other young jewish women who fought the nazis with photographs and names and little bios and snippets. anyish was rust and i wondered if i was getting it right but the chapter titles were like weapons and munitions, partisan battle and this was in tone and content just so different from any holocaust story i'd ever heard. and that's how i all began. that's how it all began. a very long answer. >> watch the rest of the discussion online at booktv.org. use the search box near the top of the payment to look for jeudy battalion or the title of her look, "the lit of days." >> i'm raul and i'm truly, truly honor ted be moderating this

session, titled rightfully to "race in america: he untold stories." and jon joining me are two incredible and audacious authors which leads me to the following. if you have not done so, i encourage you to please support the writers who have decided to embark on incredibly important scholarship and research and still neglected momentsed in america's history on race issues and a great way to support them is, yes, you being here today and also by purchasing their books. you can do that today through our book shop, the san antonio book festival's book seller, and this two books that we'll be discussing today, with the highly reviewed and recommended and awarded authors, were just published recently and they're offering fascinating revelations. on the one hand we have the

backgroundbreaking work title "the three mothers" from anna malaika tubs and she wrote but the civil rights leaders with martin luther king jr., and james baldwin and a bill and melinda gates cambridge scholar. after graduating phi beta kappa from stanford university and a master degree as well from the university of cambridge in multidisciplinary gender studies. and also we have with us, thomas healy with hit latest book "soul city: race, equality and the last dream of an american utopia" in which he narrate this forgotten story of the unsuccessful attempt to build a city dedicated to racial

equality in the heart of -- current lay professor at seton haul law school and has received fellowships from the guying the guggenheim university and to all our outend -- i have an agency sents. that what's little is what happened when we grew 'with a different language but i did not have an accent when i think and hopefully when i moderate because i'm so excited to be here. sew encourage you to, please, please, please, ask a question. there's q & a box on the screen and we'll select many of them during this conversation, and particularly during the last few minutes of the title, and number two, do not forget to get your books. so, anna tubbs, have you been --

[speaking spanish] >> no. un poco. >> i'll represent you in spanish, then, right, anna? >> such a pleasure to have you here. i try to do my best and capture the cover of the book and obviously i have them and read them and reread them and i'm a member of a black club with friends and i'm recommending those -- a book club with friends and i recommend the reading. we have so much to cover. we're going to take ten minutes with each and then have a conversation between bus and we'll be able to bring our audience in and be able to have a more or as much of a engaging conversation as we can have given the circumstances that we have to do this with. so, we are going to start with you, anna, if that's okay.

>> sure. >> fantastic. one of the things that was so interesting, the topic you selected, of course, incredible, but choosing -- did you know -- [loss of audio] -- as you began to do research on it, you focus on those three amazing women and of course their children. how did that come to be? >> i appreciate the question and i've tried to make the answer more succinct but it will be long and a little messy but i started me piece knowing i wanted to address the eraseure of black women's stories that were being forgotten and hidden. i was inspired by the book "hidden figures" that became an incredible film. so you probably have heard of the movie.

but i realized that this kind of erasure was intentional and that story makes it clear. it's not a moment where someone says, oops, we forgot to tell you that black women were behind the space launch and without their calculations we couldn't have done this. that's very intentional because its doesn't fate a patriarchal notion of who the heroes w so i wanted to find other hidden figures and brought their name toys forefront, name wiz should have known in history and i should have been taught when i was a young black girl in school. but left several options and i ne-yoked it down -- mayos it down by think offing the many layers of erasure i could decrees. the civil rights moments a moment in history we come back to over and over again, policy today, and come back it to for your years but unfortunately it's spoke but from the perspective of male leaders and

it's yeser to to name male leaders. wanted to address roles in society that are overlooked, the universally that are underappreciated, unwreck mightsed and motherhead came to mind meetly. i awas way that many mothers, especially mother offered color, do not receive the credit they deserve for the work they're doing day in and day out for the families and communities and their identity feels erased as soon as they become a more. there's no longer an appreciation of the woman and her passions and talents and dreams before hand. so, i said that will be really fascinating. the more i looked into it and realized no one else had done a project like this, i was shocked. a lot of people have said, congratulations, you did something to creative. to me this done feel all that creative eye. very surprised, i'm the first person to think what it the mothers? every area we celebrate martin luther king day to celebrate his

birthday in the middle of january and no one stopped to say who else was in the room on the day he was born? as if he pop out of nowhere. that's crazy to me, and so even on the lowest level of gold, one of them is that at the very least we realize these men did notice pop out oft nowhere and didn't just have ideas. they were raised and nurtured and we can at least acknowledge the people around them, and very specifically the women. and as soon as i started researching several different mothers of civil rights leaders i said this would be great if i focus on the mothers of sons because i can address the gender binary that says men influence boys which account true. i can blow that apart by saying here are three men we love and revere, rightfully so, and actually look at the relationship they have with mr. mothers and realize, against, the intentionality

behind the a rice shower -- erasure of their stores. it's no a mistake and i want to make sure we thought about that. so i finally decided on these three because they were all born within six years of each other and their famouses sons were born wind five years of each other. so i can speak about a century of american history through the eyes of three incredible black women. >> as you mentioned i can -- haven't read your book -- having read your book i can see you there the way you explain it and, that passion and focus and something that really impacted me was the fact that as you were writing this book, you become pregnant and become a mother, and. >> yes. >> and in your book, as malcom x set -- the mother is the first teacher of the child the message she gives to the child, the child give those world. what would be that message for

your child? >> it was incredible to -- my husband and i planned that we were going to decide when i was in my ph.d to try for our first child but it wasn't thinking about that when i came up with the project and when i was expect to go then realized the connection i had for the women now, even before i became a mother i felt connected to them and there was something else that happened for me when he realized my child, this most precious being i was greg inside of me was also going to enter a world that would be vary dangerous for. the as a black child, and even before hand that for me as a pregnant black woman in the united states, where it's four times more likely that i will die in pregnancy or child birth, whether or not eye ooh imeducated to are have access to resources the black maternal health crisis is very real if felt both the celebration of becoming a mother as well as the worries and felt connected to other separatists and and

thought how did they protect not only themselves but their children from a country that was going to wage so many attacks against them, and i found guidance for that. i found instruction. found i was not alone and my agency could i demand it be respected, i could seek support from other women of color, and all three of these cases the mothers never accepted these circumstances as if they were inevitable or unchangeable or going to say i need deal withes, but instead we're well aware of what happening in the country and the world and he are changing it, we're going to change the systems around us, one by one and we'll teach our children how to join us in that kind of changing work. some i felt i was part of a much larger legacy than myself and as much as that's a lot of pressure on me and my child, it also can feel very liberating and i

started to realize in my ph.d work that maternal theory when we talk from a white feminist perspective is very different than when we talk from a black motherhood perspective. quite often when we think that motherhood and white fem is in theory it's southerned with reproducing the patriarch can i and many criticize the role of motherhood saying women should try to avoid this or -- this is a way in which we're being subjected to these notions of patriarchy, but when you think but blackwomanhood it's a completely transformational thought when you you're a mother and you're claiming control over in the body and choices and i'm going to protect my children and claim they're humanity as well as my own. it's a liberating apparatus. it's an opportunity to transform the world and it made me feel so powerful so influential, so strong, and that's how i approached my motherhood. think even from my own awareness

of how important i am in the child's life and i have another one on the way in august i think it will make a big difference in terms of their understanding of the world and not allowing myself to be erased even in their own minds. >> thank you for opening up and sharing the thoughts with the audience. i can assure you that many are being a reflection in you and that's the beauty of this book that has been so well received and i continue to see it added to list upon list of books that must be read in 2021. thomas, thank you for joining us. i was talking to clay right a -- he always has such a great touch in selecting books of authors

that go hand in hand together. your book, which as well has been very well received, great and well-deserved "new york times" wanting to really promote it and talking about the book and truly the question is a read it very gripping narrative, but how -- what led you to decide and what led you to initially want to write this book? i was sharing with you earlier that i'd gone through civil rights in the latino community and never heard of soul city and i'm ashamed of myself for not knowing that story. if you could share how did that come to be. >> thank you so much. it's really an honor to be here. you're not the only one, let me tell you who didn't know but

soul city. didn't know about soul city until i was 22 years spoiled grew up a couple of hours down the highway in north carolina from where soul city was built. was born actually the same year that soul city was found it bet took me until i was 22 years old until i heard about it. i was a reporter at a up in in raleigh, north carolina, when floyd, who found soul city, died and that was the first time i ever heard about soul city, and i think it just -- just such a fascinating concept to me. i should make clear that what it was first described to me by one of my editors he describe it as an all-black city, that floyd mckissick was attempting to build and that was not know case, never intended to be all black. was intended to be predominantli' black but open to all races, a musty racial commune. the main goal was to provide

economic equality and opportunity and empowerment for african-americans. and that idea when i heard about it, it was just so compelling. it was so audacious. that's one word that everyone i spoke to about soul city who was involved in soul city used, just how audacious the vision was for soul city. he went and bought up 5,000 acres of farmland in, as you described it, klan country and wanted to build a thriving city of 50,000 people in a matter of a few decades and that vision i just was struck by, and i really wanted to learn more about it. unfortunately at that time in the early 1990s you couldn't just get on the computer and quickly google something and learn all about it. so i filed it in the back of my head, and then in 2014, when

michael brown was killed in ferguson, and protests erupted there, it made me think but soul city because there were real similarities between the situation that black people found themes in, in ferguson, and the situation that black people found themes in, in rural north carolina, and 1969, where floyd mckissick was tempting to build the city. both places black people were two-thirds of the population and yet in both places had no power, all of the levers of power, political and economic, were controlled by whites, and it seemed very obvious to me that although the protests in ferguson were triggered by the killing of michael brown, that they were what really lay behind that was years and decades of frustration and resentment about the fact that black people were

a majority of the population and yet had none of the power and that what floyd mckissick was attempting to address, was this lack of power, this lack of ownership, in the community, and it just -- that parallel between what mckissick was trying to achieve 50 years earlier, 45 years at that point -- and what the african-american residents in ferguson and baltimore and minneapolis and charlotte and all these other places were trying to achieve, and i just -- i felt like there was a lot that soul city could still teach us about the inequalities in our society and in particular about the economic inequalities between african-americans and whites, which really has not changed at all in the last 50 or so years. the civil rights movement

achieved a lot, lots of progress was made but on that one measure it has nothing -- nothing much has changed. the wealth gap between whites and blacks is largely what it was. this gap in the u.n. employment rate has barely shifted and that's the thing that has been -- left undone and i wanted to understand more clearly what forces stood in the way of mckissick reach this goal and what could we learn about economic inequality and about those forces that have continued to stand in the way. >> thank you for sharing that narrative on how you came to begin to create this amazing project and of course now that it's out there now i began to see on the internet experts on society, and there's some that -- experts on soul city and

they know it all, right? and trying to poke at holes or other opportunities. i'm sure being -- having to recreate the past, what were the biggest challenges? was this project at some point perhaps so daunting that it was, aim going to be able to publish what i want to publish? could you share your thoughts on that. >> sure. great question. thanks. i felt at times a bit like floyd mckissick. [overlapping speakers] >> are you hearing me? are you listening? i cannot hear you. it's just me? >> i can hear you. anna can you hear me? >> if you can hear each other, proceed. just cannot listen to you, but please continue. >> we can hear you. >> we have actually background angelled that are constantly looking at things to fix them,

it's -- but luckily it's just on my side, so please thomas continue and i'll mute myself until we figure it out. >> great question. there were moments where i felt like this is too much, this is too daunting and i worried that it would never come to fruition. i should say, though, also, birth answer this question that one thing i want to make surely i think this is a similarity between my project and anna's, anna mentioned about the intentional erasure of the three women that she writes about in her book. i felt the same way about soul city and that was others reason i wanted to write this book. most people haven't heard about it and yet at the time it was being developed it was reported on the in the "new york times" and the "washington post", "at the today show" and all over and yet when the project didn't

achieve the success people hoped it was basically just forgotten and i think almost sort of intentionally. there was this kind of effort to kind of erase it from our history, and hopefully as you pointed out, raul, that the book will help to remedy that. as far as the challenges, yeah, there were a lot of challenges. i know anna talk about in her book about become sometimes frustrated about a lack of archival material if had the exact opposite problem. was inundated with material. all of the archives for soul city are contained at the university of north carolina library in chapel hill, and there are 8,000 folders of documents. many of them are sort of business documents that are just really tedious to wade through, and so i did have some dark movements in trying to do that. luckily a lot of people who were involved with soul city are still alive, and that was a huge

help to me in writing the book. and so they helped me to sort of overcome the flood of information i faced. i guess the other challenge i faced was that here i am, a white man, living in 2021 issue started this book in 2014 -- trying to write about a black man in 1969 and what his dreams and are what his motivations were, and that was rick because i didn't -- that was difficult but a i didn't want to presume, and i worry at times, would i fully be able to understand what mckissick was trying to accomplish, and that worried me. i did have this personal connection to the story because i grew up in north carolina, and because i work at this newspaper that as it turned out played a

big role in essentially thwarting mckissick's attempt to build soul city, but i did find that to be a big challenge, how do i get inside floyd mckissick's mind and how die kind of get outside of my own perspective and my own experiences and really try to understand what it was that he was trying to accomplish. but although that was a challenge i thought it was important that i do that. think that one of the biggest problems we have is a lack of cross-racial understanding and i felt selfishly like i learned so much and by perspective and my murdering of not only -- my understanding of not only floyd mckissick but african-americans generally was enhance so much and i hoped that people who read the book, especially people who aren't african-american, and people who are white, will also

sort of -- have a new understanding of what mckissick's privilege and what he was trying to accomplish. >> i can't hear you, raul. might just be me. >> me either. you can hear us. can lip read at bit. >> i know. trying to see what -- >> now i'm sure you can hear me, right? >> yes. >> i found -- by the way, this is completely on the moderator. victoria who show me everything i just remember one characteristic of hers what to do so it's on me, the moderator, not on the festival. so, what i was saying is that perhaps this is great opportunity for a joint

collaboration for a -- mckissick model. i don't know. maybe. >> yes. i'd love to know more about her. >> sets interesting. it's funny, anticipating this, i went back through my files because i did three -there was an oral history interview that someone did with her, and with mckissick's father and i she biographical material about her and it was interesting having read anna's book and then going back and looking that i was struck by the similarities between her experience and the experience of the three mothers. she worked at north carolina mutual, an insurance company, based in durham, for 30 or so years. she had a really interesting career. graduate from college which is quite unusual in the early

20th century. her -- anyone much less a woman, much less an african-american woman in north carolina. but she played a huge role in shaping her sons a disother mothers and let's talk about that, anna. >> you know issue read your book looking for her and then i was like i guess we'll have to talk about it. [laughter] >> i love it. that's what i hope for the rest of me career everyone feels ready to doc about the mom -- to talk but me moms whenever we're in conversation. >> this is -- has been quite the journey for the two of you in obviously the -- the questions from the audience -- what is next? anna, you're finalizing your ph.d. is this something that is going to be a series or merits -- of course merits a lot more research and publication, but what is next for you?

>> thank you. love that question. it really makes me feel like i've arrived as a writer when people ask me what is next. when it's your first book no one knows year writer quite yet. you're saying it but no one believes you so once it's out it's compliment, and i have defended and passed my oral at cambridge, and i just have a few more additions to make when i have the time to do that which hopefully will be soon. i was saying that black history month and mother's history month were so beautifully overwhelming in the most positive fliers book so that's the only thing that kept me from becoming officially dr. anna, and hopefully i'll be done with the corrections and then i want more people to write about these three women. don't want to be the only person who writes about them and definitely didn't intend for the book to seem like it was the catch-all on these women.

their sons have dozens of looks written bow them and more next year and the year after. i'm saying they're just as important and so people should research them more. i want to learn more about them, and there's so much left to be uncovered and i hope this just the beginning of what we learn about these three incredible women. they're actually the book that came out recently written by a researcher in u.k., named jessica russell, entirely on louise little and i wish i'd had it when i was dying me research but i'm just excited that there's more and more of us, and it's a growing kind of team of people who are fighting this erasure and finding more hidden figure us. but i have a lot of projects in mind. write fiction and nonfiction so my next project is a novel about addressing disinformation and domestic violence, and so it's a little different but there's a thread of parenthood in

everything. so, readers will see how it connects to this later on. the my next project i pitch, and i'm also working on a picture book around the mothers of three contemporary black female leaders and a children's picture book that will also hopefully be pitched this year. so there's a lot in the works and then i'll finally say that with the three mothers, there's ban huge interest in turning it into something for screen, so we may see a documentary or we might see a movie or a tv show. we'll see. >> thank you. we'll be on standby to make sure that we continue to push it to get us explore more books. thomas, now that you have wrote soul city, 1969, america cities in turmoil, racial tensions high. sounds like serendipity and we're going through that same

component we're mentioning. what is next for soul city and your writings on that area, on that topic. >> thank you for the question. i don't know how anna feels but this is my favorite time, when you finished a project and you are really just sort of vaguely thinking but the next one but there's no pressure yet and anything is possible. once you pick a topic, then you have all the pressure in the world and then the deadlines and everything. so i like this sort of in between time before i actually have chosen, and i don't know specifically what i'm going to do next. will say that one of the things i like is i like combining -- i like writing narrative nonfiction and combining human drama with a story of ideas and i think that exists in soul city, and it exists in the book i wrote before that.

i -- there's one sort of story i'm interested in telling, which is resolves around -- revolves around the hidelander folk school the training ground for many civil right activists during the 1950s and 1960s, john lewis did sort of key training there it and was founds by a really incredible man named miles horton, and i think -- the story of the highlander focus school is told a little bit but i'm hoping there's more to say. it would really get at the kind of philosophical underpinnings of the civil rights mom and it was really kind of multiracial effort and i would really like to highlight that and just show this place and this time where people of all races were working kind of together to decrease

racial inequality. >> thank you for that answer, thomas. we got one question from lilly in the audience, and it's a question for anna, and she says you mentioned jessica russell's book as a source of inspiration and asking if there are other books or writers that you have been inspired by and you could share with us? >> oh, gosh, so many. so many. i will try again to be succinct. we'll see. but definitely most formative ones for me, you see in the reference section there's pages and pages of refer on black women's literature but sister citizen by melissa harris is a great players to start -- great place to start for anyone want know about black womanhood and

our citizenship has not been reflected and if you're not being give thing right as citizens and supposed to be given you're can say we're not being treated as human beings. so that's a great start. beautiful work that combines academic theory and then access able which i would try to do any book. dr. brittani cooper, of course, really rev -- reef luigsizeinging a disease ya by saying we can include sources outside of academics, think about artists and the north carolina which black women have found mean in the world and created life no so many are outen and form the academy through respecting these voices, and i always look up to her and have used several of her books. also incredibly inspired by activists and their work, and elysee ya garza and -- both

being cofounders with opennal as the "black lives matter" movement, they all three have written books and i think it's a powerful way to understand the strategy behind organizing. i think a lot of times people who are outside of organizing don't fully understand the amount of planning that goes into it, the amount of connections, generations before us, and the continuation of work and legacy that we all really feel we are part of. so those are some that i'll suggest and then there's plenty more that i included in the book at the end. >> thank you, an newscast. i will take that -- thank you, an name'll take that thread and thomas you go in the book and talk about other attempts, while not within the parameters of being -- from african-americans but others that were more supported. 0 what was the contrasting

differences between the projects and ultimately while your provide a decisive narrative as to why this one failed, i think you will get your opportunity for you to share with the audience how vast your research was. >> thank you for the question. there were other new communitieses that were being developed around the same time. it's very hard for us to imagine today but in 1968, congress passed a law allocating $500 million for the build offering new cities around the country to us it seems like such a bizarre concept but there was this sense that with many of the cities in crisis and with an explosion of the population expected over the next few decades there was a sense we needed to have additional cities, additional growth centers around the country, and so congress passed this

legislation to support the effort, and ultimately approved the building of 13 new cities around the country. unfortunately all of them but one did not succeed. the only one that did succeed was the woodlands in texas, and an ex-r about received more moyer than any of the other programs being funds under the law, and it was interesting is soul city was the only one of these new communities that was being developed in an entirely rural area. i was also the only one that was being developed by an african-american developer, and one of the big criticisms that mckissick received was that here they were using government money to support a community that was in many people's mind going to only be for one race, and yet the woodlands today is

88% white, and no one ever thought to critique the woodlands as a separatist venture in the way that people critiqued soul city as a separatist venture. so there were a ton of precursors for soul city, not only in the 19 ofs and now communities being built but throughout american history there had been numerous attempts by people, by african-americans in particular, to build independent, self-sufficient communities, both before and after the civil war, and so soul city was drawing on that tradition. i think that the big difference between soul city and a lot of these precursors was that it had the backing of the central government and it was a much more kind of thoroughly vetted, comprehensive attempt to build a real city. a lot of these preaccusers were

agricultural service centers and they're so many interesting communes and traditionses that soul city was attempting to build upon, and i thought that was a really important part of the story to tell. soul city didn't come out of nowhere anymore their martin luther king and james baldwin and malcom x came from nowhere. there are tradition that soul city emerged from. >> thank you for sharing that. in your book you describe the need for economic empowerment, and obviously we're still movingly to thank you issues and find a lot of municipalities who have -- it's difficult to have -- and chairman of -- the latino legal voice for civil rights in america and we just

want to two years ago redistricting on a per-district large and at-large, kern county in bakerfield, california, north of los angeles county because they were not a reflecting the ethnic and racial minorities the city. in san antonio now, eight out of ten city council members are ethnic or racial minorities and six out of the ten are women. so, we're obviously very proud for that but it is precisely learning and understanding our history we can actually create some progress. as we begin to edge towards this very interesting and thank you for your time -- i'd like to first begin this time with an opportunity to -- for some final comments, some final statements, intended to really wrap up this

discussion and this session. so, with that. why don't we start with you first, thomas, with some final words. >> sure. yeah. i'd be glad to do that. i'm going to take the opportunity to just read like a short little passage, because i want to make clear what the vision was behind soul city, and i talked about the tradition that soul city emerged out of. this utopian tradition and a tradition of creating prepredominantly black communities and i wanted to show how mckissick's vision build on the traditions and differed from them and so i'll just read a short paragraph about -- that i hope kind of encapsulates what we was trying to accomplish.

so after skying the utopia tradition here's what i write. in sort, all the mccase sis wants to build a new kind of community, he also wanted to provide something vastly more straightforward for the residents of soul city. a chance to at the american dream. there was a reason black people were absent from the socialist utopias of the 19th century and want just because they were being held in bondage. in north and after the civil war most blacks were indifferent to the massage of he shakers, for the simple reason they couldn't take for granted the very things those movements sought too escape. materialism, ownership of private property and middle class respectability. the same was true a center later when white dropouts flockedded to communes in california and new england. mckicks sis mocked what he called the frivolousness of white curl, actualing a

graduating class at a historically black college saying i thank god whites are -- blacks have more pressing concerns, and so did mckissick. he wanted to take the american dream, the dream of opportunity, upward mobility and self-determination, and make that dream able available to a group of people who holm it had been denied. wasn't trying to create a place that didn't exist. the place he had in mind existed around him, just didn't exist for black people. >> i got goose bumps. i remember reading that partner book and very powerful and thank you. i always love when authors read from the book. allows us to look into the soul, pun intended, of what they're trying to do. anna, if you would do us the pleasure of sharing some final

thoughts and observations. >> yes, absolutely. i think those who haven't read either book yet a, it's a perfect example how beautifully written soul city is. it's an awesome junior journey and i in final comment i religion be reading but this is from the conclusion. i feel like -- but it's to really hopefully drive home the point that while this book is about celebrating history and thinking about three incredible women in history it's where we are as nation today and what is left to do in terms of work, and making sure that we not only admire black women for their strength and the trauma they've been through but in instead to think how we change things that these things are no longer happening mitchell fear is not the same ones that others had day in and day out for their lives but for their children's lives as well. so this is from the conclusion and i'm read flowing electronic

version. these three women bring me incredible inspiration and hope. through honoring their existence and worth i affirmed my own. yet their lives speak to more than what we black women can gain from their stories no order to persist in our own jewish the speak to the role of the communes and society we find ourselves in. their stories are not only about how as black women we can protect ourselves and our families, but also about how others, including our loved ones and even policymakers, can and should protect us. while it is true that they live powerful and influential lives despite a lack of additional support, we could not accept the challenges they faced as if they were unavoidable. such challenges have hurt and even killed far too many of us. we should instead honor their journeys and use them as guidance for making life easier for all black women and mothers

moving forward. at the heart of this writing this constant tug of war we black women face and our attempts to find balance despite this. we are deemed less than, when we forced to be more than, we are remainedded over and over again that we are viewed and treated as objects, without needs for dignity or protection. so we are less intelligent, less beautiful, less able, and as a result we push ourselves to always be more. working harder than those around us to pursue our goals. this balancing act of being told the opposite of what we no about officerses and acting with a dichotomy in mind lee toads able to produce life even when it was denied us. our lives consist of fighting for ourselves and our communities in response to the attacks we face. pushing against the sources that deny our existence. black motherhood in and of itself is liberating and empowering.

it is the lack of support we need that can make the experience oppressive and draining. being a black mother should not be seen as a journey one embarks on or endures on her own. friends and partners when they're present should share and carrying the load black mothers hold on their shoulders, rather than standing in awe of black mothers and comment on the incredible strength others should stand with them and lighten their burden. partners should participate equally home and supporting black mothers with ini their own dreams. public officials so listen what what black mothers say they need. it's time for the honor many quietly pay to black mothers to become as loud as others require as consistent as the love, as strong as lewis' fight. -- louise's fight. >> thank you so much for that, anna. my biological last name is

just -- the -- the asubel is my wife. she was already a practicing attorney when we got married some 20 years plus ago but she had an incredible family history and there are no boys in her family so i didn't ask for her to take my last him in i took hers so i added her last name to mine and our children carry both of ours but there was a book she also enjoyed thoroughly and i thank you for bringing it to us and you both deserve all the glory i know that will come from these books, you're carving a path in an area that we need more writers, and truly i am -- i have moderated countless book presentations. they had always been within the context of my mexican american

hispanic browns backgrounds so this was a thrill and also a revelation that we must educate ourselves 0 other racial journey as we attempt to carve a more perfect union simple thank you both for your incredible books. you have an additional fan in me and i'm certain you have contributes to a desire for many to follow in your footsteps. once we have the ability to travel and host in-person events wild be my privilege to underwrite and support an event to bring you back to us but at this time an event in our beautiful public library here in san antonio and truly thank you to you and to our audience. know during the process of obtaining the book copies from nowhere book shop the san antonio book festival's ibook seller and i know for a affect'll be ordering many more for myself to gift to others. thank you so much and i can wait to host you again, but in person

here in san antonio. >> thank you, raul. thank you for questions. >> thank you so much. it was really a thrill to be here. ♪♪ ♪♪ >> after obtaining a pd in fix simms from the university of oxford andrew steele decide aging was the most important challenge or our times and h