 I think there were two two things on my mind when I wrote the book when I left Albany in 2018 after about five years the first three three and a half years was put was to put the consolidation in place the mechanics of it and when I left I had time to reflect and I had the same sensation in retirement that I had when I lived in East Asia for four years I lived in Bangkok, Thailand for two years working as a civilian for the federal government and another two years in Taiwan in the military that is I could think about this nation better and much clearer when I was out of it I mentioned to the group this morning I had the same feeling that James Baldwin had when he went to Paris in 1948 he reflected and talked about America out of it and then he went to Istanbul and 13 years late and finished another country in the fire next time in his later years he had a place in southern France with people like Sidney Pawdiep, Harry Bellafonte and Ray Charles who would visit him so it was a period of reflection so those four years in East Asia in my retirement time gave me time to reflect about Albany, Georgia and what I had experienced and I was not physically and emotionally exhausted but I was exhausted with the thought that this nation has not reconciled as past and the reason I say that with a great deal of certainty is what white citizens in Albany said to me in this consolidation what America said to me they gave me unvarnished comments and just unloaded on what they felt about this relationship that they had no interest in and they wonder why the regions could do this to them they had no interest in being educated together they had interested being educated separately so I decided that I would write about that and so the book was when I started to put all this together one of the editors at the University of Georgia Press suggested to me you need to talk about how you arrived at some of the things you have said to us those values that you brought to it where did they come from I mentioned things like exceptionality I was parented with two people who gave me a sense of exceptionality performance and achievement deferred gratification investment saving all of those things that many of you feel very normal but they were they were very intense about those things my mother was explicit and my dad was implicit through his behavior so these people at the UGA press say you have a leadership style that impacted this consolidation talk about that talk about coming of Asian Jim Crow that that you spent 18 years under legal system called segregation and how that impacted the lens through which you look at the world so that's the first part of the book is about that so I wrote the book to get a sense of the intersections how all of my becoming out of the country for four years growing up in one of the poorest sections of the state of Alabama with our guests from Argentina this might be a good time to talk about what you pursue what was Jim Crow out of the fact that you're live growing up and give them give that our Argentinian sense of that okay and I used to raise this with some Albany State students Jim Crow was a character in 1830s created by an itinerant white actor named Thomas Rice and he played a illiterate buffoon African-American man who danced and he would sing and he blackened his face he got dying to make it made his face black and he called the character Jim Crow and would have a song that says dance Jim Crow but it was to show the illiterate buffoon shift less African-American a caricature so he would go about the country entertaining white audiences with this character and somehow in 1880s the system of laws became that label became attached to those laws and those laws lasted about a hundred years to give you an example restrooms restaurants hotels buses everything was separate to bring it closer to home my mother like most of the women in a farming community were excellent seamstress they could make their click and make dress and make their clothes but once a year she would take a shopping trip to sell them my dad and I would go and for the two of us she would go to stay all day it was excruciating for us but we had to go and wait for her there was no place in Selma to wait there was one place that he and I used to wait he always had a newspaper in his hand always had a book and we would go to the colored waiting room or the ground bus station to sit and wait for her and you walk around right coming through Selma the bus station was on the way coming towards highway 80 getting coming to Marion but you will walk up to the bus station on the left was white waiting room on the right was the color so he never go and sit down and he would read and I would get a coke and sit so we wait three or four hours for her to finish a shopping or we waited in the car but there was nowhere to sit because of the segregation and in many ways she she would not take very long on some of those trips because african-americans were not allowed to try on clothes like you could hold them up to you and people could measure you but you couldn't try them on and that was one of the racial caste systems that you couldn't swim in all white swimming pools but this whole caste system of purity versus pollution and that's you have separate water fountains that you could swim in swimming pools and use restaurants so that was the racial caste system called Jim Crow and it lasted about a hundred years and the reason a man named Martin Luther King how he helped change the system is he said let's be measured by the content of our character he made a speech in 1963 in August probably one of the best speeches of the 20th century but he said we as a nation need to end this system and he was arrested 29 times for his meddling and went to jail many times it was killed at age 39 and he led the seven and he led the Montgomery Boycott when he was 26 years of age we now celebrate his birthday and we're likely to celebrate it as long as this country exists because it's a national holiday so the Jim Crow system was a system of laws now what's interesting about it wasn't just laws it was policies practices and customs and so the question you might ask well how do you enforce it will you enforce it by violence and intimidation terrorism the 1920s 1925 1926 the Klan was at Marchtown Pennsylvania Avenue one of the largest marshes that they ever had and they had people in high places who supported them they came out of the woodwork so throughout the rural South so was violence intimidation now what the juxtaposition was for me I grew up in a warm and very deeply caring community as a child I never felt unsafe and I was talking to someone recently the sharecropping system unless you really violated one of the highest civil Jim Crow laws you were not jail for petty crimes because they needed you to work on the farm and so they had penny laws at that bottom and the serious laws at the top the most serious law was relationship between the sexes men and women of different races you could get yourself killed in a minute in these rural areas if you violated that one and material got killed for allegedly making a whistle and I had two high school classmates who did leave in the middle of the night in the 1960s one was a veteran another they got them out and mom and dad got them out overnight because of an allegation that they had been too familiar with the opposite sex and the opposite race so things could go along very placid until that one popped up and that you could get you could lose your life in a minute so that was what the Jim Crow system was and King said time out enough of this and he gave his life for that at age 39 so I tried to talk about this in a way where there's not rage and resentment because because I don't think we can manage this multi-nation I mean multiracial nation multi-ethnic and multi-religious unless we use three words generosity compassion and restraint and we won't use rage resentment and anger what we saw in January on January 6th that's not the solution because if you look at our nation this is a demographically diverse nation it's becoming even more so the change what causes people across the world historically to get really upset and be open to demagogues is when there's uncertainty around social and economic issues primarily and we have one of them right now that is this demographic shift that's going on and so the supremacy of one group over another won't sustain itself now I'm worried about our democracy and I will never lack optimism even in the dying days of Jim Crow I was optimistic because I knew because I left the United States to go to East Asia when those Jim Crow laws were in place and the first time in my life I experienced freedom and liberty was in a foreign country I could walk around the island of Taiwan and Taipei and Tainan no colored and white signs I could go in the bookstores I could go in the hotels I could go in the bars restaurants tailor shops freely when I couldn't do it in stale in Alabama I couldn't do it in demopolis Alabama and so when I came back home having experienced those two years I knew I was not going to live the rest of my life under this system I didn't know how it was going to play out didn't know how it was going to work but for me internally Jim Crow was over but it was still in place so I had I had optimism about that now when I see some of our fellow citizens who feel so threatened by this sea change demographically this happening until they're willing to do things that never thought I'd hear people say especially at the highest levels of government and one of the things that I mentioned to the group this morning when I was on my way to East Asia my dad dropped me off at a place little town called Thomasville Alabama railroad town that's what my mother's from and Wallace was on the back of a flatbed truck and he was one of the most gifted demagogues that is could growl people up and get them all agitated the ones that I remember my time Huey Long was before my time at Ross Barnett in Mississippi George Wallace in Alabama Talmas Eugene Talmas in Georgia Strom Thurman in South Carolina but Wallace was up on the back of this flatbed truck after the country Western band at one of the crowd and he and he could really go to rant and he started out by talking about states rights and our state and federal and state separation and our way of life that we hold dear he said I want all and these are all working-class whites in that community and he said to them I want to tell you something and you need to let you need to vote for me because here's what I'm gonna do for you first of all let me outline what the problem is he said that that Frank Johnson went to law school with me that lying scowl away of a federal judge named Frank Johnson he's your enemy the other folks out there who think they're better than you are and he was on a roll then he said they are hippies their communists the Jews and the Yankees and those liberal college professors up at these schools and around the state of Alabama they think they're smarter than you are they think they're better than you are I like rednecks and at that moment people started to yell give them hell George give me a and so he had this crowd threatened beyond the and they use socialism and communism that equality I won't use the word that he used but equality for black folks we have it figured out in Alabama we know our place and they know their place and so he went on and on and by that time the bus drove up that was my bond boy arts to East Asia those my goodbyes of my nation hearing him make that talk so when I hear people now who are asking us to be our worst selves leaders who asking us to be our worst selves is not look at compassion generosity and restraint but feeling completely threatened by and willing to look at what Jefferson Adams and Madison creative which is a magnificent document but it didn't include slaves and what Martin Luther King was saying and civil and that hundred years after Jim Crow it should include us as nothing wrong with what Mr. Jefferson said Mr. Adams said and Mr. Madison said but it cannot exclude American citizens we cannot have a separate class of people over here so that was sort of the the feeling and seeing and thinking about this that I had time Steve to to look at those intersections and how that got played out in my time in Auburn in Georgia that's why I chose the title and reconcile and the reason that I sit on that title I looked at what the South Africans did Mandela said we cannot have 30 million people black South Africans angry and five six or seven million Africanas who have run this system of subjugation we got less we got less steam out of this kettle we're going to have something called truth and reconciliation which means we're going to trail tell the truth and reconcile and one of the things I guess it troubles me the most is are we living in a post-truth society are we living in a time now where people don't tell the truth anymore and our leadership post-truth society we have mythology and we have facts and we only want to talk about the mythology and not the facts and so we can't get that out we we can't get that out so I've been struggling with this in my own mind and and I've my sense of optimism has sort of tapered off because I'm seeing too many significant people as I used to say in South East Alabama I thought they had more sense than that I thought they had more sense than that they're willing to look at something that's so egregious and so wrong and they're saying nothing about it nothing about it and let's shift now to how did I want to shift step back and step forward like you talk a little bit about your experience as a student at the University then I'm going to shift again back to how did this all play when you arrived at out so first of you could talk about this life here if you may when you got back from East California. I was some of you may know this but Reese Pfeiffer used to be the student union building where Ferguson is now the student union building was a football field and so I was got out of the military on Friday 22 years of age went to see my mom and dad and on Sunday I was in Pady Hall and had just been out of the military a couple of days and walked over to the student the soup store to get my textbooks and was walking back and someone in Morgan Hall which is right across from here yelled out a racial slur and said go home and what and I was amused and kept on walking because what I said to the group this morning I'd been out of the country and I had not heard that word I heard it before I left Alabama when he yelled at me and I said I am back at home this this truly tells me what I when I heard that tells me I'm back in Alabama so I went on and had gone beyond feeling too much intensity about the issues of race because I had been treated on a way with freedom and liberties I was relaxed much more than some of my colleagues in the first class I went in about 30 people in 10 who are on the ground floor but 30 students about 10 got up and walked out they never came back and I was a junior I remember very clearly my third year if I sat in this seat this seat this seat that seat was always empty no one ever sat by me in a class until my junior year and it was mostly after Wallace stood in there was 63 I was 66 it was almost how religious sex shunned when you when you do things that they disapprove of in our case you would you were in our space Wallace was trying to say this space is not set aside for you this set aside white people in the state of Alabama and so what students who would get off the sidewalk was suggesting that you're in the wrong place and we need you offending us so we need to get back away from you and around 69 all of that had started to change dramatically as the numbers rose but in 1967 I along with four of the afro-american students walked on the Alabama football team Kenny stable was the quarterback played for the Oakland Raiders Jackie Cheryl who coached at four places Mississippi State Washington State Texas A&M in Pittsburgh he was a graduate assistant they only had the three major networks CBS ABC and ABC no cable and so the interview does I had no interest in staying on the football field I done my time in the military but I did have interest in creating the normalist normalization of space for people of color that no place should be set aside because of your race and that happened and it was to and I had a sense of that at the time it was to change a sense of place racially and every aspect of life in this on this campus here and that's what we were attempting to do now when I got to Albany what surprised me is and Steve mentioned this monitor the king and the people in Albany said this to me dr. Dunning I don't know where you think you are but this is a hard place down here so dr. King came down here and he couldn't crack this nut he did some things and sell them Birmingham but we were we couldn't get anything done and Albany sits right in the middle of the this region that starts in southern Virginia shaped like a crescent goes over to East State East Texas Georgia has 159 counties we have 67 and I and state of Alabama nine of the poorest counties in that crescent areas are in South Georgia run right through South of Macon right through Albany so it's plantation agriculture and so it has all the elements of superior subordinate racial stratification you still have those elements they still have the culture and values and beliefs but they're not as sort of in your face and people would talk to me about that I mentioned to the group this morning when the consolidation was announced a guy I knew very well a white attorney invited me to come to his law firm he said donning I'm on Darden's Foundation excuse me and I'm getting beat up by some of my friends about this consolidation the chancellor won't change his mind he's going to make this happen could you come talk to us because we need to know what's going on and I said absolutely I said now you do not speak with candor about and there's no there's no side conversations I said my conversation with you be the same I'll have with anybody oh absolutely absolutely so I went in and they had set aside the entire morning about 10 people all men except there was a woman there but they were all part of the decision-making leadership in Albany and when I started to talk through the process and I mentioned that the chancellor decided to keep the HBCU mission and Darden access mission that we integrate those as part of this consolidated institution one guy raises he said I don't mean to harm but what the hell is an HBCU just tell me what the hell that is so I was I made things kind of stoic I said well let me kind of walk you through when that was identified 1965 our education act title three money flows to about a hundred and four or five HBCUs and to strengthen the foundational infrastructure administratively well you do know the white students at all it would never go to a place named Albany State you do understand that they'll go up the road to Georgia Southwest I'll go to Alaska State I'll go Georgia Southern but they're not going to Albany State they'll leave town before they do that and I said if you want to know my real bias this should have been done 25 years ago we left you to the devices down here this this consolidation what do you mean I said I was in the system office 13 of those years and what we noticed from this community it's the infighting between two sister sister campuses we left you to your devices while the issue is is serving the academic needs of students not creating safe racial space but to serve the academic needs of students but I've done it you don't understand we're not Atlanta we're not Atlanta so I said well I can't think of a single decision that they made in those 13 years I spent in the system office they changed because somebody got mad I can't think of one that the border region has changed so we are we have a challenge that was on that side and I get back on campus and talk to our some of the senior leadership team and some of the alums of Albany State they said Dr. Dunne they try and steal our campus they're trying to steal our university and I hate to tell you this I don't think that's the case I think they won't know part of it they just would like for you to do what you wish to do do what we wish to do but don't bring us in the process let's keep darting so I had two unwilling partners and what was so interesting to me is that both groups felt completely at ease telling me everything that was on their mind they were just a good unload the deepest most concerns they had about this consolidation and there were some amusing moments I mentioned to the group this morning that in the street discussion of a man who's not he was pretty earthy and pretty profane I didn't get in all the details what he said but he walked behind following me out of the barbershop African-American man he said dr. Dunning those folks downtown he meant the white leadership they tried to get Albany State closed in the flood of 94 they had some help but they couldn't get it closed because they had a governor and the chancellor who just wouldn't agree with that so you need to be careful you need to watch those people downtown now those folks at Albany State with this consolidation you gonna have your hands full with them because they don't want to change anything they like what they have they think they're right they don't and I don't know some of their systems are messed up given what I hear this was a guest standing outside of a barbershop and his last parting words he said I don't envy your job because you're gonna catch hell from both of and luckily before I took the job I was here in Tuscaloosa having a good time had retired so I didn't need the job and I think had I needed the job I wouldn't change anything that I did so I was free to speak about serving students and the integration of two unlike institutions that viewed themselves as equals they were not equal one was a two-year college with one or two bachelor's program another had EDS master's program but because it was a black and white discussion they'd make themselves equal they were not equal so that's how Steve that guy played out and one of the things why I think the UGA editors asked me to write on the about the coming of age and the black belt and the time abroad because they had talked to me about some of those things and that has shaped a lot of my approaches to leadership and throughout my entire life lived abroad for four years and spent three years in Mexico City as a visiting professor but I visited over 30 countries around the world and usually I spent time with academics I'm going to make one more point and then I'll stop respond to another question I spent time with the group of academics in Cameroon in West Africa part Cameroon was colonized by the parts of it was French another part British and must have been six or eight academics and I raised the question I said what and there were some there from both areas I said what was it like to be colonized by the French versus colonized by the British and they spent had a spiritual discussion about that and they said Dr. Dunne now what makes you you meaning the United States of America makes you unique I said I think there are two things the rule of law and orderly transfer of power now if I'm asked that question today I'm not sure what I would say I'm not sure because I used to say that with confidence and in 90s I went to Ghana with President Carter to monitor the national elections in Ghana and we went to polling stations and villages in a place called Takarati in Saekondi to observe the election and to make sure that the election was free and fair and I thought about that the other day in my entire life there's never been a time that we were not talking about voter suppression in this country either how many jelly beans are in a jar how many bubbles in a bar of soap read the Constitution and interpreted poll tags and today still doing it and so I'm trying to figure out what is it that this exercise of your voice there's so many people will fight and create innovative ways to prevent that but it seems to be what we have going on and if you ask me what's the solution for it I don't have an easy one right now except free people in a democracy will have to say do you not have any shame and I think as as Martin Luther King and his lieutenants and others when they started to push back with civil disobedience and nonviolence they just said we're not doing this we just were not going to do this so somehow we've got to come to grips with this but but now I don't know what the solution is you might know but I honestly do not know Steve I want to have a discussion the strategies for racial reconciliation I think now it's a good time to have the audience ask questions so our questions will have my come around so like I asked one hold up your hand and if no one jumps in I'll ask another thing thank you so much for coming here tonight you sort of spoke to this a little bit earlier in your comments about where we are today as a nation as you think about what we're talking about voting what's happening with voting how we have been in part parsed into these very extreme positions what is your thought about where we go from here we were speaking about the educational experience of all people in the nation or really as our students they denied the fight for our democracy in line the principles that you spoke about earlier where we go we have something that that's called social media it has allowed people from around the globe to communicate and to connect but it also has allowed mean-spirited people to use it as a an accelerant to create fires and damage so we no longer have the hotting codders of the world in Mississippi and Ralph McGill's a constitution people who write in newspapers almost force you to think analysis and synthesis because you might have a weekly newspaper might have a daily but you you would read it think about it these devices we have in our pockets people can put anything on it anytime and they're not driven by facts and honesty and respect and dignity this could be one of the most destructive things we've ever happened had happened to us so technology technology is playing a major role in the lives of people around the world and how that intersects with freedom of speech how do you have access to a platform that you can say anything you wish to say but if you're irresponsible and you mean spirited you can do damage to communities to nations to people that's the piece then that striking the balance of freedom of speech and the role of technology in our civil life I and we've got we've become so slash and burning zero some I win you lose what I'm thinking about would require people of good will of different backgrounds and when I mentioned generosity respect and compassion versus rage resentment and anger and how the strategies that people use now to exclude and to win at all costs but what I think would recall this will require is people who are in different political camps different racial groups different backgrounds is to say there's something bigger than all of us and that's how we govern ourselves is how we govern ourselves and can we create something that rises above parochial and partisan interest unless people understand that my winning an election is not as important as our government then we're going to be in a tough position and so what we seem to have is that people know those things that cause us anxiety and concerns and they just stoked the fires of them that's what the demagogues like George Wallace and others did they would figure out and they would get on the stump and use political data but they did not have the social media platforms the Germans only had the radio and they got carried away with just that and did some damage that that's unbelievable in terms of the scope and now we have a technology platform that allows us to do and say anything at a moment's notice so that's going to be for me that's going to be the challenge of protecting something and Steve and I've had this discussion in my under resourced school I had some of them I had master teachers in a poor county but I had outstanding social studies and civics I had I had one guy who was a World War two veteran went to Tuskegee he's one of the most gifted teachers I've ever been around we'd almost run in his classroom here what he had to say and so I was well grounded in our system of government coming out of a poor system school system and so I'm beginning to wonder if people are so free and willing to just cast this aside what are we teaching what are people learning because I don't think you I don't think you can you've compared and contrasted systems that if you're willing to the one we have when I lived in town one we were under martial law because in 1948 Chairman Mao and Shankar Shack had engaged in warfare and the insurgents won so Mao chased him out of the mainland to town one they set up government in Taipei so that martial law gave me a sense of compared in contrasting I knew Jim Crow I knew democracy that some people had access to then I'll hear him in martial law then when I'm at the bad cock they had king and a queen of monarchy Jefferson Thomas Jefferson had an aversion to that this hereditary advantage you were born as royalty that you have king and a queen and Prince Princess Dutch he said no no no we need what he called a natural aristocracy that you judge by your virtue and your talent it's the people it was so intrigues me about this I find that fascinating but at the time he owned slaves but yet what he was conceptually talking about if you include everybody in the process it's not a bad way to do this miss in terms of government and so I've had the good fortune of being in countries where they did not have and we've had to fight here and I talk about this in the book my I voted first time on a military base overseas but the first time I voted back in the States Marengo County moved from dry to wet vote to sell alcohol so one day I had finished class in ten who are not drove down to Marengo County to vote to vote in that and I'm gonna yes yes they'll be a little sell beer went by to see my mother she said what are you doing here I said came to vote she said you came all the way down here to vote to move the kind of from dry to wet I said yes I did she said I hope you don't tell anybody that she was teasing I said well I tried to put an elegant spin on I always do my civic duty she said okay yeah but what I felt back in the States when I came back home that it felt right it felt good to exercise my voice by walking in on any subject and I think that's a good way to govern so are we in a place where in response to your question and I and I really don't know the answer to it that we can maintain what we had do we have enough people who understand enough about governance and civics and places around the world and comparing and contrasted to say let's pull out all the stops to maintain what we have rather than just cast it away and start having somebody who says I'm staying in office and I'm not leaving and now do something about it I've got the guns I've got this infrastructure I got the apparatus I'm not leaving is that what we want and you guys want to do something about it in some countries you just you no longer around you know he they don't mention your name anymore so I don't you know some of you may think this is a passing fancy but I'm think I'm seeing a little bit more and then I think I thought I'd ever see and I hope I'm wrong so I'll stop and Steve replied to another question I see that again I missed the latter part what do you think the greatest battle is that lights have today that we focus on that compel the sports in today's time for African-American I think from for my generation it was to do the kinds of things that Dr. King talked about it was those structural and legal barriers that were in place that seemed at times insurmountable until and I felt that when I went in the military and saw how close you could get to an egalitarian environment we have moved from the manufacturing bronze society to brains knowledge worker I can't think of anything that you won't that you can do in your life when you leave as a student that you won't have the computers and technology so you would be a knowledge worker so how do you develop the skills of analysis synthesis and reflection with so much information at your fingertips and when I used to invite Albany State students to our home the student leaders I would talk about that with them that how much information they had that it was not hierarchical anymore you had to go through this horizontal and I'd ask him how they done in school and somebody said well dr. Dunn I made a scene and history I made a sea of political science that how is that possible you got to work at making a seed don't you that's not possible all the information you have and the repetition and reviewing things you can do with this technology what are you doing making a sea well doctor you know ideas you know I got other things and I said no I don't know how it is so I was you know I was I understand the push into other students I was kind of affecting some how disappointed I was about that but the point I was making you do not have to go through anybody to get information and you do not and they cannot segregate you on your own computer they can't prevent you from looking at this like the library the library was the source of information London Alabama they could keep me out of there and I was telling the group this morning my access to the world was through something called the US Postal Service we had my dad had several things come into the house life magazine look magazine Birmingham News and Ebony and Jet so we got the black press and we got the larger press the house was full of things so the postman just bring to your house and deliver your mail we got all our information then we got encyclopedia books through the mail but if we don't 19 miles of London some whites only some land couldn't go in the library so we got stuff and now in your hands you have the Library of Congress in your hands get anything you want to so you're going to be if I had to say what is the new 21st century push for equity and fairness and justice is knowledge scholarship learning at the highest level and one of the things by virtue of some positions I had I never was on an agenda or had to speak about something and the president's cabinet at the University of Georgia on the system office that I did not prepare where I felt like I was going to be the most knowledgeable person in the room because I had access to information and I was not going to a single question you can ask me about what I'm proposing as we go around the table in the president's cabinet that you'd ask I couldn't answer and so what I was attempting to do is making sure that what I'm charged with doing is providing leadership for these functions is to be the knowledge worker at the highest end so that's why I think that's the way I would like what would you talk about says we encourage you to go and seek for education and what would you say to a young man such as yourself today encouraging them to when I was coming out of high school the goal of almost every young people young person I knew friends of mine was to leave the Alabama black belt my high school class was part of that great might the second phase of the great migration we went to four places to the military went north or to Alabama A&M Alabama State of Tuskegee and many a way in almost all cases taught in the public schools my dad that's that's only one time he and I had not a serious disagreement but he said don't go into military go to Tuskegee first go to ROTC there you go and I said no I got to go I said I'm leaving and I think he thought when I went in I would not go to college but I don't think he knew at the time but him but the teachers I had in that under resource school and my mom dad they had a created they had created intellectual curiosity that was all consuming for me it's very interesting and a good student so that was a piece of it the other is I was getting out of the military and the University of Alabama had a center in Montgomery on Bell Street and I was looking at Penn State Ohio State Michigan State and the guy who's the director of that center man named Robert Springfield said why would you do that you've got the GI Bill that's just been passed by Congress if you go to these schools you got to pay something called out of state I said what is that so he said told me the money he said you transfer you've already been admitted to the University of Alabama just transfer to Tuscaloosa never occurred to me so I said let me go home and talk to my parents first because many families they've been sanctioned when children did things if they marched in a civil rights March because I had some friends who fought parents on a gas station the suppliers child got out that the child marched at a in Montgomery in a civil rights March the suppliers stopped serving the gas station put him out of business and so I told my dad I said you a high school principal in London Alabama if the word gets out I'm going to University of Alabama what do you think about that he said well I've got enough time to retire you go ahead do what you think you need to do and so I came here and the encouragement from Springfield and and family sort of guided me to this place and growing up in Southwest Alabama the two schools I never even thought about was Auburn in Alabama the schools that I used to read about in the Pittsburgh Curie Jackson State Prairie View to Texas Southern Southern University in Baton Rouge Tennessee State and recently that they were sending football players to the NFL so I kept up with that but that was my sort of world view of public higher education up higher education in general but not this school not not here and so this was a financial decision when I came here on the GI Bill I got a work-study job in in Tim Hurd and Dean Gilstreet I had a job in this building stacking books over the Christmas holiday up in the stacks here so I was a wealthy man so I had GI Bill work study and the job here and what helped me was to have people that I respected to help guide me to think about the entire context and sort of help pave the way and I met with the students this afternoon and Ferguson Center part of the Black Student Union I think they admitted students at this campus now who are 13 and 14 years old I looked at those students and I thought God you guys look beyond and they said oh no Dr. I'm older than I look but Ferguson was this full of students of color that was they were not here when I was here so I felt good that 50 or 60 years ago 50 years 55 years ago I came in 1966 was a long time ago there were only 10 African-American students here when I came and to see that they have dedicated space when we requested space in 1966 to start a group no one would give us any space the first meeting we had with a group called the Afro American Association was in common hall the way we found that buildings used to be left open at night the safety notion was different so we walked in and found a classroom that was open and had the first meeting of the black students so I think the the idea of getting students educated and fully participating as students are all backgrounds it's probably part of the solution and I had some key people who gave me some ways to think about that see reflect on what you would regard as your greatest achievement in Albany your greatest disappointment and reflect for a moment on what you learned of each relative to reconciliation I think Scott the the greatest achievement was not let the mechanics of the consolidation be held hostage by any group around the issue race history and culture because that was I think the greatest achievement we were able to consolidate those two campuses and got it done on time under sacks Southern Association of College of Schools guidelines so we met every deadline we did not miss a beat and everything was done well nothing was ever rejected by the system officer by sacks so the mechanics of the process the greatest disappointment is I wished I had known how deep and I and I deeply understood the fault lines but I didn't know how deep they were that we had been able to create safe space for some hard discussions that is bringing community groups together bringing student groups together and so we got so engaged in the mechanics of the process this this side of the process that dealt with race history and culture that is we don't want to be part of this is is creating places on both campuses of people in the community and students and faculty to talk through the angst and concerns and to create an us rather than us and them we did we we were not patient enough to do that that was probably the thing that if I had to do over that's what I would do in a different way what was the third part Scott that was one third part was would you reflect on the concept of reconciliation and learning or celebration of both of those yeah you know I was thinking about that when I was talking this morning when the I was walking through a nuclear weapons area in 1963 when probably a week at ten days after those girls were killed in 16th Street Baptist Church and that was a lot of strong fetus on that small air station off the coast of China I was not nice not only about the killing of those four girls but the bombers who put that down like they're struck at something that deeply goes to the core of the black community in the south as the church one of the first thing freed slaves did when they well when they got out of bond is start churches so churches were not just place of worship but they were social institutions but dignity and respect and conversation and people get together fellowship not just somebody to pull pit talking so they put a bomb on something not just killing the girls they killed almost something that's one of the most significant entities so I was walking through this weapons area I had a 38 pistol on my side had an M2 carbine the other guy had a carbine we were walking along talking he was somewhere I think Tennessee I can't remember where and he was clearly worried about desegregation and getting rid of jump truck he said what do you people want and I said you know I would just take me left alone I would take right now I would just take get these laws off my back I don't want an apology and don't discuss money with me preparations because you can't I don't think you can pay 350 years if you had 250 years of slavery 100 years of segregation I don't know if you can get a dollar fake on that but what I think you can do is to leave me alone and it was I saw years later the movie Gandhi the British viceroy sitting around the table with other British officials in India and Gandhi was protesting about British presence and colonization and then the guy vice for say mr. Gandhi what do you want from us what do you want us to do he said leave go home leave us alone this is not your country they all laughed I said no this is this is you know this is part of the British Empire so we may be able to do some other things but we're not leaving and so I'm trying to figure out in response to your question there's schools of thought one is accountability for those 250 years and 100 years of Jim somebody somebody needs to own this somebody needs to say I'm sorry about it or pay me for it the others who said oh no I think you will offend my sensibilities that try to mean to send you a bill for what those 350 years I would take leave him alone others will say I'll take an apology so Scott I have talked to a lot of people about this I have yet to find any consensus I've yet to find that if we're going to reconcile is that an apology that will be helpful from every legislative body throughout the 16 southern states that have junk roll on the matter you know we've had leading people in the Senate who said we don't need to pay anything that none of us had anything to do with and 150 years ago and we were not here none of us we were not alive so we have no responsibility for that into the discussion which leaves what I felt in Albany at many times an unresolved unreconciled issue and I've tried to talk about this in the book but I mentioned the two yet my opening comments had I not gone out of this nation at age 18 I don't know what would have happened to me but I was able to get in a foreign country that spent two years with freedom and liberty and the ability to think about things so when I got back and had to deal with Selma Montgomery Birmingham Mobile I was in a different place and a very yet only 22 years old so I'd had that sort of out of the out of the country experience so what that leaves us with and I saw this in many meetings at the University of Georgia Georgia system the the constant undercurrent of race in America the constant undercurrent and what we have now that has beginning to happen and some of our national leaders are stoking the fires it's all out in the open it is all out in the open it is right in front of us now there's no way you can say what the issue is not about and I'll finish this Steve we we are a multi racial multi ethnic and multi religious nation and that's not going to change in fact it's going to accelerate so unless we as a people find space for everybody I don't know how we I don't know how we how we make this thing work because we we have to find space and and yet if we don't do that then we're going to change the nature of how we govern ourselves and I promise you that's not a path we need to go down that's not a path we need to go down what we need to do and or do we have enough voices in our communities so in this book I try to talk about how a consolidation of two campuses brought out this American dilemma this is this is the American dilemma how these two campuses expressed every way of the racial caste system in America almost every pillar that you can think of that's part of the racial caste system was expressed and in many ways acted out in language and discussion and conversation in the community so I tried to show that and I tried to and many in so many ways is to show my 18 years under Jim Crow did not have enough scarification that it lasted with me and and I was people who knew me and people who know me well know that I push study abroad that if you go to college you should not finish college without studying in another country and I came by that by living four years out of this nation and it's especially important for young people of color