05/31/21 05/31/21 [captioning made possible amy: from new york, this is democracy now! >> there is something we need to talk about. three words that summarize the whole history of humanity -- civilizationcolonization, extermination. this is the origin of the ideology of white supremacy. amy: "exterminate all the brutes." that's the title of an epic sweeping new series by raoul peck about colonialism, white supremacy, and genocide. "time magazine" said it "may well be the most politically radical

and intellectually challenging work of nonfiction ever made for television." we will air excerptsnd speak to the award winning haitian filmmaker raoul peck. then to the african-american writer richard wright, the author of "native son" and "black boy." he died over 60 years ago but he has a new novel out, "the man who lived underground." the manuscript was rejected by publishers in the 1940's because of its detailed descriptions of racist police violence. >> the publishers, who were white -- it was controlled, white-controlled -- did not want those descrtions of white supremacist police violence upon a black man because it was too close to home.

amy: we will speak to richard wright's daughter julia who discovered her father's unpublished manuscript and helped get it published. all that and more coming up. welcome to democracy now!, democracynow.org, the quarantine report. i'm amy goodman. republican lawmakers are continuing their attack on schools for teaching students about the true history of the united states -- from the genocide of native americans to the legacy of slavery. senate minority leader mitch mcconnell recently criticized the department of education for promoting what he described as revisionist history, including "the new york times" 1619 project which re-examined the pivotal role slavery played in the founding of the united states. in his letter, mcconnell wrote -- "americans never decided our children should be taught

that our country is inherently evil." well, today we begin our show looking at an epic new television series that delves deeply into a history mitch mcconnell would prefer not be taught -- the legacy of european colonialism from the americas to africa. this is a trailer for "exterminate all the brutes," the new series directed by the haitian-born filmmaker raoul peck. >> there is something we need to talk about, three words that summarize the whole history of humanity -- civilization, colonization, extermination. this is the origin of the ideology of white supremacy. this is me in the middle, and i just want to understand -- why do i bring myself into this story? because i am an immigrant from a [bleep] hole country. neutrality is not an option.

it's time to own up to a basic truth, a story of survival and violence. we know now what their task truly is, exterminate all the brutes. amy: the trailer for the epic hbo documentary series "exterminate all the brutes," which is available on hbo and hbo max. "time magazine" said the series "may well be the most politically radical and intellectually challenging work of nonfiction ever made for television." democracy now!'s nermeen sheikh and i recently interviewed raoul peck, the haitian filmmaker who directed "exterminate all the brutes." he joined us from paris, france. his past films include "i am not your negro" about james baldwin, "lumumba" about congolese prime minister patrice lumumba and "the young karl marx." i asked him to talk about how he went from making a film

about james baldwin to creating "exterminate all the brutes." >> basically, after "i am not your negro," i went throughout the world with the film. i was fortunate to be able to see how the film was received in many different places. and one of the common threads through that was the type of reaction that you just mentioned, like senate leader mitch mcconnell. you know, this denial is somehow a sign that they feel that they are entrenched now, they are attacked. there is great fear about me sort of civilization going overboard. and for me, it's a symbol that the type of lies, the type of propaganda, the type of abuse

that we have been subject to for during all these years. i am old enough to have heard many other people, like rick santorum, mitch mcconnell, and many others throughout the years. the only difference now is that we have the means to counter them. we have the means to tell the real story and that's exactly what i decided to do, to once for all, put everything on the table without any semblance of holding back my punches. everything is on the table, have been on the table for a long time, except that it was in little bits everywhere because science, sociology, anthropology, etc., politics, have been cut up in little pieces so we lost the wider perspective. and the film does exactly that, to bring us to the core story,

to have the whole matrix of the last 700 years of basically eurocentric ideology and narrative. nermeen: well, raoul peck, in providing this broader historical context, you trace the origins of contemporary modern forms of biological racism to the spanish inquisition and the so-called purity of blood statutes that is, limpieza de sangre -- >> exactly. nermeen: that was a means of stinguishing old christians from conversos -- that is, jews but also moors -- from the pure blood of christians. these laws, you say, are the antecedents of the ideology of white premacy. for the first time in the world, the idea of race based on blood was enshrined into law. so how should we understand the continuities

between the purity of blo statutes and the formof racist violence we witness today? because the entire argument of this truly magnificent work that the past is not really past. it is, as yosay, the past has a future that we can't anticipate. >> well, the thing is that we are accustomed to not see history as a continuity, as you say. and we came from a very specific history. and we are not some sort of tribalist tribe that came out of nowhere. today's civilization is basically embedded in the capitalistic societies and that story started around the 10th and 11th century

with the first accumulation of riches, accompanied by killing and exiling jews, killing muslims, trying to go all the way to jerusalem. and those first crusades were able to create a lot of -- or not create, to basically extract a lot of riches that allows the monarchy to be able to finance trips to discovering new roads to the east. and the accident, which it was, of the so-called discovery of the new continent was not something they planned. and when it happened, they basically created a totally new concept, which is the concept of discovery. and from that day on, you know, you could just go somewhere, put a flag, deploy military flags and say,

"this is mine," no matter who was on that land before. and i remind you that at the time of columbus, there were basically 100 million people on both continents in america. so you can imagine what it meant. within 100 years, more than 90% of them were totally annihilated. so it's a very specific moment in the history of the modern world. for the u.s., it seems like it's the beginning of a new world, but it's not. it's a continuity of a lot of action that have been the source of european civilization, basically. amy: let's go to a clip from "exterminate all the brutes," where you explain settler colonialism. >> from the beginning, the extension

of the united states from sea to shining sea was the intention and design of the country's founders. free land was a magnet that attracted european settlers. this particular form of colonialism is called settler colonialism. but as a system, it reqres violence. it requires the elimination of the natives and their replacement by european settlers. amy: and this is another clip from your series, "exterminate all the brutes." in this dramatized scene, a white man, played by the actor josh hartnett, engages in a standoff with a native amecan woman leader. >> i do not want to spill seminole blood, kill seminole children, seminole women. give us back the american property you stole from our good fellowman planters and settlers, and i will let you move to the injun territory the u.s. government has provided for your people.

>> you call human beings your property? >> they're slaves. >> you steal land. you steal life. you steal humans. what kind of species are you? amy: so we were listening to abby osceola, or the woman who plays her, of the seminole nation. you say her story goes deep into the history of this continent. talk about who she is and why you choo to center her and the seminole nation in the first part of your series, including their solidarity with enslaved africans. >> well, the whole vision of the film is based in changing totally the point of view of who is telling the story. and in particular, because this story not only center from europe but also center in the bottom

or in the middle of the united states of america, i had to start the film from that particular point of view of this woman who is the head of her tribe, of her nation. and basically, you know, the seminole have been one of the rare tribes who were never really -- who did not really obey to the enforcement of leaving their territories. and they were called the invisible tribe for reason. so it was important for me to start it from a point of resistance, from a point of an individual, of a woman. and watching this invader basically telling her to leave her land and to deliver the slaves that were -- and, of course, you know, that's a story that is not really well known,

that a lot of sles who escaped were welcomed by seminoles and other tribes. and i wanted to start with that symbolic moment of resistance and also of solidarity, and from there, deploy the whole rest of the story. nermeen: well, raoul, that is in one of the forms of continuity that you point to. the story of native americans is absolutely critical. and the erasure of this nocidal history, in particular in the united states, is evidenced, as you sho in the perverse use of native american names and designations fomilitary weapons, from black hawk to apache, as well as military operations, the most recent and proximate of which

was the may 11 operaon named geronimo to assassinate osama bin laden. so could you talk a little bit more aut that, the way in which native amecan histy has been disrted, if notntirely erased, and the uses to which it's been put in contemporary u.s. politics? >> well, it's clear that -- and you see that throughout the film through different type of device or type of stories, level of stories in the film, is how everything is somehow connected. you know, the history of the native american, which isfor me, the core story, whether it has been pushed out and erased sometimes or told the wrong way,

it's like a phantom. it's already there. you can't get rid of it. there are so many skeletons in those boxes that they come up. and they are more and more coming out. and it's ironic that the very powerful u.s. army, who was basically at its core created not only to fight the british at the beginning, but after independence was basically used to kill indians and to keep slaves, black slaves, on the plantations. so basically, the u.s. army, at the beginning, was the militia, you know? so this story continues. it's basically a story of 200 years, which is -- in the whole history of humankind is nothing. so as long -- you can try to repress that story,

but it's coming out there. as long as there will be native american or there will be black life, they will continue to tell that story. there is no escape from it. and that's why what i was saying at the beginning -- you know, when you see people like rick santorum saying that, "well, when we came, there was nobody on this land" -- what did you do with the 100 million people? you have to explain that. so it's really -- it becomes more and more absurd that republican leaderip at that level are capable of such ignorance. you know, it's mind-bending. so for me, it's just the logic of the whole story. and that's what we try to explain and to tell in this story of "exterminate all the brutes." and i really -- my objective is really to make sure

that that kind of ignorance cannot be voiced anymore. nermeen: raoul, another possible form of repression, another idea that has been reprsed, is something that sven lindqvist, in his extraordinary book "exterminate all the brutes" from which your film substantially draws, he shows how cloly intertwined the idea of progress is with racism and even genocide. what alternatives do you see to this ideology and where do you see it, if at all, taking shape? >> well, it's a very complicated question to answer. and i don't really go by that way in assessing what the future will be or what are the solution. i think any solution will first have to start with the real story. we need to sit down around the same table

and agree on the diagnostic. we have to agree on the genocide. we have to agree in the whole line of history that's been going on for more than 700 years. otheise, there is no conversation possible. so i am not, and we are not, if i can smoak for many others, it's not about revenge. it's not about -- you know, it's about let's see the world as it is and let's name all the things that happened and bring us to what the world is today. that's what it is about. it's not about showing how culprit you are or not. it's about acknowledging the past and the present because they are strongly connected. amy: we are talking to raoul peck, haitian born filmmaker who grew up in the democratic republic of congo as well as the united states.

he is the director of the new hbo four part documentary series "exterminate all the brutes." we continue our conversation after break.

■■ [music break] amy: "american dream" by j.s. ondara, one of the songs featured in the series "exterminate all the brutes." this is democracy now!, democracynow.org, the quarantine report. i'm amy goodman, with nermeen shaikh. if you want to get our daily email digest of news, headlines, stories, and alerts, send the word "democracynow" -- one word, without a space -- to 66866. text the word "democracynow" -- one word, without a space -- to 66866.

we are continuing now with our conversation with raoul peck, the haitian-born director of the new hbo four-part documentary series "exterminate all the brutes." i want to go to another clip from the second episode in the series where raoul peck -- he is the narrator of this series -- explains what happened after columbus arrived in what is now haiti, where raoul peck was born. >> instead of the bustling ports of the east indies, columbus came upon a tropical paradise populated by the taíno people, what is now haiti. then from the iberian peninsula came merchants, mercenaries, criminals, and peasants. they seized the land and property of indigenous peoples and declared the territories to be extensions of the spanish and portuguese states.

these acts were confirmed by the monarchs and endorsed by the papal authority of the roman catholic church. that's more or less the official story. and through that official story, a new vision of the world was created -- the doctrine of discovery. amy: that's a clip from "exterminate all the brutes," the 18th century, known as the age of revolutions. but we often associate this time with the american revolution or the french revolution, not the haitian revolution, which was led by black slaves, the first country in the western hemisphere to be born of a slave uprising. you say, raoul peck, the only revolution that materialized the idea of enlightenment, freedom, fraternity, and equality for all. you know, haiti becomes a republic and the u.s. congress

would not recognize it for decades, fearful that the fact that haiti was born of a slave uprising would inspire the enslaved people of the united states to rise up as well. can you talk about the erasure of the haitian revolution, your own country, haiti, its significance for you, and how the u.s. dealt with haiti all of these years? >> well, you know, thbest words for this is what michel-rolph trouillot have written about silencing the past. it was key for the u.s. d all the other european powers to silence the haitian revolution because it was, in their eyes, worse than cuba in the 1950's. we were under a strict embargo because all of them had economy that sti relied on slavery.

and haiti was the worst example they could have. and haiti was also beating them in terms of their own ideology of enlightenment because haiti, the first constitution of haiti, basically stated that any man or woman or person who set foot on the island is a free person. and none of the other revolutions dared go so far because they were totally involved in slavery and were profiting from it. so there was no way that the haitian revolution could be accepted. so when people say that america is the first democratic country in the western hemisphere, it's not. it's haiti. and the story coinue until today. you know, we have a history of being attacked, of being invaded, of many of our leaders come to power

with the acceptance of the u.s. government. and it continue until today. basically, the last two presidents we had came into power thanks to the support of the u.s. government. so we have, unfortunately, a long story of abuse from the united states and also of resistance, because one thing that we can say is that the haitian people were always -- whether it take 30 years, five years or two years, they always make sure that they can get rid of those corrupt leaders. nermeen: i want to ask about one of the critical issues, raoul, that you raise in the last part of the film, a critical questio you talk about your own experience living in berlin, where you lived for 15 years and were a film student

where you made a film on a nazi torture compound. yosay when you were there that y thought a lot about how a country that's produc some of humanity's best philosophers, scientists, and artists also operated one of the most devastating, scientifically run and engineered killing machines. now, many people have reflected on this question and the seeming contradiction in this fact by concluding that the holocaust was some kind of historical aberration. in oer words, that it stands very muc outside the history of the enlightenment and the ideas of humanism anuniversalism on which it apparently stands. but your film seems to sgest -- even as this is raised as question, your film suggests that other conclusions could be dwn. could you talk a little bit about that?

>> well, it's nothing new. in fact, there are many scholars that have worked on that specific question for the last 50, 60 years. and, of course, there is resistance to say thathe holocaust was a very special moment in the life of western civilization. but it's not. it's a continuity oa wheel of genocide, a wheel of eliminate people that are deemed inferior. the structure of genocide are always the same. you know, the person who invented the word "genocide," raphael lemkin, in 1943 -- we went to the new york public library. and in that library, in his file, there is a list of something around 42 previous genocides

before the holocaust. and he include in it, of course, the genocide against the native american people. so trying to make any type of genocide special, i think, is a really not correct way of seeing the history of humankind. they all copied from each other. they are all, of course, specific. you know, you can't directly compare the genocide in rwanda with the genocide in cambodia and with the holocaust. they have different ideological reason. they have different historical reason. they have different people involved. but as the structure, as the system of genocide, they all obey the same pattern of first pinning down a special category of person, of people,

and then start saying that we are superior to them and they are insect. and as soon as you come to the point where ey are animals or they are savages or they are insect, you are allowed to kill them. and that's the excuse that was always needed for every imperialist, for every conqueror in order to eliminate whoever was in the land they wanted to conquer. so it's similar. it has been similar throughout the history of humankind. and it became more specific within the concept of the capitalistic society, because then it was also linked to profit. it was also linked to make bigger territories in order to exploit large communities. so i have had that discussion many years ago, back ago, including in germany.

but today, i think we should move past that, what i would call the confrontation between who got the biggest pain. do we put slavery confronted to the holocaust or the rwandis' pain? you know, it's not about that. we are all from the same human family. it's not about who has suffered more. i ink we have to acknowledge every piece of history that happened on this planet, and we have to give responses to them. and we have to explain why they happened because it's the only way that entually wean prevent them to happen again and again. amy: and we want to talk more that after this last clip from the series "exterminate all the brutes." >> trading human beings, what sick mind thought of this first?

brought by force and pushed to death -- slavery, or the trade, as they referred to it euphemistically, a state-sponsored genocide. what does this say about the civilized world? amy: so, if you could talk more about what this does say, and going back to the beginning, talking about genocide, the term coined by raphael lemkin, colonization, as well as civilization, and how you find hope today in the discussions, if this is all acknowledged, though you're saying just acknowledging this is not enough. >> yes, of course. but acknowledging it is a big step. and that's what i wanted to say before

is that even for me as a filmmaker, telling that story, it took a lot of thinking in order to tell a story where for the first time you tell the story of the genocide of native americans, and then you tell the story of slavery, and then you tell also one of the major extermination story, which is the holocaust. and for the first time, think, at least on film, you can see the connections between them. and for me, it's a huge step. you know, it's taking allhose atrocity in a different context. and for me, it can only be the beginning of a wider conversation, you know, instead of each part keeping their own malheur,

keeping their own death, their own pain, and sometimes being used against each other, you know? and that's a divide that has be used for many, many years. and for me, the film is also a step to break that separate narrative. there is not many different stories. there is one historical knowledge. and we need to access it. and to your question, that's the leitmotif in the series, you know? we already know enough. the problem is, what do we do with that knowledge? because everything i say in the film, everything that sven lindqvist tells the story about, or michel-rolph trouillot or roxanne dunbar-ortiz, those are fact. those are highly competent scholars

who spent their life documenting the horror. and my use of their work, with them, was exactly that -- to force t conversation to a more sovereign type of discussion and to push aside the blurring of history, push aside the ignorance that still reign in the discussion. and, you know, i am not going to name them again, the two politicians i named, but i think a population are more and more interested in learning where they come from. you know, there is a reason why everybody now wants to have their dna analyzed, because there is some sort of feeling of connection, you know? and it's our job as filmmakers and u.s. journalists, as well,

to lay that in plain sight. and then we can say, "ok, what do we do with this?" nermeen: that's exactly -- we just have a minute. what do we do with this? your film begins and ends with the same line that sven lindqvist says again and ain, "it's not knowledge that we lack. what is missing is the courage to understand what we know and draw the conclusions." how does your film a the work of these other authors enable that courage? >> you know, i was primarily educated by jesuits. and one thing is, maybe from that, at i believed in the nion of knowledge. i believe in the notion of learning the truth. and the film, for me, is the first step. and my wish is that every school, every university is able to watch the film and have discussion around it because you cannot go further if you don't knowour own history,

whatever the side you are on. but you need to know. and it's not about accusing you of anything. it's about facing your reality because you can't understand what's going on. you can't understand why policemen are still killing black kids and black men and black women in this country if you don't know where it comes from. you know? and it's unfortunate. you know, we are in a time where we have huge instrumen for communication and huge instrument for learning. you can go on the internet and learn about everything. but we lack a very condensed matrix of those histories that we have been built by. and each one of us needs to do our homework. otherwise, i don't see any nonviolent outcome out of this.

amy: raoul peck, the acclaimed haitian-born filmmaker, director of the new hbo four-part documentary series "exterminate all the brutes." visit democracynow.org to watch our 2018 interview with raoul about his films "the young marx" and "i am not your negro" about james baldwin. when we come back, "the man who lived underground." we go to portugal to speak with julia wright about how she unearthed an unpublished novel about racist police violence written by her father, the legendary african-american writer richard wright, who wrote "native son" and "black boy." stay with us. ■■ [music break]

amy: "old man river," sung by paul robeson, who had his passport taken by the u.s. government. he was blacklisted in this country and was a friend of richard wright. this is democracy now!, decracynow.org, the quarantine report. i'm amy goodman.

over 80 years ago, richard wright became one of the most famous black writers in the united states with the publication of his novel "native son." it sold over 200,000 copies in the first three weeks and inspired a generation of black writers. amiri baraka once said -- "wright was one of the people who made me conscious of the need to struggle." in 1941, richard wright wrote a follow-up novel titled "the man who lived underground." it's centered on a black man who is force to live in a city sewer system after being brutalized by white police officers who tortured him until he falsely admitted to murdering a white couple. but publishers rejected wright's book. portions of the book were turned into a short story of the same name, but the full novel, including the graphic descriptions of police brutality, went unpublished -- until now. richard wright once said of the novel --

"i have never written anything in my life that stemmed more from sheer inspiration or executed any piece of writing in a deeper feeling of imaginative freedom, or expressed myself in a way that flowed more naturally from my own personal background, reading experiences, and feelings." but his manuscript was largely forgotten until his daughter, julia wright, unearthed it at the rare book & manuscript library at yale university and worked with the library of america to have the book finally published, nearly 80 years after it was written and 60 years after richard wright died at the age of 52 in paris, france, where he had taken his family to live since 1946. i recently spoke to richard wright's daughter julia. she joined us from portugal. julia wright is a longtime anti-death penalty activist,

and supporter of mumia abu-jamal. has visited him many times in prison. she is writing a memoir about her father richard wright. she is the executor of his estate. i began by asking julia to talk about the significance of what she found and how she finally had it published. >>hank you, y, for having me backn the show. yes, it was a very exciting discovery. i was living in paris at the end of the 1990's and during the early years of 2000, and i was learning the ropes of the estate with my mother ellen. i was also freelancing as a journalist there. and the time came, after my mother's death, to publish another work by my father.

since i would travel to the united states to visit death row and visit death row prisoners there, like mumia abu-jamal, whose human rights were being so systematically violated, i would take the plane, land in the united states, go through cities like new york or philly -- philadelphia, and go to death row. but on my way to death row, i would encounter another type of death sentence. and that is the shootings of unarmed

black and brown people in our streets, also of vulnerable minorities like mentally challenged people. and i remember being absolutely shocked, for instance, by what happened to james byrd down in texas, who was dragged behind a white -- i believe there were three of them, three white supremacists' van, until he was dismembered, alive, while he was still alive. i remember abner louima in new york and his sodomizion.

i remember in those years -- amy: by police. >> as i was going to death row -- yes, absolutely, by the police, always by the police. and also i remember amadou diallo, shot by the police 40 times, not because he was the one suspected of rape -- it was somebody else -- but he was a convenient black target. so when i got to yale and to beinecke and -- i have this memory of entering this very plush, comfortable, air-conditioned library in july of 2010

to look for a manuscript to publish. and i saw the long version of "the man who lived underground." it leapt out at me as -- i don't know what to say. a time bomb? a time machine? something that had to be published yesterday. i was so driven about it that i took it back to paris and approached library of america by -- well, in those days, it was still fax. and that's how the idea began. amy: and talk about -- talk about the book. talk about the descriptions of police violence. talk about the man who went underground, who lived in the sewer system.

again, it was published as short story but not as a book, because the publishers didn't want those graphic descriptions. >> the publishers, who were white -- it was controlled, white-controlled -- did not want those descriptions of white supremacist police violence upon a black man because it was too close to home. as one editor who rejected the long version of the manuscript said, it is "too unbearable," "too untenable, too uncomfortable." it's a bit like, you know, lifting the one

and not wanting the worms -- the racist worms underneath to be seen. very interestingly, kevin powell, a new york writer, very promising writer, commented on the long version the other day, what if those first 50 pages on police brutality had been accepted back in the day? all the discourse around that narrative that would have taken place all thosyears ago would perhaps have changed something. but it didn't.

amy: i'm looking at a quote from "the man who lived underground," your father's book. he says -- "outside of time and space, he looked down upon the earth and saw that each fleeting day was a day of dying, that men died slowly with each passing moment as much as they did in war, that human grief and sorrow were utterly insufficient to this vast, dreary spectacle." and i'm thinking about the time we live in, julia, right now, as you look across the atlantic at your country, the united states, what happened to george floyd last year, the police murder of george floyd and then the trial. your thoughts? >> my thoughts about the video that was taken by darnella frazier, such a young gl, fearlessly, even while she was being threatened,

is a central, fundamental thing to our culture. because as benjamin crump said, as she did it, e recaptured part of our narrative that escaped us. and that narrative is the narrative of our death because that goes back to slavery. it goes back to the lynchings. it goes back to "black boy" chapter two, when richard, aged eight or nine, realizes that the grown-ups who were whispering above him are whispering about the lynching of his uncle, silas hoskins.

and he doesn't understand. he wonders where the body is. he wonders why there are no flowers, why there's no funeral. and he says to his mother, "why didn't we do anything about it?" and those words reverberate through all these decades and seem to have reached darnella as she filmed george floyd's last moments. she did something about it. she filmed his last moments. she ve us a new narrative. amy: we're talking to julia wright, the daughter of the literary giant richard wright, so famous for his books "native son" and "black boy." in 1951, richard wright actually starred in a film version

of "native son." he played the main character, bigger thomas. this is just a clip from the trailer. >> all my life i heard of black men being killed because of white girls. and there i was. >> darling, give up. it might make it easier. >> i felt free and wasn't scared no more. i was back home again. and there was my father the white folks had killed when i was a kid. >> how can i help you now? >> you don't have to help me, mr. max. go home. now you can hate me like the others. amy: again, that is richard wright playing bigger thomas

in the film version of his book, the blockbuster best-seller at the time, "native son," and then his kind of literary biography, "black boy." julia, especially for the younger generation, if you could give us a thumbnail biography of your father, of where your father grew up, how he moved north, how he wrote these books, and ultimately -- i don't know if you'd describe it as fleed, but fled the united states with you and your mother -- right? fled new york, fled the racism, as james baldwin would do later, and ended up in paris? >> difficult. because i'm so close to what he did, i don't have that bird's-eye view that i would like to have. but i would say that maybe he would prefer the word

"expatriate" to "exile," and he would prefer the word "escape" to "flight" because they are more active words and he thought of himself as more endowed with agency as time went on. everything he did was to gain more freedom in his ability to create. you showed a clip of the film he invested so much of his energy into -- writing, co-writing the script,

being part producer of, acting bigger. and in the end, that film was censored because it came out during mccarthyism. that was one of the reasons why he could not stay and create freely in a land where the pages he wrote about police brutality would be dismembered from his book, a bit in the way james byrd would be dismembered. i mean, i use the word a bit violently, but in a way, it is the same thing.

he needed freedom in all senses, in all meanings of the term. and so he went where he felt he could find it. amy: i mean, if you could talk about what he experienced here. al the huac hearings, watching paul robeson being destroyed by the u.s. government, this enormous talent, this giant figure. them taking his passport, the anti-communist fervor of the time -- not wanting the fbi to come to try to get him to spy on his colleagues, his relationships with james baldwin and ralph ellison and paul robeson.

the significance of this period? >> it was the cold war. and culture, academics, writers were used in the cold war against one another. it was a terrible cloak-and-dagger period, but it was to the death -- to the the death of creativity, but also to the death of life. it was terrible. i remember my father's best friend ollie harrington, who was a member of the usa and the creator of bootsie, the cartoon --

amy: the communist party usa. >> yes, yes, yes. and he was the creator of bootsie, a very famous cartoon. and he was my father's best friend to the end. my father used to tell ollie, "ollie, the apartment is bugged. it's bugged." and ollie used to laugh at my father. this was in paris, at the end, during his here. amy: julia, we just have 20 seconds. >> and ollie would laugh and say, "no. no way. you're being paranoid, richard." but richard insisted, so ollie brought technians in. and they found bugs. amy: well, we are -- we have to leave it there,

but people can pick up this latest book of the great literary giant richard wright. thank you so much to his daughter julia wright. "the man who lived underground," just published. i'm amy goodman. thanks for joining us. [captioning made possible

♪ hello, and thank you for joining us on nhk world-japan. this is nhk "newsline." we begin in japan where the australian women's softball team has just arrived. they are among the first athletes to come to the country for the tokyo games, which was postponed by a year due the coronavirus pandemic. about 30 players and staff members brought