that view eb dubois -- w.e.b. dubois deliver that. they were players in civil war memory and the most remarkable one was the 1913 gettysburg reading. they have a totally different view. prof. varon: tell us about that reading and then about the take. prof. gannon: you have the 1913 reading. president wilson was a southerner. everyone talks about he gives the speech and it seemed to be some key moment of reunion reconciliation. prof. varon: describing the heroes. prof. gannon: the blue union boys were all heroes. people said things like there were not any african-americans there and there was a tale of what the 1913 reunion was like. the newspaper covers it that way. they're all american heroes. they were all americans because that is the way americans are. they are heroes. they were trying to merge the confederates and u.s. military tradition together to prove that we are all americans, all heroes, and sort of embrace it. they were americans. that is the way we are. that was the thought process. they had this reunion. there is sort of

w.e.b. dubois is a big big hero of mine. >> tell me why. >> he's just one of the smartest people in the world. and-- to read what he wrote and to understand the th-- thoughts he went into, you just think "wow why can't i be like that?" and someday i will. >> do you think the media is doing a good job of covering racial-- >> no, not doing a good job of covering these kind of things and i'm not sure exactly what it is or why it is. and it seems like they're missing something. they're not telling the story the way the story should be told. they're not telling it all. they're leaving something out. i'm not really sure what it is but i know i'm missing something. >> do you feel like you had that something before and it's gone-- >> yes i think i had it had a media that told the story more clearly in the past than is true today. not told it better but-- well, maybe even told it better than is told it-- today. >> still ahead on talk to al jazeera, julian bond talks about where he'd like race relations to b

he wrote about it for w.e.b. dubois.e other period, of course, would be the harlem renaissance. >> hinojosa: mm-hmm. >> the harlem renaissance, which was a time of... well, it's the... historian david levering lewis puts it, "it was civil rights through art." black people had the idea-- which was a not very efficacious idea, but they had an idea-- that they could change the image of the race vis-à-vis white people who doubted our ancestor's intellectual integrity and intellectual capacities by creating great literature and art. so there was this big revolution of writing and it was called the harlem renaissance, but it led to renaissances throughout the caribbean and even in africa. you know, the négritude movement, which was started by a martinican, aimé césaire, and léopold senghor, who went on to become the first president of senegal, they were students at the sorbonne. they heard about the harlem renaissance and they created the négritude movement starting in 1934. and langston hughes, probably the most googled and s

washington was born a slave, so his experience is very pragmatic, where you have somebody else like w.e.b. duboisho does not have the same experiences, a free man, a northerner come a educated who goes to harvard. who you are and how close you are in time to this event, changes how you view it. so not all african-americans are going to look at slavery and the new south in the same way. it is very confiscated. a very complicated civil war narrative. a tremendous amount of discord. so let's move forward and look at reconciliation taking hold. to bind the nation's wounds is a quote from another lincoln inaugural address. and it sits very aptly with reconciliation. one of the reasons that the american civil war remains so popular in modern america is because, well, one, many can trace ancestors back to the civil war. it is very close to us, it is on our own soil. we have a great record of primary sources. civil war soldiers, union and confederate alike, wrote a lot about the war. they wrote letters home, kept diaries and journals during the war. very good accounts. >> and there is an industry that po

i would get the tribute to the great w.e.b. dubois. i am who i am because the import dubois love to me. he loved the truth. he loved justice. i love truth and i love justice and dubois was not a christian. he was a post-christian where he went to church in the church wants to them but they almost had to leave the church to promote the gospel. the churches were just too narrow in that day. they were too cowardly and too accommodating to the powers that be. then he says we know history is the history of the present. the past and present eyes intertwined in the third dimension to the future always is the object of our vision mediated their understanding of the past. our actions you know there's a great speech that martin. thank god he had the courage to give it. >> host: he closes the speech with a refrain about being dissatisfied. the arc of the speech itself is to get to do why what he calls divine dissatisfaction. >> guest: brother martin on the great dubois. >> host: than a refrain that is not be satisfied. his refrain is let us be dis

washington, w.e.b. dubois. and i'm going wow maybe there's a biography in this guy?, you know, advocating a very new strategy in the civil rights movement and challenging booker t. washington. i'd learned that there was a biography written him back in the, you know, 40 something years ago that was titled " the guardian" which is the name of his weekly newspaper. so i said, yeah, i think there's a place for a new biography. but then i got to 1915, and i got just surface, you know in some of these references to how he was at the forefront of this extended protest against the movie, like i said that i knew about. and i said, that was my aha moment. i said that's the drama that's the story to tell and through which to capture what i think are so many big ideas about civil liberties, civil rights, film, you know, media revolution. and that's where i started to channel all my efforts. c-span: here's an excerpt and it's a civil war battle. before we get to that, and is we'll come back to monroe trotter -- >> guest: sure. c-span: -- the stoneman family and the cameron family

his name is w.e.b. dubois. in 1957 he embarked on a writing writing, three novels. 89 years old. he was not committed he was that courageous. he was that willing to engage in that fallible question the unarmed truth but on the apologetic love love of truth, the love of justice. we are christians, we love our enemies. dubois was not a christian. he was profoundly spiritual. the four questions. how shall integrity face oppression? what dishonesty do in the face of deception? what does decency do in the face of insult and how shall virtue meet brute force? four pillars to bring us together. a quest for integrity honesty decency and virtue. i think one thing we fundamentally agree on anybody in america who is fundamentally committed to the quest for integrity, honesty, decency and virtue is profoundly countercultural. cutting against the grain because instead of integrity what is predominant in america? love of money. money, money money. crash -- cash rules. everything around me take cash. it doesn't have to mean -- rule may, does not to rule us. instead of honestly what do we get? m

radical contemporaries, like w.e.b. dubois, who had been kicked out of the naacp, he complained bitterly that the naacp was useless in the fight to free africa from colonialism because, he said, the association was just a bourgeois set up, afraid to do anything not respectable," and communist william paterson who had tried to submit a petition to the u.n. charging the united states with committing genocide against african-americans but was blocked by the naacp fumed that "the very same americans interceded in order that the reverend michael scott white speak, they were also the ones who refused to intercede when the petition dealing with genocide in the united states was submitted. similarly, historians decades later tell us that the naacp was so infused with liberal ideology that all that it could think of was to try to get more african-americans in the foreign policy bureaucracy. as if that was going to make any difference. timidity and collusion with the u.s. government led to a faustian bargain whereby the association rece

and we begin to understand -- radical contemporaries like w.e.b. dubois, who had been kicked out of the naacp and 1948, complaint bitterly that the naacp was useless in the fight to free africa from colonialism. because he said the association was able to a set up -- a bougeois setup that was afraid to do anything. a congressman tried to sign a petition charging the u.s. against, but was blocked by the naacp. fumed that the americans who interceded in order that the reverend michael scott might speak were also the ones who refused to intercede when the petition dealing with genocide in the united states was submitted. similarly, historians decades later, tell us that the naacp was so infused with liberal ideology, that all he could think of was try to get more african-americans in the foreign policy bureaucracy. as it that was going to make any difference. what we really see historians tell us, is timidity and collusion with the u.s. government that led to an embargo, whereby the association received a pittance of civil rights concessions at home in excha