toni morrison -- toni morrison was our guest in 2001, one of the few novelists to appear on the program she discusses her book, reads from her pulitzer prize winning book 11 and describes what it was like to win the nobel prize in literature. >> a long, long time from my grandfather being born. he was 5 years old when the emancipation proclamation - right? and he was framed because he kept hearing the adults say it is coming. he thought it was a monster so he crawled under the bed and they had to explain it to him. and became aware of the circumstances under which they lived, the difficulty my parents had as a young couple and a kind of miraculous thing in my generation. i knew i wanted to go to college. i was not -- my mother was not interested in my getting married. she didn't think it was necessarily the ultimate goal of a woman's life or rather she thought it wouldn't come too soon. so they told me listen, we don't have enough for you to get a full college education but we had enough for one year and i said that is all i wanted, just one year. that is the way i went off and -- convi

story tellers like toni morrison and spike lee. you chose to study medicine at ma hairy, and engineering at nca&t because you want to lead and serve. i'm here to tell you you made a great choice. whether you realize it or not, you've got more road maps, more role models, more resources than the civil rights generation did. you've got more tools, technology and talent than mymy generation did. no generation has been better positioned to be warriors for justice and remake the world. now, i'm not going to tell you what to do with all that power that's in your hands. many of you are already using it so well to create change. but let me offer three pieces of advice as you continue on your journey. first, make sure you ground yourself in actual communities. with real people. working whatever you can at the grass roots level. the fight for equality and justice begins with awareness, empathy, passion, even righteous anger. but don't just activate yourself online. change requires strategy, action, organizing, marching, and voting. in the re

you should read everything toni morrison has written. everyone should. some writers writing today, what inspired me today, i love the dominicana, i also read a lot of poets. natalie from when my brother was an aspect, i could go on forever but i want. you had another question? did you or did someone else? >> now i have to call you out. i'm a president of northern wisconsin. [laughter] it's not that cold in madison. >> it was cold for me. [laughter] >> just kidding. tommy about dance. the dancers you and your girls did, wasn't anger, tell us about that. >> dancing and music for a lot of risk, i studied music when i was a kid, but dancing was more about, i think, performance and performing, for me specifically, performing a kind of strength, it was very often in miami, i started going through puberty, i felt the unwanted attention from men and i developed early and i felt like i was getting all this attention that i wasn't interested in so i started dressing and price quotes, and work baggy jeans and polo shirt and basketball jerseys and i dressed head to

author tony morrison gave an answer we think applies now.ment she found politically and morally disappointing, that is precisely when artists go to work. she wrote there's no time for despair, no need for silence, no room for fear. we speak, we write, we do language, she wrote. that is how civilizations heal. it's something we like to keep in mind. this is a show that tries to keep an eye on culture and music. it brings me to something i wanted to share with you. i spoke recently with melissa etheridge, the great rocker, about what she's been up to. let's take a look. ♪ ♪ ♪ don't have to live like a refugee. >> we turn to melissa etheridge. tough times, what a pleasure to see you. >> pleasure to see you. these are tough times, we're all doing what we can. >> doing what we can, being informed, taking precautions is one piece of it. but people's mental, spiritual health, especially as this is long term is another piece of it. as you and i know, you joined us here on "the beat" before, we both love music in different ways, you with talent, me w

you should read everything toni morrison has written, everyone should. some writers writing today who inspire me today. i love catalina's latest novel can tour a, i read a lot of poets. and natalie diaz's my brother was an aztec. i could go on forever but i won't. you had another question? did you? did someone else question? >> i have to call you up. i'm a resident of northern wisconsin, lifelong resident of northern wisconsin. it is not that cold in madison. >> it was cold for me. >> tell me about dance, the dances you did? was a catharsis? anger? tell us about that. >> i studied music when i was a kid but it was more about performance, and performing for me specifically, performing a kind of strength, it was very often in miami when i started going through puberty, i felt the unwanted attention from men and i developed very early, felt like i was getting all this attention that i wasn't interested in so i wore very baggy jeans and basketball jerseys and tourist head to toe like a boy and didn't want to be looked at. dancing was like that, pretending to

toni morrison if he surrendered to the air he could write it. t.s. eliot only those who risk going too far can possibly find out how far they can go. we find ourselves today in the strange universe, one of paradox that we could never have imagined one of closeness and openness for masks. fear of criticism and judgment and doing things differently seems utterly beside the point when everything has changed. the graduate this year, the class of 2020 are entering a world turned upside down. that should send them a message. the old ways, hallelujah can be cast aside. self invention is the order of the day so be brave, take the leap, do it, derek and live 2020 courage in god speed. thank you. >> thank you so much anna. courage and kindness. it is something we will hear a lot of tonight which is so inspiring. next up is going to be donovan livingston award award-winning educator and public speaker. his 2016 harvard graduate went viral reaching over 13 million views. since his pivotal speech his speeches have been on "cnn," npr, good morning america and news

>> i'm reading "beloved" by toni morrison. >> stephen: "beloved" by toni morrison. is it funny?not very. >> stephen: i haven't read it. i don't know. it could be a knee-slapper. how many pages are on? >> um, page four. >> stephen: page four! maybe it's all set up, maybe there's a punchline coming up on the next page. i hope you had a lovely weekend. actually, i hope you had a weekend because that means you can still differentiate the days of the week. i know that one of these past couple of days had to be a saturday because i, along with the jimmies, co-hosted "one world together at home" which raised $120 million for the w.h.o. and frontline healthcare workers. thank you, lady gaga, and thank you to all the corporations that donated money like coca-cola and pepsi and spanx. by the way, if you wear spanx as a face mask it will really firm up your butt chin. oh, check your calendars! today is 4-20! whoo! finally an excuse the stay at home, stay on the couch, eat snacks binge watch netflix and really get paranoid about your cough. of course, if you don't smoke marijuana you still

so there i was toni with wofford and then my he can husband's name, morrison. >> host: you married and became a mother. were you writing at this point in your life. >> i think i was but i wasn't -- certainly didn't call myself a writer. was a teacher and i was interested in the work of some local people here in washington, some were faculty members, some were artists, and they had a group of writers at that day formed. i was invited to attend, and i brought with me some short of frail little thing is work on as a very young person, and one of them was a little story that i had to write fresh because they wouldn't let me come over and over again if i didn't bring anything new. so i wrote a story, and brought it to that meeting, and used it much later as the heart of the first novel i wrote. >> host: it was called? >> guest: the bluest eye. >> host: i'd like to show it to the audience, and as i do would you explain how this poock actually made it to -- this book made it to print. from that beginning. >> guest: well, i wrote the story for the club. i remember my baby, my oldest son, was h

i never read a short story i didn't know what they were i found oh so helpful i read a lot of toni morrison because she's genius and then attend of short stories. i could go on but there are so many great writers you take the ones that speak to you and then amazing that i enjoy reading but those that don't give me ideas and then some that do and that's the beauty of having control over how you learn . >> what we reading then? >> read a lot of religious books read the book of mormon in the bible and 19th centuries peaches by the founding mormon prophets that's what i was at home and pretty quickly so we went to school for the first time with that stilted archaic style. >> because that is what i was reading a lot of my professors were bewildered i found 19th century it took a while to get that voice out. >> but it's so different than the talking voice and you have to work on speaking that way isn't it interesting? where they feel certain self-consciousness and then you become more formal i did this with a lot of writing not just my own but use words that you would never use because they feel

i read a lot of the year of magical thinking and a lot of toni morrison because she was a genius and a ton of short stories. you take those that speak to you and there are some amazing writers that i enjoyed but they don't give me ideas of how to write and then some that do and i think that is the beauty of having control over how you learn. >> host: back to your childhood, what were you reading? >> guest: i read a lot of religious books. we have others in the house but didn't really read them. i read a lot of 19th century speeches by the kind of founding mormon prophets, so that is a language. >> host: pretty interesting when you went to school for the first time at 17, you wrote in this kind of stilted archaic style. >> guest: in a very stilted style because that is what i have been reading. i think a lot of my professors were just very bewildered by why i sounded like a 19th century -- it took a while to kind of get that voice out great >> host: isn't it amazing it is so much different than a talking voice in that you really have to look at how you didn't speak in that way i am as

over the next two hours you will hear from milton friedman, studs terkel, christopher agents, toni morrison and shelby foote but first, john hope franklin, author of the best-selling slavery to freedom, appeared on "in depth" in 2006. >>

it's been echoing in my head over and over again, a character in toni morrison's novel "be loved." how much are we supposed to take? when you see the police response to white protesters clam aring to open up the economy coming into the state capitol in michigan, spitting and getting in the face of police, having a gun on their side, refusing to have their arms locked into handcuffs. they're so patient and restrained. here we are responding to the fact that this man treated george floyd like an animal. what do we get? rubber bullets, teargas and the like. more than two americans, nicolle. this is the ugly underside of who we are. >> eddie glaude, you leave me every time with no words, especially today. let's just vow to keep having this conversation every day. >> indeed. >>> up next, donald trump is tweeting away about twitter, tweeting about twitter and its decision for the first time to fact check some of its tweets. he's threatening to shut it down saying it's stifling free speech, on twitter. democrats saying the president laying the groundwork to invalidate the november electio

. >> host: how did chloe, your birth name, become toni morrison? >> guest: a little bit of lunacy i think, in some vanity. my name was c-h-l-o-e. i love the name. children couldn't pronounce it into some adults would refuse to and they would call me ch-lo were other things that were not chloe. because my sister and i were so close in age, they were always together and they called us lois and chloe, so i didn't really have separate name to make a long story short. but when i got away, i used my name, which was a short name of my favorite name. [inaudible] >> host: you married and became a mother. were you writing at this point in your life? >> guest: i think i was, but i wasn't, i certainly didn't call myself a writer. i was a teacher, and i was interested in the work of some local people here in washington. some were faculty members, some were artists. they had a group of writers, and i was invited to attend. and i brought with me some little things that i had worked on as a very young person, and one of them was a story that i had to refresh becau

the late author toni morrison was the guest in 2001. one of the few novelists to appear on the program. up next she discusses her work, reads from her pulitzer prize winning book, "beloved" and describes what it was like to win the nobel prize in literature. >> for me it just seems enormously a long, long time from my grandfather being born, he was five years old when emancipation proclamation was declared. he was born in 1860. and he was crying, he was frightened, because he kept hearing the adults say, it's coming, it's coming. he thought it was a monster. so he crawled under the bed and they had to pull him out and explain to him. and i'm very keenly aware of the really life threatening circumstances under which they lived the difficulty my parents had as a young couple, and a kind of miraculous thing i suppose in my generation. i just knew i really wanted to go to college mitchell mother was not interested in my getting married. she didn't think that was necessarily the ultimate goal of a woman's life '. rather she thought it couldn

and some ways this is a departure, a spirit with which i teach and certainly i teach the work of toni morrisond i taught the work of richard wright but i tend to teach much more fact driven and material driven as opposed to the emotional register. i do think of teaching as a calling and it's important to bring to that a sense of value and humanity and justice of love to the students even though were supposed to be dispassionate. >> how does one get a phd jd from harvard at the same time. >> unwisely. i -- when i graduated from college i was 21 years old and i was just completely in love with the life of the mind of ideas and i did not want to choose and i wanted to do everything and i said graduate school, law school and then i did two years of graduate school, it was a frenzied pace but it was beautiful, it was amazing, i loved it. i learned so much and every day i was being nurtured the all of the generations of people that came before me and help me understand the world. >> we went to play a little bit of music and a little bit of bdo, this is from 1999. ♪ ♪ >> that is betsy norman singing