duboise wrote a book in 1935 that for many people was his most pointed and most impactful book in terms of taking on orthodox scholarship and its representation of black history, a book called "black reconstruction." and i read several passages of "black reconstruction" in order to think a little about what was at stake in relation to addressing this deficit of bringing together african-american history. and one jumped out at me in particular, and this is one that's dealing with reconstruction, but if we redact the word "reconstruction," we could probably put any phase of history in the united states in its place, including potentially the one that we're in right now. ford to paint the south -- in order to paint the south as a martyr to inescapable fate, to make the north the magnanimous e mansion pater and to ridicule the negro as the impossible joke in the whole development, we have in 50 years -- he's talking here about orthodox scholarship, he's talking about academics working at places like columbia, harvard, university of chicago, northwestern and the like -- we have in 50 years b

that handsome visage i am looking at right now, but you have had a chance to befriend everybody, duboisemartin luther king, paul robeson, nelson mandela. out of all the people you have been friends with and struggled with, what makes nelson mandela so uniquely different? >> the people i have been privileged to serve, nelson mandela was the one i least suspected i would ever come to me, personally. i tried several times when he was incarcerated, to gain the privilege of visiting him, but the system would not permit that. himarted corresponding with while he was in prison. i had come to be aware of him through my mentor, the man who i most admired, paul robeson. e was very close to king against thewas apartheid system in the early day of its presence in south africa. he was the first black man to ever receive the nobel prize. looking at south africa from that prison, i began to become more aware of what the african national congress was doing, and what the leadership was aspiring to do, to make the decisions that would help us fight the struggle that the south african people were fighting