fortune. i had asked the consul general for his address to which i can send a book, and he texted back and he said, is there anything that we can -- can i do anything to be helpful? and i thought, yeah, actually. you have lived a lot of the story so one of the two of us talk about it together as opposed to a traditional interview. so thank you. it means a lot.

i bet you this audience is going to get something different than other audiences i have spoke to because you can prod things that you know the other side of. my family started like a lot of people in the indian diaspora, leaving india in the 1800s. mine left at the end of the 1800s. but the 1800s was a period of remarkable economic upheaval in india, largely because these were climate refugees. it was mostly because of drought in india. and my family fell victim to that. now, in a big country, in theory when you have a number of climate issues, today, you should be able to mitigate them in some fashion. it is becoming harder and harder to do so. but the thing about india is the india that was colonized by the british was a massive, massively important country. it was almost a quarter of global gdp at the time that the colonialists took over. by the time that colonization ended in india in 1948, it was

about 2% gdp. so the country had been diluted of its ability to be resilient in the face of these droughts and people left by the millions. now, if you are in india, you left where the boats talk you. most were going either further east into asia or africa or the west indies. and so my family ended up in south africa, were compared to be in drought stricken, it was the promised land. the streets were paved with gold. they came from a colony, which was racist and unfair, but, remember, that in india there were very few british officials at the height of the british regime. it would generally run at home. so the average indian was not getting a fair shake economically, but they were not feeling, generally speaking, the general brunt of racism that you got in south africa. south africa was a whole another kettle of fish.

so my family were merchants. i thought that meant they were business people. they were literally selling things from small carts. vegetables and things. whatever that is. but that led them to small shops. as the shops got a little bit more prosperous, my great- grandfather needed an accountant so he found this bookkeeper. the book peter have to with hist agitations and the negotiations with the government, he'd cons had another client whose name was gandhi and lythe two became friends. gandhi lived in johannesburg and my grandfather lived in victoria over the government was so gandhi would have to with negotiations with the government have to come to victoria. my great-grandfather would give him a place to stay because in those days nonwhite people can stay at hotels or things like that. and he will give him use of his horse and cart to go back and forth to his meetings. so one night they are sitting and become friends and gandhi says to my great-grandfather, the indians in this country do not have the courage or the backbone to fight the

injustices. so i am going to start a commune to give them the strength to do that. and i would love your son, that is my future grandfather, who was seven years old at the time, to come be my student. and my great-grandfather looks at gandhi and thinks it is a terrible idea because he is a businessman. why does he want to get involved with this agitator? so he says to gandhi the only thing that comes to mind. we are muslims and your hindu. i cannot send my schedule son to your school. to which gandhi says i will read him the koran and teach them your religion. that was not unusual for gandhi. he hundred hindu scripture. he hundred christian scripture. y had no they gandhi was a pluralist at amthe time and was becoming a much more worldly guy by the week but my grandfather became his youngest student at the age of 7 at this ashram. they fundamentally grew up as hindu so they had no meat and

no water and beds. >> this was a precursor for a training for how you would endure conditions in prison. >> in fact, prison sounds like it might have been better. but this was exactly the point. folks needed to toughen up. in order to fight injustice, you needed to understand that you will get arrested. and as a result, by the way, they would often offer a chance to pay a monetary fine, but the thing was to take the fine down and take the jail time. 30 days in jail. these were essentially misdemeanors. and go back recommitted the crime which was going to the wrong door or bus station to get the media attention on this story of racism. >> but you also reason the chapters of this book that gandhi was not at this stage,

the richard attenborough sort of high figure of gandhi we know now. he was asking for very prescribed rights within the british colonial system. >> within the system, he saw indians as citizens within the british colonial system and he did not think as citizens that indians were be afforded their rights. he did not at the time think something -- his design is not to undo the british colonial system. i do not know whether he would have liked to our thought that was too big a fight, but he didn't want to do that nor did he think that anybody had equal rights. he was arguably a racist. his views and his writings about black africans at the time -- not arguably -- they were actually racist things that he said. he just wanted the indian to be closer up in rank to the british. he had been educated in the uk.

>> that was the early gandhi. >> he then evolved in south africa and gandhi often said i was born in india but i was made in south africa. he took the lessons back and succeeded remarkably in india. but, yeah, the early gandhi was not who we have come to no. and that is a great story of evolution. people of all. he subsequently understood that until everybody has justice and equality and liberty, we cannot count any of ourselves as having those things. >> and, which is quite illustrative in so many ways, and of course, you know, we were speaking earlier and i just read the jonathan isaac great biography of "king." >> great biography. >> and the amount of inspiration that king took in the early civil rights movement from gandhi, of course, and it was a great struggle, this issue of, do we work within the system or do we work to overthrow the system.

>> right. >> which was the crux of the 1960s. within the civil rights movement, the battle within the civil rights movement. but so your family. you know? obviously, your great- grandfather comes over from india and there is a great story about jumping into sharp- infested waters. so all immigration, by the way, is not sort of as prescribed. sometimes, there are slight detours, and this one took a detour through shark-infested water. >> it was interesting because it was right around the time of the war and there was no internet. there was no phoning, either. so my great-grandfather on his journey back to south africa was not clear on who had won the war. and this played out differently. if he pulled into a south

african port, and the africans had won the war, he is now coming in as an indian-british subject. he is now the enemy. and all of this dream to coming to south africa to create a new life would end at the end of that at the boarder. if the british had won the war, he would be fine. he would be a british citizen. he did not know what had happened, so he figured it would be better to not take the boat all the way to south africa, but as soon as he saw land, which was at the time portuguese east africa, mozambique, he got off -- he jumped off into these shark- infested waters and swam to shore where he ended up in portuguese east africa, in which he could go through the jungle and go through to south africa without crossing the boarder. it would have saved him a lot of trouble if he had realized the british had won the war.

>> but that is the importance of news. >> a question to me, my fascinating thing is i do not know anybody in my family could swim. and he was wondering whether that was still the case. >> so these are small acts of courage. >> yeah. with the sharks. let me tell you, i am not getting to that. >> but moving and emigrating is tough. right? >> i think we have to remember that. as a conversation about immigration in this country gets tainted the way and has, it is important to remember that whether you think about it as an economic imperative or you think about it as a charitable imperative, because you really shouldn't because that is not useful, it is hard to make the decision. no matter how much better america might be for you than wherever it is you are coming from, it is a hard decision to

make. these people are not multilingual in many cases. they were not educated. and they do not know what lay on the other side. there would have been a letter that had come back from some guy who went to south africa and say everything is fantastic. here is some money. he got more money to send back and we are earning here. but he's our decisions everybody in this country's parents have made our grandparents have made. that is no small decision for karen because of the big decisions people make to these countries, our countries literally benefit from the addition of these people because we don't have enough children to populate our own society. >> so we are in south africa in the 1910s through 1930s and '40s. and of course, apartheid is not officially become a thing until 1947. but prior to that, there was a settlement in south africa where it was already extremely racially divided. there was a coming of age of

sorts. a movement in south africa during that period. and your family was quite involved in that. >> at the time, there were different movements broke of the asians were involved in a particular movement. the africans had a movement. this happen across africa. there were many black africans who believed they needed to do this without the asians. at one point in the movie "gandhi", you see gandhi telling his white architect best friend or preacher who was a white man, i need to do this without you. so these were interesting times. but what happened is the black africans had the numbers to be effective in trying to fight what was going to become apartheid. the asians had more money. so a number of smart people in both communities said why don't

we combined? because the asian demonstrations were always very small. and because they were a money group of people they do not see themselves as demonstrators and do not want to wrecked their businesses but they did feel these laws were unjust and would like to support the overturning of them. so that is how it came together. and it came together in many other ways, too. because there were not many nonwhites trained to be doctors or lawyers or whatever, but south africa effectively trained if you. we actually have a few. we have one right here. we have a few more indian lawyers. there were a good number of african white jewish lawyers who played a very, very big part in the anti-apartheid movements. but these coalition started to work together to overcome apartheid. ironically, the response from the government from the 1910s all the way to one apartheid became a real thing in 1947 was just to be more and more harsh. at no point did anybody gain any meaningful concessions.

it only went worse as the years went on and to every surprise in the national elections of 1947 -- remember, 1948 is when india went into independence under gandhi and has a spinning wheel on the flag because that is what gandhi said. your self-sufficient will be the way you gain independence. in that very same year, apartheid laws were coming in that prescribed everything. i mean, first it was you cannot marry somebody who is not the same color that you are. then it was you cannot have any sexual relations with them and the way they divided them into race. it was interesting to see. gandhi left south africa in 1913-14. >> his grandfather and his brother stayed. >> they stayed. and things got better for them as business people, but worse for them as indians, as people

of color, and ultimately by the early 1960s, it all came together, and it was just ultimately worse. >> and after south africa, you speak in the book about how your family had a very successful bakery business. a commercial bakery business. and 4000 bread a day. >> and our. >> a lot of bread. >> a lot of bread. >> so you have all this -- this -- this big industrial concern and of course your grandfather and your grandfather's brother was quite involved with the movement. >> yes. >> and the state then stepped in and does what it does, the apartheid state, and makes it very uncomfortable for them. >> yeah. they basically make it impossible to do business. this is not a corner bakery. this is a bakery that packs all of its bread into trucks. the trucks then go into -- and to, you know, every area. race restricted.

right? every area where wholesalers would then take the bread and get it into bakeries and everyone bought their bread in the morning. and, initially, they were allowed to do their business like any other bakery, but they were the only nonwhite bakery in the country. so to penalize my family for supporting financially anti- apartheid soft or bailing people out of jail or all their workers, it was routine to get arrested if you are black in south africa -- literally the crime was being black and walking around. but the interesting thing about being black and being arrested, there was a fine percocet in my case my grandpa was five pounds or 30 days in jail. with black workers, it was five pounds or you work on a farm. the equivalent of the american south. so every sunday my father will be getting these guys out of

jail who did nothing. so this is just an example of the byzantine things that happened in apartheid south africa. they started telling my family you cannot have a standing permit. you will have to get it renewed two times a year than it became four times a year and monthly and then it became weekly. you have to go get your permit to get the british emitted weekly, which meant mondays were right off because you're going to a government office to get a permit done which means you cannot be in the place you have to sell your bread before 6:00 a.m. and then it became daily. so at that point, by the time you got your permit, the permit office opens at 9:00. albright is sold at 7:00 a.m. in the culture, people bought their bread fresh. that put them out of business. they created a bread war. they tried to take a few more businesses out on the way out and they succeeded in taking four bakeries out. at which point the government had had it. and my dad and my grandfather

were together on the day in 1961 with a bulldozed the ovens which were the central part of the bakery, and my dad said it was the only time he had seen his father cry. my grandfather was 58 years old and he died a week later. but here is the good part about the book. he died thinking this was the man who was on gandhi's farm. he died thinking he had failed in his efforts foley. he saw his bakery come down. this is the business they had built. they had used it to finance the anti-apartheid struggle. what he did not know is his son would become the first -- the first south asian muslim elected to major office in canada. his daughter in law would run for office. his granddaughter would run for office. and his grandson who looks a like him would be me. would not have known that.

>> we spent a lot of time in south africa, and the reason why we wanted to get to this part of the story is that for audiences these days, the medina t and the kind of complexity of the law -- this is the law of the land. this is the state using course of power. you know? in very unjust ways. and the complexity of it and moral complaints of that sort of went on and moral compromises that went on is i think illustrative. it was interesting to get back into those details. >> yeah. >> and, again, i think that was a very useful component. >> yeah. i wanted to both position the memoir in history and somebody said the other day your friend is like forrest gump. you keep running into these. but actually everybody's family wants into moments in history. you're just when things happen and you remember where you are and that is what it was. my family was just my family. just happened to be influenced

by major shifts so my family actually left south africa, it was a sensible time for them to have left south africa given that they had asked and was their ability to fight the power. they got to kenya, which was at the time another center of the indian diaspora. but, at the time, a british colony. my parents were in kenya when the british flag came down in the canyon flag came up. people cannot vote by the birth of their skin were there to witness the birth of a democracy. one of the things i talk about in my book is our house and toronto, which you have spent much time in, had canyon decorations. anybody art. it was decorations. even though my family was fundamentally indian, we had been out of india for a long time, they had spent more of their life in south africa, you couldn't have any beals's art. it was prescribed. white people's music and art was there's and black people's music and art was there's. there was in between, mixed-

race people, they had their way of talking in foods and indians had their own. the division between indians and chinese. completely prescribed environment, you can imagine why that motivates me into a world i am in now. we grew up grabbing at anything we could grab at two not be stuck into our own little . >> and kenya, the early experiment with kenyatta and onwards, also becomes politically complicated. >> understandably. understandably. lack people had not been given the agency to govern their landa across africa for a very long time. and in kenya, i truly believe they wanted to be a pluralistic, multicultural society. we have to understand about african countries, they are by

definition multicultural. it's not just a mass of black people. different languages, different lineages, ethnic lineages. kenya had a lot of that. cemented to be a pluralistic, multicultural place. but there were these pressures on asians. some of them were self-imposed. some were not. the colonizers controlled everything. and the goods went to britain to be produced. for the black person who was not enjoying the fruits of their labor or success or the good feelings of democracy, when they went into town, they didn't see the british allies are. they saw the indian shopkeeper. they saw the indian accountant.h they saw the indian lawyer. they saw the indian dr. the indian was occupying the space above the black person. and what the indians and the black people should've been op doing is fighting together to

eliminate the yoke of control. the societies work very well and causing people to be madd at each other, which again, full circle, very instructive about america today, right? we are really good at causing people to fight with each other about things we should be fighting together. but that is what the colonial power did. for indians, it became tough. what was going on in uganda, there was a real sense of, we are coming for you. and i don't think that was broadly shared amongst africans in east africa. it was there enough to worry my parents would already lost so much in that first effort to try and fight for fair democracy, that the fear of losing it a second time -- >> you get good advice from canadian diplomats. >> and there's always a canadian diplomat in the story. >> working in the background. >> i kid you not, the only reason i'm standing on the stage is my dad ran into a canadian diplomat in osaka during the world's fair and he, you know, was asked, i was

going to australia, go to canada instead because there was this new thing going on in canada,. trudeau had just come to power. and that story of running into somebody who says your path is about to change. and there is this new opportunity. and kin your parents' it took them a while -- >> what a world where a diplomat is convincing people. >> this never happens by the way. >> this diplomat made them come to his office to fill out the forms and basically said to my parents, if you get your rights to go to canada, if you don't want them, don't take them. but can be fill out these forms? because you may not be safe here. and so they did. ru they filled out these forms and they went to canada. and there was, what had happened to canada at the time was that trudeau and pearson,

they just did basic math. this wasn't a particularly sophisticated approach. they looked and said, our birthrates are slowing. we don't have enough force here and we are competing, generally speaking, with the united kingdom and america for immigrants. so we are going to have to get awfully creative about this. that meant two things. getting creative meant looking at different layers of people you might want to come to your country. and that included activists and refugees, which most countries will take. but they would rather not. right? you would rather not take the activists. just a quiet people who work. that was number one. number two was what model you create to make canada into a place that these people, who were otherwise looking at other places, which is to come to? the model was -- i'm sure you can articulate this better thans i can -- but it was a model that said you can come here and

will feel under no pressure to lose your culture, your underlying culture. and we will sort of trick you into liking ours as well. and you will be a hold both. and i have to say, i truly believe in my heart that is how it has unfolded in canada. >> well, i think in canada it also rests on 500 years of also rests on 500 years of of peoples, including indigenous peoples, coming together and recognizing that we are not the majority here. all of us are going to have to do some give-and-take. >> and they did well. they did welcome the people. >> i think there was something else taking place. this is a valatie you are seeing not just in the d anglosphere and anglo american worlds, but everywhere in the so-called western world during that period was this idea the racial is asian of citizenship and the regionalization of who could come to the country was,

by the mid-1960s, mid-1950s, was starting to dissipate. and you are saying for some very practical reasons but also moral reasons, there's also a broader movement, i think that the pearson/trudeau connection in canada deserves an enormous amount of credit for that. but also their predecessors. the conservative government in canada, they actually started the policy of looking at some of these, the way in which racial immigration was taking place. st but equally in the united states, at that same time, you started to see a change in the immigration law. and part of the reason why the u.s. looks like it does today is the start of that approach. but in canada, it was a remarkable place when your parents arrived, in the early 1970s in canada, and unlike a lot of new immigrants to canada,

they arrived in a part of toronto that was particularly diverse at the time. >> correct. >> and in some ways it was a very good thing for your family. >> it was interesting. my parents, until a couple of years ago, lived in the very same house that we grew up in. >> it's probably now destroyed. >> there is a very big house on a piece of land now. you know, owning a piece of property in toronto seems very compelling these days. so i thought about it. and, at the time there was little bungalows, they were mostly lived in by veterans of the second world war. so what i write about in canada is, i didn't think it was a

very diverse street, but it was very diverse by canadian standards because it had irish, scottish, and english on the same block. and they took those differences very seriously. very seriously. protestant and some were catholic, the whole thing was e very crazy. but there were two people on the street were different from even that. they were not from the british isles. it was my buddy mike and me. family was half sicilian and a quarter syrian and a quarter french-canadian. and we were indian. bu which made us brothers on the street. he doesn't look anything like me. he is a pretty white guy. but, we were definitely not de like everyone else on the street. but toronto was a more multicultural city than the block i lived on, but we didn't experience that. so the schools i went to, i was definitely the standout. but it influenced me, it confused me a little bit, i

didn't get the grope inside my identity, although the house, my grandmother wore a sorry and we ate indian food and had kenyan decorations and my grandmother decided she really liked christmas lights. she thought that was an excellent thing. we had christmas lights, we had christmas tree. so the whole thing was confusing in the best way. >> what is remarkable about his family, and i want you to say something about the particular traditions of the is molly community. for those of you haven't come across this, this community in particular in the context of the broader diaspora of people of indian originally moved out, at the very interesting ethics that were very effective in building community. in building a sense of contribution. a sense of organization and agency amongst people. >> we are members of the

committee, a minority amongst minorities in the islamic world. seen by some as heretical actually. it hasn't if those, one is pluralism. the idea that we must not think of others in terms of tolerance. tolerance is the wrong approach. it suggests there's something fundamentally wrong with you. pluralism means we are different. we have different foods and religions and ethnicities, different politics. and yet, we are together in this project it is a country. we share the land, share responsibility for one another. the other is volunteerism. is a highly structured community in which all the positions are held voluntarily, hopefully positions and religious positions. in a fairly structured way.

in these positions are either gender balanced or rotated in a way that makes short women and men are playing equal roles in the leadership of the committee. it worked, interestingly d enough, in south africa or the government didn't want to take care of anyone. so they could take care of themselves by having social services, child care, educational services, healthcare services. what has happened since is the body of the community that provided those services has expanded into newspapers, hospitals and universities that serve everybody in the community as part of that pluralistic is those. normally they are not for them, therefore everybody in the committee. in what that did is when i parents got to they were so hungry to be involved in politics they also came from a community where the building blocks for getting you involved in civil society exist.

and so, the transition to be into all of these positions you held within the community, into holding it in the broader community, it becomes easy. you've met a lot of become city council because they were doing that stuff inside the committee. there was an ethos of service within a community, and he's those of with my family in particular of wanting to be involved in civil society because they couldn't do that because of the color of their skin, now in two countries. they really wanted to get down to this thing. 10 years into being in canada, by 1981 they were ready to jumpa in. they wanted as much a society could give them. and that they could give to society. >> in your family was quite central to what i think is an amazing thing in many ways. we are looking at the way in which politics, elected politics, in places like canada where we have dozens of now

minority origin mps including s. many people, cabinet ministers, >> it looks like the bar from star wars. >> in a good way. >> it is representative. and it's also -- but it stands on an edifice of early contributors. and your father, when he ran for office in 1981, which of course he was going up against a juggernaut at the time, some it was extremely well loved, a lovely individual who is the institutional candidate, and he was oppositional candidate. they formed a relationship as well. >> i don't know whether politics were different than or candidate was different than or candidate still like that now, but our experiences in elected politics in canada were not

adversarial in that way. they were adversarial on the debate stage which is where they should be adversarial. because back then they were real all candidates meetings where the candidates would ss stand up and be questioned by the audience about particular policy stances and it wasn't an adversarial thing. adversarial thing. boo or clap, they had strong positions on strong issues. but they were policy discussions. the irony is that i was 11 so years old when my dad ran and he announced in that living room of the house he was going to run. and everyone thought that was crazy. saying things like, i don't think it works that way or i th don't think we are ready or whatever the case is. my dad said we will not know until we try so what we try? so he runs for office, and the youngest person on the campaign and i'm very excited by the whole thing i think we are going to win. can i read a passage? >> absolutely. it's election night and we have

been campaigning. we run into this guy, dennis was the guy he was running against. he was a conservative and the minister of health. in a country in which healthcare is as important as it is in canada, being the minister of health is akin to being the attorney general or treasury secretary or something like that. it's an important job. to this is who my dad is running against in a constituency that had been for 42 years. there is nothing about that that single victory. on election day at 6:30 pm, rush hour slowed to a trickle and my dad said he wanted to go back to the house and change tol suit to watch the election returns come in at the campaign headquarters. while everyone else went back to the office to eat and wait for the returns, i rode home with my dad. after he changed and got his speeches ready and left our house to return to headquarters just before the polls close at 8:00, father clicked on the radio at 8:00 right as the

station launched into the top of the next hour with opened with news. the polls have closed across ontario the announcer says. it is too early to tell who will form the government. he then continued. but there is one race we can call. we can declare dennis the victor. i couldn't believe it. it was literally one minute se after 8:00. hundred races had been run and my father suffered the most resounding loss out of all of them. i didn't understand how they could've known who won right after the polls had closed. how they could've counted votes already. i soon to would take hours for the election to be called. i didn't understand anything about exit polling or projections. they were able to call it a so nothing more than the fact that dennis was the safest incumbent anywhere in the entire province.'s victory was is inevitable and obvious as the nose on my face. i was shocked. i glanced up at my father expecting him to be confused and angry as well. but the look on his face betrayed nothing but ease and contentment. which confused me further.

i can't believe we lost, i said. of course we lost, he said with the biggest smile. we were never going to win. >> what? i said. what you mean we were never going to win? what was this all about? >> we ran because we could. i stood for what i believed in. people had a chance to vote for me and more people voted for the other guy the me. that was always going to happen. i knew that but i ran. now i have lost. our life goes on. we don't get arrested. we don't get shunned. nothing bad happens. it blew my mind. the whole campaign, 11-year-old me had been looking up to my dad seeing him doing debates in think it was the coolest thing in the world. not understanding politics. i believed we were doing it because we had a shot at it. it would be so amazing when we won. we pulled into the campaign office. i was trained to process it but then we walked into the front

door and people started to clap and cheer. there weren't any tears. a i thought, what are you happy about? we lost. i was the odd man out because i was the only one who thought we were going to win. my dad probably went in the back and called dennis and congratulated him. it lasted under one minute. that was that. my dad cannot think the staff. from what i remember everyone in the room was jubilant and ecstatic. except my father. the staff are excited because we moved the needle. i would subsequently learn they were celebrating because my dad had taken the liberal party from third place to second place which is a difference of maybe 1000 votes. we had made a solid dent in the conservative majority paving the way for real victory in the future. my father on the other hand was at ease. he had done what he needed to do and have a look of satisfaction he had done it. thanks to my father that was the night i learned there is a deeper way to think about politics, which for so many people has become a dirty word. politicians are all crooks, the system is rigged and i don't trust them. it's true there is no shortage of politicians who provide

reasons not to trust them. ri but the world is full of people who engage in politics for the right reasons. i know that because my immediate family is full of people who engage in politics for the right reasons. on that night in 1981, that storefront campaign office was full of people celebrating simply because they had exercised the right to engage in politics for the right reasons. to this day when i hear people run down politics and politicians because cynicism of politics is the luxury of those who never had expense life without it. if those people ever truly lost the ability to participate in the system, they would never take it for granted again. >> [ applause ] >> but then, a mere six years later, your father goes on to win that seat in 1987. >> which feels like an impressive -- less impressive story. >> it's so true. but what was interesting about that is that win catalyzed a lot as well.

during that period, it's hard to say, i was a teenager, involved in some of these campaigns. and there was a sense that the world was changing. as a result of some of those sorts of win's. your father was key amongst them. but your mother was an enormous figure in her own right. and played a big role and certainly could've been -- basically could've given up the opportunity to what would've undoubtedly be a role in the government. >> most people know my family, in a vacuum you would think my mother was the politically involved. my father sort of a quiet most bookish fellow. is going to hear this recording. delete that. robust -- >> lovely man. extraordinary. >> my mom came from a family of 12 siblings. she's all about crowds and people. it catalyzed people. my mother did pull out of the

campaign. also for cultural reasons. she was a candidate in the 1993 federal elections. but my grandmother, who lived with us, her mother-in-law, the woman who raised me, fell ill. >> who is also a fierce lady. >> she was a fierce lady. my mother pulled out of the race to sort of take care of my grandmother in her ailing final days. and i think my grandmother wanted that to be the case. my grandmother was very forward thinking, neither mike grandmothers had formal education but they were both very forward thinking women. my mother didn't become an , elected politician. but she was a candidate. my sister was a candidate. in my family, politics was and remains a noble profession. >> wow. and, for that, you were involved in politics early on. >> politics and student politics

. >> so much. >> a lot. >> funny story, so ali, a terrific writer by the way, one of the reasons to get the book , and he is terrific on the page. started off as a print journalist. >> i did it in high school and college. >> and in college. but, as a queens journal reporter got into the 1990 democratic convention. it's not in the book. >> that is really good. that is great. >> i'm going to pull up stuff. >> it was wild. i was hanging around with no ly real work to do. and i convinced -- >> how did you get into the convention? >> you get a letter, i had to have people writing letters to say who i am legitimately who i am. they could just a no. but they give it to me.

i came to new york, you get a big badge into which you've got to do. i had no real work to do. the other reporters were filing stories. so i went to y the area where t ap reporters were working and they were busy. i pitched myself to some guy, i'm free have nothing to do. th would you like a story? he looked at me like you've got to be kidding? i doing a lot of stuff. but his mind worked quickly and there is something happening at a nearby hotel ross perot with a delegation from arkansas was meeting must flow -- ross perot meeting must flow -- ross perot it wasn't going to be a big story but he probably felt some responsibility to covered. he thinking about this kid who said he can go. gives me the assignment. i go to this hotel, i interview all these people. . a comeback, file the story. he edits it. and he puts on the system. no one ever reddit and newspaper ever picked it up. but i actually did my first piece of real world journalism there. >> tell us about that moment.

anyone who knew ali during this period would've said this is a guy destined for politics. we were in the house of commons doing that stuff and looking around saying, this is the natural trajectory of things. of course, as life evolves, many different trajectories emerge. journalism really called to during that period. >> it really did. it's not weird that it did because what did those of us who like politics consume all the time? we consumed the news. the important people told you, who guided you and gave you the information you required to be an informed member of the electorate upon which democracy depends where the news people. i grew up thinking these were important people. so i don't know, it was never really inactive decision to not pursue life in politics, many of our friends did. and they are still actively

involved to this day. it is fun to watch. i just decided to go different way. it didn't feel all that different. although let me tell you, never have i thought my parents so indian is what i told him i want to be a journalist. then all of a sudden it was like, what? what is wrong with lawyer or doctor? so that was the only weird -- it was like i was telling them i was going to become an abstract artist. but that was the move away. they were subsequently very supportive of the operation. to me i was staying largely in the family business. >> let me read a couple of questions from the audience. i'm concerned that we are occupying this with political talk. let's go to journalism. talk to us, there are couple ofa questions here about the nature of journalism and ethics right now. clearly we are at a junction point. you often talk about bearing

witness quality of journalism and facts quality of journalism. tell us where we are in the trajectory of your career. you had this amazing career that started off, tv in canada, business journalism in canada. my gosh, oprah had you on during 2008 to explain the financial crisis to folks. but you made a choice to get out of that business journalism. and into other topics that were closer to you. >> that was 2016. it became an active choice. although i had been more involved in global affairs. it worked is i started in business news and then got hired by cnn financial news. but then cnn financial news closed down and i joined the main station. i also then started hosting cnn international show that was cohosted out of london and hong

kong and produced in hong kong which sort of segued me into a little international affairs. and then i was still in economics guy but much more international global affairs' kind of guy. at cnn i had done a lot of higher risk stuff. hurricanes and things like that when you morph it altogether, i had become this different person. then i joined msnbc and the reason i did, it was right before the election of 2016, literally weeks before the election. and october. and the thinking was, the prevailing wisdom at the time was hillary clinton was going to be the president and there would be a lot of policy oriented stuff in the administration. i had become critically adept at breaking down and explaining policies. i had read the a formal care act for instance and dug into it. i like this kind of stuff. they thought that is what i

would do it msnbc. they hired me because there was an anchor slot early in the morning, 5:00 am. but i had built that show at cnn for the woman who is now my boss at msnbc. she said can you help us fix the show? , i said sure. that met going to bed early. election night i went home before the polls close and take a hearty ambien and go to sleep. i write about this umin the boo suddenly my phone rings and it's my boss. i need you in my office now. i said why? y gets her thinking, futures are tanking worldwide? is donald trump is winning. i said something along the lines of this is bs and hung up the phone. she phone me back and said turn on your tv. i was a very sleepy guy but in the office one hour later. so look, -- >> you are in this new transition into doing not business journalism, doing more political journalism. and you're getting around,

seeing people in the communities, when does it strike you, how does it strike you that you are doing a different type of job and a job that you relate back more to this idea of understanding citizenship in a different way? >> it probably started in that post 2016 era when the mental issues about our society became clearer to us. i wouldn't say that was entirely obvious to me. it really struck me, literally, is how i open the book in minneapolis on may 30, 2020, when i was literally with a rubber bullet. >> you got shot. >> i got shot. that is when it occurred to me, a few things occurred to me at once. my parents had arrived on these shores some 50 years earlier and that marked the end of their quest for democracy.

i thought, put that in a drawerg it's a piece of ancient history we don't talk about it anymore. i'm thinking, seemed to be in the middle of the quest for en democracy all of a sudden. it wasn't 100% clear to me but r it was starting to gel that something else was going on here. and that i was hit by an armed agent of the state into what was described as a violent rally. but i was there. one of the reasons i go to these is because i am there. and i was able to say, that is simply not what happened. t that is not true. donald trump decided to campaign on this issue for a while about that night and my getting hit what was going on. wasn't a true story. it was much more compelling than mine but it wasn't true. the third thing that occurred an to me is that people talk to me, and i am sure you, about what an interesting job you have. you have a front errow to what

unfolding in the world. a front-row to history. we are not in the front row. we are in the arena. once you get shot you are in the arena. and so are all of you. we are all in this thing. this is an actual fight for the preservation of democracy in which we all exist. we all have slightly different roles to play in it, but we have to decide to play it. it is okay for me to be an activist in favor of democracy, it's okay. sort of like an activist in favor of peace or safer climate. it's not a politically partisan thing, it is saying, democracy exists because of an informed electorate and my role is to help that electorate be informed. hence, i am a tool of democracy. i am a part of democracy. i exist because of democracy and democracy hopefully flourishes because of the work i do. so that connection to citizenship has an obligation as opposed to a series of rights and it started become clear to me. citizenship is the right to

vote and do this. its obligation to uphold democracy. >> he became an american citizen. >> i did. i was sort of ambivalent. i don't think -- i treated it with such a casual approach that i didn't tell anybody. no one even came to the swearing-in. didn't think it was an important matter. there's a selfie i took, maybe i should memorialize this, but i did realize, in that citizenship swearing-in ceremony, there are number of students in the room and had a conversation with him earlier about this, i treat some things very casually because of the kind of life i live. i am on airplanes all the time so to me it's like taking a bus. i'm starting to realize, sometimes you get on an airplane and that is someone's first trip. i remember my first trip on an airplane. it was life-changing. or someone to meet their spouse or seasick relative. or say goodbye to a sick relative. or someone's honeymoon. i needed to start thinking

about the fact that these things we share all mean different things to all of us. in the citizenship courtroom they take your phone away, io which i think is nonsense. so here i am sitting there for two hours, they are filing everyone in. i don't have a phone. to give you a constitution. i read the constitution cover to cover three times. in that time. it's a good document. and i was never -- between reading the constitution and saying we don't live up to all the things written in this, it's neat the things that are written in this. and all of these people in the different reasons why they e might be in this room with me swearing for their citizenship. maybe this to marry someone. or because they married someone. to pursue their dreams or this marks the end of the escape from some other place. i don't know. it suddenly struck me that this should be treated more importantly that i have been it treating it. and then can d the idea that no only should this be treated more importantly, i have

obligations towards citizenship and the upholding of democracy. it doesn't just exist around me. you can't just sit here in 2024 and say this is looking really bad. you have ways to make it, the outcome, less bad. and we have to engage in them. >> in the seven minutes we have with us today, i'm going to ask you two questions, this is a bit of a synopsis of some of the comments from the audience. one is, what is the state of journalism? the other is the state of democracy. i wonder if you would say something about democracy here in this country, particular, but also democracy around the world. and also what your sense of the election is, we are in the middle of a mega election year around the world. ir but particularly the u.s. election. >> we start backwards. this is the most election year any of us can remember. more than half of the world voters are going to polls.

some of the elections are fair and some are not. some are predetermined and some are not. some should be worrisome, including the one in india underway right now, because india, turkey, hungary, they are all examples of what we need to worry about. and that is, not dictatorship or autocracy being born of revolution, the kind in which you change all the airport names and schools and that kind of stuff. but the softer thing where you, as voters, because of frustration with the way things are going hand over certain rights to people who will tell you they have a better solution or more obvious solution than the difficult work of democracy. and that is where we are around the world. and the president of u.s. likes to say democracy is growing around the world, i take exception to that. i think it is wishful. i wish you were right but i don't think he is right. a , we need are democracy in america. and we need heto prevent for th erosions.

when half of the country is at risk of losing the reproductive rights, that is actually a problem for the other have too. right? when you need clarity on that one, look at south africa 6% of4 the population voted in apartheid days. there democracy was fantastic. it was fantastic for the 6%. they had all the choices in the world, different candidates. it didn't occur to them that 94% needed democracy too. in america we have to realize that. this is not a women's reproductive rights problem. this is an our rights problem. we need to step up and deal with that. >> [ applause ] >> we need our own rights. the world, this is the beauty of talking to you, as people who are not americans, the world likes to talk about america, the world likes to talk smack about america, the

world likes it when america takes one on the chin every now takes one on the chin every now but they don't want it to fail. they don't want this democratic experiment to fail. it would be very bad because the influence in the world would be influenced -- negatively influenced by the failure of american democracy. they are ready to pounce. there are number of bad actors in the world were just waiting to see if they can wait out they biden administration and try some of their hijinks. there are valid arguments about america not being policeman to the world except cars start crashing into each other when america is not there sometimes. many people say america's role in the middle east is not as robust as it should've been. it's not going to get better without america there, believe it or not. we have to take that seriously. savior democracy for the sake of saving her democracy, but also world democracy. the role of journalism is complicated in this. i would say this, cable news has contributed to an social media has finished the job in ha

erasing complexity. from matters that are inherently complex. i think you and i, growing up, we argued and debated about lu political ideas. that were in front of us at the time. we now live in a world where embracing complexity on an issue is seen as a moral failure. not being able to medially have a take on very complicated things going on in the world is seen as a moral failure. not engaging one side or the other only seems like a moral failure. i would like journalism to help us get away from that. i am trying, in my journalism in the waning days of my career, to do that. to have us engage with each other respectfully through empathy, understanding pluralism. and understanding these matters are all really complicated.

if they weren't compensated we would've sold them. >> television journalism, if you can point the finger at television journalism, clearly you pointed out this crossfire dynamic which might've started on networks -- but i was an intern. for crossfire. >> the medium clearly has its own message. >> and its own mode. >> it's got limitations. but actually the old crossfire wasn't a terrible environment because people really debating things they came i honestly. they work gas lighting. are danger immediate today is people are lying to you. it is not that they have opinions, everyone has opinions and we are not squirrels. we are humans. we can discern people's opinions and say i know where he is coming from on this but here he did it well and i need to think about that and learn how to debate it. we are going away from that.

we are not looking to debate other people, we are just looking for the people we don't have to debate. that is not what is going to create a healthy society. it does create a lot of viewers and followers on social media. but i would rather do the opposite. i would rather say if you're operating in good faith and you truly believe what you believe, and we can have a basic agreement we are on the same side of preserving democracy a' the structure within which we exist, then let's have a debate. i bring those people onto my show. my viewers don't all of what i do. in but i'm not here to protect your sensitivities. and here to allow you to understand the breadth of opinion that is out there. that is our role. that is what we should be doing. allowing the breath of an opinion to be out there and be debated on every issue. on every issue. our role in society's role is not to keep people intellectually comfortable. is not to keep them intellectually safe. we need to lean into that in

the coming months, the coming days, the coming years, to remind people this country was built on robust discussion and it needs to continue to move forward on the basis of robust discussion, not hot takes. >> [ applause ] friday nights, watch c- span's 2024 campaign trail. a discussion on how the campaigns have progressed in the past week. two reporters going to talk about the issues and messages and events driving the political news and to take a look at the week ahead. watch c-span's 2024 campaign trail friday nights at 7:00 on c-span. or download as a podcast on our free mobile app or whatever you get your podcasts. c-span, your unfiltered view of politics. >> american history tv, saturdays on c-span2.

exploring the people and events that tell the american story. starting at 2:00 eastern, port to the rogue american revolution , highlights include historian robert swanson, historian david chiu on the saratoga campaign of 1777. and historian karen o'keeffe's on why general horatio gates went from a subject of the british crown to a revolutionary. then watch american history tv series, historic presidential elections. exploring what made these elections historic. the pivotal issues of different eras and the lasting impact on the nation. this week the election of 1960. emma craddick massachusetts senator john kennedy nearly defeated incumbent republican vice president richard nixon. this was the first election in which all 50 states participated. and, at 8:00 eastern lectures in history, boston college medications professor on how

baseball connects americans to their past and culture. exploring thamerican story. watch american history tv, saturdays on c-span2. and find a full schedule on your program guide or watch online anytime at c- span.org/history. >> weekends on c-span2 are an intellectual feast. every saturday american history tv documents america story. and on sundays tv brings the latest in nonfiction books and authors. funding for c-span2 comes from these television companies and more. including charter communications. >> charter is proud to be recognized as one of the best internet providers. we are just getting started. building 100,000 miles of new infrastructure to reach those who need it most.

>> charter communications, along with these television companies, support c-span2 is a public service. >> zinzi clemmons novel, was a finalist for the aspen words literary prize. the california book award, a hurston right legacy award and hurston right legacy award and circle leonard prize. she is eight 2017 national book award 535 honoree and her new essay collection, freedom, is forthcoming. she is assistant professor of english at the university of california davis. nell irvin painter is a national book critic circle finalist. mmr starting over. the edwards professor mimic in history america at princeton university. and a fellow of the american academy of arts and sciences.

she has also received honorary degrees from yale, and the university of north carolina at chapel hill and dartmouth. after phd in history from harvard, she earned degrees in paintingin from school of the arts at rutgers and the rhode island school of design. now lives and works in east orange, new jersey. of course this evening we are here to celebrate nell's new book, "i just keep talking, a life in essays". this conference of new collection of essays spans art, politics, and the legacy of racism that shapes american history as we know it. assembling her writing for the first time into a single volume, i just keep talking displays the breadth and depth of mel's decades long historical inquiry and evolution of black political thought.t. henry louis gates jr. had this to say. nell irvin painter is one of the towering lack intellects of the last half-century. i just keep talking is more

than odyssey for the senses, it's a revelation that will inspire courage in anyone seeking to express the truth. we are honored to welcome them this evening. joining giving them a warm harrisburg welcome. >> [ applause ] >> thank you. >> hello. hi, everyone. it is nice to see you all. nell, it's wonderful to be here and truly an honor to share a stage with you. thank you for inviting me. so, am very happy to be here to

celebrate with you. i just keep talking. -- "i just keep talking". there are really few writers ge who can speak with equal doubts about american history , about the craft of writing and literature, about politics, popular culture and visual art. but in this unique collection, you managed to do all of that and then some. painter is a capacious thinker whose curiosity has never been constrained by genre or discipline. and whose courage has led her to distinguish careers in academia, in writing, and visual arts. by collecting her writing on multiple subjects together alongside her artwork, a full picture of painters genius emerges which is not just the sum of its parts, but is characterized her ability to think within wearing each parties deepened by their

ability to speak to each other. for its depth i keep -- "i just keep talking" is readable and intelligent without dumbing down or pandering to an audience . for those of us familiar with peter's work, the book is a celebration of her genius. for those of us who are new to her, it is a delightful entry point into her esteemed and capacious body of work. in the essay, lung divisions, which is about the growing recognition of black writers from jades baldwin to toni morrison, she mentioned the 19 88 letter signed by 40 black writers demanding the gn recognition of morrison's work. it struck me while reading this book that perhaps this work might also argue for the recognition of painter is one of the nation's great sears, a person in possession of

stricken clarity onto the country's history and an implicit understanding of the mechanism of racism, classism, and sexism. and his body of work forms an excellent basis to understand our country. so, with that said, i'm going to let you talk as much as possible. and, i want to start with the process of assembling this book. as we started talking about backstage. because, it's both an art book and an essay collection. i wondered how you arrived at this format, tell us about the process of putting it together. >> thank you so much. what a lovely introduction. i am fortunate, i like, to haves such a thoughtful introduction and so complete. thank you. the process of publication is

something i could talk about forever. i've been very interested in the history of the book, which is material history, and the history of the book is a field that is very old. but, for the longest time, he didn't take account of black authors and black writing. it tended more toward sort of european, elizabethan, and so on. the granular history of books made often in britain. but, one of the wonderful things that has happened in the current times, in the 21st century, is that fields have opened up to each other. so, for instance, yes, this is a chance for me to brag about another new book -- second

edition of sojourner truth. published two days ago. >> [ applause ] >> wait. and, you thought i was just caring this for my lunch. already. wow. this is the third edition of yo standing in armageddon, the united states, turn of the 20th century. so the old books are coming back and coming back and coming back. so i wanted you to know about that. at any rate, one of the things that has happened in the 21st century, really, in the second decade of the 21st century, is s that what we think of as the archive, what we think of as are techniques of knowing

society in the past, this is opened up tremendously. so i mentioned in the history of the book, i used that with sojourner truth. so i mentioned sojourner truth, so this book was published a quarter of a century ago and i worked as hard as i could with the tools i had at that time. i did not have a tool like a history of the book with me. and i know we want to talk about paper and printing and so forth. but, what the history of the book has done for me is to see sojourner truth as an author, as a self published author of and as told to biography that she had printed, she marketed, she distributed herself. when she went to akron, ohio,

she was on her own book tour. so that is something that is going to go into my new book on sojourner truth called sojourner truth was a new yorker. and she didn't say that. so, that's the new things we can do with the discourse. but, you ask about publishing and printing. so if you have -- i keep talking in your hand, the first thing you notice, the book is really heavy. and the reason it is heavy is because it has this wonderful paper that you can see full- color, often full-page images of my artwork. yeah. so, i started being interested

in paper and printing and publishing in 2005, as i was finishing up creating, black americans, which is a narrative history of black americans. but it's a history, but all the images are black fine art. which means i needed color, i needed reproductions that were big enough for you to see, which meant, luckily, i had an editor who knew a lot about paper. and so he was able to understand the need for paper understand the need for paper and to have the book printed at that time, which was 2005, had a printer who could deal with the paper and the color. so that's why first started understanding. and then with old an art school, the memoir,

it is full of images. again my own artwork. it is sort of works in progress. you see how i am doing as i go along. and so once again, we needed full-page, we needed good-sized throughout, not just an insert. and once again we needed good paper. now, the publisher there was an independent publisher called counterpoint in berkeley. and they were able to do that. so when it came time for "i just keep talking", and we were talking about the contract, i said, i want to be able to put in full-color, full-page images throughout. and they said, oh no, we can't do that. the book will cost $40. it will be prohibitive. no one will buy it. and i thought, my little publisher in berkeley and i said, if they can do it in

berkeley, you can do it in new york. so i said, go talk to your graphics people. they went and they talked to the graphics people and the technology is not the same technology from 1996. not the same technology as 2005. so they came back and said, yeah, we can do it. so the book does not cost $40 and it's very heavy. so all of you writers out here, insist. >> absolutely. put in the contract. >> put in the contract. literally. >> thank you. i want to now go to the title of the book. so, the title comes from, you tell a story in the introduction

about an editor at knopf who rejected a biography of jose hudson. >> just because he was a stalinist. >> and the conversation went something like, hudson doesn't tug at the heartstrings, right? and you replied, well, neither do i. i just keep talking. you say feisty, mouthy, unrepentant is how you describe him and yourself. which i find highly accurate. "i just keep talking", you said, and writing and publishing books that bringing me just enough the following for very nice career. no distinguished scholarly career, et cetera, et cetera. and you speak in the book as well is in the art school about the frustrations of not being

recognized. and despite all of this, you y persist to talk. so that idea of persistence is inherent in the title. >> yes. >> i want you to just talk about that idea a little more. why is it so important to just keep talking? >> i think it's important to keep talking, especially for women to just keep talking because her so much that says don't. we just keep talking. i always feel like i have something to say. in fact, have a very an distinguished color league -- scholarly career. my first job was at ben. i was tendered and promoted three years. i second job was at the university of north carolina, chapel hill. i became a full professor in another three years. a perfectly good career. a perfectly good career.

and i got to be president of the organization of american historians, and president of the southern historical association, and the american academy of arts and sciences. well, you mentioned some of this. so it has been a perfectly good career. however, it's been a perfectly good career, but i never felt like people were saying, oh my god, nell, that is wonderful! as you say. that has come very late. and i will give you an example of the frustration. the frustration. ation. the some of you know of the book, re the history of white people. it falls on the distinguished career side in the sense that it got a front-page, gorgeous front page review of the new

york times book review and this was when it was fat. when it was itself and i had a wonderful book tour. my first stop was the colbert report where i arm wrestled steven colbert and he did not win. i did not either. that book got no book prize. nothing. so it is that kind of thing that happened. on the one hand, hitting all the marks and on the other hand -- people ask me so i never wrote for the new york times or new republic or anything like that.

in fact you warmed my heart by mentioning one of them. would you say why that was special for you, going about voting? >> yeah, actually my dad is in the army, so he will appreciate this. so you mentioned an essay where you talk about the importance of voting and historical sacrifices that have been made and you mentioned seeing the lines in 1994 of black south africans being able to vote for the first time and my mother was in one of those lines. >> really. for me that is a historic image. did it tug at your heart strings? really it is a marvelous image.

and the essay that i wrote it about was 2020. it took a long time for us to find out what happened, so it was about voting and i think i also mentioned voting during reconstruction, too. because there are moments when american voting has so much additional residence. it is kind of a quintessential action and marker. of succession. >> so i think from there, we might as well keep talking about the election. it is probably on our minds and seeing as we have you here we can consult you for a little

bit. >> sure. >> i think this is where your book is probably going to receive a lot of attention, because your clarity around the particular historic moment is so well taken for obvious reason. you say in the book that we are living in a moment between reconstruction and right before things were rolled back. >> yes. they called it redemption. >> thank you. redemption. >> yeah, that piece, i have forgotten what it is titled but i remember so clearly saying

that i feel like i'm living in 1872. this is after the stirring americans in the streets of 2000,ac where i felt safer in t country than i ever have in my whole life. i just loved 2020. we were in the adirondacks and people were out in the streets in plattsburgh and king valley. space as you know are represented in congress by elise stefanik. i feel like i'm living in 1872, this moment of promise. now i know as a historian that 1876 and 1877 and 1898 and 1912 were still to come, but i want to savor this moment of

progress. of seeing a face of the united states that says black lives matter. police brutality is wrong. so it is living kind of in two times, in a way and right now i almost feel like we have to do that again, but i have so many friends who were just tearing their hair out, imagining what the united states is going to be like. what the united states is going to be like when donald trump is president again and i said, i am in 1872, for one thing, but i also don't think we are going

to have to face that because i don't think that he is going to last until november. i will also take you back to, remember last fall was that when we said oh my god, we will have a civil war? >> i think it has been happening for a while. >> i don't hear it so much anymore, but i said you know, we had one of those. it killed a lot of people. it ended slavery and that probably was the only thing that could end slavery and we got the 13th and 14th and 15th amendments. so if we have another civil war, our side is going to win because we are organized. we prize organization and

government and collaboration with each other. working together. whereas the other side, they have their guns and will be at each other's throats. and we will win. and we won't get the 13th and 14th and 15th amendment, but we will get rid of guns and all dogs will be on a leash. >> thank you. that moment in the book gave me so much hope and comfort when you said that, that the civil war is not the worst thing that can happen. >> it's pretty bad. it is pretty bad. >> but you make an excellent point that sometimes you have

to work through a lot of pain to get really good things on the other side. so, thank you. biography. so as we just saw, a definitive biography of sojourner truth and this is a form in your career. recently you have been writing more memoir and i am interested in the biography and the stories of a particular historic figure and how have you found writing a memoir, is it a similar process? >> i can tell you for a long time. the sort of foundation of my interest is my sense of not being the right kind of black person and i talk about that in

the introduction. i come from an educated family. we were not rich, but we were not poor. i didn't have to experience drug abuse or violence in my home and when i read around, there is so much that our society and our culture wants of black people that is so different from my life. my life, my formative life and also the life i just told you about. it does not fit in the narrative of black hurt. so i have always taken the sense of individual specificity into my writing of history and that is why biography is so interesting. because even when we have

social identities that our society wants to make into what we are, wants to some us up as our social identity. each of us has a life and a history in the family and a dumb brother-in-law. so whenever people start talking about white people are superior or black people are superior or africans are superior, i remind them that everybody has a brother-in-law and they do away with any idea, any concept of superiority, because everybody's brother-in- law -- well, you understand. so specificity is really important for me and that is

really the basis of biography. listen to the truth. i started thinking about sojourner truth with a question. this book was first published in 1996, so it is a 20 century book and in those days there would often be an image of to sojourner truth on the door of women's studies or african american studies and there would be some words like ain't i a woman or do this to me or do that. and then you would see the photograph and it was blue joao. she is very gentle, respectable

and also -- so how do you put those two together? that is what i did in sojourner truth a life, a symbol and what i am doing again. she didn't say that because after this quarter-century so many people have paid no attention to what i said about how sojourner truth did not say that it was made up 12 years after the fact. so i am going to go even deeper into sojourner truth's specificity including her being a new yorker and taking

advantage of new york law to get her son back from having been sold illegally into perpetual slavery. this is something that harriet jacobs never could've done because the laws of north carolina, in north carolina it was not just accepted. it was business to traffic children. it was business to turn people into financial assets. this is not the case in new york. i mean it happened, but it was not the case in new york law. in north carolina it is routine. if it happened in new york it was illegal. >> thank you.

two, lovely, longer essays about sojourner truth. always worth checking out, but thank you. since we are speaking about stereotypes, stereotypes of women, i thought we could talk about your wonderful 1992 essay on anita hill in the book, which feels very prescient in a lot of ways. when i read it, i was very young when that happened. >> you were young. >> im older than i look. of course i did not watch the entire hearings, but i observed the atmosphere and it was so negative. so horrible and violent towards anita hill, but your essay, there is so much clarity humanizing her and also

analyzing the trial as a spectacle and showing us how thomas was able to manipulate the media. using different stereotypes. basically deploy the stereotype -- >> triggered to the race. >> using those stereotypes to his advantage, to proclaim his victimhood and anita hill was not able to do that because of the limited and rigid stereotypes associated with black women. and i wonder, you know, if those are the only images still available to black women or if in 2024 we have sort of moved beyond those categorizations?

>> i think we have moved beyond those categorizations. i do not subscribe to the widely popular narrative of permanent black hurt. i don't subscribe to that. that says that things not only have not fundamentally changed, they cannot fundamentally change. i do not agree with that. so for instance -- i mean, clarence thomas is kind of the same person as he was in 1991, but i think the society around him is more able to see an educated black woman as a person. i mean, when i was teaching at

princeton, my students, my graduating students could see her as an educated woman. ambitious and so willing to follow a miscreant because that was the way to further her career, but i don't think that sense of black women as trader to the race, as tearing down a black man, which circulated in 1991. maya angelou for example wanted us to coalesce around clarence thomas and all of my students stood up and said, no. i think now we would have thousands of americans standing up and saying no. s i think white people changed.

the marker of white peoples change was in 2020, i think. i did not make up the phrase i'm going to share with you. the great white awakening and i think millions of white people can see the dynamics of race now in a way they couldn't before 2020 and certainly could not in 1991. i think thomas portraying himself as a victim now would be laughed out. >> so i think we should wrap up there. thank you so much and we can open up to the audience for questions.

>> if you do have a question, just raise your hand. i will bring you the microphone. we will start right here. >> i so admire your thought that you are living in 1874. i feel as if i am living in 1935 germany. and how that affects my attitudes. obviously 1874 affected your attitudes about lots of things. >> that was kind of a cloak i threw over myself, you know? so if you asked me now to sit down and write 5000 words, i'm not sure i would say the same thing. but anyway, your point. >> why is that? why didn't you write 5000

words? >> because times change and -- but not usually and i will tell you why. our country is gigantic and there are millions and millions of people and we live in a news industry that gets our attention, gets our eyeballs and gets our eyeballs on advertisements with stories of atrocity and stories that scare us to death. the stories that scare us to death are generally national stories. i don't follow the politics of pennsylvania. i know something about the politics of pennsylvania and i wonder if you would feel the

same way if you only looked at pennsylvania. would you? okay, we are in the same state. >> people that i know and like, know about or read about, et cetera, have some german background. it is a wonderful mix of german and irish, german and italian, german and something, but they are also german and i am polish lithuanian, so i am such a foreigner in this area, even though i have lived here since 1969. so my feeling is more international than national. >> let me bring it back to new jersey then. east orange, very different. >> yes, i agree. >> would you feel the same if i

limit you to new jersey? >> same as what? >> that it is 1935, that it is 1933. >> it doesn't matter where i would be in the united states. >> keep it in new jersey. >> with chris christie or what? >> no, murphy is our governor right now. >> we have chris christie on our backs. even running for president. >> he is not anymore. >> thank goodness. it is so complicated and we know that. >> it is because my view of what is going on around us is limited to state and local and we get to newspapers every day. one is the new york times and the other is the star-ledger and the star-ledger has all kinds

of things going on. ge i learned about beach erosion for instance and a lot of new jerseyans murdering their family members, but i don't feel 1933 in new jersey. if you want me to feel 1933, put me in the new york times facing the national news. so what i would like you to do to feel better and save your stomach lining is spend more time with new jersey and your county and your town and maybe you have something to worry about with your school board. i don't know. things happen here. but i think we need to remember how our information comes to us and the industries that send it

to us, for us -- >> also a lot of local outlets are shutting down. >> people are worrying about that and that is something you should worry about, but don't just worry about it. do something about it. do something about it. so a friend of mine is the marvelous jelani cobb and he is very aware of what you're talking about, about the crisis. so one of the things he has worked on is making journalism school tuition free. so do something. do something. don't just sit at home and read

the national papers, pay attention to the national news, worry about what the hell is going on in florida. unless you go to florida and you vote for local school boards. >> hi, so, hello. i listened recently to your interview with debbie on the podcast and i enjoyed it. actually connected with debbie and was one of her students years ago. so, yeah, i really loved the interview and hearing about you and your process through creating your art and how you had to kind of become one with it. like you know it was good, but getting to that space, i can definitely relate to that. we didn't talk about your

artwork, but can you talk a little bit about it tonight and where you are now through your art? >> sure, so "i just keep talking" is full of art and some of it is old art that i made an art school or since then. the rhode island school of t design in 2011, which already is a long time ago. as i was putting these essays together, one part of the process was about the words. making sure i didn't repeat myself too much or publish something that was clearly very dated. i do talk about something that happened a long time ago. i think it is the first essay, about affirmative action. something i published in 1991 and it reads like it was written yesterday.

the process of putting together the text was one thing. but there were some images i wanted to put in and this book has illustrations. were you in art school? >> yes, i did photography and now i am more into branding. >> okay, you know the hierarchy between fine art and illustration. so i embraced illustration even though when i was in art school -- and i was in painting programs. fine art is supposed to be autonomous. it relates only to itself. illustration relates to something else. and so much of black art has

been dismissed as illustration because it talked about the society, it talked about history, it talked about people. it talked about white supremacy and racism. illustration. but in 2022 i did a residency and i got to know a professor and he taught me a term which is editorial illustration. i say that is what i do, editorial illustration, because it responds to text, but it also is hopeful with vision and meaning. but it took me a long time to pull together my art made with my hand and my computer with the words i am going to use.

so in this book you will see some very wordy pieces and those are some of the later pieces. so when i put together the collection of essays, this would have been around 2022. i realized there were some things that i needed to capture visually. so i had a residency and i had a big wall. so i made my art and i put it up on my wall and you will see it. the process of putting together my essays was one and the process of making and putting together the illustrations was another. so i used a wall to put up the pieces i was making. not all of the ones on the wall made it into this book. thank you.

>> hi, i am curious about what you said about pessimism and why you think it is so widespread. why you think it is so durable and if there is an end to that. >> those are hard questions to answer. one reason i think it is so attractive is there is so much to it. we keep having discrimination. we keep having white supremacy. we keep having all of the bad things that happened to black people. those things keep happening. for instance when i say to people that i don't think we will have to deal with the trump presidency. they say you are an optimist. i say, no, i am not an optimist. i've lived too long black in

the united states to be an optimist. i cannot be an optimist, but on the other hand -- one of the early responses to "i just keep talking", the book, was a list of 45 of the best books this spring with women of color and i thought, 45? in the olden days that could never happen. it could never. just to get 45 books out in the world by black women authors , would have been amazing and then to limit it to one season and say these are the best ones. that could not have happened when sojourner truth in life,

a symbol came out. do some of you remember three years ago when it was big news that sojourner truth was able to go to court and get her son back and the archivist found the actual artifacts? do you remember that? it was big news. take my word for it. well, there were three scholarly biographies of sojourner truth around the time i published mine. margaret washingtons was another. all three of us explained this. we all said this is what happened. she went to court, she got her son back. it was not news. the people who cared about that story were us. and a few years ago it was national news. so people ask me why are you

writing another book about sojourner truth? sojourner truth has changed. so that is one big reason. another reason is that the people who say these things are really attractive writers. they are such good writers. so there is enough bad stuff, they are really good writers and we always want explanations. so we have a hunger and i think for younger people who don't have this decades long -- i mean i can remember. not real well, but i can remember half a century ago and younger people don't have, i will give you one last example.

so i go to senior strength training class at the montclair y and the guy who runs it, his name is john. nice, old white guy and he plays music from before the mid- 60s. i can't stand it. and i said to him, john, this is horrible. he said what's the matter with it? i said that is the music from segregation time. he said i never thought about that. but i remember segregation. from california where there was segregation time. this is not to take us to one of the states of the south. so things have changed. young people, thankfully, didn't have to live through the 50s and early 60s and there are

some really good writers -- >> you talked about anita hill. i just want to say, i can vouch for that time. i also wanted to mention that, you know, we are going through this election right now and we see a lot of disillusionment. amongst people in general about voting. and from my perspective it seems as though people put too much faith in voting. what i mean is they don't seem to understand that is the beginning of the process and not really how things really get changed and it takes more than just voting and i wonder if you have any thoughts about that. >> i am with you, 100%.

i agree with you, 100%. but i think i would put less emphasis on how it has to be the first step. i think i would say it is the essential step, but i would agree with you in how it all turns out, absolutely. >> thank you both so much. i'm enjoyed it immensely, so thank you. i wanted to ask the historians o a question. i wanted to ask in your long and distinguished career as a historian with your favorite developments in black history have been as a field and where you are excited about where the field is going? >> that is like asking a mother which is her favorite child and usually it is the most recent,

but i always say my favorite book, i know this isn't exactly what you asked, but for a long time it was the book my knopf editor turned down. when hudson and i went to see him, hudson lectured him about how the republicans and democrats are just the same thing and you aren't going to make any difference unless you are a communist. he did not tug on his heartstrings and he was still very much alive. this is like the 70s. this is late 70s, so this is like antebellum america and my editor said, but he doesn't tug at your heartstrings.

most days a black man had to tug at one's heartstrings to get published by knopf. >> any other questions? okay. thank you so much. can we give them one more round of applause? our author today.

megan kimball is my name. the way i should say this first is gilbert garcia. i'm an opinion writer and columnist with the san antonio express-news, but that's not important. our author today, megan kimble. my name by the way, i should say this first is gilbert garcia. i am an opinion writer and columnist for the san antonio

express news. megan kimble is an austin-based investigative journalist. she is a former executive editor at the texas observer. she writes about housing, transportation and urban development. her latest book, which just came out a few days ago is called "city limits: infrastructure, inequality, and the future of america's highways" and it examines the toll that ever-expanding urban highways have taken on our communities and it does that through texas cities. please help me welcome author megan kimble. >> thank you, gilbert, and thank you all for being here. it is really a delight. >> now megan, you were born in austin, but you grew up in southern california. in california, like texas, has a very strong car culture.

geographically big, very spread out. during that time you are growing up in southern california, you first started to question the world of urban highways on our society? >> it wasn't really growing up. i moved back to l.a. after college and i was an editorial assistant at the los angeles times. i made minimum wage and i was tutoring high school students to pay rent, so as a result i was driving all over los angeles. this was before smart phones, so i had a printout of mapquest on my seat. i would obsessively check sig alert if anyone remembers that, to try to navigate where i was going. i often spent three or four hours a day in the car and the impact on my quality of life was enormous. that is when i really started to wonder, why is this? why have we built cities this

way? what does this do to us as drivers, as people in a community? i moved to tucson, arizona to go to graduate school and the difference in quality of life moving somewhere where i required my car to get everywhere i needed to go to somewhere where i could walk most places was so significant that that is what triggered this interest. >> i think many of us tend to see highway construction as a response to demand. the population of our cities are growing. more cars and we are trying to keep up with that, but your book explores the idea and it is an idea that has been talked about for a while, that widening and expanding our highways really has the effect of reducing demand and i wonder if you can talk about the concept and how it works and it will sound familiar to people. >> so the phenomenon has been well understood since the 1960s when we started building these highways to begin with and the

basic principle is when you adkar capacity, cars will fill that up. it is basic supply and demand. when you make it cheaper and easier to access, more people will access it. so they will move farther from their jobs, farther from their schools. they might take more discretionary trips to the grocery store or mall, more often than they otherwise would have. that was first documented in 1962 and has been documented again and again, saying that when you add lane miles, cars fill up those lane miles. a researcher found that when you add 1% of lane miles, 1% more traffic results and that is controlled for population growth. it has nothing to do with more people driving, it is just people driving more. per capita driving increases. some people call it the fundamental law of road congestion and yet we have the texas department of transportation, known as txdot, who comes to every major city in the state and says we will

fix traffic by widening this highway. all the evidence shows that does not fix traffic. a lot of the premise for my book was learning about highway expansion in austin where i live. right in the middle of the city as it does here. learning that they intended to expand that from 12 to 20 lanes, promising to fix congestion and knowing adding lanes would not fix congestion, so i thought why are we still doing this? this is the literal definition of insanity. >> i think we should point out that while you are looking primarily at texas, texas is probably an extreme example of the phenomenon. this is big cities throughout the country that do it. >> the book takes place in texas, but i pitched the book as texas is the worst offender of something that everyone, everywhere is doing. every state in the country, democrat, republican lead, it doesn't matter. every major city has a massive highway expansion in the works. biden's infrastructure bill

dedicated something like half $1 trillion to roadways and a recent study found about one quarter of that funding is highway expansion. so hundreds of millions of dollars across the country are laying down more pavement for promising to fix traffic and all of the evidence shows that it won't. >> i think one of the things that is underappreciated and you emphasize in the book and i think it is very important for everyone to be able to read and understand the stories, is the fact that these highways are not only dealing with demand and traffic issues and cities, but they are shaping our cities. they are not always responding and in many cases if you look historically they have led to sprawl, contributed to sprawl and they have, what you talk about with houston and austin, they contribute to segregating the city.

i think if you would talk a little bit about i-10 and how it cut through the fifth ward and the impact on the community. >> it is kind of an adage that development follows roads, roads don't follow development. roads open up room for development and we've seen that with almost every city in texas. when these highways were first built in the 1950s and 60s, so the interstate highway act passed in 1956 under eisenhower, lots of federal money became available to build highways and urban planners across the country saw the opportunity not only to accommodate all of the demand for cars, but also to get rid of quote unquote blighted neighborhoods. neighborhoods made blighted a decade earlier from red lighting, the system denying access to credit to neighborhoods because black and hispanic people lived in those neighborhoods. so a decade later as planners were drawing these routes, they looked to these neighborhoods.

there were lower property values. people did not have the political capital to resist highway construction and i came across a modern-day study that found redlining neighborhoods denied access to credit because they had minority populations were three times more likely to have an interstate through them than the best rated neighborhoods. you can see it again and again in the documentation. i spent a lot of time in the archives. i went to washington, d.c. to look at the predecessor of the highway administration. it is written. it is in the record that these highways were an opportunity to kind of cleanup, in big air quotes, blighted neighborhoods. this coincided with the era of urban renewal which is a biased policy of the federal government to demolish black and hispanic communities and the engine driving all of that was the creation of the suburbs. so our housing policy had incentivized white homeowners

to move far from city centers. they could access great government-backed mortgages. so these white families were flocking to the suburbs and to get them there we built these massive highways and a great example is as you mentioned, interstate 10 and the fifth ward in houston. the fifth ward was then and remains a black community. in the 1950s. i talked to people who grew up there and remembered it in the 1950s and 60s. it was a complete community. people walked everywhere they needed to go. most people didn't have cars. they didn't lock the doors on their houses. people came and went. everyone knew everyone, so there was really no reason to leave. well, one day people started hearing rumors about highway was going to come through the neighborhood. this was before the voting rights act passed. before the civil rights act passed. people got their mail one day and it said we need your land for a highway. we need your home for a highway. people had basically no way to resist or protest or do

anything except move. so i talked to this one woman, mary good jury. her family, they were in middle school when her family got the letter that the texas highway department need your home. so they moved, you know, three miles north of where they lived before, but she was determined to graduate from her high school, one of the most prominent black high schools in houston, so she walked there everyday, three miles to squander miles back, because her family had been displaced by the highway. i talked to lots of people like her. the highway demolished more than 1200 structures. it took three full city block sand -- blocks and emptied the community. people's friends were gone. people themselves were display stand so it literally cut a barrier through that community, so it is split in half now. people call the southern half of the fifth ward the bottom,

because it is below the freeway. >> wasn't there an example of someone who was a cheerleader and was forced to go to the dedication to celebrate the dedication of something that really decimated this neighborhood? >> yeah, so i was looking for people who had been impacted by the highway's original construction, so i started talking to neighborhood leaders in the fifth ward and i had a barbecue one day with this woman who was telling me about highway construction and she happened to be a major at in the marching band of high school. as part of that, all of these highways were big celebrations. there was a ribbon-cutting when the highway opened in the marching band performed. she marched down the highway. totally clean, no cars have ever been on it and it is supposed to be this big celebration. like progress has come to the fifth ward and she is like, this was not progress. my neighborhood has been demolished. i'm not celebrating. i am a teenager. what can i do except twirl my baton on this highway and go about my life?

so even at the time i think a lot of people were really troubled by these highways and in cities across the country, people revolted. there was a mass movement of people against highway construction. the original freeway revolts in the 1960s. tens of thousands of people protested in golden gate park in san francisco. in washington, d.c., black and white people together, a multiracial coalition of people protested highway construction and a lot of these people stopped highway design. freeway fighters erased highways for maps before they could be built. >> you talk about in 1956, president eisenhower and one of the many things i learned from this book was both president eisenhower and i think his chief advisor helps to implement this law. they were kind of appalled at the way this was being implemented in the various states in the country. their vision for this was this was going to be something that would connect all the states of

the country. they did not see it as this would be used to deal with local traffic congestion problems. the idea of routing these highways through cities, this was not something they envisioned. >> know and i love this story. i don't love it, it makes me angry, but i loved finding it as a reporter because it cracked it open for me. i went to the eisenhower presidential library in kansas to try to find out what was the kind of narrative around the creation of the interstate highway system and, indeed, it is called the national defense highway act. eisenhower sold it to congress as a means to connect the country in case of nuclear attack, in case of war. let's move goods and produce and economic prosperity across the country. at the same time, the interstate act passed. it was a $25 billion law, the biggest public works project ever attempted in american

history and the federal government agreed to pay 90% of the cost of construction of the highways. meanwhile cities like san antonio and dallas and houston, people were buying cars. there were so many more cars on city streets. car registrations jumped from like 500,000 to 25 million in a couple decades, so city planners were like oh my gosh, we have to do something to accommodate all those cars. so they have tons of money from the federal government and basically no strings attached, so they started doing what i described. they started building massive interstate highways through the middle of cities to solve this kind of newly created problem of urban congestion. so the interstate highway act passes. within a few years it is wildly over budget. $1 billion over the $25 billion budget and eisenhower appoints general john bragg been to look into the program. how is it being implemented and he wanted to report back on what is happening with the implementation. so this guy looks into it. he realized the program is

largely overbudget because of urban routes. it is much more expensive to build a highway in the middle of the city than it is in farmland, so he asked congress, when you passed this act did you intend for states to build highways through the middle of cities? they look into it and produce a report and he basically synthesizes all of this in a report that he gives to eisenhower. i found the notecards and the presentation he gave to eisenhower. they had cursive written on them. the short answer is, congress did not intend for highways to be built through the middle of cities. in the past the interstate highway act, it was not intended to solve urban congestion and he gives this remarkable speech to eisenhower and a group of assembled higher- ups in the government, saying basically all of the experts say the way to solve urban congestion is by building transit systems. and yet across the country what cities are doing is actively tearing out transit to build

roads. this guy is a republican, he is an engineer. this is not a political conversation. this is pure geometry. all of us in our cars would not be able to fit in this room, but here we are. so he gives this presentation to eisenhower and to others to say you should tell the bureau of public roads to instruct states to stop using our money, federal money which was designated to connect the country, to solve this new problem of urban congestion. he gives this compelling presentation. eisenhower's response to that is captured in a memorandum written a few days after the meeting and he was really pissed off that his program is being used in a way he had not intended. that it was against his cities -- his wishes and those that implemented it that way had done so against his desire. so i found that, it wasn't supposed to be this way. this was not the intent of the

program. this was never what was supposed to happen. why didn't they change anything? well i found eisenhower's secretary's daily notes in the archives and she had this note that, you know, these guys were in for a meeting on the interstate highway program. thinks that cities should be directed not to build highways in the middle of their cities. others think it would be murder to move in an election year. so it is an election year. money has been allocated to states. eisenhower says something like the states would rise up in arms if we took away this money. states of electoral votes. >> states have electoral votes. he wants his party to win reelection, so nothing is done. >> we talked about sprawl, we talked about displacement. how communities have been affected. businesses affected. housing, by what you are describing. one of the mind blowing facts

that appears in this book, and this comes from the texas department of transportation study, was the fact that on road emissions in texas, one half of 1% of the total carbon dioxide emissions in the world. i don't know if you were aware of that when you started. if you didn't i think you would be shocked, because i was when i read it. i knew we had an issue with emissions in texas, but that is an amazing statistic. >> i was shocked. actually wrote a story for the texas observer where i used to work about highways in texas. that led to this book and when i was reporting that story i was looking through txdot environmental documentation and it is like on the road assessment of greenhouse gas emissions. a super technical and there is,

whatever, this graph showing texas emissions. worldwide emissions, texas, and on the road. i think the point of the graph is to say we sure aren't admitting that much on the roads. look at this little circle. i interpreted it as we, drivers in texas, are responsible for half a percentage of all the emissions in the whole world. that is staggering and to me that fueled a lot of the reporting for the book. that gives it the urgency. highway expansion will take people's homes and pollute our error. t i profiled in the book have a measurable impact on global warming worldwide like that is really urgency. highway expansion is going to take people's homes, it will pollute our air, all those things are terrible, but what we absolutely know is that it will significantly increase greenhouse gas emissions and it is not going to solve the problem it set out to solve. so, we, drivers in texas, these highway expansions that i profile in the book have a measurable impact on global warming, worldwide. like, that is really staggering to me, and it is also like, an opportunity to be like, hey, we

in texas, if we stop that, that could also have a material impact on worldwide global climate emissions. >> one of the things you talk about in the book is this movement that has grown in opposition to some of the assumptions that were made about expanding highways, and you look at the opposition to expanding i-35 in austin, the opposition to expanding i-45 in houston, and a movement to remove o i-345, the elevated e highway in dallas. and in reading the book, it really felt like, something has really been building here over the last several years and it has become sort of a coordinated, multistate movement. could you talk a little bit about how you have seen this grow and why you think this has become the movement that it is now? >> yeah, i absolutely think we are sort of in a new wave of freeway revolts today. i started reporting on this group in houston called stop txdot 45, that is this grassroots group, just normal people learned about this

massive highway expansion, a $10 billion project that will displace 1200 homes, 300 businesses, take like 450 acres of land. it is absolutely enormous. and this group said, "no, we don't want that." and they started going door to door across houston, knocking on doors of people who lived in the footprint of the expansion, or who the expansion would suddenly be in their backyards -- all of them didn't know about it, txdot had not on outreach to them, so they started this pretty remarkable grassroots opposition movement to txdot and they successfully stopped that expansion for two years. so, members of the group filed civil rights complaints, alleging that the project violated title vi of the civil rights act because it so disproportionately affected black and hispanic people. the people in the footprint of the expansion, according to txdot's own analysis, said thatt the residents are primarily low income and minority. so, they filed complaints and they said, hey, txdot, we need you to pause what you are

doing on this project while we investigate these complaints. you know, you can find out more about what happened with that in the book, but as a result of that, they were able to renegotiate with txdot, they had leverage. so, again, this is just young people in their 20s and 30s really see the connection between highways and climate change, particularly houston highways and increased flooding, like you lay down more concrete, you are able to flood more. so, currently, as i was reporting in the book, there is a group in austin called rethink 35, and they sort of l grew up out of the opposition to the i-35 expansion that i mentioned earlier. there has been, for about a decade in dallas, a campaign to remove i-345, which is this elevated stretch of highway that bound the eastern stretch of downtown dallas and it impacts an enormous amount of land. the argument there is, we could put that land to better use, we could build housing on it, we could build affordable housing, offices, whatever the community needs and wants. it absolutely is a wasted opportunity to use that for a highway.

so, those campaigns are kind of happening separately, and what was really cool for me to observe as a journalist was over the four years i recorded this book, they started talking to each other. they started coordinating and realizing that the locus of power was not at the city council, it was not at their txdot district, it is at this entity called the texas transportation commission, which oversees txdot. the four people appointed by the governor. so, they started organizing statewide. they had biweekly zoom calls, they had organized several statewide protests in austin at the texas transportation commission, and i think seeing that kind of growing, coordinated movement in texas, that is also happening nationwide. there are freeway fighters in almost every state in america and they actually convened in cincinnati this fall and i went to cover it for bloomberg. there are grassroots campaigns talking to each other, trying to figure out how to get to the root cause of these highway expansions. why do they keep happening? and how can we change, policy to prevent them? and >> as you pointed out, the real power to transportation in texas is texas department of

transformation, so it is really amazing to read some of the accounts in the book and to get the sense that they really are h sort of disinterested in the sentiment of people in the communities that are going to be affected by some of these projects. whether it was in the i-35 expansion -- in the case of the i-45 expansion, you had somebody that you write about ultimately filing a civil rights case and the federal government put a pause on the project, and my reading of it is that the texas transportation commission, they were kind of vengeful about it and said, okay, well, parts of this project that you might want, we are just going to give that up, you are not going to get that because you are trying to block this expansion of i-45. and along those lines, in san antonio, we had an experience very similar, where we had a project that was overwhelmingly approved by voters -- it was a

bond project -- dealing with broadway street which runs north-south in downtown san antonio. the project was going to an provide a bike lane for a stretch of broadway, it was going to widen the sidewalks. the texas transportation commission had essentially turned over control of broadway to txdot and i guess they technically still had ownership of it. so, there were no objections from the texas transportation commission, but, after the bond was passed, and well, the plans went forward, and suddenly, at o a certain point, the chairman of texas transportation commission, bruce bowe, decided that this was not going to happen. we had the mayor of san antonio adamantly in support of this. as i said, the voters of san antonio adamantly in support of this. and that chairman of the texas transportation commission did not care. i want to get your thoughts about it. you wrote about this very well

in the book. and as you point out in the book, there were a lot of questions, suggestions that bruce bowe had heard from governor greg abbott, and that had affected -- because we haven't really heard any objection to this for a long time, then suddenly we did. >> yeah, that was remarkable, to me, when that happened. like, watching that unfold. as you said, the voters of san antonio overwhelmingly approved this bond that would have narrowed that road and added bike and pedestrian infrastructures that would have taken away two lanes to add bike lanes and pedestrian infrastructure that the voters overwhelmingly approved. and there was some technicality, like you said, that they had not actually turned over ownership, despite working with txdot engineers in san antonio and the city of san antonio. so, like, some random meeting in february 2022, there is an item on the agenda about broadway, and the meeting was really remarkable, and before he puts it to a vote, he says, i want to give some context for this agenda item.

and he says, you know, governor abbott has given us one directive. so, all of these commissioners are appointed by added, the only answer to abbott. the directive abbott has given us is to fix congestion. abbott ran for office planning to fix traffic in texas cities. when he was elected, he created this $65 billion program calledi texas clear lanes, which is responsible for all of these highway widening's across the state. he said, i think moving -- removing capacity on this roadway would go against governor abbott's directive to us, therefore we must take this facility back and keep it as a six lane road. and like, i -- it is absolutely undemocratic. yeah, i'm speechless, even now. like, it -- i think everyone in san antonio was shocked by that, and i -- like, it was sort of a mystery. lots of people speculated. i was never able to prove that

governor abbott called bruce but -- and he lives in san antonio, by the way, shout out if he is listening -- you know, you can look in the property tax appraisal district and find out where he lives, he lives pretty close to broadway. he knew about that project. there was absolutely no no way he was unaware of what was happening and what the city of san antonio was planning, and to have this sort of thing that actively removed -- this project removed from the voters of san antonio, i found that to be remarkable. ts and i got a little clarity on it a few months later at the texas tribune festival in austin. a high up guy on txdot was on a panel and there was a local reporter from the texas tribune who said, hey, what happened? what was up with that? there is this quote, it was in the book, and i still find it funny, he said, you know, part of the bond was to make that road safer, lots of people are injured or die on that road because it is not well designed for bikes or pedestrians. cars move very fast on it. so, that was part of the project. he said something like, you io know, we understand the need to

make texas road safer, but not at the expense of vehicular capacity. >> [ laughter ] >> because that should be the big priority, right? >> because that is our highest i priority. it is not texans' lives, it is moving texans quickly in a car. >> well, i am going to pause to think about that for a minute. >> [ laughter ] >> you know, one of the things that i think many of us have heard over the years is that texas is unique, geographically. we are such a big state, some of our cities were kind of developed after the advent of the automobile, unlike some of the cities, say, in new england and in the northeast. so, i was curious to get your take on the argument that we sometimes hear, that public transit can't work on the same level in texas cities that we might see elsewhere, and that texans love the freedom of being able to drive their own cars, and it is just the nature of the state, it is just not

going to adapt to what we might see in other states. i wanted -- i am just going to present that devils advocate argument and kind of get your take on it. >> yeah, i love that question and argument. i mean, how many of you love to drive? okay, we've got a handful. we've got a handful. i don't love to drive, but i, in austin, have to drive everywhere to get where i am going. there are no other alternatives. and so, i think we have been sold this narrative that cars our freedom, cars offer us independence and autonomy, and therefore we should do everything in our power to incentivize car travel, because that is what americans want. that is what americans have. so, like, that is what we do. our behavior is dictated by the infrastructure that is built for us, and in a state like texas, there just aren't other options. so, i have one quarrel with -- and obviously, not with you, just with the argument -- that texans love their cars, like i would gladly get rid of my car e if i had viable alternatives, but the reason i am counted in

the number of drivers on i-35 is because i have no other options. and, indeed, to the people who love driving in here, those who love driving should still encourage transit, because it gets people like me off the road and you have a clearer road ahead. like, everyone should support that. >> yeah, it is a win-win. >> yeah, exactly. >> we will start taking n questions in a minute, but i wanted to ask you one last thing. at one point, someone in the book -- and i apologize for not remembering who it was -- with regard to this issue that we are talking about, they asked, what is the transition plan? because even if we say, we are going to maybe remove some highways that have caused more damage than anything positive, and if we start trying to move more toward public transit, it is not an easy process. it is a time-consuming process. what were the transition look like? how would that work, when you

look at that? iv >> yeah, and that is a great question, a txdot engineer asked that. to go back to your previous question about sprawl, we have built the cities around the car, it is not easy to reverse that. it is not going to happen tomorrow. we have to retrofit our cities in some way, and there is going to be some, perhaps, short-term pain with that. i would argue that short-term pain is much less than the pain of living for the hottest summer on record, for example. c like, we absolutely have this huge urgency to change how we get around and move. but, like, indeed, i am not trying to undersell how difficult of a challenge that is. for me, i think it is, we look at the money we will spend on these highway expansions, $65 billion over the coming decade. imagine what we could do if we put that money into bus rapid transit. like, imagine what we could do if we built light rail with that money. so, , i think beginning to thin about how we spend our money as a state, and what is it prioritizing and incentivizing is, to me, the transportation plan is like a bus that comes every five minutes versus every 30. >> and as you pointed out in

the book, state law dictates that txdot devotes 97% of its budget to roadways or highways. >> yes, according to the texas state constitution, 97% of our state funding is required to be spent on roadways. >> okay, so, we are going to start taking some questions. okay, let's start with you, sir. thank you. >> this is kind of more of an observation, but, you know, when we talk about how we don't like to drive, write, and we talk about how these highways are just creating more congestion, but in san antonio, the voters have routinely voted against alternatives such as light rail. so, how do we change that narrative? is it fear of the unknown, why we keep doing this? it has been brought up, how many times? three times? and overwhelmingly. and until such time, we feel the pain, i don't think -- or, if the legislators to change

that percentage -- is there any -- i mean, is there any hope? the voters say one thing, but we act, when we go to the io polls, in a whole different manner. so, how do we bridge that gap? >> yeah, i don't know enough about the votes that happened in san antonio. the same thing happened in austin, we rejected a transit bond, twice. m. i will say, though, i certainly didn't vote on the i-35 expansion. i haven't voted on any highway expansion in the state of texas. so, why are we not being asked to vote on transit? the answer is the state doesn'te spend money on transit. so, cities are being asked to pony up more money to pay for transit systems. so, we passed transit connect by agreeing as a city to raise our property taxes. that was a hard pill for many to swallow, housing is expensive in austin, so the idea of paying more for housing

to get transit is a hard sell, i but we ultimately passed it. i don't know the specifics of san antonio, but i assume the voters are being asked to pay more in sales tax or some kind of bond to pay for a transit system, and i think it is, certainly, understand people are strapped for money and they might reject that. but, again, that actually should be the responsibility of the state. our state transportation agency is only funding highways. i think that is the bigger question. >> can you speak to any documentable connection between the oil industry and highways, and everything you are talking e about now? >> yes. there is one. i don't know enough about the oil industry, specifically, but the connection between concrete companies and highway construction companies is very clear. the associated general contractors is the lobby arm for that highway industry in texas, the people who build anda maintain our highways, and they spend millions of dollars electing people like greg abbott and dan patrick. so, like, the connection between highway and concrete companies is very clear. the members of the texas

transportation commission certainly have connections to oil and gas money. i don't -- i didn't do the investigative journalism to document it. but, laura ryan, who is a former commissioner, owned car dealerships. >> can you hear me? whether gerrymandering is an issue here, too. we have 35% of the states population live in the five metro areas, yet getting on i- 35 from here to austin and back is a nightmare. there is no state-level initiatives to deal with that. we had a $34 billion surplus in the last year of the texas nd legislature, and there were no substantial mass transit initiatives that tapped into that money. so, it just seems to me that the republican leadership in the state either doesn't accept the data-driven science behind induced demand, or there is

some other reason for why they won't simply engage in mass tr transit issues. >> yeah, that is a great question. i mean, i think it is true of a lot of texas politics, which is like, cities are dominated by real interests. there absolutely is that dynamic in the texas legislature of the liberal cities need to be constrained, need to -- you know, that was the whole dynamic of the last session. like, cities don't have the authority to pass regulations. like, basically new capped the cities. so, i think you see it in transportation, which is the chairman of the senate transportation commission, is robert nichols, he represents real texas and has an enormous amount of power, but his constituents don't really need or want transit. i certainly think in rural texas, highways are an appropriate solution. but, the urban voters in texas don't have much power in the state legislature, and that is manifested negatively in many ways, and one of them is transportation.

>> yes, in the book, you don't really address the highway lobby -- which is oil and gas, motor vehicles, highway construction, and also suburban development. all of those industries make a lot of money off of highway building. and, you know, are you sure it is the transportation commission that is making these decisions? or, is it the highway lobby? >> oh, i mean, it is absolutely a story of political corruption, and i did do that for my story in the texas observer that ran in 2021, looking at the associated general contractors just as a slice of that highway lobby, of how much money they give to texas politicians. as i said, they have given moret than millions of dollars to governor abbott to get him re- elected. so, the texas transportation commission answers to governor abbott, who certainly gets a

lot of money from highway contractors. so, like, i am not diminishing that, at all. i think the political corruption is really important. i think, though, the larger story i was trying to get at -- so, there is that, the political corruption, but there is also this idea we have been sold that cars our freedom. that is something i heard again, and again, in hearings at the texas capital. there was a hearing in 2021 to open up the state highway fund to fund transit. someone was there, testifying, saying, you know, public transit is for socialists. highways are capitalism. it is reductive and absolutely false. like, you can disprove that we spend millions and billions of dollars subsidizing highways, but that perception remains. so, absolutely, there is a story of political corruption, but i also think there is a wrong correlation, politically

that highways are -- like, transit is for liberals and cities. like, that is disproven, when you look in the 1960s about how people were talking about it. in the 1970s, 1980s -- reagan raised the gas tax and funded transit. this political dynamic that we live in today is new, the idea that transit is for liberals. t >> well, that actually was going to be my question, was this association in how we think about freedom, that word, and how that relates to transit. so, you really kind of already answered it. but, if you wanted to pursue it a little more, feel free. >> yeah, i don't have that much more to say, except that i don't feel that free, chained , to my car. i think a lot of people feel that way, particularly young people. >> i think there is one back there -- yes, sir? >> you mentioned concrete companies thave big car companies, especially american big car companies, have they affected this in any way? whether it was the bill in 1962 who or from then to now? >> car companies, like general motors, is sort of behind the

inception of the interstate highway program, which i document in the book. in the 1940s, general motors sponsored this exhibit called highways and horizons that basically sold roosevelt on the idea of creating an interregional highway network, which morphed into the current highway system. i didn't do the reporting to document how car companies have influenced how we spend our money, but certainly, if i had a year and some funding -- [ laughter ] like, i have no doubt that the federal infrastructure bill was influenced by car money. i just haven't documented it. >> i think we have time for one quick question. is there anyone else who -- yes? yes, ma'am? we will get the mic over to you. >> what my question is, it's just -- the subject was the future of the highways. i am in the design field, and i know when we talked on roads, that you either provide an alternate route or an alternate

transportation. what my question would be, my friends of my generation, when i promote broadway, "won't this be wonderful?" they would say, "i don't walk." "i don't do a bike." but, when i talk with these 20- year-olds, 30-year-olds, my nieces, they live downtown, they bike to work, they will sometimes take cars where it is that rental system. are we come in 50 years, going to have dinosaurs for highways? you think, all these billions of years, and you take away two generations, my generation, and behind us, and all of the in 50 years, the 20-year-olds, 30- year-olds, they aren't going to be driving that much and i think they will want transportation. i think this is wonderful, proactive and i have been in conferences in austin and houston and they were trying not to cry when they were doing

these presentations, and they fought for over 10 years. i just wish there was an alternative just for the future. >> yeah, bei mean, to your poin young people don't want these highways. like, not just because you can see the drivers registration among young people is much lower, it is on the decline, much more than it has been. but, also, young people see the connection between highways and climate change. i talked to this activist who is 16 in portland, she protested outside the oregon department of transportation for two years, saying that climate leaders don't widen freeways. but, i think there is a parallel climate movement. i will also say, like, driving doesn't serve a lot of people. like, a quarter of texans don't drive. when i was recording this book, my dad lost his ability to drive. it is not just for young people. lots of older people, people that have any kind of disability that prevents them from driving -- like, our form of transportation simply does

that -- not serve them. i agree, there is a huge demand, a latent demand for other forms of transportation, besides driving. >> [ inaudible question ] >> yeah, since -- thank you for bringing up the title of the session, which is "the future of economics." indeed, i have talked to many think tanks and researchers, but ultimately, the argument of the book is we should tear these highways down. i went to the city of rochester, in new york, they removed a section of their interlude highway, filled it in, and built housing on top of that, and it is absolutely remarkable to see. land that used to just be exclusively for speeding cars, polluted land, concrete, is now three-story apartment complexes where people live, and walk around, and go to the brewery down the street. that, to me, is the vision of the future. like, we built these things

over the course of a decade, we can absolutely tear these down. >> i think on that encouraging note -- i apologize for anyone that had a question that we couldn't get to, we have to wrap things up -- but, i want to thank you all for coming, and please help me thank you megan kimble. >> thank you, all. >> have a great day. thank you. if you are enjoying "book tv," sign up for our newsletter using the qr code on the screen to receive the schedule of upcoming programs, author discussions, book festivals, and more. "book tv" every sunday on c- span2, or any time online at booktv.org. television for serious readers. "american history tv," saturdays on c-span2, exploring the people and events that tell the american story, starting at 2:00 p.m. eastern, fort ticonderoga in new york hosted its 20th annual discussion on the american revolution. comments include historian, robert swanson, a canadian regimen. historian, david shuman, on the saratoga campaign of 1777, and historian, kieran o'keefe, on

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rio, he has passed. but, my mother graduated from del rio high school and we are fortunate, and have served here in san antonio for many years. and in the audience, i have my wife, martinez florez, and my daughter, mia. but, you, all, are here to hear fromom jesse esparza, so i want to provide an introduction for dr. jesus jesse esparza, who is an associate professor and interim chair of the department of history at texas southern university in houston. his area of expertise is on the history of latinos in the united states, emphasizing civil l rights activism. dr. esparza's manuscript, a fight for latino educational ng autonomy in a west texan borderlands town, was published by the university of oklahoma press, as part of their new as directions in series.

it has already received two book awards, two and counting, right? >> yes. >> so, the 2024 outstanding book award by the texas association of chicanos in higher education, or cihe, and the nonfiction book award by the national association of chicano or chicano studies, or naccs, he received his bachelors degree from southwest texas university and phd from the university of houston, so, if you all would join me in welcoming dr. esparza. >> [ applause ] >> thank you, thank you, i appreciate the invitation and i appreciate the space to talk about such an important work in such an important community, so, thank you.

>> i know this is -- i mentioned my personal experience, right, and my dad has mentioned in the book, i want to do one thing, and i just want to ask the folks that are from del rio, or san felipe, if they can stand or have family from there, so that we can recognize them. so, that we can know the audience. >> yeah, for sure. >> [ applause ] >> and jesse, that is what i actually wanted to begin with. if you can tell us, folks who may have read your book, or have lived experience in san felipe and del rio, can you e tell me about raza schools? >> raza schools is the story of a one-of-a-kind school district that existed in the borderlands town of the city of del rio in this mix american acumen -- american community. this is the story of a community and of a people who

organized and established, in 1929, right as we were coming into the great depression, established an independent school district, the first of its kind, arguably the only kind of school system that would be organized by mexican- americans at the height of jim crow. that is to say, at a time when mexican-americans were segregated, when they were disenfranchised, when they were victims of discrimination, when they were over policed en masse incarcerated. here, you have this community in west texas in the city of del rio in 1929 on the cusp of going into the depression, establishing an independent school district, recognized by the state board of education, recognized by the agencies coming out of austin, and it is an accredited school system, with an accredited high school, and it is graduating learners as early as 1932. that is what this story is. this is sort of the rise and fall, if you will, and the legacy of the school district known as san felipe isd, named

for the community that birthed it. >> and you are from san antonio, we were talking about that earlier, right? graduated from breckenridge high school. how did you hear about, or come across san felipe and the story of the school district? >> so, i had never -- in coming up k-12, i had never heard of san felipe, or, you know, san felipe isd. and even when i went to college, despite having to change my major like four times, like most people do, i eventually landed in history as a major, and even then as an undergrad, i had never heard of this school district. then, i got into the graduate program, and in the graduate program still in san marco, i had never heard of this district. then, go to the university of houston, and i am at uh there for about two years, before i hear about this school district, school system. and it was actually my adviser, dr. guadalupe who is an adviser

in our field and served as an adviser when i went to uh and recommended this school district as my study, because when i usually went to uh, i wanted to be a student of all counts. i was fascinated by the youth movements, the chicano movement, and what students were doing in san antonio, and houston, and dallas, and wherever. so, when i met him, i said, hey, i want to do what you do, but i want to write my dissertation on the chicana walkouts. he was like, "no, don't do that. done to death. everybody does that, everybody knows that history." right? and rightly so, there weis a lo more work to be done. but, what we didn't know at that point, at the moment, is

that we have to, as historians, really focus on stories that aren't being focused on at all, that no one hears about. and so, it was he who recommended that i may be not switch lanes, but maybe move over a lane or so to consider doing this community. like, no, i don't want to do that, i want to do the walkouts. he was like, "just go down there and see what you can find." so, i went on an excavation down there and i hung out for maybe a week, we can have, talked to one or two people while i was down there and i was like, wow, i had no idea this existed here. i was just floored, i was fascinated, i was amazed, i was hooked. so, i came back to my adviser, i said, okay, beth, let's do it, this is what i will do. hi eventually, it became my dissertation, my dissertation project, and that's that kind of on the shelves for years. around 2020, i picked it back up and turned it into a manuscript, a two time award- winning manuscript. i'm just saying. >> [ laughter ] so, you mentioned the week or so that you spent down there, so, what does that look like when you went back to that? >> it felt like i went back in time, actually. you know? this was a small community -- i was familiar with the city of del rio, i had visited deauville before, but in the times i had visited del rio, i had not been in this neighborhood, i had not known about this community, and sort of the historical importance of what had happened there.

i knew of other significant moments, like the case, for example, that comes out of the city of del rio in 1930, the he first court case in the state of texas that tried to destroy segregation in schools, briefed by mexican-americans, i knew that, but i didn't know about san felipe. but, it was like going back in time, and it reminded me, a lot of when i used to visit my family in mexico, these small houses, these small streets, and certainly, it is not all like that, but this is what i remember when i first went there. that was my impression. i said, wow, this was -- and i saw that they had a museum. they call it a memorial center,d and it is a memorial center, but i call it more of a museum. and really, it is a research facility. it houses the most extensive collection of memorabilia and artifacts dedicated to telling the history of that school district and that community. and i had a chance to go in there, and again, i was just floored, and i was just amazed by the wherewithal of this community to preserve this or history.

i mean, these are valiant acts of preservation that they engaged in. before, i went down there to write this history, i am not the first historian to document, or the first person to document the history of san felipe. i am not. and i won't be the last. i mean, what i have done with this book is just the tip of the iceberg. one of the things i learned is that there is much more history that can come out of this community and there is much more history to tell, for sure. >> what is one of the most interesting things that you discovered during that process? >> i was really impressed with how mexican-americans, since before, really -- or, i guess, at the turn of the 20th century, mexican-americans have always resisted. they resisted the things that oppressed them. they fought back. they weren't these sort of -- you know, they didn't stand on the sideline, they weren't idle, to use whatever resources were available. they fought tooth and nail, they fought with grit, and guts, and blood, they fought with everything, and it really just sort of confirmed for me that mexican-americans have a long history of activism, and that they engage, with what my

good friend and mentor calls a spectrum of resistance, that is to say they use the courts, they use city hall, they take it to the streets, engage in protest politics, but they also formed their own institutions, from religious institutions, to cultural centers, to businesses, and also to educational spaces like san felipe isd. so, you know, that really was confirmed for me and that was one of the things i really appreciated in my early research, when i started doing this research. >> one of the things that, in reading the book, jesse, that i took away, is what you mentioned, i always think of that starting in the '50s and really accelerating in the 60s, but you say that it began much earlier, right? but arc of resistance. so, it began how much earlier? >> i would take it back to the early 1910s and 19 teens, because a lot of the tenants of

the chicano movement as we might understand them today, this idea of autonomy, this idea of self-determination, this idea of, you know, being self-sufficient and self reliant, that existed in san felipe in the 1910s and 19 teens, decades before that idea was sort of really propelled during the chicano movement of the 1960s and 1970s and even into the '80s. so, i do sort of extend the periodization of the chicano movement as we understand it, backwards into an earlier period. i talked about the revolution that existed in this community, a lot of that sentiment and a lot of that idea being inspired by the revolution in mexico, ideas of freedom, and democracy, and liberation, and uplift. un community uplift, social uplift, economic uplift, so on, and so on. that was already cemented into this community, and so, the next logical step for them was to ensure that they controlled every institution in their community and that included the schools, as well. >> so, that sense of autonomy -- one of the takeaways, i

think, for readers, is also just, as you mentioned, the role that the schools played within the community, as key anchors. so, have you seen that in other research that you have conducted? in other writings, in other manuscripts that you are developing? is this analogous? or, is this something that is unique? >> it is a bit of both. i have seen examples of what existed in san felipe, in other schools. but, i have seen it as sort of a microcosmic level. not to the extent that it existed in this very unique, independent school system. this school district demanded excellence in achievement among the student body. it expected these students to pass every grade and to graduate from high school, and to apply in, and enroll in, and become accepted to an institution of higher learning. and this is important because

if you look at was happening to ethnic mexican, mexican- american workers across the state of texas in the 1930s, 'fordyce, kristi 50s, most of them are not receiving an education before the eighth grade, and many make it to 10th grade and are not allowed to f graduate as seniors, or they would not be encouraged to apply to the same areas, to ut austin, places like that. , they would be conditioned, and programmed, and placed into the service industry, and those kinds of occupations tend to ri privilege the rich and underserved the poor, but in san felipe, that was not the case. san felipe demanded -- you know, they demanded this kind of success on the part of students, expectations on the part of students, and provided a rigorous academic curriculum that prepared them for that, that prepared them to withstand the rigors of a higher education. and then, perhaps, more importantly, survive beyond college education as many of them would go to live in other places, san diego, dallas, austin, san antonio, places

like that. so, they wanted to make sure that these students could learn and survive in what would have been a hostile environment outside of this very insular, protected environment that they had generated and created since the 19 teens. most of the graduates don't come back to san felipe, they go elsewhere, and they might not find themselves in an insular, protected environment, so the school leaders, the parents, and all made sure that the students were equipped, right, academically, but also socially, culturally, economically, and so on, and so on. >> what are some of the things that -- as you work with students, right, at texas southern, and they go through this book, or you discuss the process, what are some of the learnings that you provide to them? >> yeah, so, i teach at texas southern university in houston,e texas, which is an hbcu historically black college and

university, and i teach mexican- american history there, so when i assigned this book to my students -- who are mostly african-american -- the response i get from them is like, whoa, i didn't know that mexican-american students have a similar history to the african-american community, so there are a lot of parallels. that tells me, the students, that is there aha moment for them, they are learning, they got something. we sort of consider the educational experiences of mexican americans, i alluded to in just a few moments ago, but if we sort of stand back and take a bird's-eye view, we know it is a tragic experience, we know that mexican americans have high literacy rates, we know that they are arbitrarily suspended and expelled, we know that their view is intellectually inferior, we know that they are being viewed as apathetic toward education. this is historically viewed, right? we know they are hostile in confronting school leaders and administered us, so on, so on. we know they are segregated, we know their classrooms and buildings are not properly managed, or mismanaged, they are

lacking the space, and sometimes they don't have running water, electricity, those kinds of things. so, it is a tragic learning experience for mexican americans across the state. but, the other things that students will walk away with is like, wow, this is going against the grain, here. this is counter narrative to what is the typical mexican- american experience in the state of texas, and in many ways, it is. it is a very unique experience here, what is happening to these students and these learners in the san felipe community, for sure. >> there are several innovations that you mentioned that san felipe utilized, or leon, right? so, it was a nexus in the community, provided meals, provided pre-k, prior to headstart and lbj, did a lot of things, there. there are some other innovations that perhaps you discover that aren't mentioned in the book? or, are there other things that you would have liked to have emphasized, perhaps, in your

process? >> no, i think i was able to get everything i needed to find in the time the press needed me to find it, i put it in the book. but, you mentioned something very important, because the school district was, in many ways -- i mean, to be clear, just so we are clear about it, this school district was teaching a curriculum that was assigned to them out of austin. just like all accredited school districts across the state. but, the teachers and the leaders of the school system, they, i call it sort of steering the curriculum. they steered the curriculum in a way to ensure that it came to the benefit of their students. and so, for example, they toned down the a symbolist character of texas curriculum during this period. or, they make sure to include heroes and leaders of the mexican and mexican american community so that learning would be relevant to the students. or, you know, they didn't criminalize speaking in spanish the way that, you know -- no shade to san antonio -- but the way that saisd might have, or the way houston isd might have. i am from houston. so, these teachers spoke to students in spanish or spoke to

parents in the language they were most comfortable speaking, so they didn't criminalize students and students didn't see themselves as the bad guys, or as the enemy, or as newcomers in the curriculum. so, it really resonated with them and the school system did these things academically, but then beyond that, it also worked just as hard to, you know come help with uplifting of the entire community. i call it "the holistic approach" in the book, because the school district also had all kinds of drives. i was really amazed to learn si that in the 1930s, the school district, of all things, was providing all these vaccines and inoculation drives for the community. the community that wouldn't have had access to healthcare services in other parts of e deauville, or outside of del rio. and it certainly went to booktv.org five to get them to work done and those things. but, in the city, they would have limited access. but, here, the school is not serving as a critical site to provide healthcare services to the people in need of those things and all of this is free of charge. they didn't have to do those

things. that is not the job of the school district, but the school district did that because they knew it needed to be transformative, not just to the student learners, but they needed to be transformative to their families and to the entire community, as well, because if we all can't uplift, none of us will uplift, is what the district did. >> and studies -- graduate studies now, what they tell you is that is a community school, right? so, in a sense, we see that san felipe actually did that a century ago. so, very, very impactful. >> yeah, and the way that -- you know, a good way to think about it is, the way we sort of consider ethnic studies today. a curriculum that is inclusive of a culture, a curriculum that is inclusive of a community, parents, a curriculum that is accurate, and is rigorous. those things existed in san felipe in the 1930s, '40s, and in 50s, so it is like a proto- ethnic study, sort of this prototype of what eventually

becomes ethnic studies before the term "ethnic studies" is even coined. that already exists in this community. >> so, i think based upon that discussion, right, i had asked if jesse would read a passage into goes "oh, no, i would need several." so, there is nothing better than actually hearing it from the author. so, can we? >> please, yes, i would be happy to. >> okay. >> now, if you don't mind holding the microphone for me? >> of course. >> so, this passage, here, it's sort of -- i tried to explain the way san felipe existed both inside and outside the system of segregation, because one of the reasons that the school leaders, the leaders of this community found this school district, was so that their kids would not be segregated in what was traditionally a white,o independent school district, a neighboring independent school

district also in the city of del rio. we don't want our kids to be segregated, so we will make our own schools and we will educate them our own way and we are going to do that. so, i sort of talk about this, but in doing so, san felipe sort of inadvertently -- or perhaps, on purpose -- becomes a segregated school system because it was at least 95% mexican-american. and so, it almost becomes a figurative system -- not almost -- it becomes a segregated school system. so, i tried to deal with that. it is not an easy thing to deal with. here is my attempt of dealing with it in the book. worth noting, is the unique way that san felipe operated both inside and outside the system of segregation. mexican americans have a long history of challenging segregated schools in lawsuits such as skin 1930. a year earlier, they formed a separate school system and a school district to circumvent anglo dominated schools and their segregationist policies. but, more than separating themselves, mexican americans, by developing their independent school district, effectively shielded themselves from

outside forms of harassment, creating an insular environment, where students could develop cognitively, emotionally, and socially. that insulation, in turn, entranced a students' future success and school persistence. san felipe schools provided students with an education that made them educated with whites in an era where mexican americans were typically viewed as nothing more than a servant class. moreover, these students learned how to be resilient in a society aimed to disenfranchise them, economically exploit them, and exploit them in numerous ways. with this inflated environment, as a result, mexican americans were better able to educate their children and prepare them to thrive academically and intellectually outside their community, despite the harshest jim crow policies that disadvantaged them. in this sense, san felipe isd, as a segregated educational unit, proved beneficial, as it

helped mexican-american students learn in the classroom, and perhaps more importantly, survive beyond it. >> [ applause ] >> so, what do we leave with, with that? with that passage? >> i mean, listen, i mean, you know, segregation -- if the devils all kinds of communities. and integration is definitely something to be celebrated. but, i think sort of -- it muddies the water in many ways, and i think that is a good thing. it is more complex. the story is more complex than we might imagine it, and if we allow ourselves to go into these complex kinds of spaces, i think we come better learnerso and better understand there's of the way that history operates. so, i am never one to uphold

and insist on segregation, but i understand the importance of autonomy. i understand the importance of self-sufficiency. i understand the importance of self-reliance, and i understand the benefits that can come from that. and, you know, this school district doesn't exist anymore. it is now consolidated, as many of you know, with a neighboring school district. so, they were integrated in 1971, these two separate isd's work integrated in 1971 and i addressed that in my last chapter and it opens up all kinds of cans of worms, if you will. but, it creates problems and students struggled, teachers struggled, parents struggled to adopt, and adapt, and find ways to navigate in a new, integrated school system. and so, integration, while it should be celebrated, right, while it should exist t everywhere, also comes with the poverty of progress. because what you have in the case of san felipe isd, is you have the almost erasure of this community.

you will have memorabilia that will be destroyed on purpose, you will have structures that will be removed on purpose, you will have things that will be sent to the incinerator on purpose, as a way to silence, sensor, and to erase the intellectual accomplishments of this one-of-a-kind school district in the borderlands community of del rio, texas. the other thing that i hope our listeners and our viewers can walk away with, is that i think we should also shift the way we think about, and shift the focus on where these studies should exist. we tend to, for example, emphasize major urban centers when we look at civil rights movements. and i think there is something to be told about the borderlands communities, there is something to be told about oi rural communities and urbanizing communities who don't get enough attention, the attention that they deserve, and i think it is something worth noting here, that we should focus, and refocus, and reorient the way we try to explore these pockets of communities for civil rights activism and those kinds of things. >> so, i have one final question, and then we will open it up for q&a.

but, are you, with your comments, foreshadowing what is next for you? >> yeah, in fact, i have sort of been volunteer old -- i have been volun-told by the descendents of teachers are on this community, that i should sort of take up this project, and they are here in this room, and they are watching me, so i should be very careful. but, you know, one of the teachers i talk about in this book, irene cardwell, was a longtime teacher in this district played a crucial role in making sure students got to the graduation stage. ti so, in some of my earliest talks, in some of my earliest visits since the book came out, too, i had met her sons and daughters, and granddaughters -- or, excuse me -- and nephews, and nieces. so, they sort of collectively said, you know, you should write a biography on ms. cardwell. and i was like, oh, okay. d so, i didn't have a choice,

really, but i will do it, i am proud to continue this work. i am not from san felipe. but, went and visited with them, they treated me like i ak was born and raised there, they treated me like family, they brought me to their houses, they shared with me their most intimate, private moments in history, their triumphs and their tragedies. they fed me, they took me to mexico and they toured me around the city. i really learned more history from speaking to the people of this community, then i did searching in all the archives that i searched through to write this book. so, it is my privilege and my honor to say, yes, i worked on v this biography, let's get it done, for sure. >> [ applause ] >> so, folks, a lot of memories, right? and definitely, i am sure, there are some questions in the audience for dr. esparza. so, we have a microphone here in the center, and then i think there is a question in the back, right on the other side of the camera.

>> thank you. i am just curious, whether in getting to another community and writing your book, whether you have heard of something called "the border organization," or perhaps some folks from del rio are familiar with that. or, for the uc connection, or for the links, or for emotional or other kind of energy that created the school district, kind of manifested itself once again in these organizing efforts of more recent vintage. >> so, i have not heard of that organization. but, again, right, i think that goes back to what i had mentioned earlier, is that one of the things i had learned, as soon as i was done with this book, is when i go on talks, people come and say, hey, wait a minute, you got this wrong, this is how it is.

and i am constantly learning and relearning new information, really, again, from the people who are there, because i wrote the book, but i am not the expert, right? i am not the expert on this community. the people from this community are the experts in this community. so, i really take a page out of their playbook to fill up this book here, but so, i am not familiar with that organization, but again, it goes back to what i said -- this is just the tip of the iceberg because there is much, much, much, more to learn from this community and from the accomplishments of this community. and i hope, also -- because one of the things i argue in this book is that it is the only independent school district managed by mexican-americans. i hope -- and i hope this comes across as okay -- but i hope that i am wrong, because we want to hopefully find that there are other mexican- american communities throughout texas, throughout the nation, who are also doing as those in san felipe did. san felipe should not be the only one -- currently, it is -- but i hope that is not the case

for too long. >> okay, we have another question in the back. yes? >> did any of those same rigors that you describe in the -- for lack of a better word -- la raza school district, transfer to the consolidated school district? or, where they lost? >> yes, that is a fantastic question, thank you. it is a bit of both, also. because what happens in the immediate aftermath of consolidation -- this is in 1971 -- by 1971, federal courts are forcing independent school districts across the state to integrate with neighboring school systems, who are identified as a single race school districts, meaning san felipe was 95% mexican- american, so it is a single race school district. if you are over 60%, you are a single race school district. this was happening with african- americans, anglo-americans, so on, so on. this was happening everywhere, not just in del rio.

but, in del rio, when consolidation takes effect, there are clashes among teachers and administrators over the curriculum. as pete -- teachers from del rio isd do not care to implant the same methods that teachers from san felipe isd were implement into their learners, so they clashed, and they fought. for example, san felipe isd was teaching bilingual education, and after consolidation, leaders from del rio isd moved to strike it, and so, parents and teachers fought, and they resisted, and they kept it as part of the curriculum. they had english only movements that sweep into the city, you have americanization movements that sweep into the city. you have movements to try to remove them, as they call them, welfare programs. they try to do all these things, but the parents fought, the teachers fought to keep it as part of the curriculum. so, yes, it is a little bit of both. it went away, it came back,

then it went away, and it came back. that is the ebb and flow of bilingual education. and other kinds of enrichment programs, likely night school program, and those kinds of things. that is a great question, thank you. >> very good. yeah. all right. so, the back is fairly active in asking questions, so we are going to -- yes? in >> hi, sorry, i do have a question, i was just interested in the timeline of the book because it is in the mid-to- late 1920s to 1930s. that is also the height of the border violence with border patrol, which is what we knew it as now. all 1929 and 1971. now i b impact in the school becoming its own community. >> that is a great question, as well. the book really focuses on the periods between 1929 in 1971. of

i begin the study in the mid to late 1800s when the first original family soon arrive into this community settled the place. they would come from sort of these northern and northwestern parts of mexico. these are the intellectual families, the entrepreneurs who bring their entrepreneurial ship and intellectual community, this is a literate community, so i started there to kind of give readers a sense of when this community was formed and then i fast-forward to the 1920s to talk about the formation of the school district which would've been in 1929 the night and in 1971 with consolidation but then i almost kind of -- and also in 1985 so i've got like four different stopping and starting points, but to your question about the violence happening in other parts of the borderlands against ethnic mexicans by

border enforcement who were behaving in this extrajudicial menace, did that have an impact and why this community formed the school system? i don't explore it much in the book but my answer would be yes because it falls within that effort to create an insular, protective environment, and production not just against segregation, not just against neglect and bigotry but certainly protection against violence.de in the city of del real, for example, while police violence is not to the extent in this community as it would've been in south texas, there are c instances of that. like, during the great depression when there are massive deportation campaigns and efforts to remove people from the nation, many of which would be citizen-born p since -- persons from the nations, these people formed an organization to protect themselves from these forced removals, if you will so it falls in line with these efforts to always protect the community.

lead, protect, secure, safeguard the people of this community to the best of our ability. that is a fantastic question and again goes back to there is more work that needs to be done. >> so the order violence actually, the bob bullock museum had an exhibit slated perhaps to come to san antonio next year. you know, one of the things and reading "tran10" is just that it is beginning to create a dialogue expanding the ark began earlier. there are other things we should be mindful of as laypeople. how can we lend to the discussion and creating a critical mass to actually give voice to the stories so for a sense of affirmation, for current and future generations, what do you recommend? >> my recommendation is to get this book. and i know how that sounds but

i don't mean because i want sales. sales will come. get this book. read this book, go and visit this community. go and visit this community. recommend these books to your libraries. recommend these books to your cultural service. recommend these books to your school boards. these are the books that our children should be reading. this book is not on the reading list in the city of del rio. perhaps it should be on the approved list of reading books but yeah, it is really to learn the story and get the story out there, you know. it was a shame that i did not know about this community until into two years of my graduate program. i should've learned about the school district in the third grade, so do what you can to help get the story out.

support your local historians. support your local libraries. i give all praise to the librarians in this community to the archivists in this community, to the expert historians who live in resident houses in this community. it is because of them that this book was able to be written. a lot of it was cleaned from te oral history. i give a lot of credence and weight to oral histories. oral histories are fascinating ways to write stories.l they are fascinating ways to challenge inaccurate frameworks. they are fascinating ways to fill in the gaps in the archival record.d. they are fascinating ways to create the archival record when there is no record. oral histories do that and i encourage you, wherever you go back to, go to an oral history project. talk to your family, talk to your elders, talk to someone in the community or talk to the person who's been running that grocery store since the 70s. there is rich history there. it is richer than you might think it is. >> we have time and

appropriately, we will and with your question but i think now, many third-graders and others will learn about the history of some felipe. -- san felipe. >> i would like to thank you, especially her mom and dad. excuse me. i moved to california two years after teaching in del rio from '71 to '73, and i did not know with whom i was going to stay because i was going to go teach somewhere, and your father opened the store -- his door to me so i can stay with you or i can find a place, and i think

it was my mother who called him and said [ inaudible ] that was the kind of people that we were. we shared each other's hope and feelings for very close community. the teachers cared for us. they loved us. the community was one. if you did anything wrong in our community before you got home, your parents knew about it. because they loved us and they wanted us to succeed, and i think we were the second poorest school district in the state of texas but we also had the highest number of doctorates in the state of texas for minorities because the parents cared. the teachers cared, as well,

and that is what creates a winning community. once the consolidation took place, it destroyed a lot of that, and i got there and 71 and i was a teacher, i ask, where are all the trophies? where are all the band uniforms? they were set on fire. they destroyed them. they tried to destroy our history. that was a crime. that should not happen. hopefully we can learn from those lessons and carry them into the future. >> thank you. >> i like to thank your mother for letting me sleep on her couch and opening up -- i taught in full some csrdoba unified school district and i returned back to texas and i

live in wimberley, texas, but thank you very much. appreciate it. >> thank you for that. >> thank you, sir. you can hear it. you can hear it on his voice. this is -- every time i sat down to interview somebody, that pain and that pride in that emotion, it was just overwhelming. i have interviews where i have to just pause the recording to give this person some dignity and privacy to cry over things that happened 50 years ago, but for them, trauma is with them still as though it happened yesterday. i recognize that with that, you know, with those emotions, courage and the strength to really push forward and to really educate the next generation who come to this community so i really appreciate you sharing your

words, thank you. you remind me of the interviews i did back there. >> i want to thank you for honoring the legacy. i only knew that through stories from my dad actually and from my mom and reading the book about many of those times that we were in the car driving that he would, as we were going in to del rio, he would explain about the schools, about the golf team, the state award winners. that is opening weekend for the movie, the long game, but i want to thank you for giving voice to a community to many individuals outside of some felipe and honoring the legacy mr. cardwell mentioned. i just want to thank you all for being here for just a poignant afternoon in discussion. you have told us what is coming next, as a scholar and historian and also that if we were to buy your book, which we

all should, we can do that through where? >> through the university of oklahoma press, ru press.org or you canau also do it through amazon if you're okay with using amazon to make purchases. >> we want to thank dr. jesus jesse esparza. we want to thank c-span tv. we want to thank all of you and the author will be available for some conversation for just a few minutes because we do have the next event that is coming in. let's give dr. esparza a round of applause. >> book tv every sunday on c- span two features authors scussing their latest nonfiction books. at 6:30 p.m. eastern surgeon and john's hopkins university researcher looks at what happens when

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in this program, thomas paine's common sense, from 1776. as the american revolution entered its second year many colonists -- colonists were divided over to whether to reconcile with britain or seek independence. the author was thomas paine, a recent immigrant with connections to founding fathers benjamin franklin and benjamin rush. the pamphlet laid out arguments in plain and persuasive language for not near merely resisting british rule but casting it off. pain argued colonists had an opportunity to create a new nation based on self-rule. because america is the cause of all mankind, adding that the near a government approaches to a republic the less business there is working.

common sense sold thousands of concrete -- copies and was distributed widely across the 13 colonies. in july, 1776, six months after common sense was published, the continental congress signed the declaration of independence. >> welcome to books that shaped america, a special c-span series that looks at how throughout our history books of influence to we are today. this 10-week series will focus on different eras, different topics, and different viewpoints, so we are glad you are with us. tonight, our focus is thomas paine and his 1776 "common sense." joining us is richard bell, university of maryland history professor who teaches common sense in his classes. it is january 1776. what's going on in the american

colonies? >> it's a busy time. thanks for having me here. where do we start? we can scroll all the way back to the stamp act of 1765 but that seems too far back so why do we say 1774 might be where we want to start this conversation. there's just been the boston tea party in december of 1773 in the british parliament retaliated with a series of very coercive, draconian responses against the people of boston, the people of massachusetts, a set of acts known collectively as the coercive acts although the citizens of stoncalled them the intolerable acts and that causedt ofuproar not just in boston, massachusetts where these acts are being enforced but in many other colonies, as well, so a sense of grievance

spreading in 1774. in 1775 we see the outbreak of armed hostilities, first at lexington and concorde in april of 1775, the battle of bunker hill, the formation of the continental army and in november of 1775, just two months before common sense hits philadelphia bookstores, we see a royally-appointed governor in virginia by the name of lord dunmore offer an extraordinary proclamation to enslaved men of fighting age if they come and join lord dunmore royal forces to crush these rebels, now calling themselves patriots. then, he will grant them lifelong freedom, so gradually, slowly but surely, tensions have been ramping up on what began as modest political disagreements, now seems on the

verge of breaking into something much more traumatic. >> how strong was the loyalist sentiment at the time "common sense" was published? >> it has been hard to get that question because we know what happens next. we know patriots will rise and rise, they will gather and we know that they will win by 1783, when the treaty of paris is signed, so it is important that we scroll back and realize that when this is all starting, it is no sure thing that the movement for separate nationhood, for american nationalism, for independence is going together any supporters at all. we don't have accurate estimates of how many patriots or loyalists or neutralist there weren't any single moment in time but in january of 1776 when tom paine will publish this extraordinary pro-independence pamphlet, very few other american colonists

were talking openly, let alone loudly, about independence, so the default position was, for those who felt aggrieved by all of britain's policies, that something must be done, but that something did not yet have a name, and that name was not yet independence. a redress of grievances was perhaps the order of the day for most aggrieved american colonists. >> so, professor richard bell, this 48-page pamphlet was published. how was it published and what did it contain? >> oh, my goodness. it was published by a publisher with a very similar lesson into mine, robert bell, no relation, and like robert, i am a u.s. citizen. robert bell was a philadelphia publisher with a reputation for publishing things which might make some of his competitors or customers angry, a sort of broad agenda, politically speaking.

robert bell was happy to publish it in part because thomas paine had developed a reputation in recent months as british attitude or so he probably thought he might cause a bit of a stir with a pamphlet with such a prominent thes. robert bell certainly did not know the war for independence would be carried on the back of this pro-independence pampet but certainly hoped probably to make a bob or two. >> in short, monarchy and succession have laid not this or that kingdom only, but the world in blood and ashes. small islands, not capable of protecting themselves, are the proper objects for kingdoms to take under their care, but there is something absurd in supposing a continent to be

perpetually governed by an island. how subversive was this? >> in so many ways, very subversive indeed. there are people on both sides of the atlantic ocean who have criticized their king or queen before. there were people on both sides of the ocean who criticize the monarchy as an institution before, but rarely with the vitality, the energy, the command of the english language, the confidence that this relatively unknown writer, thomas paine, brought to the task. it is a rare and unusual thing for a public print like this pamphlet, this 48-page on stitch, unbound pamphlet to say not just that the author has a bone to pick with the king, but that all kings everywhere are,

and by nature, will always be illegitimate and immoral and unscrupulous. it takes extraordinary confidence, at the very least, to say something like that in public, albeit anonymously, when the pamphlet was first published. >> so, thomas paine was not writing necessarily abstract political philosophy. >> yes, it's a great question because he is drawing, i think, on an intellectual, political and cultural well of what we might call republican with a small r, anti-monarchy writings that stretch back a couple of hundred years. there had been an english civil war over in england where paine

was born in the 1640s seeing anti-monarchists cut off the head of a king there, charles i, and that would produce a lot of writing about why he would do such a thing so paine may or may not have been familiar with the some of that anti- monarchical writing from 100 years earlier. we certainly no other revolutionaries like jefferson were reading and drinking in the well of ideas but i think you can see paine's own personal politics coming through, as well. >> was common sense a common phrase at that time? >> i'm going to leave it to our friends at the oxford english dictionary to put a particular date on that sort of usage but one of the things i did learn and reading some of the wonderful scholarship on thomas paine is that in an earlier phase of his life when he had been a journalist and debater in england, he had sometimes published pieces in local newspapers in britain where he did not use his own name to sign the spaces. he is taught is called a pseudonym, made up name or phrase. the one he chose in england back in the 70s 70s was common sense so he saw that sort of as a nom de plume, a pen name.

>> what was the immediate action when common sense hits philadelphia? >> depends who you were. it found a readership very quickly, and we know that not because everyone who bought one wrote down that they bought one and told historians reading through documents in the library of congress what they thought, but because we know from printing records just how many copies were printed, and how many more editions had to rapidly be rushed into print, not just by robert bell in philadelphia, but by rival printers basically ignoring any sort of copyright claims and publishing their own bootleg versions in philadelphia, and then printers and other towns and cities from boston and providence to new york and charleston, rushing their own bootleg versions of common sense into print within a matter of weeks, and lots of

pamphlets by lots of different authors were published in 1776, but none had the sort of rapid take-up in sales that common sense did and by the end of that first year, 1776 -- remember, it was published in january, it was the best- selling political pamphlet of the years. there were plenty of people who hated it and plenty who did not want to read it all, but among those who read it, many found they were sympathetic to what they read. >> well, when you read "common sense" it reads sort of like the declaration of independence. here's a statement than a diatribe against the king of england. >> i love that observation. i'm hoping we get to talk some more about the declaration of independence in this conversation because that is a parallel i've been thinking about, as well. when we think about the declaration of independence written after common sense in july, 1776, we often think about that list of grievances thomas jefferson wrote about

king george's, all those 25, 27, however many grievances beginning with "he has", taking one grievance and leveling it at the king of england after another. i would argue that jefferson must've gotten that idea of personifying the enemy from thomas paine because as you point out, to read common sense is to watch thomas paine point out that all the grievances the american colonists are experiencing are one man's fault and not the man is common sense. >> we are talking about 1776 and "common sense". we want to give you a snapshot of what the colonies, america, was like in 1776. "common sense" was published in nuary of that year. about 2.5 million was the estimated population of the

conies. the economy was based on agriculture and for trapping. the second continental congress governed the 13 colonies at the time. john hancock was president of that congress. the revolutionary war had started april 19, 1775, and independence from britain was declared six months after "common sense" on july 4, 1776 and the taxation rate , and this is a number that surprises me, was 1.5%. and, there was protest against that. >> times of changed, haven't they? we can talk in depth about taxation and british policy but i will make two quick points about taxes. one is why is britain imposing all these taxes over the previous 10, 13 years on these hapless american colonists who don't like having their taxes raised. one thing to bear in mind is that britain and most colonies had just fought a major global war in the 1750s and 1760s called the seven years war.

we in the united states sometimes called the french and indian war which is its local name, and this local war against the french empire almost bankrupted the english treasury and so there was a massive national debt in britain that as far as the ministers there were concerned, needed to be paid down. taxation as a way to do that. what many folks may not know is that it was not just the american colonists who were being handed new taxes to pay down this imperial war debt. plenty of british subjects in england itself, scotland or wales, were facing higher taxation, too, but did not have the same tools at their disposal as people 3000 miles across the sea, to register their discontent about taxation with inadequate representation. >> so, nearly 250 years later, richard bell, does thomas paine's "common sense" holed up and still have an impact? >> well of course. i reread it today. i'm sure you did, too, and

there are passages, so many passages, which leap off the page as if they are the sort of political writing that would animate people at anytime and anyplace. now, the document has some different sections serving different purposes. one part early on is the writings of a very animated constitutional scholar, and they may strike some readers without any familiarity with english constitutionalism alles was voracious than other parts, but once you get into the heart of this document, especially the long section where paine dismantles monarchies as legitimate institutions, then paine seems to find his vibe, his groove, and the writing really starts to soar, both in terms of his rhetoric, but also, interestingly, in the language choices he uses. he starts to talk at you much

more directly, and clearly. you feel like he is next to you, and you're talking with someone very smart and very opinionated who's going to win you over, and that is paine's genius, to use the plane-spoken language of the tavern goer, really, to engage ordinary people. he is not writing for the thomas jefferson's of the world. he is writing for the man and woman in the street who can be persuaded by well-reasoned, yet clear and accessible prose. >> take it forward. where would you put him on today's political spectrum? >> his politics are completely fascinating and to understand his politics, you need to realize that common sense is not all there is to thomas paine. i would argue that tom paine wrote three masterpieces, for which he is remembered. in some ways, they are very different from one another.

their names are "common sense", "the rights of man," and "the age of reason." he wrote this other two in the '90s about two years apart and had a lot to do with context of the french revolution, which was unfolding at that time. what we can say at the general level is that paine knew what he thought and that his ideology was consistently pro-republic with a small r, and pro- democracy of course, with a small liturgy. he wants ordinary people to have responsive, elected, accountable, transparent representatives. he is suspicious of organized or ancient power structures like monarchy and organized religion, and so he is one-of-a- kind, but i see a lot of

modernity and some of those. >> well, good evening, and thanks for joining us for this, books that shaped america. this is our kickoff of a 10- week series here on c-span, looking at books that shaped americ shaped our history, made us who we are today. we tookth list from a longer list put out by the library of core in 2013, and we chose 10 books from that list. you can find all of this information on our website dedicated to this series, c- span.org/books that shaped america. this is an interactive series, and we want to hear from you. tonight, we are talking about thomas paine and common sense. we are going to put the phone numbers up on the screen in case you would like to participate in our conversation here with professor richard bell of the university of maryland. 202-748-8920 if you live in the

eastern and central time zones. 202-748-8921 for those in the central and mountain time zones. for text messages only 202742 8003. and if you do send the text, please include your first name and your city. we will begin taking those calls in just a few minutes. i mentioned that our partner in this endeavor is the library of congress. we are using some of their materials. we are going up and shooting some videos of first manuscripts, et cetera, a lot of the books we will be covering in this series, and we want to show you this video, and this is one of their archivists with an original copy of "common sense". >> i am a curator in the rare book and special collections division of the library of congress. we have here thomas paine's "common sense", the first edition. it was printed in january of 1776 in philadelphia.

it is a 47-page pamphlet, in which paine, who was a recent immigrant to the colonies, argued for separation from great britain. up until this time, americans consider themselves to be part of great britain. they were subjects to the king, and even though there had already been some battles between the american colonies and great britain, most americans wanted reconciliation . this pamphlet changed their attitudes towards the monarchy and the abuses of great britain towards the american colonies, and encourage them or persuade them to establish a new government. it is divided into four parts. the first is on the history of government. the second part deals with monarchy and

hereditary succession. the third part deals with the current state of american affairs, and the fourth part talks about the ability of america to govern itself and to form a navy that could challenge the royal navy. this is a first edition, and i don't know exactly how many copies were printed in the first edition. there were several additions printed very quickly because it was a very popular pamphlet. there have been estimates of around 75,000 2000 printed within the first few months. eventually i have seen figures that suggest there were around half 1 million copies printed in total. at the time, the colonies consisted of about 2.5 million

inhabitants and that makes this the best selling book in all of american history. they would have purchased this pamphlet from local booksellers or the printer, in terms of the technical production. it uses probably hand-made paper that was created on racks, chain line type paper, and it would've been issued without its binding. it was a pamphlet. people were buying their own books of the time. this particular pamphlet as part of our american imprints collection. with this collection, the american imprints collection, we try to document the early printing history of the united states and preserve that for posterity.

>> richard bell, our curator at the library of congress was talking about the four sections of the book. why is it important to note how thomas paine divided this book? >> so, we don't have paine's own inside baseball account of why he structured it this way, so we are sort of left to read the tea leaves a little bit. but, i would say he is sort of taken us back to first principles. the first section talks about what governments are for, which is not a question many of us actually pause to reflect on these days, so he takes us back to basics and says governments are intended for a limited number of purposes, one of which is security, that they have resources to protect us from perhaps external threat, and quickly in his survey of

the history of governments across this planet over several thousand years, which is all done very tightly in just a few pages, he makes the argument that governments, most of them have lost their way, that they have exceeded their original purposes and responsibilities and in some way or other, either become bloated and inefficient, or become tyrannical and dangerous. those were apparently the two choices there, and that is setting himself up of course to them look at one particular government, which is the british government under charles iii, which he will do in the third part, but in the interim, he tackles monarchy as a particular form of government and it would be quite the understatement to say that thomas paine is not the fan. i would be happy to lay out a little bit more of that. paine sees hereditary monarchy is as fundamentally problematic

. again, in ways that many of us today, especially those of us with a british accent, may not always reflect upon. he sees what is unnatural, what is odd about hereditary monarchies, that we concentrate lots of power into individuals who we then do not let sit in parliament directly, but have to sit outside of parliament therefore not knowing what the other hand of government is doing necessarily. the royal families are people who, in paine's words, have come to those positions of power not by any great intellectual advantage or political acuity, but because either they were born into a dynastic line and by accident of birth, they end up ruling millions of people, or because they are the upstart young men who have killed the

previous dynasty of kings and said i think i could do better, which is how every new dynasty, at least in the british royal family, is often started, so paine points all these things out to american readers and labels them, frames them as absurdities. so, problem enticing the conventional wisdom, the status quo and saying we don't have to accept the way the world is. we have it in our power to begin the world over again, which of course then takes us into the current state of affairs between america and the british government, which by january of 1776, these two sides are in open-armed hostilities. we've already had lexington and concorde and bunker hill, so the question paine is asking by section 3 of the short, punchy pamphlet is, are we going to keep taking more abuse, or perceived tyranny, more blundering taxation policies?

are we just going to go cap in hand with a list of things we would like the king to maybe make better for us, a list of grievances he can reconcile for us, or are we going to break away and say enough is enough and seek independence as an alternative in that in part four he makes the case that we can and that we will. >> well, let's hear from some of our viewers, and let's begin with dan in bridgewater, new jersey. , good evening to you. line marketing. as a refugee coming to this country, i have read this thomas paine pamphlet many times. i have to say i don't see what is the big deal. i don't think it is a major item of historical importance or political science importance or analytical importance, and it seems to me it was more serving the mercantile class interest in the real american revolution , to my mind, came around the 1960s when debate over the individual and his right and his well-being was so

predominant. at that time, and if you look at what happened in this country afterwards, it was not really democracy as freedom for all but rather democracy as a sort of political economic interest for certain classes. >> thank you, dan. we're going to leave it there and get a response from our guest. >> thank you for the comment there. it is certainly true that to seek independence leaves a lot of unanswered questions about the nature of the governmental system, the republic that may follow it, and who is going to be enfranchised to vote and who is not, and paine, as someone who considered himself a friend of a broad participatory democracy was certainly, i think, disappointed and disillusioned to see that not as many people, but even every white man got the vote in the american republic that immediately followed the end of the war in 1783. we could

debate, of course, for a long time whether common sense is the most important political pamphlet and i think people with different interests would reap different conclusions, but people at the time certainly thought that it mounted an explosive challenge to the conventional wisdom about monarchy as an established institution, that it did so in the form of putting forward an argument for separate nationhood and political independence that had not been quite so crystallized by anyone out loud before, and that it is the plain-spoken lauage of a tavern keeper, of ordinary folks in the street, drum up support for a political program. in the ys, i think it was inarguably revolutionary.

>> and, here is another example of common pains -- thomas paine's writing in "common sense". why is it we hesitate? from britain we can expect nothing but ruin. if she is admitted to the government of america again, this continent will not be live -- worth living in. from the errors of other nations, let us learn wisdom. ian raskin is an actor who impersonates thomas paine and here he is, talking about thomas paine's writing style. >> i wrote it in short, simple sentences, and i wrote it to appeal to my readers' best and higher self. oh yes, and i also said that against the greatest military power on earth, we could win, but in short, simple sentences. it is not in numbers, but in unity that our great strength lies. yet, or present numbers

are sufficient to repel the force of all the world. the cause of america is in great measure, the cause of all mankind. in america, the law is king, with tyrants, the king's law. society in every state is a blessing but government, even in its best state, is a necessary evil. in its worst state, an intolerable one. now, let me expand on this. it has caused much misunderstanding. we are all society, and in an ideal situation, we would all aid and support each other, each contributing to the common good, a blessing. but, since we have not yet reached such an enlightened state, we must turn to the necessary evil of government to restrain our vices, and to provide the support that we cannot provide ourselves for the common good of the people. >> and that was thomas paine impersonator ian raskin talking about thomas paine's writing

style. back to calls. robert in connecticut, good evening to you. please go ahead. >> yes, good evening. you mentioned there was a 1 1/2% rate of tax. what was that assess storm, property, income? what was the tax rate 10 years earlier? and what was the tax rate in other jurisdictions of the british? >> richard bell, any answer for that gentleman? >> just a quick one. i want to say at the outset that historians continue to debate and refine what the rates of taxation were for anticolonial jurisdiction, how they changed over time so i don't think there is actually an agreed-upon consensus that every historian would sign off on at this point. what i can tell you is taxation via the stamp act was on commercial use of paper in the american and caribbean and canadian colonies, so think of

all the stuff we buy that is made of paper. folks back then used to buy a lot of stuff and it was made out of paper. we could be talking about newspapers, the price just went up. we could be talking about a pack of playing cards. we could be talking about a liquor license or a court document. the price just went up, so the stamp act really annoyed an awfully large cross-section of the american colonists and not just folks in the american colonies but also the caribbean coliseum -- colonies. duties came along next after the repeal of the stamp act. they did not only tax paper. they also added a plethora, group of other manufactured imported goods, you know, cloth, fabric, t and pagers, so

suddenly everything that you brought off the ship, which was a lot of things in the 18th century, was more expensive. the tea act is a different case because the tea act actually lowered the price of imported tea but the stamp act in the township act certainly raised the price of the things we buy so it's not being imposed on lander savings accounts or will for income. it's being imposed at the point of sale, is what we would call in the uk today, value added tax. >> did the pamphlet mention anything about violence or rebellion and/or revolution, or was it just an elucidation of ideas for the people to read and consider? >> great question. so, so we should be clear here that paine is advocating that the purpose of continuing military conflict should be for the singular goal of

political separation. he is not advocating starting a war, because the war has already started. lexington and concorde is widely considered to be the outbreak of the american revolution war, and that was nine months old by the time this pamphlet dropped in january, so i'm not going to put causing a war on paine's shoulders, but he wants that were to mean something. he wanted to have a purpose. he wants to achieve something tangible anmeaningful that he hopes will last forever. >> what was his relationship with the elite of the american coni, the other founding fathers? we have one quote we woulli to share, which is, john adams called common sense quote, poor, ignorant, malicious, shortsighted calculus mass. thomas paine said about john adams, it has been the political career of this man to begin with hypocrisy, proceed with arrogance, and finish with content. obviously, they did not have a close relationship, but what was paine's relationship to the others? >> difficult and tense sometimes.

the founding fathers, we think of immediately washington and adams, jefferson and madison, hamilton and franklin, folks like that. they are all on the same team, if i can use a sports analogy, as thomas paine. dale, by the middle of 1776, around the time of the declaration, would see themselves as in favor of independence, which is exactly the political project thomas paine is advocating for in common sense, but like the members of any team, it does not mean they all got along or that there was not any nuance in their particular individual agendas. tom haynes -- thomas paine is a friend of working people in a way that few other founding fathers were intuitively, let's just say that. think about we could go deep of course in two different biographies here. thomas paine is the son, the

immigrant son of an english corset maker, a manual laborer. he is, i think, with the possible exception of ben franklin, who is a printer, the only founding father who ever worked with his hands and got them dirty. he was a member of the working class and so he has a bone-deep sympathy for working people in a way that harvard college graduate john adams, patrician landowners like jefferson and washington, had to struggle to really connect, so that means there relationships were also often tense and difficult and adams, in particular, who always fancied himself as a voice of the people often found he was being upstaged by someone perhaps with greater tolerance for speaking in the language of the working class than he himself possessed. >> thomas paine did have a relationship with dr. benjamin rush. in philadelphia, biographer

stephen friede talked about their relationship and the importance of that relationship and getting common sense published. >> hi, my name is stephen friede. we are here at the american philosophical society in philadelphia. in front of me is the autobiography of benjamin rush, handwritten for his kids in 1800, and what is great about it is that one of the things he described to his family is how he met thomas paine and how common sense came about, so when paine moved to philadelphia to be a writer and hopefully a teacher, rush was a well-known intellectual and physician. he was friends with the people who had come for the first continental congress with john adams and others, and was interested in writing about independence himself but he was afraid. he had written about slavery,

and had lost many of his clients because he was against slavery so he knew that somebody needed to write an explanatory piece, explaining to people why independence should not be scary to them and why it was important to understand that. he believed in explanatory writing. and so, paine was a really good writer, one, and if it all went bad for paine, it would not be as bad as if it all went bad for him and he actually wrote this to his kids so let me read a little bit from what he said. he said about the year 1774, sir thomas paine arrived in philadelphia from england with a letter of recommendation from dr. franklin. he was waiting for employment. he started writing for united states magazine. he did this with great ability and in one of my visits to the bookstore i met with mr. paine and was introduced to him. his conversation became a once interesting. i asked him to visit me, which he did a few days afterwards. subjects of conversation were political.

i perceived that he recognize the independence of the american colonies upon great britain and that he considered the measure as necessary to bring the war to a speedy conclusion. i had prepared an address to the colonies but hesitated at the time and shuddered at the prospect of the consequences of it not being well received. i mentioned subject to mr. paine and asked him what he thought of writing the pamphlet. i suggested to him he had nothing to fear from popular odium to which such a publication might expose him, so he could live everywhere. so basically rush saying, i have to live here but you could leave town. so they made this deal that they would do this piece of writing together and paine begin coming to rest his house with pages all during the fall of 1775. by the end of the year, they had finished a draft. rush instructed him to show it to a handful of people, and then got a printer. they changed the name. paine originally wanted to call it plain truth. rush convinced him to call it common sense and in early

january 1776, it was published. no one ever could have predicted what an unbelievable publishing phenomenon it would have become. >> richard bell, as we were watching that, you started chuckling. why? >> yes, the title story is one that is just lovely. so, we think of common sense, this pamphlet by thomas paine, to be this mana from heaven, right? this guy pops into the story of the coming of the american revolution. he is actually in english immigrant. he is aggrieved with great britain for personal reasons and rights this anti-british diatribe that to put it mildly, moves the needle, and yet as we heard from steve friede, who wrote this excellent book about benjamin rush, then of fact it was slightly more collaborative than that, that benjamin rush is one of the people suggesting that paine to -- turn to the subject matter for a standalone pamphlet. he had previously been the editor of literary magazine. a

draft may have gone to benjamin franklin for review and edits. that is hard to corroborate, i should say, and that it was benjamin rush, not thomas paine, who even came up with the amazing title for this pamphlet. i do not know whether or not benjamin rush new that thomas paine used to publish under the pseudonym common sense though i expect as they became friendly, that was a little detail that came out in their conversation that is why rush said well when talk is fine, but how about- year-old nickname, how about common sense, because the great genius of "common sense" the pamphlet is that it is not actually common sense. people don't know this stuff already. they have not put two and two together but paine's genius is to make them think it's the only way to think from now on so it becomes common sense but it is not common sense and they open the cover and get started. >> bev is in middleburg heights, ohio. >> that evening. thank you for the series and

for taking my question. as someone who is currently teaching a class on the founders, i wanted to ask the professor, since he did already mention about the fact that basically the war had already started. lexington and concorde, buncombe , whatever. how much would you compare the influence of pains pamphlet to the argument presented by robert parkinson in his book "the common cause in 13 clocks" that it was the fear that the newspapers were presenting throughout all of the colonies that the british were promoting slave insurrections and indigenous people, you know, going to rise up and they were going to support them in whatever, and that richard henry lee, who actually made the proposal for the declaration, he actually said after dunmore's proclamation about offering the freedom to slaves who abandoned their