. >> in 1911, booker t. washington shreveport and gave almost an impromptu speech on a temporary grandstand right to my right where the annex of the courthouse is today. no one was really told because the white establishment was re however, within an hour's notice, 2,000 to 3,000 people came right here. clogged up texas streets and clogged up marshall and wanted to hear it. photographer from the local newspaper, the times, took his picture. the photographs taken that day are typical booker t. washington. he's animated. he's preaching. he's giving a very, very well received speech. and people loved it. he was -- he was a star. there was no doubt about it. four years later, shortly before his death, he comes back and he could not be here because there were too many people that wanted to see him. so the venue was moved out to the fairgrounds which is where they are today. about four miles west of here. when shreveport had 20,000 people, 10,000 people came out to listen to him. i think the first time the draw was curiosity

booker t. washington for his time was one of the two great african-american voices. and they did not get along, they didn't see things the same way. they were opposed. and washington i think for southerners struck a chord because they understood what he was saying. and he still is an important voice today. often marginalized by more heated rhetoric. he is a voice of sanity. he in many ways is an earlier version of dr. martin luther king, jr. he preached hard work. he preached unity. he preached the fact that we are of one people. we may be different colors. we may be different religions. we may be different back growns, but we are still americans and we are still southerners. if you look at any picture of him on the stage, he's moving, he's gesturing. he is animated. he's always pumping his fist. he's always pointing. he's moving and he's not looking up or around. he's looking right at people. and everybody there who was within earshot i'm sure thought for at least a while that he was speaking directly to them. he was looking directly at them. and as he looked at them

only two names were in the encyclopedia, and that was booker t. washington and george washington carver, but she lectured about the contribution of frederick douglass, w.e.b. dubois, and how jackie robinson had broken the baseball barrier. and we remembered the opera singer who was not allowed to sing in the hall and had to sing in lincoln center. all the discrimination and the local in justices. like, everything was separate and unequal. the school was inadequate. we could not go to the hospitals. they built a house adjacent to the main hospital. the white people were not supposed to be in the same room with an n-person. you know the n-word? i said to myself at the end of the day that i love my country and i'm glad that that day, i took a stand. i saw through the supreme court that the flaws that america had tried to correct them by removing those horrible signs -- "white" and "colored." i said when i testified at the trial, i went through how we were treated, and the lady dramatize it, so i do not have to go through that, but it is the whole system of sepa

the colored superintendent who was headquartered in a white frame house on the property of booker t. washington junior high school, not on 25th street. residence lines were sharply drawn. if you read read read from "not in my neighborhood," just how sharply. for instance, my family living in an apartment on madison avenue in a townhouse, we children did not dare play with the children of the appalachian families who moved into the unplumbed garages with no water, no plumbing, on you tao place and right across the alley from the back yards of our townhome apartments on madison avenue. we were unequal. when i was younger, i remember visiting dad with mom at huts her's where he was a window dresser and he had been told he would never, ever be able to rise to a higher level of employment. that's how he migrated to become one of the first people on the police force as it integrated. i remember passing the cafeteria in huts her's and i could see the crystal chandelier, but we went to eat lunch with dad by going down into the basement and walking among the pipes that led to the colored cafeteria. goin

stories iny and collea kelly whose book "right to ride" about the age of cam com daigs, the booker t. washingtonhere apparently african-americans didn't really push back. she in her book really writes, no, this is about the age of thwarted resistance, people were pushing back, people were resisting. they just lost, right? and they lost over and over and over again until the moment when the 1960s civil rights movement and the selma march finally leads then-president lbj to do what president obama did vis-a-vis occupy, which is to bring the language of the social movement into the well of congress, right, into the presidency. let me ask you one question, though, about failing presidential candidates, in this case a failing vice presidential candidate. sarah palin it seems to me that, despite being a loser, is an enormous agenda setting winner. so she loses in 2008 as the vice president, but then in 2010 she becomes the queen maker for all of these congressional races, right? sarah palin goes in and endorses nicki haley and mary fallon and suzanne martinez and the next thing you know, sarah palin,