 I think for two reasons. When I left Albany State, my job had been to consolidate, provide leadership for the consolidation of two campuses, one historically black and one historically white and it was an environment where no one wanted to do anything, wanted a part of that. They were all opposed. And I was exhausted, not emotionally and physically exhausted. I was exhausted with the notion that the unreconciled issue of race in America was so alive and well in the community. And I was struck by how people felt on both sides, talking with me about their passions, their anger, their angst and their emotions and their feelings about not wanting to be part of anything that suggested we could be educated together. And so when I retired, I had time to think about that. And I chose an approach as I tried to process all this information. I reflected on James Baldwin. James Baldwin went to Paris in 1948. He went there because many American artists, African Americans in the 20s and 30s, blues singers, writers, artists and others went to get away from the United States. And I had spent four years in East Asia and so I understood what Baldwin was talking about and I'll describe what he said. He went to Istanbul and 13 years later he finished another country in the fire next time. And his later years he had a place in southern France where people like Sidney Poitier, Harry Belafonte and Ray Charles would visit him while he was doing his writing. My time as a civilian was in Bangkok, Thailand for two years and I was a DOD civilian. And I had another two years in Taiwan in the military so I spent four years in Asia. I had time to think about this country when I was out of it. There was nothing like being away from this nation to reflect, analyze and synthesize. The second thing that happened is I was free to move around freely in Taiwan, places like Taipei, Tainan and Kaohsiung when I couldn't move around freely and sell my Montgomery in Birmingham. There were signs all over the place white and colored when I was growing up. To give you one example, many people don't understand Jim Crow but my mother used to go to sell my once a year for shopping. She was like most women in our community. They were excellent seamstresses. But you couldn't, they didn't allow African Americans to try on clothes. You could hold them up in front of you. But you couldn't try them on. And that's part of the racial caste system of purity and pollution. If you touch anything, if African Americans polluted it. Separate water fountains. So when I got to Taiwan I could walk around, go into bookstores, go into restaurants, go into hotels and to move around freely. So Baldwin talked about that. So when I got a chance to get away from and retire from the position at Albany State, I had a sensation like I had those four years in Asia. I had time to think and to reflect. And so I felt a need to explain myself, to sort of write about this stuff. And I first took a stab at writing about this to consolidation. And the editor at the work of the University of Georgia Press said, Dr. Dunning, you sound a little circumspect. You're not an administrator anymore. Just say what's on your mind. And so I just cut loose. So I said exactly what was on my mind. I wasn't trying to be cautious, but I had spent a lifetime in a profession where I had used facts, data, reason and logic, not emotion, anger, and resentment. So I was sort of talking about things in that way. So I wrote this book to give the reader a journey through the Jim Crow system and how, in one of the poorest sections in a poor state, how I navigated through that. And the second thing is how to give the readers in this country a look at ourselves where we are now on the cusp of something that's, in my, these are my words, it's fairly dangerous. I think the problems we will solve, and I tried to talk about this in the book, they will lend themselves to generosity, restraint, and compassion, not to rage, anger, and resentment. If we're going to solve these problems, it's going to be generosity, compassion, and restraint. And usually when things become uneasy for nations around the world and here, it's when there's sweeping economic uncertainty and sweeping social changes. For us, we have this huge demographic C-shift going on in our nation. We are a multiracial, multi-ethnic, and multi-religious nation. There's no way to get around that. We may wish to be something else, but this is what we are. And so how do we begin to now take what Jefferson Adams said when they did not include slaves in the process and say that system of a democracy that has rule of law and orderly transfer of power can work for this present 2022 environment. So I wrote the book, Steve, to sort of reflect on all of that and to use my own life's journey and the Albany State Darden as a case study of how we act out our feelings and beliefs and emotions and thoughts about each other. And I just put that on paper. So that was this, and it was almost a deep need to explain myself because I'll say this and Steve, and I'll respond to another question. What was amusing to give you a sense of what was happening as soon as this was announced by the system office, a guy I knew very well who was on the County Commission, a white guy in Albany, called me and said, Dr. Dunning, I have some people who are tied up in knots about this announcement that Chancellor's just made. Could you meet with us and spend some time in my law office to talk with eight or ten people and explain to this group what's going on. And when I walked in the room, I said, well, let me, so I walked in the room, that the person who changed the state in 1837, the University of District, the one who got started in 1851 as a minor school develop girls, and in 1854, I believe it was Macon University, that we were forced to set all the rules starting with a simple all-pride. And so I wanted to do the land grant acts that created places like Albany, Clemson, and the city state, but they excluded them, and they came later and created the Tuskegee and A&M 4000 state land grants. So we're talking about that. So what you need to know, white students and all that, I never want to go to a place like Albany. And I said, we don't know about that. What's the challenge? So he talked about just the state land, peace, art versus spirit. But that was sort of a challenge that was set by the group that has four large state colleges over the years. So I'll get back on all the state's campus. There are lots of all the state. Done? Let those white folks take our school. You know I've been living all my life, those groups, top to bottom. And after running, you need to carry the case. So I'm on both sides of the talk. I'll say one more thing to give you a sort of feel for that. One side of the line, I've walked out of the Bargashot. And Albany, the president of Albany State, there's no way you can build a good knowledge here. So I walked out of the Bargashot. It's a good solidification. On the side, you've got those business folks downtown. White business people want to get a place closed. They try to close it down. So you need to be careful. On the other side, you've got us Albany State. They don't want to change it. They want to stay like they are. So that was sort of the political social context. And what I would try to do is try to improve. If we have non-reports out, that became useless about 350 years. We had about 250 years of American slavery. 100 years of camp. So that's 350 years. This year will be 58 years after the civil rights. You cannot discuss anything in this station. That's a race. And so now here we are in a place where we are struggling with the thousands of persons out. What's the truth? I'll give you one good example. I say this for a good reason. Thomas Jefferson wrote some of the most ever read of the Declaration of Independence and some of his later writings. But you can't discuss, Jefferson, not discuss the Salient. You can't. But you've got this issue where we aren't trying as a nation to come to grips with the suburban. The South Africans have tried through the reconciliation. To say, it's mixed. South Africa, let's be so. Get this out of my system. Which means tell the truth and write it down. What we say after America's slavery, so you're going to be gone. And then you show that and create a shaft out of the system. The system is fine. It's such an issue. That's how I was trying to use it. 1964, many southern states said, you've got a sign, Thomas, you've signed the Civil Rights Act, and I'm here to enforce it. So what we have now, the truth of this is the last thing to be done. We have, in my life, had passed demagogues, so skilled, taking these things in the talk, causing us to really come apart out of the same. George Wallace was on the black-bed truck. When I was on my way, he saved my name from a little tiny town. The black-bed truck, I think Patterson beat him first. Wallace said, I want you folks to leave the whole working class. And he said, I'm an engineer out of my development. There's nothing to change here. But he said, first of all, and I'm surprised, he said, line the scowl away, but don't judge me, Frank Johnson. He's a good-for-nothing. He's a second Yankees in the liberal college professors. That's the thing. So what you have had in Huey Long in New Zealand, Ross Barnett in Mississippi, and Pat George Wallace here, Eugene Talmadge, George at the strong thermodynamics out there, you've had some people who, and so they called, was thinking about this community. Well, all of that came out through conversation. People would say, almost anything was wrong. They would tell me, George, they want a batch, and South George would call it a batch. So when I got a chance to retire, it was a big study of what we had seen in the process. This was a big piece. I left with no easy solutions about it. Dean, I'll stop. I would like you to talk briefly about something that's not input, and that is to relate a little bit about your experience as a student here at the university, the interactions you have with your white students and white students as well, and then how that led to trying out for the football team and working for President Matthews to make their own vision. And I walked over to the student center to the bookstore. The bookstore that time was Reese Pfeiffer. Ferguson was a football field. And so I went in to buy books for the class, and I was walking back from the bookstore over in Reese Pfeiffer and walking down the sidewalk in front of Bitgood and Morgan. And some student yelled out of Morgan, yelled at the racial slur and said, go home. And it was sort of a perverse amusement for me, because I'd been away in East Asia for a couple of years, and that racial slur let me truly know I was back at home. That was almost a welcome home, because in that period of time, that was so common, the use of that racial slur. But I was a veteran, I was 22 years old, and served my nation for four years and two years in a foreign country. The first class I went to in Tin Hoor, the ground floor, I must have been 30 students in that class. This was in the summer of 66. And I walked into the classroom, and about 10 students immediately got up and walked out, just left. I don't think they ever came back. And I was a junior before anybody sat by me in a class on campus. That was around the first time I remember that happening. I've been here two years, I think 1968, where the seat beside me was filled more often. The seat in the front, the seat behind. And so I just have a circle around me with empty seats. That happened for the first two and a half, three years. And I walked on in football, and I have to always tell my friends in 1967, a big line row was 240 pounds. And I ran back about 180 or 190 to explain why I was out there. Now, that would not be healthy. The reason we went out, one of the guys in my, across the hall, an African-American guy, said, did you hear what one of the coaches said? And I said, what was that? He said, I was told that a coach said, an assistant coach, that he did not ever foresee a day when the University of Alabama could recruit any Negroes and that they would not have the capacity intellectually or physically to play football at the University of Alabama. And so he said, why don't we go out then and just say, hey, coach, sign us up. And I'm 22 years old, and my only feeling at the time is to create and normalize space everywhere, not to play football at Alabama. But I went out and stayed out there for several days until I realized that this felt worse than basic training, and that I had been there and I'm not doing that anymore. And we walked into the, behind the Natatorium, I think on Thomas Field, must have been 90 guys there. Kenny Stable, who played with Oakland Raiders in his quarterback, got named Jackie Cheryl, who coached at Mississippi State, Washington State, Pittsburgh, and Texas A&M, was a graduate assistant. And no cable, just three stations, I mean three networks, CBS, ABC, and NBC. That was before any cable. So we walk off the field and everybody had a mic while you're here. And having gone through a process in Taiwan of shifting from feelings about things happening back here in 1963, like blowing up girls in a church, I had gone through the anger piece. I just kind of said, you know, I've always wanted to play for Coach Bryant all my life. And he was looking at me to say, I'm out here for a social cause. I'm out here to desegregate. I had said none of that. So the purpose was to create space for persons of color everywhere, not just in boardroom, but football fields. And it was the normalization of it. It was the normalization for American citizens to be anywhere they had the capacity. And King said content about character. Jefferson said something similar. He called, we need a virtual, not a virtual, a natural aristocracy that has virtue and talent. We don't want monarchies, but what we need is a natural aristocracy that you are measured by your talent and your virtue. King said content about character. They were talking about the same thing. So we were as young students trying to figure out how we could do that for all areas. And one of the things we did, we met with President Frank Rose, who was, his office was in Carmichael, where the Dean of Education office is now. And the reason we met with him is that we saw a float, a homecoming float. And they had men, male students, wearing Confederate uniforms and female students wearing antebellum dresses. The thing they caught our attention, they had 12 and 13 old African American young boys from Tuscaloosa fanning them. They were sitting, the women were sitting and these African American boys portrayed slave kids. So they were fanning these girls as the float went down University Boulevard. The homecoming parade. We went to see President Frank Rose. And he said, Dr. Rose, we just don't, all 10 of us, we just don't think that's a good idea. He had sort of a protrusion bearing and he said, well, I'll look into it. We'll see what we can do about that. We didn't go back to see him nor did he follow up with us, but we didn't see the float anymore. I think that was the end of it. So on this campus, that wasn't by that time, that wasn't while I stood in the door in 63 in June, what was happening then was almost how some religious sects do when you offend them. They shun you. Shunning was almost like, you know, you are in our space and you are contaminating this space. And so that was kind of moving away from having National Guards here in 1963 because of Word About Violence. But I haven't lived, haven't worked in East Asia and been abroad and gone to places like the Philippines, Taiwan and other places. I felt right at home. I told, I say one more thing, Steve, and I finished. When I left to go abroad, I felt no ownership about anything in this state and in this country except our family land in Sweetwater, Alabama. But when I came back, it felt like I was a participant in the nation. I was an owner because I served the nation abroad. I felt fully empowered, fully engaged, and fully a part of this culture. And I was done with being controlled by my color. Didn't know how that was going to work out, but I was not going to obey Jim Crow laws. And luckily, things changed shortly thereafter. But that transformation happened when I was gone. That's why I used the James Baldwin approach. I was able to reflect and think about a lot of things. There were five or six things that happened in 1963 when I was gone. It meant I was being assassinated, killing from Park in Birmingham while I was standing in the door while at the King. I have a dream speech. And lastly, Kennedy was assassinated in November 1963. All that happened when I was off the coast of China. And when I realized how deep the fault line was, I knew it was deep. But when Kennedy was assassinated, I was awakened by a Taiwanese young boy who we were paying to keep our barracks clean and do a lot of things around the barracks. He touched me on the shoulder. He said, the president has been shot. And I said, was he in Taipei? He said, no, no, no, the American president. So I quickly got up. And there were two airmen, one from Mara, Georgia, and the other from Huntsville, Alabama. They were screaming and yelling and clapping. Saying, we got the SOB. We got the SOB. We got Kennedy. And I thought, what are they talking about? And what they were celebrating, Kennedy had given a speech after Wallace stood in the door here at Foster supporting civil rights, supporting a civil rights bill. And they were anti-Kennedy for that very reason. And lo and behold, civil rights got passed the next year, stronger than what Kennedy proposed by Lyndon Johnson. But they were celebrating the death of an American president. And he was the commanding chief and we were on foreign soil. So I went back. When I was 19-year-old, I sat down on my bunk and I thought, I'd only had 19 years to process this, but I realized this thing is real deep that if you have two airmen wearing the uniform of our nation, we're on foreign soil and they're celebrating the killing of the American president because of his stance of trying to end a hundred years of a racial caste system called Jim Crow. And as plain as I can say it, that meant when my mother went to Selma, if my dad and I had to find somewhere to wait, he always had a newspaper and I always had a book. We would go to the colored waiting room at the Greyhound bus station and sit and wait. Not traveling on bus, but that's the way you could sit and you would not be bothered. You didn't want to sit on the street because they said, what's your boy doing here? People just like a dignity. So Kennedy was trying to say these laws make no sense in a society like ours that talks about democracy. He was trying to end that and when he was assassinated, that's why these two guys celebrated. Now that's over, but they didn't anticipate a guy from East Texas named Lyndon Johnson who was wise about the Senate and he could twist arms of Southern senators to get this thing passed in 6064. I'd like you if you could. A lot of my white friends don't understand what my African American friends always call the talk or the conversation. I've yet to meet any black professional that hasn't had driving while black pull over at some point. Tell us about the conversation you had with your father when he didn't want you to come home, drive home tonight for the regular camp. Yeah, I had an interesting sort of pattern when I was here. Finishing final exams or finishing the weekend of classes and regardless of one of the things I always did was go to Stillman College and the Hay Center was brand new then. And so I would on Friday night go by Stillman through four other students over here because what we always said when we went over there we saw smiling faces. And then after I'd say they had a couple of hours I used to go to a place that my mother quite could never understand why in the world we had blues music so much. And so I went to a place called the Citizens Club. And there were people in there like Joe Simon Little Milton, Bobby Bland all those blues singers that play in those kinds of places. And so I would sometimes leave there about one or two o'clock in the morning either go down Highway 69 through Greensburg or go down 43 through Utah and Damopolis. My mother was always a voracious reader so she was up when she'd hear me coming in the house and she'd my dad they always talked about things and my coming and going and he'd go in the bed but he got up at four o'clock for all his life. And he called me one morning he said let's go for a walk let's talk. And so we went for a walk down around the land where when I was a child he kept cattle and grew timber. He said when you are coming home why don't you go to go back to the campus and just go to bed come at 7 or 8 o'clock in the morning. And I just asked him why would he again I'm a veteran feeling empowered because I've not had connections in a foreign country. He said it's dangerous. He said if you come through Greensboro or you come through Damopolis in Utah and there's a policeman sitting in a light and he sees a University of Alabama sticker parking decal on your car he turns the light on to stop you and make sure that the car is not stolen because he does not know African-Americans yet up at Tuscaloosa and you might say something to provoke him and you could lose your life and he said if something happens guess who's word they're going to take it won't be yours, it will be here's and you need to just not drive home that late at night go back to the campus and go to bed and he was a high school principal and I never grew tired of hanging out with him we used to walk our land a lot and I wanted to say to him I've served the nation I'm 22 years of age I have felt free in a foreign country I know what that feels like I want to feel free back here just to go and come and be left alone but I did what he said because in hindsight he's right those before we even have a hard time now with cameras you can imagine what would have happened in 1963 having I got shots in Utah, Alabama, Demopolis, Alabama it's the end of that discussion so he was saying I need you to be protected and what was so interesting me in hindsight I couldn't think about it then I did not have the wherewithal to think about it but all these years later just the juxtaposition or walking around the streets of Taipei and Tainan and no restrictions and to come back home to my native country I've got to start navigating ways to protect myself and having to listen to my dad who knew intimate knowledge about the Jim Crow system and the coming and goings of that so that was that was the challenge of that you didn't look to the county courthouse say again you did not look to the county courthouse justice I talk about this in the book the self-regulation that many african-american communities did in my section of the state calling the sheriff was not a solution calling the sheriff that was an added set of problems nothing in that courthouse happened in London except the meaning where 22-year-olds clerks behind the desk talking to a 75-year-old african woman Mary what you want this morning so this whole idea of what I call the dehumanization of people as a child and how elderly african-americans were spoken to by the 20-something group so the courthouse was not a place of anything except necessity to pay taxes by a tag but not to look for not even close respect and justice and that was sort of the norm and one of the things I saw in Albany is how that had impacted people over the generations I remember when I was in Taiwan when those girls were killed it's a 16th street Baptist church that was the only thing all these other things I mentioned kind of caused me some heartburn but this one tied me up in knots because I knew the nature and the importance of the black church in the south in my rural community the church was much more than a place of worship and before that church was bombed George Wallace said according to the New York Times what we need in Alabama to stop all of this foolishness about civil rights there's a few more first-class funerals once we get that people in that two weeks later somebody thought it's the proper to put down by that side of the 16th street Baptist church so I must have been so intense about it I had a supervisor who was a native Hawaiian and we were I got off midnight shift and turned weapons in he said let's go for a walk so we were walking down the flight line time of these jets taking off American planes taking off he said you tied up you walking around like a lid fused and I kind of unloaded about what was happening back in the states in 63 he said but you you're not going to solve it just by the intensity you have right now you're one of the bright guys in my squadron I need you to figure this out and I wondered at times was it his Polynesian background things that happened in that part of the world that he could understand but he sort of pulled me aside and said you need to sort of relax and temper this and so when I came home I sort of lost sort of any overt feelings because I had been in an environment where I was treated with dignity and respect and understood the complexity of what's going on won't be solved by rage and resentment so I got deeply immersed in scholarship deeply immersed in learning deeply immersed in you know always was a voracious reader but I started to examine a lot of things and I'll give you one good example when I was here as a student I took a lot of classes in Morgan and I read things by Flannery O'Connor you know Faulkner and Robert Penn Warren in addition to Richard Wright and Ralph Ellison I was trying to get the whole size of an issue so I was just digging deeply into scholarship and one of the things I did not know about was the lost cause that after the loss of the Civil Civil War that a lot of people reframed in the south what the Civil War was about it was never about slavery it was never about mistreating people and what we had as part of the Lost Cause narrative and I did not know this that we had benevolent slave masters and happy and contented slaves and that was all disrupted by this mob mobocracy group from the north affecting a slave democracy in the south and so I was beginning to try to look at these themes that are out there that so undergird who we are and how we think about things the nature of things and so when I came here as an undergraduate student in Alabama I think I did not read as much outside of the class as I did in the class because I was just sort of intense about it just learning just having a deep feeling about knowing things and so in Albany I used to talk to so many people of all different size and then didn't even know what Jim Crow was I mean they had heard it but they couldn't sort of put the pieces together that's how far we had moved away from it and it used to amuse me and he said Dr. Dunne you used to understand this race stuff I said well I think I do and and are you sure you you don't have to like you mad about things you talk you explain you describe and you need to we think you need to get get in there and mix it up and I said mix it up with my mind I talk I explain and I push and I describe and I tell and I frame issues as us not us and them because I'm part of this I'm part of this is my country guys come on so I'm putting myself squarely in the middle of this picture and but it was hard to do with polarization on all sides and when people were playing out the historical ways that we processed information in our section and that's where I want to pivot in your book I have one quick story when he was working in the president's office Matthews took a call from Wallace Wallace wanted a flag with in front of this building to fly the Confederate Stars of Arts President Matthews was called out on the cabinet meeting to me to take the call from the governor not just the subject while the legislature was in session Matthews said no we fly the American flag we fly the fake flag we're not going to fly the Stars of Arts we'll uphold the legislature appropriating the money to build the third flag home Matthews refused to take him on me and done so we would have had all the debates in South Carolina would have been right and a lot of people the other thing that happened while he was working in the president's office Matthews made a statement committing the university in 1970 when he took over having a thousand African American students on campus by 1975 and once the president publicly went live on that that gave permission for every department to do something about it and I think there's a real lesson in history for our university today to look at that time when art was working in the president's office now art you arrive at Albany and again that's one of the very few communities where Kings, non-violent strategies didn't work you talk about seven strategies for reconciliation do you like to talk a little bit about that I won't talk about all of them Steve but I will pick it let me ask you this highlight those for me do you have them in front of you do I have them in front of you if not let me without making this as a recipe one was a that sticks in my mind that I used as a strategy was a network of healthy relationships the thing that I noticed for the Darden State College people and the Albany State people in the community and within the campus was not a network of healthy relationships and building alliances I used almost that nauseam that in order to deal with some of the problems we have it's going to take cooperation collaboration and leverage that that's going to be the sort of style that makes a leadership style that makes things work so that was one of the things that I highlighted the other is Japan had been closed to the west for decades but they open up Admiral Perry pushed them to open against the trade before they realized when they opened up is how many things they learned and they adapted them to Japanese way of doing business one of the healthy network of relationships I said is adapting strategies without humiliation Tom Friedman talked about that because we had challenges with recruitment, retention and graduation and one of the top universities in the nation with recruitment, retention and graduation is Georgia State University in Atlanta so I sent a delegation to go but I noticed on when I was asking people to pull together a team I noticed some resistance on campus to go into Georgia state and somebody said we don't need to go anywhere to learn about recruitment, retention and graduation from a white school and I said this is generic it's not about the issue of race but they are graduating more African Americans than anybody in the university system in Atlanta so they're doing something and the reason I knew that I had spoken with the chancellor he mentioned predictive analytics a process that Georgia State was using that was highly successful with African American students and so I wanted this team to go up there and what one person pulled me aside and told me why there was some resistance and the resistance was is going to a white school to learn about working with African American students and this was what I called adapting adapting policies and practices without humiliation without worrying about where it comes from that there are generic things across the world don't worry about the source but if it's effective and efficient don't tie the color and ethnicity and religion to a process and and so that was those are two strategies the other one that I've thought about is thinking strategically data driven people when I first got to Albany State people would come to me with a case and the case was being made around passion not data facts and information and it was the word that got around that the last thing that I would pay attention to is somebody coming in because it feels right to do this it's the cause it has to be data driven and I wasn't thinking much about that because I had to function in an environment at the university system in Atlanta and UGA that I didn't start anything unless I sort of understood the reality of the circumstances and finally one day I was walking down the hall and there's a president's office at Albany State I heard somebody say I'm just talking about what you think you better have some information that shows here's where we are that is factual and it's reliable and what and I finally explained that in a cabinet meeting that we're spending time, money, energy and resources and it cannot be because you're coming in making a case about something because you have an opinion about it and as I think about what where we are now and Wallace is commenting about the anti-intellectual are we in a post-truth society are we now in a post-truth society where no one tells the truth but also are we in a place where everybody's opinion is as valid as expertise I use Steve as an example he spent his career looking at higher education systems and and structure and organizations and research on a number of things but there are people who would discount that because I think this so my opinion is just as valid as your expertise that seems to be what we are in a lot of cases I'll watch sometimes school board meetings on television people are saying I don't want my child to hear anything about this subject with a suppression of privilege or anything about race and I'm thinking how are we going to manage our affairs if we only want to deal with mythology and not fact if you only want to deal with mythology and you are saying my opinion is this versus the expertise in fact and reality over here so one of the things I was trying to do at Albany State and my mom and dad went to Alabama State and my dad also went to Tuskegee and my sister went to Alabama State and they have a great deal of passion about the places because as I reflected on listening to them talk in local parentheses about how people how they were nurtured in that environment it was significant to them but it can't be so significant that you don't now look at 21st century and modern practices and how technology and globalization automation and climate change affect them all of us you can't run the 1930s Alabama State in this present environment we got to just take care of our children it's got to be a more complex administrative and leadership process than we have now and so all I was trying to do is to say I recognize the historical passion you have about this institution but the world is going to run past us full speed if you're sitting here talking about just our HBCU heritage that's all you're talking about and I get that and I understand that and I'm saying you better think strategically and be nimble and agile and use data and use facts and information and build relationships if your relationships are toxic and we had many because people told me they were toxic and I don't know why I wonder about my predecessors did they unload on them like they unloaded on me people would tell me anything their feelings about what was going on so Steve that's just three of them I wanted to give the audience now a chance to shoot some questions that I will say I was struck in the book by Hal Knox who had done his lot of data and away from passion and the future of HBCUs and other regional universities was going to be based on the quality and high expectations and creating a culture of high expectations and not agreement and victimization that's just not going to get our boxcard out of the edge and I think about the relevance of that a lot when I think about what can we do today as a university to make health and black health about that security area and questions from the audience please Dr. Dottie thank you so much for your talk I can't wait to read the book I just I had the opportunity in the late 90s to go to South Africa and meet with Bishop Tutu it was a church group and he said to us it was four years after I had ended and he said to us African-Americans at least you were doing something around truth and reconciliation you had never got your 48 years in the community so I wanted you to sort of comment on maybe a structure that would give us the energy to sort of comment on it some of us would call reparations but some kind of structure that would give us over that gap that you mentioned that's an interesting question because I never forget one night I was in a two-person team I was walking and this was after the killings of those girls in the church in Birmingham I was with a guy from Memphis, Tennessee a white guy we were walking through this nuclear weapons area and we were checking facilities and he was saying something about what he had heard and he said what do you people want and I said at this point all I'd like to have is just to be left alone just to be left alone and as I've reflected on that here we are with labor the labor of African-Americans built the South's economy and by extension the nation's economy so 250 years of labor from African-Americans another 100 years through the sharecropping system so we had 350 years of that labor building our economy and there are people in our midst on the one hand you have the former Majority Leader in the U.S. Senate says we don't we shouldn't pay anybody anything because we were not here 150 years ago we have no obligation to do that none of us had anything to do with that and there are others who were saying I watched my grandparents land being taken from them I watched them work from early morning to late evening somebody needs to say something about this with this accountability how do you create circumstances where we balance the accounts that we balance this because if you've gotten 50 years of labor and now we've only had 58 years of an open system and I grew up in an area where the area is still suffering from basic amenities whether it's internet whether it's the assertion and aggression about going to college and knowing how to navigate through systems where people sometimes are not strong enough and I my wife and I had this discussion a couple of days ago and I said I don't know whether it's military or my personnel but I can navigate a system and I can figure out things I said in many ways I was kind of a hard case she said you still are and I said no, I'm a kind man so we have students coming from these areas yes ma'am, no, yes ma'am and just not pushing so the aggression and assertion and the other piece is that the amenities like internet, the books and schools and all of those things that create what I can call economic, social and political infrastructure that normalize high expectations my area likes that and I had two folks my mom and dad who we couldn't go to the public library in London because it was not allowed it was segregated but they, the internet they used in 1960s and when I was in high school it was called the US Postal System we had books magazines, newspapers encyclopedia so it I was able to visit the world and so this whole idea how do you settle, how do you have an accounting and one way you when you use the term reparations it's causing people to get in our corners you get in your corner, get in your corner, we're going to come out fighting because no one alive this so what sort of language how can we reframe Pam what we're talking about how do you settle that 350 years of building the economy of the south and by extension the nation's economy how do you settle that when you've had free labor and you're not part of the system that's a question that unless we figure out we can't even get anybody to say I need to apologize for that formally the legislative bodies around these 16 or 17 states we need a formal apology for what went wrong you can't even get that so I'm and I think that was Steve the Albany experience that was people were saying Dr. Dunning you need to know the nature of where you are this is what we are dealing with day in and day out and I was not on the way of all that but what I chose to do and what this guy and Taiwan a native Hawaiian was telling me this system that you grew up in it now got you hostage it's got your brain you're being held hostage because you can't think and it shocked me because I was being held hostage and I walked back came out of that part of the world and back to this country relaxed very much relaxed so I could talk about this in Albany where it looked as if I was not in a fight all the time because I had gotten relaxed by saying this is my country perhaps more than yours because I served it for 48 months I didn't could put that exaggerated sound but I served the nation 4 years of my life to this country 2 years on foreign soil so the less we can reconcile either infusion and Steve talked about this with the grant I think there's a Marsha plan almost there are counties that starts in southern Virginia they go all the way from southern Virginia all the way to east Texas and it cuts through south Georgia and south Alabama right through the sweetwood Alabama it's with 3 census reviews they're in the top 2 quartiles of poverty in this nation that means they're staying there and so it's going to take an investment an intense investment and Marsha plan may be a bit too much but that is the place where everything that you could turn upside down to get labor out of people and shut them out of every system you could think of it happened in Marengo, Clark, Sumpter Wilcox Green it happened in all those all these counties throughout the black it happened there and how do you begin to have this discussion where you don't have people just with these shut down the discussion as soon as you open your soul language how do you frame this in a way because I have a good friend who's head of diversity at the University of Georgia and I used to tell her I say you diversity is not your issue it's the university issue of people supporting diversity the dean's department it's when your back is turned when you're not in the room they're discussing diversity as much as you are so what you need to do is to figure out go see them one on one and explain to each of the deans how you can provide technical assistance support and framing of this so when your back is turned they're supporting your mission but if you think you're going to get on the president's cabinet and beat people into submission I got news for you without one because you come in with your fist and you're ready for battle that was not an environment where that could even get off the table so this whole idea getting to the bottom of what Desmond Tutu talked about you guys haven't done anything over there across the water in the United States of America and all you guys are still fighting about it so that's the piece that I struggle with and if I had an easy answer I would say that but for me that I do know that has helped me throughout America is the framing of the issue is framing it and using context and where people can begin to see it's an issue not what I'm pointing at you and saying you that fault right now I'm not sure we have many people who are skilled at doing that I'll use one example Steve and I'll stop I was sitting around the table at Michael Adams University president and we were discussing I brought up the Latino initiative that I had started at the University of Georgia because the Latino population was exploding in Georgia especially around Atlanta and I said you know maybe we ought to look at them in addition to recruiting African-Americans recruiting Latinos and one person who in the emissions office were now let's make sure we keep worried about quality now and I said I said well now I was not talking about quality I don't think diversity is a synonym for deficit I said that's not I didn't think when we discussed diversity that was a synonym for deficit what we are talking about from these populations we recruit students in these populations who can handle a high performing environment regardless of the background but what the interpretation that this person heard that if you diversify you getting less than rather than more than and I didn't look at it and say what are you talking about I mean I know I have friends who would say that are you trying to say this and I said no and she understood instantly what I just said that this is not a synonym for less than and so this whole idea of language and that seems to be what we are stuck with is how to do framing of this where you can keep open the discussion and get to the bottom of whether there is an apology and what is possible for 350 years of labor what is it that this country has the capacity to do in places like the black belt Dr. Dunn, thank you so much for this very informative and inspiring talk there is a section in your book where you talk about a very almost volatile student group who showed a lot of resistance to the merger of our state and dark and my question is one of how do we go about advocating or being activists for the changes in which you just spoke of you listed your talk today generosity, compassion and restraint there are some younger groups that perhaps may disagree with that so when we survey history you have SNCC but then you have another group that is more practitioners of respectability politics and I think that dynamic also exists today and you have more radical and very passionate groups like black lives matter and young people are really impatient and tired of the bureaucracy but then you have your more traditional older perhaps groups that also won't change but feel that there's a different method my question is how do we get these two groups to work together and what is a strategy to advocate for whether it's reparations whether it's changes to the university or in our communities that's an interesting question because Dr. King near the end of his life if you look at his earlier life he he used the most sacred text in western civilization in the bible and he talked about brotherhood and the content of our character so he always looked at us rather than us and them and he was beginning to lose out near the end of his life because there were people who were saying I'm not turning the other cheek this is too slow I want to do it overnight and he Dr. King at times used to walk sometimes through African American neighborhoods maybe stop in at the pool hall and talk to guys and somebody said hey Dr. King I hear you gotta march tomorrow you need me down here to help you out young man I sure would like for you to do that he said I'll bring my gun if I need to he said no no you stay out you stay home we don't need and what you had was a leadership style and an understanding of civil disobedience and nonviolence and Gandhi used it in India he he sent the British back home they'd been there about 190 years and so civil disobedience and nonviolence and both countries were changed forever so King's approach was no weapons, no violence and just to disobey unjust laws and we're not trying to change the system of government we just like to be undead just like everybody else there were people 19 and 20 years of age and I felt that when I was talking to my dad I don't plan to wait for these folks to adjust to my coming and going to be free to drive down this highway at 1 o'clock in the morning like any other person so I was impatient but my respect for him as a man caused me to listen to that but these were two schools of thought one was saying as a father and as an older person be patient, take your time and another is saying no I'm not going to be patient about this I'm going to get in my car and drive like everybody else I'm free to move down these highways so how do you create what I call campus dialogues campus conversations or community conversations where people of an older generation working with the people young people to help them act out their feelings and emotions in ways where they grow and develop and not lose the passion but guide the passion not lose it because you're never going to cause young people or not have about issues and ideas either for good or ill they're going to have that so how do you begin to frame that in ways where you can have these with us on a university campus but campus conversations around complex issues and I used to do that I used to have peace of night with the president at Albany State and I used to sit there and listen to 18-year-olds and 19-year-olds in a weapons area in Taiwan with a gun and it scared me I didn't want them to go to the grocery store by themselves but they would come up with some interesting stuff we don't have time for that and I thought is it social media is it the immediate gratification they think these complicated problems can just be solved overnight and no human systems they don't work that way and I thought every one of them had a device cell phone doing things and I said how do you know that I said you saw this on Facebook I said you saw this on Facebook yes sir that's what somebody put out there so I'm sitting here thinking I'll start thinking about that Marvin Gaye song inner city blues make me want to holler and throw up both my hands I thought but I kept a stoic look and I said well guys you probably need to find out who put that on that well Dr. Dunne I hear that you're promoting the change of our school colors let me show you what's on the phone I said guys do you think I spend time in the office thinking about school colors and changing the band uniforms and worried about the passionates dance group you think I spent time with Dr. Dunne that's what they're saying so I'm sitting here at that point my head is just about to hurt but point I'm making social media platforms and how do you use the way they live young people where all I had was a newspaper and a book and a magazine they have a device that opens them to the world for good for good the social media platforms it has allowed us to be meaner faster and quicker we can accelerate so people put anything on there and yet we are charged with guiding and leading and developing for me that would suggest engaging providing a framework for dialogue to be able to talk about this not get frustrated with them and point and say you need to be doing this you need to be doing that because I was a strong-willed 19 and 20 year old and luckily we had a lot of men in my high school and they could calm us the boys down talk to us so they talked about a lot of things and we had a hierarchical structure where there was a great deal of respect for teachers and a great deal of respect for male teachers and female teachers so they could get our attention but we had those same sort of feelings that you see now but it could be guided in different ways what has happened with social media has made experts of the young we were not experts as young people at the time now if you have one of these 10 years old, 15 years old no that's not correct a 12 year old can tell you that that's not true but we have no filter between information and the person and the consumer and for me a lot of my information is filtered through an adult in school or in home or in the community that was a filter and that information had been processed there's no filter between a device and a person now as a university president I was involved in a lot of groups with students at home for dinners we invited homeless college students as well as foster kids and it was just truly my wife would facilitate these discussions and it was truly staggering what many young people are up against who are homeless or either coming out of foster care and so I would sit there and think about sweetwater Alabama where there was not a single household there was not a man and a woman in the house and we didn't call defects foster care if somebody got without a parent somebody took the man took the child but not calling the state because the state does all sorts of things to black folks at that time so if you're going to solve this intergeneration this divide it's going to require some discussion and that's what I was trying to do Albany by having these students in our home and me going to the residence hall and I'll stop because I know we have a schedule but I used to walk across campus and I see some of the male students and I thought they should respect that I would lack of respect sometimes for each other on campus I was walking with three guys walking to me hey what's up man so I looked behind me he said I said do I look like a what's up man oh I ain't mean any harm I ain't mean any harm and what I was in a humorous way saying let's have some way we process encounters that's not a good one, not me but just you don't want to call the university president or the department chair or the dean as if you're talking to your friends learn two languages, learn how to navigate once you can talk in the residence hall you guys can say anything you want to say but when you encounter professors and people in the classroom then I explained it to them once they started laughing because two of them knew exactly what I was doing I looked back I said no he's not talking to me and so I would try to figure out ways to engage and to discuss with this generational divide without you know finger pointing and anger and all that because they're not the same there's a long team in 20-yo there's somebody in the 60's and 70's we are different in how we deal with them Steve I'm going to leave it to you to say on some sort of schedule the only thing I want to say first of all let's get Dr. Guy about it