and all they care about is pursuing these fictions of their own victimhood. in their alleged fragility. it's nauseating. i cannot standta it. we all have to stop being browbeaten into silence whether it's the fiction of fragility and safety, the fiction of racial oppression. we have to start fighting back and fight for civilization. arcs on that note i want to thank you heather. [applause] >> did you know you can watch book tv online anyti bookkeeping.org. use a search box to find your favorite non- fiction authors. ', but when i come to the podium, i really enjoy a great round of applause. let's try it again. you know, we're not although you all are here in the room. there are a number of people who are watching c-span.

we want them to get the full experience of being here in miami, even in the rain. we are very cheery about the book fair. i want to thank you for that kind introduction. you read it exactly the way wrote it. very well done. but i'm thrilled today to be to introduce today's authors. i'm going to come to the gentleman to my left in a moment. but before i get there, i'm going to start with robert samuels and going to ask to come to the death. he is a national political enterprise reporter he is a national political enterprise reporter for the "washington post" focusing on the intersection of politics, policyd and people. he joined the post in 2011 after spending nearly five years working at the miami herald.

the struggle for racial injustice, racial justice, excuse me. along with the co-author i got that right and if i didn't he will correct me just so we are clear which examines the events of may 205th, 2020 when george floyd was murdered outside of minneapolis convenience store by a white police officer also examines i the families roots in the sharecropping, the segregation of the schools, the over policing of the community and disregard toward his struggle with addiction. please help me welcome robert

samuels. [applause]he [cheering] i don't to know if you notice guess whatat my script says tha. he is the white house bureau chief for the "washington post" which he joined in 2019 and he worked at bloomberg policy from washington and florida and as i just mentioned he was the co-author of george floyd, one man's life and struggle for racial justice. please join me in welcoming. [applause] [cheering]

next is carrie, she's a historian at t tufts university and the author of black radicals the life and time of william monroe winner of the 2020 history prize among other honors and the author of the graham keys the legacy of slavery and an americanth family. the latter covers the lesser-known story of the black relatives of sarah and angelina the graham key sisters who were and are revered figures in american history for rejecting the privileged lives on a plantation in south carolina to become firebrand antislavery activists in the north. the o book offers a collective focus from the abolitionist

sisters and deepens our understanding of long struggle please join me in welcoming carrie. [applause] the author of the books on national and international including the best-selling range of a privileged class. he served as a columnist and contributing editor of "newsweek," editor page chief for the new york daily news and contributor and columnist for numerous major publications including usa today and times. in his book raising and reckoning from the founding fathers to today's disruptors he

addresses slavery and modern m discrimination explorings how pivotal decisions have established and perpetrated discriminatory practices in addition to the rise of disinformation in its plunge to democracy intoer an ever deepeng crisis. you're going to enjoy this panel. i now turn it over to them. give them all a round of applause. [applause]

the experience with racial injustice. i will read from the introduction of the book that is titled flowers to give a little bit of the flavor of what we wanted to do with the book. he would express the same sentiment to men, women and children, old friends and strangers to homeless junkies to big-time celebrities and neighborhood nobodies when he

was known [inaudible] during the final phone call in the spring of 2020. i love you too, he replied. we always said we were going to give eachh other our flowers before we die the end of that right there lets you know what type of person he was.

the emotional declarations were nothing new as a teenager he would give his sister a hug and tell her he loved her before leaving his house with his friends quietly enough to keep the old other kids from overhearing. he'd grown up singing songs and when he spoke for the last time in the may of 2020 they reminisced by belting out her favorite tune keep on loving you and i'm going to keep on loving you because it's the only thing i want to do. as a young man the family had outside aspirations to become a supreme court justice, a pro athlete or a rap star. by the time his world came crashing down in the months before he had been chasing a modest ambition, health insurance, still in his dying

secondsic he suffocated under a white police officers me and he managed toma speak his love. i love you, he screamed from the pavement where his cries were met with and in difference as deadly as hate. i love you, he yelled a reference to his friend who was with him when he was handcuffed that memorial day weekend. tell my kids i love them. these words mark the end of a life in which he repeatedly found his dreams diminished, deferred and derailed in no small part because of the color of his skin. i am robert. it's good to be here in sunny miami. [laughter] you can tell i was dressed for

it. i'm going to talk a little bit about may 205th, 2020 because that day we thought we had a sen what would be the defining instance of racial discussions and i'm not talking about george floyd. when we woke up that day we heardd the story about two peope arguing in central park one woman named amy cooper and one christian cooper, you will remember this. this was going to be the conversation that we had. so, what happened? that day i was talking with a friend as things got a little intense. he was trying to say legally the woman who called the cops and

claimed he might attack her didn't do the right thing. i got very upset and i said here's the thing. if police killed me tomorrow, mt concern is that people would ask what did i do to deserve it rather than wondering about my soul, my heart, my hope, the dreams, people i loved. and i stayed home that day. george floyd walked into a store named cub foods. the world got to know george floyd on the last days of his life. his words to the officer who was murdering him designated in the hearts of so many people. i can't breathe. but as we went through the

videos depicting that day there are so many things that he said that stood out and i wanted to learn more about. he told the officers to go easy on him because he was mourning the death of his mother, the woman he was crying out for. he told the officers that he was afraid to go to the police car, inside a police car because he'd just gotten over coronavirus and he was claustrophobic. that also turned out to be true. and as george floyd was speaking his truth, he looked up and asked a question to the officer that still makes me shake a bit. he said why don't you believe me, why don't you believe me? within that a single question it

meencapsulated the hearts of our project, his name is george floyd, because it was the question of a man begging to be seen as a full human being, as the story, as a society and institution that did not see him that way and as so many people began to march in his name across the world, we knew that the life, thehe spirit and the soul was being lost again because he had lost a sense of his motivation and his spirit. so we did what reporters do. we set out. i went to george floyd square, the place he was murdered. we had dinner with his family several times, accompanied them on some really hard days, i got

a haircut from george floyd's barber who talked about him. he went to church with his brother and did card readings with his girlfriend who was trying to make sense of it all. he walked the streets, we partied at the clubs where he partied. we cried with people who watched him die. and in learning about this man we learned he was a man that was filled with hopes and dreams. we learned as a boy he wanted to become a supreme court justice because he believed he could add adjudicate the law. we learned about his desire to be a football player, his desire to be a truck driver and desire to get health insurance. when he got to minneapolis, he

was struggling with drug dependency, trying to find a job to be able to take care of his kids and he walked into a rehab facility called our turning point. the turning point was a place designed to specifically to cater to the needs of black americans because we know so little about how to heal black americans of their particular struggle. so i'm going to read a part of that and then hand it back over to tell you some more things. the first day george floyd walked into his class at the turning point, he realized it wouldn't be the typical talking circle. the room was instead set up like aco classroom and at the course that was called felt like just

another college. the class is led by a man named woodrow jefferson, he was a former math whiz whose life had been undertaken by substance abuse. he believed black men might respond differently to a setting in which they were treated as intellectuals because so many had beencr criminalized and stereotyped as uncontrollable, impulsive and stupid. he would pace around of the class giving examples about mr. cooley and mr. slick, t neighborhood hustlers while the other manipulative. he added to examples about how people operate in the world bringing up mohammed ali and uncle tom, the other is differential.

jefferson didn't try to cast dispersions. he told the class that all men were trying to figure out a way to survive in a world that provided them with limited options. all men in some ways were broken by racism searching for a way to find dignity. look at history, jefferson said. have you noticed how people are always trying to profit off us, but what about you, how can you find you again and love yourself again? it's about finding one day jefferson saw a hand go up in the back. it was george floyd. he finally felt comfortable expressing his personal astruggles in a way that he had

not been able. he talked about how disappointed he was and how so much of his identity and self-worth hinged on the expectation that one day he would be able to play ball and now his body was a mark of pride and constant reminder of his failures, the physique of a man who tried but didn't measure up some of the things people most admired and feared. you are lovable, jefferson told him. you are supportive and valuable. jefferson had them stack up together they repeated the mantra. i am lovable, i am an important, i am empowered.

one of the things we wanted to do in this book is tell the george floyd story as a uniquely american story that could fit in two other american stories and in order to do that we had to go back to the history of george floyd's family and the history of the founding of this country and we went into the archives and one of the things we wanted to answer is why did george floyd come into the world and why was hep born into deep poverty. we heard the stories how he grew up and living in the kind of impoverishede existence out of the a norm of the average amerin in the 21st century born in 1973

pumping house and a water that didn't have running water. we wanted to find out where that history came from so we researched his family going all the way back to his great-great-grandfather and his son was bornas in 1857. but he was able to get his freedom and one of the things we found out and i would love to go into all of this. i will try to condense a lot into a couple of minutes. his great-grandfather became quite wealthy from working hard as a farmer in the fields of eastern north carolina and he was able to unmask over years which made him one of the wealthiest black men in his community. he was so wealthy the white people that lived aroundd him d

specific racial slurs for him. they called him the rich n word and he was well known for how wealthy he was and he was targeted for how wealthy he was. the plessy versus ferguson georges floyd's great-grandfathr had his wealth targeted in a time of it was very common for people who found wealth and land to be stripped of that land with veryok little recourse and we gt into it in the book. they gave him these very complex business contracts and essentially allow themselves through some of the unique financial instruments they were able to use to strip him of this land and the tax authority when that washe done at the end of te

early 1920s his great great grandfather hadnt his landsc stripped away and he wanted to pass it down to his dependents because he knew he was never able to pass anything down to him, they'd never been able to own anything becauseat they were enslaved and he knew that is what he needed to do to build a legacy for himself and he had that taken away from him and we found out over the course of the next generation we see a family of sharecroppers that worked hard for decades upon decadesey but wasn't able to unmask any kind of generational wealth. they worked hard. for decades ad that is why he came into the world poor as he did. so people who think that slavery was such a long time ago and the civil rights era we see in the 21st century the reverberations of that kind of injustice in the life of george floyd who came

into the world as the son of someone who was a sharecropper not only the grandson of george floyd's mother in the field ofso north carolina so we wanted to showcase how that impacts someone's life when you're starting that far ahead and i will end with one of the words of george floyd's mother you are already bored with two strikes and have to work twice as hard because no one is going to look out for you. very sadly as we found in the the book those words ended up being very precious because in george floyd's life whether it is in the system, we found him running into these obstacles, these barriers but we wanted to also find the origin of the band to do that we ended

up going back deep in his theory finding it is the origin of many families in the country that worked hard but because of racism we were not able to get a fair shot so we do hope people read the book because there's so much in there that we can't get in this evening this isn't a work of history it's an american story. >> wow. awhat an american story. what a couple of weeks we've

been through and i'm not even talking about the stable genius who acquired twitter and then decided to bring the other stable genius back on to twitter. he wasn't born a u.s. citizen because we sure as hell don't want to deal with that. what i mean is we do indeed have that red wave we were waiting for but luckily it confined itself to florida and it seems a good part of america decided they were not quite ready to end

this american experiment with democracy which as we all know has been going on for some time. we used to think we knew when it started. i mean, before the 1619 project screws everything up, we pretty much agreed that the 70, 76 is when this democracy launched itself. within the project wasn't quite right. we've got to go back when the first africans were brought to jamestown and that is the essence of america.

why 1705? 1705 is when the virginia legislature declared that it was perfectly fine for a white man who owned black slaves to kill them. if he killed them and disciplined them for not doing their work correctly and if in fact that happened it should be treated as if that accident never occurs. in a sense that defines the early america much more then the declaration of independence which despite the words no one really paid attention to that because we all knew or they all

knew that it wasn't meant to be true which reaffirms by the infamous dred scott decision in 1957 which was preceded the predicate for that virginia legislature which all but declared that black people have no rights, that folks were bound to respect. that way of thinking finally ended on paper with the 14th amendment which was passed or ratified and passed without a fight and 68 which for the first time put forth this idea that all americans were equal and entitled to equal rights and

launched unparalleled history where we saw officials and lieutenant governors even a black governor for a second, black senators, black folks at all levels of political society and some at high levels of society itself and that lasted all for a minute or about 11 years when grand compromise of 1877 which made the republican rutherford hayes president in exchange for giving up the dream of reconstruction getting the troops out of the south and in effect forcing african-americans whto go back to all but name. then we have to go to the civil

rights movement of the 50s into the 60s when that began to change and that of course ended the landmark legislation of 64, 65 and 66 that changed but that was around the same time goldwater had the insight that the republican party changed. in 61 goldwater famously declared the republican party, which by that time folks were outside of the north were not allowed to vote that republicans ought to go looking as he put it hunting where the ducks are. basically foreshadowing the whole southern strategy that the the begin inrty at

a very dramatic way to turn its back on the very idea is part of the american society and that was the evolution of the republican party, which ultimately delivered to us donald trump. that is 250 or so years of history in five minutes. but that's what the race and reckoning is all about. it's about the decisions that we made as a country that delivered us to this point where we are now and i'm going to read a little bit of that if you will allow me.

in 1955 abraham lincoln, sorry, martin luther king delivered a famous speech on the capitol steps of montgomery alabama in which he asked, and i'm going to start reading this, how long, he asked, would it take until the dream of equality was realized and he answered the question from the stage how long, not long because no light can live forever. not long because you still reap what you sow. how long, not long because the arc of the moral universe is long but it things towards justice. that final phrase originated with theodore parker the minister from the 1800s whose

version was i do not pretend to understand the moral universe. i cannot calculate the curve and complete the figure by the experience of site. i can divided by conscience and from what i see, i am sure it bends towards justice. that sentiment is wonderful but i'm not sure how it spins. it's often rewarding those that seem least to deserve it. the democracy on the other hand is pretty clear. groups that were considered minorities are in fact gaining a larger and larger share. that's not going to stop in the foreseeable future and it will in fact mean change in the sense that we will ultimately have to

acknowledge the united states is not just a white nation and we will have to stop making such a big deal out of something that shouldn't matter. the so-called people of color it's not that we are smarter but smart enough to know that we are not the problem. we know from having lived the consequences that bigotry is not a good thing and instead of running from acknowledging it,ri we have no choice but to base it. americans of all color have come to recognize the discrimination makes no sense and from that that came before. even before many of the elders among us seem to be learning intuitively that the differences are trivial and nothing worth fighting about. there's a multiracial array of

people who want to be free of the preconceptions off the past who recognize acknowledging the importance past and present but perhaps of our deliverance and to accept the society that refuses to acknowledge the missteps is likely to keep going down the same dark path. one day we will be free enough distant enough from the evil spawned by enslavement that focus on what really divides us and why so many people support economic political order to 1% of the population that pays the ceos of fortune 500 companies more than 300 times what the workers receive but provide enough money that they enjoy riding into, space and others it's barely enough to pay the

bus fare to work. the survival of the fittest healthcare policies that leave many unable to pay for their kids education or their medical care. since the dawnf of time, powerl people have excelled of the blame and responsibility away from themselves and towards those that are least capable of defending themselves perhaps when we stop focusing on the so-called ethnic differences, we can focus on what we can do about that. thomas jefferson had a country to build and the lines that wouldn't be billed largely on the backs of enslaved people so he justified treating people while simultaneously the freedom but things have changed. today there is no human blindness tons justify. the reasons for the

rationalization no longer exist other than to cater to the insecurities of those that determined to blame their problems on people who had nothing to do with those problems. intelligent people are coming to see catering to the resentment is killing us which believes we can see beyond the horizon when this particular source will no longer exist. what is more worrisome it's become impossible the divide between those that accept the facts and those that do not. it's become unavoidable the outcome of the issues before us with the ability to put to preconception aside and adjust the reality. the founders didn't believe that in doing so which is why they build so many safeguards to the republicans separated the masses from the political power.

as political scientists put it the founders solve the democracy is the tyranny of the majority. they referred the government is delegated to a small number of citizens. the small number would be able to refine and enlarge the public views and their wisdom to a certain. over the century the united states moved closer where in theory every voice has a right to be heard and issues have become more complicated and difficult to follow but this information has become an epidemic and much of the public can't be involved adding to the truth and therefore puts this trust in political propaganda and conspiracy.

while dismissing even some evident facts. the challenge to understand the more serious natureot lies not n our differences but in our failure to see beyond them complete with a bill of rights when the epidemic was implied to the right to spread military grade weapons. the right to reject leaders that implies the will of the majority and to dismiss the evidence of global warming and science in general that applies the right to lie about whomever and whatever they like without regard to any harm that doing so might cause and the list goes on. the beauty of this new bill of

rights is that it requires no process and requires a willingness to jettison the responsibilities that democracy is more than the anointed few. [applause] it's hard to follow both of thesenk books so thank you so much. i will start by saying that this book comes out of the work of black really did historians who come before me. jennifer morgan, deborah, martha jones just to name a few.

i will start by talking about the genesis of the project. 53% voted for trump and i was working on my first book about radical newspaper editor. one of the things i kept coming wacross when i was researchingy first book was the name of but not inha relationship to the sisters. but in reference to archibald, african-american born in charleston 1849, his brother francis james in charleston, 1850 and archibald's daughter

angelina in 1880 and famous as a leading black woman playwright of the 1920s. when i was doing the research i kept coming across all this history surrounding them that i learned as a child from my grandparents. i remember asking my grandmother. i learned about the sisters and i asked my mother are they related to those we talk about and she said of course they were. why don't they write about them together and she said people don't like to talk about that story. look at the thomas jefferson before the wonderful work of the previous historians. as i was working my first book i started to think what is the story historians are not telling given that i'm doing all this

research and i keep seeing these amazing coverages and barely any semention in fees contemporaneos newspaper articles why didn't i see connections and why did i only see references to the wife and rarely references to the brothers black. so i began to reflect on the relationships that many that we are all talking about on thisbo panel are talking about. these ideas of what it says about itself ultimately leading to the damaging effects that can have over thehe long-term and i started to look at this as a

microcosmli of the story, exceptionalism in the community that all it takes is hard work and moneyy and achievement and e can escape the ravage. slavery wasn't that bad. if it was, there were a few outrageously violent people and as a woman told me in charleston my family owned slaves but they were kindly slaveowners. so i began to become concerned with my book addressing these issues placing the lives of the effect in a very real way at the center ofhe the story. i'm going to start with a brief story that i think becomes a microcosm of their life. in the 1906 playwright arrived in charleston south carolina for the first time in her life despite the fact that her uncle,

grandmother and most of the adults in her life had been born there. she was there for the occasion of the 40th anniversary of the institute. a source of pride for black charleston, the first heads of the school were three black brothers, thomasm and francis descended from those. they were in influential web that met the artisan class in the decades before the civil war. grandmother nancy was not free until the troops be claimed in 1865 that meant her own three sons and both of her uncles were

also enslaved. but nancy insisted to her sons and granddaughter the greatest of the south flows through your veins and by this she meant the family that claims to own them. they helped found the avery institute in 66, nancy's sister was the mother of the cardoza brothers and now 40 years later her father and uncle returned is the most famous inin the country to congratulate the institute of the newly minted black teachers. behind the celebratory parade that was organized in their honor and behind the sign that said and she heard people in the archive she heard people in the

streets whispering that it belonged to those who had embraced during the civil war and whose fortunes had fallen by the end of the reconstruction. one home to a grade to southern dynasty. by the time she returned to her own home with her uncle and father she told them she couldn't help but feel a sense of foreboding. there is a tale to tell in need but she said i will never decipher it although it sweeps over me heavily. how i wish she concluded it's a story that we would tell ourselves. but i hear that we never speak

its name. again when i first started working on this, the word shaped my approach to understanding the long and complicated and ultimately i would argue uncomfortably familiar story. like many african-americans at the turn-of-the-century particularly the so-called elite, the woman was the granddaughter of both the enslaved which is also the grandniece of two of the famous white women born to one of the wealthiest and influential families in the south carolina country. during the 1830s the story goes against, quote, the institute in which they had been raised. in fact the 1838 letters on the

quality and the 1836 pamphlet an appeal to the south both of those became text in the antislavery human rights movement. in 1838 after a year of touring the north speaking on the duties of white women and public reform, she became the first american born woman to speak before a state government when she addressed the massachusetts state legislature on the need for immediate emancipation of the right to political representation. after she married that the activists to get toward the white walls, the sisters moved to new jersey where they raised her children and ran a series of reformin organized and integratd schools and continued to host women's rights activists like susan b anthony and elizabeth cady stanton. of the sisters were loaded by their contemporaries for supposedly, quote, disavowing

your birthright and sacrificing their wealth to support, quote, theth cause of the slaves. these of course where the fact is that we know. but i had sos many questions. how was it for instance they profess, quote, feelings of deception when they discovered theircl black nephews whileer reading an article in the antislavery standards of the story goes back to the civil war they made their way to lincoln university, pulled themselves up by their bootstraps, they are allowed in the press and they see their name in the press and go to meet their nephews. this was the first contact they've ever had with their nephew. according to angelina as well, they were horrifying to horrified to discoverthey existt

believe that he washe a bad slaveholder. he was always such a nice boy, they said. we believed he would never do such a thing. this led them or so the story goes to meet the brothers, toar welcome them into their home in hyde park massachusetts and pay for theirr education. first lincoln and then the tuition to harvard law school which he graduated in the 1870s. but accordingor to all of the available historical records and all of which are available in the archives, he was a particularly brutal slaveholder so brutal in fact the authorities were called twice and urged him to stop beating his brother during the civil war. as a child apparently he delighted in banging their heads

against door jams causing one-man permanent brain damage that eventually meant they begged him to bring him north. this eventually meant that he made his way to new jersey where the sisters only response to the disability caused by their brother. he is of no use to us, so that is one question i had. thenhe the matter of the brothen themselves. then again to reveal in letters and diaries and public speeches they referred to as the negro masses. raised by their mother. and the greatest in the south both used the same derogatory

language when talking about this to describe what the brothers l saw as the creeping immorality and looming your respectability if the majority of the colored people. the presbyterian churchor for instance it warmed the institution founded by john f cook in washington, d.c. in the 1840s and he transformed it fromel a welcoming congregationf all classes and colors of people into a color politic to use the words of one of its famous parishioners, one of those that had elected as you just heard about. to transform the presbyterian into a vibrant center of civil rights and community activism he also policed his parishioners if they were to become permanent members they criticized what he

referred to as working folks and the tendency to hang their arms out of windows and give the citizens every reason to distrust us. similarly as consuls to the republic he often referred to the peasants as incapable of self-government and, quote, in need of economic interventione from the businesses. here he sounded more like a racist overseeing the confiscation of the land in the 1860s then a black man dedicated to racial equality. finally there is a question of how they treated the black women in their lives despite the support for the women's suffrage and the reputation foroc supporting the national national association of colored women. frank married a fourth-generation philadelphia abolitionist at a public intellectual in her own right but discouraged her from continuing her public writing after the couple's first and only child died in infancy.

although devoted to lobby and proud of her past accomplishments, the exposure of a pastor's wife could jeopardize gwhat he called the ultimate goal, racial respect ability, racial respectability at all costs. it's also the matter of the woman who traveled to charleston for the first time in 1906. whaten did it mean that she spet all of her life asking her uncle in her father's about her past. why, she asked her father, if the sisters had been such kind owners why didn't her grandmother ever learn, why, she asked her father and her uncle, did they never talk of charleston except when he arrived there at the age of 26? her father, unclet and aunt wee

-- he repeated in multiple letters specked ability, respectability at all costs. finally, when she fell in love with a man and an attraction that frank and her aunt should have been happy about, he threatened to cut her out of his life forever. he was too dark, his work entirely unsuitable. the legacy explores these complexities over the scholars that called slavery's afterlife. it asked questions that are important today as we leave the effects of the late stage capitalism and civil rights and obamath era. they are as important today asro they were in the brothers time. how does the racial and sexual violence of the southern slavery continue to affect families,

communities and the reason people communicate and understand our blackness.be what was the real cost of birthing the color delete from the sexual exploitation by slaveholding white men. and what does it mean in the economic success and achievement have never been enough to the racial of this? thank you. [applause] we are happy to take questions. there's a live microphone in the middle of the room if you queue up and it can be a dialogue with

the authors. >> i just finished reading the invention. i s found your book and answered so many questions. it made me cry when i read about the treatment but it's like watching the wizard of oz. thank you so much. >> thank you for reading. the invention is a novel team that was written a few years ago the fiction of the sisters

lives. >> thank you so much. my question is directed to the authors about george floyd. thank you for filling in many of the gaps and knowledge and understanding ofo who he was. i guess my overwhelming feelings in hearing his story was sadness in hearing his story was sadness i was wondering, he had everyng

right to be angry and sad. whatever in the media, whatever he spoke was filled with love. i wuss wondering were did that where did that come from. >> thank you for that question. thank you for engaging in the text like that. other things that we had to wrestle with was the nature of hope in the united states. we see so many people who are who arey moved to march after s death operating under the idea theet country could be a better place. it raised the question why that's like that and we are like that. for the floyd family and many black people that live-in the country theo alternative to hoe

is a way to bleed. it a defense mechanism that allows folks to see the sunny side of things. one of the things that was reallyo important to why we started this process, we were veryti conscious of not writing something that was exploitative of black people or looked at that should entertain the masses. we wrestled with that question a lot. we learned the answer was the story of george floyd. it in his work and the way he related to people he never fully gave up on the promise of the country. he tells folks that we don't simply write the story because

george floyd died. we tell the story because we get to live. when we get to live we have a opportunity to make things better that's the philosophy the floyd's were operating under. [ applause ] >> excellent reading for all of those. with so much disinformation that just seems to be spreading allac over the place. how do we get it under control. how do we find out what is true and what is fiction. >> that could easily become a 2 hour long discussion. there are some things worth

acknowledging. the impact of social media has been huge. social media, i'll generalize hear, i communicates in large measure in short abeefated and very emotional ways people eyes late themselves and what they want to see. two, it puts some crazy nut sitting around writing stuff in ffhis pajamas. they all get together in the same way and there is this glop of stuffno that comes at people. it's a huge responsibility as individuals and responsibility manyre of us are not prepared to

assume. we must pay a lot of attention to the sources we are reading. it puts a huge burden on educators to teach in such a way that they teach students we have at, serious criticalal thinking problem in this country. the better we get at that the betterer we'll be. people don'th, want the truth ad the clarify right from wrong. they want to affirm what we we are in an age were that is inevidencable. god willing, my previous book before this i believe in free

speech i don't believe free speech corrects itself automatic. i don't believe it drives out bad speech. i'm fully aware which is first amendment, which people love to cite don't't understand what it says. that doesn't declare companies can't moderate their content. that doesn't declare there can't be rules to define how a community governs itself. i think we need much more of that. we as citizens need to be outspoken about that. that's only a small part of the answer. i thinkk, a big part of the ansr is ultimately, will fall on us asit individuals. we'll bee hit with nonsense and

up to us to make sense out of it as best we can. >> fund the humanities. [ applause ]in >> that's a blunt way of saying it.e theg horrible thing is, studens don't get, i teach college. instudents don't critical thinkg because we taught english and drama. we cut the education designed to makean you think. support humanities, books, and librairies. that's the only way. >> that's what i mean. that portion alone could be the subject of a long dialog. thank you for you presentation and work. i have been wrestling with this question. the last question incur -- encouraged me to

ask h it. your work is also competing with a media project that's doing somethingg different. i wouldn't name it. i wonder if you have any critiques on the work you have done on telling the story of his life of the other project either specifically orci generally when it comes to telling the story of the lives of people from tra'von martin to mike brown. all of whom in death justified why they were killed. why is that a pattern. how does your work contrast with the alternate narrative of george floyd. >> thank you, thank you so much for they question. i might be vague in answering

i'll try to do my best. for us, we are journalist. at the washington post we seek for the truth. so, we welcome other efforts that are interested in seeking the truth. when it comes to misinformation that work iss counter to what we are trying to do. it's easy to have everything look like it's on a level playingg field. one thing we had to do to make it work is do a lot of research and talk to a lot of people. there were more than 400 dinterviews of what we had to o to put together the narrative. we b wanted to be able to standn this research and say everything that we wrote can be backed up. it's factual, backed up by interviews,an research, and archivalth information. it's hard to put together that kind of work.

people put stuff out there for clicks. we wanted to write something that k could stand the test of time. we wrote' this in a short amount of time but doesn't mean we didn't try to check every fact and have people read behind us and fact check for us and make a vetted effort. this wasn't something that people would come backkn and sa, got xyz wrong. no, we are human beings. we wanted to make sure we crossed everytt t and dotted evy i and made sure we did the work in thehe right way. we can stand, you know, behind the work we did and made sure it backed up by research and evidence and written with a loto of nuance. we wrote about the good, the bad, the ugly but we wrote it in the context. a lothi of times the context is stripped away because they have

a narrative. we didn't come with a specific narrative we were trying to push or specific policy goals. t,it's important to have that. the rolect restricts us but fres us from some of that. we focus on the truth and allow sothat as our guiding light. that's what we try to do with the book. otherswill combat this with s other issues and angels. as longt a truth is the guiding light. when you get misinformation and people tryingak to take advantae of confuse people or justify things.if you get into trouble and it's a social call for a book like this to have a space for itself. one thing we run into all of the is people coming with misinformation that theyou read online. about george floyd, black lives

matter movement, any number of things adjacent to the book. a lot of times it's incumbent upon us to reeducate people. this iss what we found in research and t makes it harder o get through the deduct and come with the book. i'll put a sharper point on this. i'd like to be very clear about it. incredible details to make a way we know that this is not something thatme was an thoverdosage. we go through that. we go through the discussion of his drug dependency. people are very bold and they trusted us with the information. we don't run away from it.

it's important to understand the context of which those sorts of things happen. often time, now, elon musk's internet. well did you interview the woman he apparently assaulted as if we arewo not journalist and not tae the job seriously. the answer is yes, we did. also, they did not. we talk about thinking about this in full nuanced ways that means all of it. we tell this story in a full way you get a better understanding he is. we'lles have to cutoff the question. they are here to continue the

conversation. authors signing on the second floor past the elevator. books are for sale at the desk outside. thank you so much for coming out. c-span is your unfiltered view by the government funded by television companies and more. >> at spark light it's our home too. we are facing our gatest challenge they are working around the clock to keep you connected. it's easier to do yours. >> spk light supports c-span along with other television providers. giving you a front row seat to democrat. >> anducation company funded by ox father's day university

alumni. these are the classics they recommend. charles dickens 18 60s great expectations is also there. it's not happiness. they also recommend fitggearld. george 1984 refenced by the right and left and dangerous of aauthoritarianist. as according to ox father's day the nember elis a classic example of the early 20th century. these are just a few of the recommendations list. to see them all head to their website. >> judge thomas do you swear to