and let me just introduce, now, john sayles who's going to read from the novel. [applause] >> thanks. thanks for coming, everybody. couple clarifications. one is i actually didn't write the screenplay or work on the screenplay for the fugitive. if you read wikipedia or any of these things, about a quarter of what you read there is misinformation. so -- >> wikipedia. >> yeah. i, i watched the tv series and the movie, liked them very much. [laughter] didn't write them. and i, in fact, did sell blood to make money, but it was my own blood. [laughter] so the chapter i'm going to read you is set in wilmington, north carolina, in early 1898. at the time will wilmington had a population that was over 60% african-american, and unlike many of the other southern states at that moment, their ability, black men's ability to vote, had not yet been taken away. north carolina was the last of the former confederate states to bring in the jim you laws -- jim crow laws and grandfather clause and those kind of things. and, in fact, by allying themselves with the working white peopl