>> we hope we've done a fair job tonight of telling the story of your relative. thank you for your call. before we go to her legacy where, is she bury? >> she was originally buried in palo alto. they exhumed her body and she's next to bert at west branch. >> when government opens again and all of the institutions are back, you can go to west branch and visit the herbert hoover presidential library there. so the question for both of you, since they were a couple that approached public life together, what should their legacy be? >> i think it is -- as the first lady, her legacy is the way in which she tried to ute lietz her role as first lady to make a call to action to the public issues that she believed in but also that dove tailed with the kind of approach and philosophy of government that her husband had. so they had a legacy in terms of presidential couples for how to -- the delicate balance between

the sort of political side of what first ladies are supposed to do. >> marlin? > hello? >> your question, sir? >> i was doing the campaign of hoover and al smith. the biggest thing was repealing the 18th amendment. i grew up in a community and all of them conservative, very religious. everybody voted for hoover. also, the market crash in '29, the banks busted at the same time. i was 7 years old then and i wanted to go down and collect my money when the banks broke. the hoover dam was named for him.

the draw started when the dust storms started all the way from north dakota all the way from nebraska down to oklahoma. >> i've got to jump in. you've given us a good opportunity to ask the last -- what should her legacy be and how should we view the hoover administration in hindsight? what's your thesis going to be? >> my thesis is she has not been succeeded by a woman who served for 13 years. we would remember a lot more of lou hoover now. her activism and a lot of her nonpolitical agenda in working with the youth, with the girl scouts set the stage for future first ladies to have causes and things they supported that did not have to have political repercussions or

connections. as far as remembering them for the depression, i think that anybody knew how to handle them, we had depressions before. we managed to pull out of them within a couple of years. this is the first one as we know now that lasted as long as it did. we did not pull out of the depression until we entered world war ii. so even with all of the legislation that franklin roosevelt was able to get congress to pass, that in and of itself did not help to improve the economy until things changed very radically. >> our thanks to emily and to annette dunlap for being our guest on the story of lou henry hoover. and our thanks to the white house historical association for their help throughout the series.

>> next week watch more programs from our first ladies series including highlights from season two midweek. each night at 9:00 eastern here on c-span. in just a few weeks our series returns live with programs on the five most recent first ladies beginning with nancy

reagan monday night starting anuary 13. >> we're offing a book on first ladies for $12:95. and our website has more about the first ladies including a special section welcome to the white house produced by our partner the white house historical association about life in the executive mansion during the tenure of each of the first ladies. find out more at cspan.org/firstladies. >> tonight on c-span a discussion on gender, race and the growing incarceration rate among women. after that a congressional gold

medal ceremony honoring american tribes on their military service. and later a discussion about faith in the white house. >> i think radio is the longer and best form of media that is left. we're doing hour long conversation. only c-span does long forum conversation anymore. it's revealing when an author has had their book read these days because they don't get many who read their books. it's so rewarding to them. i get a great deal of satisfaction when an author says to me that's the best interview i've had on this book tour. charles. t from that makes my day. i like radio . three hours is an adone dance of

time and i can do so many different things. c-span, we bring public affair events from washington directly to you putting you in the room at congressional hearings, white house events, briefings and conferences and offering complete gavel to gavel coverage of the u.s. house all as a public service of private industry. we're c-span, created by the cable tv industry 34 years ago and funded by your local cable or satellite provider and now you can watch us in h.d. >> next a discussion on gender, race and the growing ncarceration rate among women. from tulane university in new orleans this is an hour and a

half. here this evening. plentyout and see that are still worried about their grades and seeking extra credit. thank you to the professor for that lovely introduction. larger part of the campus intellectual project to gauge with michelle alexander's ant, which has gotten enormous amount of critical praise over the years, that has restarted conversations that activists and scholars have been having often in more silo the spaces. hassuccess of the book provided more spaces for public discourse around these questions. me, one of the great challenges of the book as well as of so much activism, particularly within african- american communities around incarceration is the unnamed and almost always unnamed assumption

that this is primarily a man's problem, a problem of male bodies being stopped and frisked by police officers instead of assumptions about male gendered norms associated with black men and notions of violence and the idea that the problems of incarceration and the cost of incarceration are primarily borne by african-american men. part of what we want to do is challenge that by going to the intersection of gender and incarceration, by speaking specifically about how incarceration impacts women. we have assembled a really extraordinary panel and we will try to do as little talking as possible although all the students in my class know that i'll he say that and then talked for 2.5 hours straight. on our penultimate is susan burton, founder and executive director of a new way of life reentry project.

she is a formerly incarcerated person herself who after many years in and out and with a clear understanding of the challenges of incarceration, started a new way of life. she has been recognized for her successes and her continuing activism including being nominated as a cnn top 10 hero and a community crusader and receiving the citizens activist inrd from harvard university 2010, also being a justice fellow and a women's policy institute fellow and a community fellow for the california wellness foundation. heywoodh us is deion who is one of my favorite people. i am always looking for a reason to have her at the table. she is the executive director of women with a vision, a new orleans-based organization founded in 1991.

she is one of my favorite people mostly because of her no- nonsense approach to these fundamental questions. women with a vision does not take on the easy questions when it comes to incarceration. in 2009, she oversaw the launch of the note justice project. n-o.al they filed a lawsuit on behalf of trans women who were labeled and arrested under the street based sex workers crimes against nature law here in louisiana. they were on the sex offender registry as a result of nothing more than having been sex workers. a settlement with the state of louisiana removed 700 such individuals from the sex offender registry. [applause]

of course, for her work, women with a vision was also victimized by fire. that said, she takes on the questions that are not the easy ones. tina reynolds is a cofounder of women on the rise, telling her story. organization that seeks to provide a voice for currently and formerly incarcerated women. she is a formerly incarcerated woman herself holding a masters in social work from hunter college. one of the most important projects that she is currently working on is the birthing behind bars project. we recently focused on the problem of women who are undocumented immigrants being shackled in the context of labor and delivery. heart of what werth does is recognize that this is standard practice in many localities not

only for undocumented immigrants he held for nothing more than the status-based crime of being called a legal because they have crossed a border, but also for domestically incarcerated women. who has beth ritchie been one of my favorite people for longer than it would be reasonable for us to talk about here. the instituter of for research on race and public policy at the university of illinois at chicago. she is an intellectual mentor, one of the people who introduced me to the possibility that in the academy we can both be serious scholars and committed activists. her research projects include a study of factors including rearrest rates for women and young people released from large urban jails and also an examination of public policy and social factors that impact incarceration rates. i teach her book regularly. she is the recipient of the union institute's audrey lord legacy award.

"e book that i teach is arrested justice, black women, violence and america's prison nation." welcome my panelists. [applause] the way that we have decided to do this is to give each person on the panel who could undoubtedly speak for two and a half hours themselves, three to five minutes. i will hold you accountable for the three to five minutes. mostly because i have a series of questions on a variety of topics around arrest, conviction, incarceration and harder community impact that i hope to get to. i want to simply give you a moment to talk about your work a mere scholarship, your activism so that we have a sense of what this broad picture looks like. we will begin here. >> thank you so much.

i must include what brought me to my work. son was five-year-old killed accidentally by an lapd police officer. the height of the world on drugs. -- war on drugs. soon after, i began to take illegal drugs. illegal drugs i was in possession of, i was sent to prison. i was sent to prison not one time, but i was sentenced six individual times. i spent time in prison for possession of a drug. in 1998, i found a place that helped me. the place was in santa monica, a predominantly white neighborhood and when i got there, i got -- i was introduced to recovery and i

began to practice recovery. what i noticed is that in that neighborhood people were not sentenced to prison for possession of drugs. i said, what is wrong? what is going on here? i just saw these two different approaches, same county and the different neighborhoods, other side of the tracks. wasft there really glad i getting help. but really angry that i would be punished, caged, handcuffed, six times when recovery was so much more humane and acceptable. monica, went back to south l.a. and work and bought a house and began to help other women just like me find a place that they could come back to in their community that had some resources with a safe

environment and there began the beginning of a new way of life. today, a new way of life has five homes. over 700 women come back into the community. we have reunited more than 150 women with their children. more than that, we began to organize. we look at how to make policy changes. on 82-18 inworked --ifornia which bans unemployment applications. we began to organize nationally a formerly incarcerated and convicted people's movement. we 10 years ago organized all of us or none. five years ago we started a legal department where two lawyers take on all types of discrimination.

discrimination, housing discrimination, looking at how background check companies rapidly report all --es of stuff on people's for people who are seeking jobs, seeking employment. this whole mass incarceration thing is just -- has totally destroyed communities across this country. what do i do? i just work to make a better world. i work to level the playing field. i worked to give opportunity to people, women and men, but getarily women that never the opportunity to have a better life, to improve their life, to go to college and so forth. i worked to make a better world. thank you. >> hello, everyone. ago, it was really an

idea that came from eight women, all of them who were born and raised in the city of new orleans. we make a joke about how all of , thirdpresent every ward ward, ninth ward, seventh ward, six. [laughter] with theem decided onset of hiv in the late 80's and early 90's that even though there was a lot of talk about how it was transmitted, no one was talking to anybody in the african-american community. that is where women with the vision was born. for the first 15 years, we did a lot of advocacy on the local level in terms of speaking up around different issues that marginalized communities and at that time, that is when new orleans had 10 housing

developments and we worked in and around those areas. and harms around hiv reduction and trying to connect to women. we learn early on that access was the biggest issue. racism was the issue and definitely poverty was an issue. shiftedrina, our work because as many of you know, it became equal playing ground for some and what i call the killing field for others. that because i was here and that is what it felt like. ist we found post-katrina all of the worst things seem to have gotten worse. there seem to be all these new policies that had been in place someway, themehow, state legislature decided to go in and make the penalties worse. to, ok,our work shifted

we have been doing it on this level -- it seems like we have to look at laws and policies women in and cycle out of prison but put them in direct risk for going to prison. work on the our justice campaign was targeting louisiana's crime against nature law, solicitation crime against nature which was an automatic felony. 20 years. you have to follow all federal guidelines as a registered sex offender. one of the things we found was the majority of women being charged were african-american. 79% of the people on the sex offender registry were african- american women. that didn't look right to us. us wehough people told weren't going to be able to

fight it, they had tried this , you are not going to be of the to do it because one, y'all are small. two, y'all are all black and you are from the south. that didn't work for me. the one thing we are all very clear on and that we try to instill in people is that we are born with a power. we should have that. all we do is try to help women find their power. what won was their stories. we wouldn't have been able to do that if the community wouldn't have stood with us. led how that campaign was going to look and what we wanted the outcome to the. i am extremely proud not only for all of us at women with a itself.ut the community those trans women and women who said, enough is enough. small, black women,

changed louisiana. exists and women were taken off the registry and should no longer be placed on. thank you. [applause] >> i am glad to be here. arrested for the last time. i haven't gone back since. , but thisle violation particular arrest or rearrest was different. i was pregnant. buyer to that i had done my time on the installment plan. i had been arrested 61 times and served up to 4.5 years. i was pretty tired of being sick and tired. however, i wasn't tired and sick and tired for me but because i was pregnant. things became a little bit more overt.

as far as the treatment i received within the prison. i was shackled and sent to bedford hills where farm records island was about an hour and a half away. i was shackled by my ankles with a chain between my ankles and i my also belly shackled and arms. i had a five-point restraints. i was maybe 4.5 months pregnant and i had to lean over the bar and hold on while the bus took me up to bedford hills. night.a winter i said, what if the boss gets all nice and turns over? what happens to me if that happens? would someone protect my baby? i said, if this is happening to me, i wonder how many other women it has happened to. i served my time. i did my time specifically to keep my son. it wasn't for me that i served this time.

pregnant i began to open my eyes and look and see how women were treated. there were a lot of other women in the prison during that time that were pregnant as well. we did not receive appropriate food. nutrition, we did not receive appropriate medical care. things started turning for me. the case of my child being taken away from me after i gave birth to him was another issue. where would he go? birth to my son and i was shackled and handcuffed during birth and delivery. that was another scary thing. now i am looking at the safety for my child. son become a co- conspirator to my crime? i said, something has got to change. if this is happening to me than it is happening to other women. i served my time. i was eventually able to keep my son during incarceration i fought to keep him.

he and i walked out of prison. he was nine months old. eight years later, worht came andnd -- worth came around we decided to work on our first policy legislation change what was to end shackling of pregnant women. it was done with an organization and collaboration with incarcerated women sharing their stories about their experience. we are not the experience. we have those experiences. the separate that experience from who we are, we began to share our stories of the practice of being shackled. in 2009, we ended shackling, the practice of shackling in new york. [applause] change massim is to criminalization.

>> thank you. i am delighted to be here tonight in part, i will tell you my story by naming names. to start with, melissa. [laughter] have done for we a long time, susan who runs an incredible program. i say that because my work, my path to this work has been deeply influenced i women's stories. hear theays, when i three to five minutes, i think this is what our midterm election should have been about, these women leaders changing the world. they represent -- you got the short version of incredible stories of these organizations. make no mistake, these are black women up here. [laughter] right? represent, especially they

represent and credible on the ground of black women, black queer communities, black young people who are trying to change the world. would be as, this very different event at the world were ready for the kind of change that they have been working on the ground for for the past 20, 30 years, i don't know how many mycobacteria i want to name their names and their organizations. there is insight in the room. there is the new jim crow, but there is also all these people who have done this work for a long time. says thedo work that -- we that this isn't don't live in a world that celebrates prison abolition, black women's leadership, freedom, opportunities for women to raise their children, places forrieve, opportunity

sexual expression that is fair and just, the reason we don't live in that world is because we live in the world that is a prison nation. the prison nation in the world that says despite all those attempts to survive, despite well articulated strategies for empowerment of black communities and other subsets of black communities, what we have instead is a world, a government that is committed to the politics, the principal, the philosophy of a cursor allstate. when i talk about a prison nation what i am talking about -- ae world that has united states government that has more prisoners than any other place in the world. furtherople spend time away from their families and communities than in any other place in the world.

they spend that time in worse conditions of confinement than any other place in the world. they stay in their longer than in any other place in the world. we have embraced an ideology that says a prison nation caging people because of their race, because of their age, their sexuality, their gender is an appropriate response to social problems. i didn't say lawbreaking. i said social problems. that is what is filling up. metal health problems, problems related to violence, problems related to poverty, etc. when i try to bring to this work is an understanding that we need to change that world, the world of a prison nation that this government has embraced so that women like these are our leaders, are creating the kinds of communities that i want to live in. that to