i want to now go to the title of the book. yeah. so the title comes from you tell a story in the introduction. about an editor at knopf. i believe, who rejected a biography. joseph hudson. yes, just because he was a stolid artist 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. and you say, feisty mouthy, unrepentant is how you describe both him and yourself, which i find highly accurate. i just. i just keep talking. you said. and writing and publishing books that their way haltingly, bringing me just enough of a following for a very nice career.

no, no. a distinguished scholar career, etc., etc. and you speak in the book as well as in all in art school, about the frustrations of not recognized. and despite all this you persist to talk. so that idea of persistence, this is inherent in the title. yes. and i want you to just talk about that idea little bit more. why is it so important to just keep talking? i think it's important. just keep talking and especially for women to just keep talking because there's so much that says, don't. so we just keep talking. and i felt like i had something to say. and in fact, i have a very distinguished scholar career. i my first job was at penn. i was tenured and promoted in three years. and then my second job was at the university of north carolina

at chapel hill. and i became a full professor and another three years. so, you know, it was a perfectly good career of a perfectly good career and i got to be president of the organization of american historians and of the southern historical association and the american academy of arts and sciences. well, hugh, some of this so it's been a perfectly good however, it's been a perfectly good. but i never felt like people were saying, oh, my god, no, that's wonderful. as you said, that has come very late. and i'll give you an example of the frustration. some of you that the book, the history of white people, the

history of white people falls on the distinguished career side in, the sense that it got a front page a gorgeous front page review in, the new york times book review. and this when the new york times book review was a fat. yeah, yeah. when it was when it was itself. and i had a wonderful book tour. my first stop was the colbert report, where i arm wrestle stephen colbert and no, he didn't win. i didn't either. so you know that, went beautifully. that book got no book prize, nothing. so it's that kind of thing that happened on the one hand, hitting all the marks and the other hand, a kind of silence. but i always felt like i had

things to say and people ask me to say them. so i never for spec for the new york times or the new republic or anything that. they asked me to write and i wrote. and in fact you've warmed my heart by mentioning one of those pieces. would you say why that was special for? the one about voting. oh, yeah. and actually, my dad's in the audience, so he'll appreciate this. congratulations. oh, so you mentioned it's an essay where you talk about the importance of voting and historical sacrifices that have been made. and you mentioned the the seeing the lines in 1994 of black and colored south africans being able to vote for the first time. and my mother was in one of those lines in philadelphia voting for the first time of really? yeah.

and for me, that was a stirring image. i how many of you remember that? do you remember that image? it target your heartstrings. yeah. really. it's a marvelous image. and the essay that i wrote it about was around the 2020 when it took a long time us to find out what had happened. so it about voting and about i think i also mentioned voting during reconstruction there too, because are these moments when american voting really has so much additional resonance beyond just the political beyond just the parties that it's kind of quaint? the central action they had mark or the quintessence of citizenship. yeah, yeah. so i think from there, we might

as keep talking about the election. that's probably heavily all minds at a time. seeing as we have you here. yeah, we can, you know, consult for a little. sure. so, you know, i think this is really i think this where your book is probably going to receive a lot of attention and appreciation because your clarity around, the particular historical moment that we're in, is just so well-taken for obvious reason. and you say in the book that we're living in a moment between. between reconstruction and right before things are rolled back. right. yes, yes. yes. they call it redemption. thank you.

redemption. yeah. that piece i've forgotten what it's titled, but i. i remember so clearly going around saying i feel like i'm living. in 1872. and this was after the stirring americans in the streets of 2000 where i felt safer in my country than i ever have in my whole life. i just loved. 2020. we were up in the adirondacks and people were out in the streets and saranac lake and blacks in keene valley, all those places, you know, are represented in congress by elise stefanik. so i said, i feel like i'm living in 1872. this moment of of promise. now i know as a historian that,

1876, in 1877, 1898 and 1912 were still to come. but i want to savor this moment of promise, this moment of seeing a face of the united states, that that says black lives matter. police brutality, wrong of white is wrong. so it's living kind of in two times, in a way. and right now, i almost like we have to do that again. but i so many friends who are just tearing their hair out imagining the united states is going to be like with like what the united states is going to be like when donald trump president

again. and i say i'm in 1872 for one thing. but i'm also i don't think we're going to have to face that because i don't think that he is going to last until. but i'll also take you back to remember, last fall was when everybody was saying, oh, my god, oh, my count, we're going to have this civil war. we're going to have a civil war. yeah. was when was that? i think it's been happening for a little while. really? i hear it so much anymore about it anyway. and i said, well, you know, we had one once. yeah. killed a lot of people. that it ended slavery. and that was probably the thing that could end slavery. and we've 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 and collaboration with each other, working together. whereas the other side there would be they have their guns with them all the time and they will be at each other's throats and will win and we won't get the 13, 14, the 15th amendment. but we'll get rid of guns and all dogs will be a leash. thank. that moment in the book me so much hope and comfort.

yeah. when when you said that that the civil war is not the thing that could happen it's pretty it's it's pretty bad. but when you make an excellent point that you have to work through a lot of pain to get out really good things on the other side. yeah. so thank you. for biography. so you've written, as we just saw, a definitive biography of, sojourner truth and is a form that you've been drawn to in your career. yeah. recently you've been writing more memoir. and i'm interested initially what drew you to blogger and to writing the stories of a particular historical figure. and now how you've found writing memoir fits. it's all similar. a process. you know, i could talk about that for a long time.

the the sort of founding portion of my interest in memoir is my sense of not being the right kind of black person. and i talk about that in the introduction and i come an educated family. we were not rich, but we were not. and, you know, there was i didn't have to experience drug or violence in my home and when i read around and i read a lot there's so much that our society and our culture wants of black people that is so different from my life. my life at my formative life. and also the life i just told you about. it doesn't fit in a narrative of hurt. so i've always taken sense of

individual specificity into my writing of history and also that's why biography is so interesting, because each of us, even when we social identity these that our society, our society wants to make into what we are once just some us as our social identity. each of us has a and a history and a family and a dumb brother in law. so whenever people start talking. white people or superior black people or superior or are superior, i remind them that everybody has a brother in law and those brothers in law do away with any idea, any of super

rewarding because everybody spread their in life. well understood. so specificity is really important for me and that's really the basis of biography with such a truth. i started thinking about securing truth with the question. and this was first published in 1996. so it's a 20th century but at another there would often an image of truth on the door of studies or african-american. and there would be some words like, you know, you're woman or do this to me or do that, you know, sort of black power. sojourner truth. and then you would see the photograph and it was this

bourgeoise. she wasn't snarling wasn't a carrying on about having been enslaved or no, she's very gentle, very gentle. she's respectable. and also she's. so how do you put those two together? that was where the book came from. so that's what i did in sojourner truth. a life, a symbol. and that's what i'm doing again in centering your was in new york and didn't say that because after this quarter century so many people have paid no attention to what said about how sojourner truth didn't say it. francis gage made it up 12 years after the fact fact. so something still to be said. but i'm going to go even deeper

into. securing her true specificity, including her being, the new yorker, and taking advantage of new york law to her son back from having been sold illegally into perpetual slavery, the south. this was something that harriet jacobs never have done because the law of harriet jacobs's north carolina not made and in north carolina, it was not just accepted that it business to transfer children it was business to turn people into financial. this was not case in new york. i mean it happened but it was not the case. new york law in north carolina. it was routine.

if it happened in new york and, it happened. it was illegal. thank you. to a lovely essays about sojourner truth and jacobs in the book. obviously, sojourner truth, the biography worth checking out, but thank you. since we're speaking about stereotypes, stereotypes about women. i thought we could talk about your your wonderful 1992 essay on anita hill in the book which feels very prescient in a lot of ways. when i read it, you know, i, i was very young when that happened. sure. you were. i was. yeah, i think i'm older than i look. and i, of course, didn't the entire hearings, i absorbed the atmosphere of. yes. and it was so negative and so

horrible and violent towards anita hill. but your essay just there's so much clarity and humanizing her and also just analyzing the trial spectacle and showing us how thomas was able to was was able to manipulate manipulate using different stereotypes and basically deploy the stereotype the black woman prior to the race. yes. he was able to use those stereotypes to his advantage to to proclaim his victimhood and anita hill was not able do that because of the limited and rigid stereo types associated with black women. yeah and i wonder if, you know,

you think that we still if those are only images still available to black women or if in 24 we've sort of moved beyond those? i think we've we have moved beyond those categorizations. i am not a natural pessimist. i do not subscribe to widely popular. narrative of in lives per minute black hurt. i don't subscribe to that which says things not only haven't fundamentally changed they cannot fundamentally change. i do not agree with. so for instance i think an anita hill figure or i mean clarence thomas is kind of the same person as he was in 1991. but i think the society around is more able see an educated

black woman as a person in a way that i mean, my i was teaching at princeton at the time and my my students in my graduate students were all tearing their hair because they could see her as an educated woman, ambitious and so willing to. a miscreant because was the way to further her career. but i think that that sense of black women as traitor to the race as tearing down black man which circulated in 1991 so. maya angelou for instance wanted us to coalesce around clarence thomas and of my students stood up and said no.

but i think we would have thousands of americans up and saying, you know, i think i think white people can just in the marker, white people's change was 2020. i think somebody i didn't up the phrase i'm going to share with you was the great white awakening. and i think millions of white people can see that of race now in a way they couldn't before 2020. and certainly not in 1991. i think clarence thomas portraying himself as a lynch victim now, would be laughed out of out of the out of the senate.

so i think we should we should wrap up. okay. thank you so much. and we can open up to the audience for questions. if if you do have a question, just raise your hand, bring you the microphone. start. i'm going to start right here. i so admire your thought that you're living in 1980, 74, too, i feel as i'm living in 1935, germany. and how that affects my attitudes, obviously 1874 affected your attitudes about of things. no, no, no. that was kind of a cloak. i threw over myself, you know. so if you me now to sit down and

write. 5000 words, i'm not sure would say the same thing. but anyway, your why is that is why wouldn't you write thousand words? because times change times change and sometimes with you in. 1933, but not usually. and i'll tell you why. our country is gigantic. and there are millions and of people and we live in a news industry that gets our attention, gets our eyeballs and gets our eyeballs on advertisements, out 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 here. 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 know, i come through new jersey, so i feel like, okay, we're in the same state. we're in the same state. yes. people that i know, lancaster county, you know, know of or read about, etc., have some german background. i mean, it's a wonderful mix of, german and irish, german and italian, german and something. but there there also german. and i am polish and lithuanian. so i am such a foreigner in this area, even though lived here since 1969. so my is more international than national. well, let me bring you back to

new jersey, though. would you feel what would you grew up east orange is it very different? yes, i agree. but would you feel the same if i limit you to new? same as what that is 1935. it's 1933. oh, doesn't matter where i would be in the united states, i think we're living. no, no, no, i. i want to keep you in new jersey in jersey. yeah. with chris christie or what i know murphy is a governor right now, but we have chris christie on our backs. no, we don't. he was running for president. he's not anymore. thank goodness. it's. it's so complicated. and you know that. i'll tell you why. and pestering you like this. it's because my view of what's going around us is limited to state and local and i feel, you

know, we to newspapers every day. paper papers. when is the new york times and when is the star-ledger and the star-ledger has all kinds of things going on. i've learned all about beach erosion, instance and a lot of new jerseyans murdering their family members, but i don't feel 33 age in new jersey. if you want me to feel 33. yes. you put me in the new york times facing the national news. so what i'd like you do to feel better and save your stomach lining, would you spend? more time with new jersey and your county and town and maybe you have something to worry about with your school board. i don't know. things happen there, but i think

we need to remember how our information comes. us and the industries that give it, send it to us for us to buy. yeah. also is a lot of local outlets are shutting down and there's well yeah if you want to worry about that and that's something should worry about but don't just worry about it do something about it. yeah. do something about it. so a friend of mine is the marvelous jelani cobb, a journalist who is now the head of the columbia journalism and of course, is very aware of what you're talking about, about the of local reporting and state reporting. and so one of the things that

his on is making journalism school tuition free. so do something do something. just don't sit at home and read the national paper pay attention to the national news. worry about what hell is going on in florida unless you go florida and you vote for local school boards in florida. i so i listened recently to your interview with debbie millman on the design matters podcast. oh yeah. and i really enjoyed it. i actually have a connection with debbie was one of her grad students for several years ago. yes, i lived in new york, but this is my home here. so yeah, i loved the interview and just hearing about you and your process through creating your art and kind of how you

kind of had to. become one with it and feel like this is something you knew that it was good, but, you know, getting to that space, yes, i can definitely relate to that. we didn't really talk a little bit we didn't talk about your artwork, but you talk a little bit about it tonight and where you are now is here with your art. yeah. um, so i just keep talking is full of art and some of this old art that i made in art or i've made since then. i graduated from the rhode island school of design in 2011, which already is a long time ago. and as i was putting these essays together, so one part of the process was about the words making that i didn't repeat myself too much. i didn't publish something was clearly very dated, you know, talked about something. well, i do talk about something that happened a long time ago.

the i think it's the first essay in history is about affirmative action. and it's something i published 1981 and it reads like was written yesterday but anyway so the process putting together the text was one thing but there were some image issues i wanted to put in as i mean and this book has illustrations. did you, were you in art school? yes, i did photography and then kind of you know, now that we're in branding but yeah. and i do illustrations, so, you know, okay, you know, the between fine art illustration. so i'm illustration even though when was in art school what exactly. yeah. and i was in painting programs so it making paintings and f