Patricia Stephens Due and Tananarive Due

DATE January 16, 2003 ACCOUNT NUMBER N/A
TIME 12:00 Noon-1:00 PM AUDIENCE N/A
NETWORK NPR
PROGRAM Fresh Air

Interview: Senator Joseph Lieberman and his wife, Hadassah, on
their book, "An Amazing Adventure," about the 2000 presidential
campaign, and Senator Lieberman's current run for president
TERRY GROSS, host:

This is FRESH AIR. I'm Terry Gross.

Senator Joe Lieberman announced on Monday that he's running for president.
This week not only kicks off that campaign, it's the start of his book tour.
The senator and his wife, Hadassah Lieberman, have written a memoir called "An
Amazing Adventure," about the 2000 presidential campaign in which Joe
Lieberman was the first Jewish vice presidential candidate. Yesterday I
recorded an interview with the Liebermans. In the book, the three-time
senator from Connecticut says he will always feel that many more people went
to the polls intended to vote for him and Al Gore but did not have their votes
counted. I asked him how his opinion that he and Gore should have won the
election is affecting his interactions with President Bush.

Senator JOSEPH LIEBERMAN (Connecticut): People ask me, `How do you feel about
2000?' and I say what I think Hadassah and I convey in the book. I loved
every minute of it until the end. And the end was disappointing, infuriating,
all of that, but, you know, I don't forget that because there are a lot of
people who tried to vote who didn't get their vote counted, and that's why we
finally adopted election law reform this year, and I hope that President Bush
will help us put some money in it to make it real. But it's my nature to go
on, to learn from what happened, and as a result, I have a responsibility as a
senator to try to work with the president when I agree with him and to be
honest enough to tell him quite explicitly when I disagree.

GROSS: Your new book is about the experiences on the campaign trail, and you
call it "An Amazing Adventure." That's the title of the book. It also sounds
pretty grueling. Hadassah Lieberman, how do you feel about going through this
again and going through it with your husband being the presidential, not the
vice presidential, candidate which will make it even more grueling?

Mrs. HADASSAH LIEBERMAN ("An Amazing Adventure"): Well, obviously, it's
personally challenging to one's relationship and to one's family life because
that's just the nature of what a national campaign demands. But at the same
time, it's an incredible opportunity and it's important, I believe, if you
believe in yourself, which Joe does and which we do in Joe and what he has to
offer this country, to take that challenge and not shirk from it.

GROSS: Joe Lieberman, how does candidate George Bush compared with President
George W. Bush?

Sen. LIEBERMAN: I hesitated a moment because I was trying to remember during
the campaign. Look, there are differences here, and that's part of why I'm
running. The president, as a candidate, promised he would change the tone in
Washington, and the sad fact is that the tone is more partisan and polarized
today than it was before he took office, and that's not just a matter of
observing a conflict. It means that we're not doing what we should do to
revive the economy, to improve our health-care system, to protect our
environment, to do something about energy, education, etc., etc.

The president also campaigned on this promise to return integrity and honor to
the Oval Office, and I think in too many of his policies, he has yielded to
either big financial interests or extreme ideologues, and here again, I'm
talking about--environmental protection, I mean, comes to mind. It's been
important to me, a priority of mine for all my entire political career. And
this President Bush has torn apart a bipartisan consensus on protecting our
natural resources and protecting us, our health, from air and water pollution
that existed at least back to his father's administration and, in some senses,
back to the Nixon administration when the environmental movement started. So
one of the premises of my campaign is that President Bush promised us a better
America in 2000, and two years later, that promise has not been kept.

GROSS: During George W. Bush's presidential campaign, some of his critics
felt that he wasn't coming across as very smart. He stumbled a lot when it
came to foreign policy and the names of foreign leaders. He wasn't
well-traveled. Now he's facing a war with Iraq, problems with North Korea, a
war on terrorism. Do you think that he is different now than you thought he
would be? How is he handling the international crises we face compared to how
you thought he would do?

Sen. LIEBERMAN: Any president in office learns, so I'd say on international
and foreign policy, President Bush's record has been mixed. I happen to agree
with him, as you probably know, on Iraq. I've felt for a long time that we
had to disarm Saddam or we would pay a terrible price for not doing so. I
think that the president's response to September 11th was strong. On the
other hand, I think he's been much more inclined to use the military and
threats in regard to the Islamic world and North Korea than trying diplomacy
or, with particular regard to the Islamic world, trying economic aid, better
communication, creating more freedom in that world.

I think the current crisis in North Korea has been the most inept chapter of
the Bush foreign policy record, where he has been weak and inconsistent and,
as a result, what was a difficult situation on the Korean Peninsula with an
unpredictable tyrant, Kim Jong Il, has become a dangerous crisis. At one
point, the president was against negotiations. Now finally, he seems to be
coming back to it. At one point, he took the military option toward Korea off
the table for the first time since Dean Acheson did it prior to the Korean
War, and some people think it helped to bring about, unfortunately, the Korean
War.

So it's a mixed record on foreign policy. And, look, sometimes people say,
you know, a lot of senators are running this year, but there's a reason for
that. The world has come home to America, and America needs strong and wise
leadership in its relations with the rest of the world to protect our security
and improve our economy, and I think senators have some unique experience--I
certainly think I do, as a member of the Armed Services Committee--to bring to
this most important job.

GROSS: My guests are Joe and Hadassah Lieberman. They've written a new book
about the 2000 campaign trail. It's called "An Amazing Adventure." Joe
Lieberman, you were the first Jewish candidate on a presidential ticket. You
write in your book, `No one could predict how voters would take it. Would my
religion become a factor in a close race? Was it worth the risk to see if the
country was ready for a Jewish vice president?' You say that you suspected
that the fear of anti-Semitism would be greater than the actual anti-Semitism
you encountered. Did that prove to be true, and do you feel that you faced
any coded anti-Semitism, anti-Semitism that was kind of, you know, cloaked in
other language?

Sen. LIEBERMAN: No, I don't think I did. And I do think it did prove to be
true. It was, in that sense, a very validating, inspiring experience that,
you know, the promise of America, that we'll all get treated fairly, doesn't
matter who you are or where you started. You know, if you've got what it
takes to do the job, people will judge you on that basis. I felt that all
around the country, there was a rush of focus on my religion when I was first
selected, for obvious reasons. I was a first. But by the end of the
campaign, there was hardly a mention of my religion. And that's just the way
I wanted it to be. I wanted to be judged on my merits or demerits, and that's
the greatness of the American people. I think that's exactly what they did.
You know, people voted for what they thought was best for the future of the
country, not on the irrelevant question of the adjective that goes before the
important noun that describes me, which is American.

GROSS: It's really good to hear that you don't think you faced anti-Semitism
when you ran for vice president. The anti-Semitism factor has just changed a
bit since September 11th. We've seen a lot of Islamic extremists see the
United States as part of the Zionist conspiracy. Some extremists think the
Israelis are responsible for the World Trade Center attacks.

I want to read you something that was written on January 11th in The Daily
Telegraph of London in an article by David Rennie. He writes, `Even
commentators who profess no anti-Semitic beliefs have raised concerns about
whether a Jewish president might be a liability at a time of Middle Eastern
crisis and surging anti-Americanism in the Muslim world.' What's your
reaction to that?

Sen. LIEBERMAN: Well, I think better of the Muslim world and the Arab world
than to think that they will determine their relations with America based on
the religion or anything else of the president. If you're president of the
United States, the greatest power in the world, everyone else in the world
will deal with you based on your policies, not on your religion or gender or
race or anything else, and that's the key question. I mean, look, the United
States today, unfortunately, is much less respected and liked in the world
than we were two years ago. That has nothing to do with the religion of
President Bush. It has to do with his policies, the way in which the rest of
the world thinks he's followed too often a unilateralist or arrogant foreign
policy. And I think the world is much fairer than that commentary suggested.

I can tell you in my own career in the Senate, you know, I've spent a lot of
time, because I'm on the Armed Services Committee, concerned about our foreign
and defense policy, have established long relationships with leaders in the
Arab world; just visited the Middle East over the Christmas holidays, mostly
to see American troops abroad, but met with leaders in the Arab world and, you
know, was greeted with great warmth and respect as a friend, as an American
senator, as somebody who they understood was thinking about running for
president of the United States.

So I think that's really not a factor. Now look, I'm not talking about that
small group of extreme fanatics, like bin Laden, who hate anybody who's not
like him, hate Jews, hate Christians, hate Muslims who are not of his brand of
Islam.

GROSS: You say that you grew up without anti-Semitism and that most of your
friends weren't even Jewish when you were growing up. Hadassah Lieberman,
your parents are survivors of the Holocaust. They're from Prague, where you
were born. What did it mean to them to have your husband run for vice
president of the United States?

Mrs. LIEBERMAN: My father's not alive, and my mother, she was thrilled. She
knows that Joe's all about, and she knows he's capable, and they're with him.
So the truth is that my parents came to this country for the hope that it
offered them, the hope of democracy, of raising their two children in freedom
and, ultimately, having a son-in-law who's running for president. So for my
parents, I think the point is that 60-plus years ago, they ran away from
totalitarianism, and, you know, we're no longer there. We're in a free
democracy, and we have to be proud of it, and that was some of what I found
when we went across the country in 2000.

GROSS: My guests are Hadassah and Joe Lieberman. They've written a memoir
about the 2000 presidential campaign called "An Amazing Adventure." More
after a break. This is FRESH AIR.

(Soundbite of music)

GROSS: If you're just joining us, my guests are Joe and Hadassah Lieberman.
They've written a new book about the 2000 campaign trail. It's called "An
Amazing Adventure."

There's been a pretty rocky transition of power from the Democratic to
Republican majority in the Senate. As I record this on Wednesday morning, the
Democrats and Republicans have been unable to reach agreement on the split of
committee financing and office space, and until they do reach agreement,
Democrats remain in charge of the committees. Is this the most divided Senate
you've seen, Joe Lieberman?

Sen. LIEBERMAN: Unfortunately, there's been too much division over the 15
years that I've been in the Senate. But right now, this is a pretty serious
division, and it's too bad with the great crisis that we face as a country,
and, you know, the next election plays too much of a part in the way both
parties conduct themselves; whereas the people want us to get together and get
something done for the country, and Lord knows we've got a lot of unfinished
work to do on homeland security, on health care, on education and, most of all
right now, on the economy. So it's bad now. It's probably as bad as I've
seen it. But unfortunately, it's not uniquely bad in the 15 years I've been
in the Senate.

GROSS: You were one of the sponsors of the homeland security bill. How is
our homeland security coming, in your opinion? Not long ago, you said that
you thought that with the exception of new airline security, we're only
slightly safer than we were on September 11th? Do you still feel that way?

Sen. LIEBERMAN: I'm afraid that that is still my opinion, and it's one of the
reasons that I'm running for president. You know, within a matter of, oh,
three or four weeks after September 11th, I, together with two or three other
colleagues, including a Republican colleague in the Senate, Arlen Specter,
introduced a bill to create a Homeland Security Department. President Bush
was opposed to it for more than eight months, and then flip-flopped and came
out in favor of it. But we lost eight important months there in which we
could have better organized our defenses. They're very disorganized now, and
that disorganization is dangerous. It's not only common sense, it's our
constitutional responsibility to provide for the common defense, and that
today means a homeland defense, and we can't do this without being willing to
invest some money.

And this is something else I'm going to argue very strongly about President
Bush's priorities. In fact, he's trying now to get the Republicans in control
of Congress to cut back on the money that we should be spending to support
local firefighters, police officers and the Homeland Security Department, and
you're just not going to make America safer at home unless you're willing to
invest some money into it. So I think the president's priorities here are all
wrong, and as a result, the American people indeed are not much safer from
terrorist attack, I'm sorry to say, here at home than they were on September
11th.

GROSS: Joe Lieberman, in 1991, you co-sponsored with Senator John Warner of
Virginia the Senate resolution that authorized the first President Bush to go
to war against Saddam Hussein. After the war, you expressed your regret that
we ended the war without removing Saddam Hussein from power. In '97 and '98,
you worked with Senator Bob Kerrey, Senator John McCain and Trent Lott to
introduce the Iraq Liberation Act, which basically made regime change a part
of US policy, and I know that you support entering Iraq and overthrowing
Saddam Hussein now, and I think you've said that even if the UN Security
Council doesn't give its approval, we should go in anyways. Are you worried
about some of the unintended consequences, short term or long term, of a war
with Iraq, particularly if we're doing that war without the support of the UN
Security Council?

Sen. LIEBERMAN: Well, look, it's a complicated question. I'll try to give
you a relatively brief answer. John McCain and Bob Kerrey, Trent Lott and I
hoped with our legislation that we would have created the conditions in which
we were supporting Iraqi opposition to Saddam, so that by now, they would have
been in a position internally to overthrow him and liberate the Iraqi people
from his dictatorship and brutality, because they've probably suffered more
than anyone else from it. We're endangered by it. I think that we did the
right thing, the US did the right thing in going to the United Nations
Security Council, but we have a very strong feeling and we look at Iraq
through the lens of September 11th, and we don't want to look back and say, as
we did after September 11th, `I wish we had done something more decisive to
stop al-Qaeda before they struck us.'

So I think we have to reserve all options, and I do think in the current
context that we've allowed Saddam to confuse the world about what's happening
in Iraq. This is not like a police investigation, where we've got to find the
evidence. We know that he had chemical and biological weapons that were
capable of killing millions of people when he kicked out the UN inspectors in
1998. As Hans Blix of the UN said last week, Saddam still hasn't convinced or
even tried to convince the UN what he did with those weapons, and I've seen
classified American intelligence which convinces me that he still has them and
he's hiding them, and as long as that's true, the world is in danger. Most
particularly, his Persian Gulf neighbors, whose security is important to us,
are endangered by Saddam Hussein.

So, yes--and incidentally, at some point--and this is of the commander in
chief's choosing--president--if he doesn't get Security Council or to get
Security Council approval, will have to open up more of that classified
American intelligence information not only to the Security Council but to the
American people. And then to make the decision, if the Security Council does
not approve of--and Saddam doesn't disarm military action and change the
regime--whether we're prepared not to go it alone but to create our own
international coalition to do it. I'm convinced we'll never have to go it
alone. We shouldn't go it alone, but we won't have to.

GROSS: Are you concerned that if we go to war with Iraq at the same time that
we become more despised by our enemies, we may become more alienated from our
allies who don't support us in that war?

Sen. LIEBERMAN: That is a concern, but I hope and believe with proper
leadership and advocacy that the Bush administration can convince a
significant number of allies to support us, and I'd also say that strength in
leadership usually convinces people that a country like ours believes strongly
in what we're trying to do. I mean, we're doing something here for a
principle. We're taking on a responsibility that a lot of great powers
wouldn't take on because we worry that if we let Saddam go--you know, we've
spent 10 years trying to get him to keep the promise he made to the United
Nations at the end of the Gulf War. That's a matter of principle, the
strength of international law. It's also particularly a matter of the
security of his neighbors, and we're willing to take this fight on.

Now I think that if it has to be and we win it, as I'm convinced we will, it
will strengthen American leadership and it will change the dynamic in
currently conflicted parts of the world, including the Middle East, but only
if the Bush administration employs not just the sword but the plowshare, also
uses more economic aid and is willing to extend itself diplomatically to seize
the moment post-Iraq to bring about resolution of conflicts in places like the
Middle East.

GROSS: Joe and Hadassah Lieberman have written a new memoir about the 2000
presidential campaign called "An Amazing Adventure." They'll be back in the
second half of the show. I'm Terry Gross, and this is FRESH AIR.

(Credits)

GROSS: Coming up, religion and politics. We continue our conversation with
Senator Joseph Lieberman and his wife Hadassah. Also, a '60s civil rights
activist from the segregated South and her daughter, who grew up in integrated
neighborhoods, compare notes on race-related experiences. We talk with
Patricia Stephens Due and Tananarive Due about their memoir, "Freedom in the
Family."

(Soundbite of music)

GROSS: This is FRESH AIR. I'm Terry Gross, back with Joe and Hadassah
Lieberman. They've written a new memoir about the 2000 presidential campaign,
called "An Amazing Adventure." This week, Senator Lieberman announced he's
running for president.

The Democratic candidates for the presidential nomination will be appearing
together for the first time later this month at a fund-raising event
commemorating the 30th anniversary of Roe vs. Wade.

Sen. LIEBERMAN: Yes.

GROSS: Usually when politicians speak of their religion in relation to
abortion, religion is used to explain their stand against abortion. You are
an observant Jew. Is your religion guiding your decision, your stand on
abortion, and if so, what is it telling you?

Sen. LIEBERMAN: Yeah. You know, my religion, like so much else in my
life--my life experience, my education, my public service experience informs
my decisions, but it doesn't, you know, control them. I mean, my pro-choice
record is based on not only my sense of what is right and wrong generally, as
a theoretical or philosophical matter, but it is also my own expression of
what I believe is right for government and for me as a government leader. And
of course, here we have a historic Supreme Court decision, Roe vs. Wade, which
is the law of the land and sets a standard that I believe makes sense and that
we should follow.

Incidentally, this issue remains one in which there is a dramatic difference
between most Democrats and most Republicans, and certainly between this
administration, which has persistently tried to undercut the constitutional
right of a woman to make this choice, and Democrats who have persistently
supported that right.

GROSS: So are you saying that your stand on abortion, which is pro-choice, is
motivated by your religion, that you're taking that stand in spite of your
religion or that...

Sen. LIEBERMAN: Oh, you know, one of the...

GROSS: ...the two are in sync with each other?

Sen. LIEBERMAN: Yeah, I mean--well, no. Of course, I'm running for
president, not for chief theologian, so you get a lot of different points of
view in my religion and others, most other religions, on how their religion
affects their belief about a very personal issue like abortion. So I say it
may have formed my general sense of right and wrong, but, you know, my record
here is as a public official, it's a long-time consistent record and it's
ultimately what the campaign for presidency is all about.

GROSS: Hadassah Lieberman, is abortion and the right to have an abortion an
important issue for you?

Mrs. LIEBERMAN: Well, I think it's important to give people the right to
choose. What I personally believe, or what my husband personally believes, is
our belief, so it's really irrelevant to the discussion, in the sense that if
you're pro-choice, you're pro-choice.

GROSS: When you say beliefs, you mean your religious beliefs or just your
personal beliefs about abortion are irrelevant?

Mrs. LIEBERMAN: Well, I think personal beliefs, when you're representing
people and it comes to something that's so personal and so private, I don't
think it's in the public forum.

GROSS: So you don't feel the need to talk about what you personally think
about abortion...

Mrs. LIEBERMAN: Not really.

GROSS: ...but you do feel the need to uphold the Supreme Court decision.

Mrs. LIEBERMAN: I feel the--yes, there's a need to uphold that decision and
to give women free choice.

GROSS: And if the decision was somehow reversed, would you feel the need to
uphold the reversal of the decision?

Mrs. LIEBERMAN: No. I just--you know, we're not dealing with that. Thank
God we've got the choice right now and that's where we are. So why put up a
theoretical? It's irrelevant. It's not going to happen. We're going to have
to make sure that pro-choice is available for women.

Sen. LIEBERMAN: Can I try an interpretation of my wife, because we've had
this discussion. She doesn't like it when people press me or her about the
impact of what somebody thinks our religious doctrine is on a public decision,
and I think that's what she's saying, that that question is a personal,
private one. That is the impact of the religion. Ultimately, we want to be
judged on our public record.

GROSS: Well, taking religion out of the equation, do you feel equally
uncomfortable just talking about your personal feelings about abortion, or
maybe religion enters into those personal feelings, which makes it difficult
to talk about.

Sen. LIEBERMAN: No, I mean, I think that our society has made the right
decision on this as reflected by the Supreme Court decision, and that the
choice ought to be there, but that we also as a society ought to be trying, as
President Clinton used to say, to make abortions as safe, legal and rare as
possible, and that's--you know...

Mrs. LIEBERMAN: And respectful to people who have different ideas,
personally. We need to respect one another. That's something that I think
we've lost a lot these days. You know, we each have our views and yet, you
know, we need to respect the other's view. That's, I think, the problem we
have worldwide.

GROSS: OK. Well, I want to thank you both very much for talking with us.
Thank you.

Mrs. LIEBERMAN: Well, thank you.

Sen. LIEBERMAN: Thanks, Terry. It was a very interesting discussion. I wish
you well and look forward to talking to you again.

GROSS: Joe and Hadassah Lieberman have written a new memoir about the 2000
presidential campaign, called "An Amazing Adventure."

Coming up, a mother and daughter compare notes on the civil rights movement.
This is FRESH AIR.

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *

Interview: Patricia Stephens Due and her daughter, Tananarive
Due, discuss their participation in the civil rights movement and
the book they co-authored, "Freedom in the Family"
TERRY GROSS, host:

My guests are a mother and daughter who have written a new memoir comparing
their experiences of the civil rights movement. Patricia Stephens Due grew up
in segregated Florida. In 1960, when she was a student at Florida A&M
University she joined CORE, the Congress of Racial Equality, and participated
in her first civil rights action. It was a sit-in at a segregated Woolworth's
lunch counter. After she was arrested, she and four of the protesters refused
to pay the fine, insisting on serving their sentences, to clog up the jail and
bring national attention to their cause. It was the first so-called jail-in.
She was arrested in several subsequent protests and has remained an activist.
She and her husband raised their children in integrated neighborhoods. In
fact, they were the first African-American family in a couple of neighborhoods
they moved to.

Patricia's daughter, Tananarive Due, went to private, predominantly white
schools until the fourth grade when she enrolled in a predominantly
African-American public school where she had her first black teacher.
Tananarive Due is a journalist and novelist. Her new book with her mother,
Patricia Stephens Due, is called "Freedom in the Family."

Patricia Stephens Due, when you were in the civil rights movement in the '60s,
one cop threw a tear gas canister right in your face. He recognized you as
one of the leaders, one of the main activists in this protest, and that tear
gas canister went off in your face. It affected your eyes permanently. You
have to wear dark glasses indoors as well as outdoors a good deal of the time.
So your children couldn't help but notice that you had this, like, permanent
damage. What did you tell them about it? Did you--What moral did you want
them to get out of it, that, you know, you can be permanently impaired by
activism? I mean, what--How did you want to tell them about this without it
being too frightening? What moral did you want them to get?

Ms. PATRICIA STEPHENS DUE: Well, from the time they were very young, I was
wearing these dark glasses indoors and outdoors, and there weren't many
questions asked then. But they learned at a very early age that we had been
foot soldiers, actually, in a war, heaped on us by our own country, and that
there were many wounds, and I had one of the wounds that was visible. But
they also knew that there were many wounds that you could not see. There were
so many emotional wounds. As I think about that day when this tear gas was
thrown in my face, there were many people there who were tear-gassed, and as I
was led away by a man because I could not see, right after it happened, who
led me to a church. He said he had been in the Army. `Don't rub your eyes.
Put this handkerchief over your eyes.' As I sat in that church, I could hear
all of the screams of the other students. So what you have to say to your
children is that what you did was important and you had to do it because you
had to make a difference; and in my case, I had to be free.

GROSS: Patricia Stephens Due, you grew up in the segregated South. And,
Tananarive Due, you grew up in integrated neighborhoods. Patricia, I'd like
to know if you intentionally wanted to bring up your children in integrated
neighborhoods, whether that was a goal or whether that's the way it worked
out?

Ms. STEPHENS DUE: No, actually, that was not a goal, although I think it's
important for people to get to know each other. But they ended up in
integrated neighborhoods because when my husband and I went house-hunting,
there weren't any housing available in black middle-class neighborhoods.
Because it was so difficult for blacks to get loans to buy homes that usually
once they bought a home they kept it forever. So because we could not find
housing in black neighborhoods, we just started looking for housing in other
neighborhoods.

Now just to back up a little bit, I was in Quincy, Florida, when Tananarive
was three, and my husband and I left because we felt that she needed to be in
school and there were no schools available in Quincy at that time for black
children. So we moved to Miami. And I tried to find a school for Tananarive,
and we had to take her with us from school to school. And one of the most
painful things that ever happened to me was because of our hunt for a school
for Tananarive. School after school in Miami, Florida, said, `Whites only.'
So after a few days of having this--of having heard this, Tananarive felt that
she had found a solution. She went home, she covered herself with baby
powder, her entire body with baby powder so she could be white, so she could
go to school, being three years old, not realizing that being white meant more
than just using something white on your skin, because actually Tananarive
thought her grandmother was white because she was a fair-skinned person. So
her solution was to cover herself with baby powder and she would be white.

Ms. TANANARIVE DUE: And I told her `Mommy, can I go to school now?' Because
I thought `OK, this problem has been solved.'

GROSS: So, Tananarive, for your mother, this was very upsetting. What's your
memory of that experience?

Ms. DUE: I absolutely remember covering myself with the baby powder, but I
don't remember a feeling of hurt or rejection associated with going with her
from school to school. So I think it's just that, you know, in a child's way
you come across a situation and instead of thinking poorly of myself,
necessarily, you know, I didn't think I was inferior to anyone at that time,
I'm pretty sure, but I just thought `OK, this is sort of an aesthetic problem.
I can put the powder on and then, you know, everything will be fine.'

GROSS: If you're just joining us, my guests are Patricia Stephens Due, who is
a civil rights activist, a long-term civil rights activist, since the early
1960s, and Tananarive Due, her daughter, who is a journalist and a novelist.
They've written a mother-daughter memoir of the civil rights movement called
"Freedom in the Family."

Tananarive, your mother grew up in a segregated city. You grew up in
integrated neighborhoods. What were some of the things you were up against in
integrated neighborhoods? Like you said you were called an Oreo. What were
some other problems that you faced in integrated neighborhoods?

Ms. DUE: I really felt caught in the middle as a young person. It was
profoundly painful for me to finally have the exposure on some level I had
deeply craved with a lot of black children only to discover that I was
immediately outcast because of their perceptions of me either by the way I
dressed, the way I spoke, my attitude toward my schoolwork; I mean, all these
things that I really had gotten from my parents because we were a very
education-oriented home. Here I was with this strong sense of history and
strong sense of having come from a civil rights family and the very people,
you know, in my mind that my parents had sacrificed for were rejecting me; and
that was just on one side.

On the other side, we lived in mostly white neighborhoods. Very often we were
the pioneering first black family in a lot of neighborhoods, and at one point
one of our neighbors threatened to my mother that if he saw us playing in his
yard he was going to shoot us with his shotgun. Now my parents never told us
this, but there were people from our church, which is Unitarian church--there
were white members of the church sitting outside in the car to patrol the
house at night in case someone might try to do harm to us. And then we moved
to another neighborhood, and then I became more aware of the problem because
my parents had really tried to shield us in the previous neighborhood, but
when we moved, it was obvious that people had been throwing tomatoes against
the house, that people were throwing rocks against the house. Someone put
rocks in my father's gas tank.

And that's when I became intimately familiar with the N-word because young
children, as young as five years old, walking down the street would call me
`Nigger.' My first experience was one of the first days I was in the new
neighborhood walking down the street feeling carefree and a teen-age boy came
walking past and muttered--just loudly enough for me to hear--`If there's one
thing I can't stand,' he said, `it's a four-eyed Nigger.' And I was just
shocked. Because I knew--I mean, the word `Nigger,' to me, had all sorts of
connotations from a long time ago, from the civil rights era, from slavery,
from, you know, Knight Riders and burning crosses, and I--it really had not
occurred to me that that would be the sentiment where we lived, but it
actually became fairly commonplace for me that I was called `Nigger' quite
often, to the point where I realized after a couple of years--I was about 10
years old at that time--by the time I was 12 or 13, I noticed that I had a
tendency to walk with my eyes facing the sidewalk. I didn't want to make eye
contact. I didn't want to draw attention to myself because I learned to
expect outbursts from every person I passed.

GROSS: If you're just joining us, my guests are Patricia Stephens Due, a
longtime civil rights activist, and her daughter, Tananarive Due, a journalist
and novelist. Their new mother-daughter memoir about the fight for civil
rights is called "Freedom in the Family."

Patricia Stephens Due, when you were in prison back in 1960 after
participating at a lunch counter sit-in to integrate the lunch counter, your
father wrote you a letter, and I'm going to read an excerpt of it. He said,
`I know that you feel that you were doing a grand and noble thing. Remember
this, if either of you get into trouble,' meaning you or your sister, `if
either of you get into trouble, the very people you are trying to help would
never lend you a hand. The facts are really this: about 10 or 15 percent of
our race are just about ready for what you're trying to accomplish. The other
85 or 90 percent don't care and are not at all interested and would do nothing
to aid the cause.'

Then your father warned that you could be expelled from school and that he
could lose his job because he works for the county and the state. What impact
did that letter have on you?

Ms. STEPHENS DUE: At the time, really, probably, none. My father had been
my civics teacher. My father was a person who had taught me I had the
responsibility to be involved and I had the right to be a first-class citizen.
So as I found that letter a few years ago and reread it, it was really as if I
was reading that letter for the first time. But hearing it read and having
read it myself in recent years really bring tears to my eyes because my
parents, like parents of the other persons who were involved, suffered so
much. In another letter, he talked about how my mother--he was afraid my
mother would have a nervous breakdown. But I wanted to be free, and the
others in jail wanted to be free and even--our parents, our grandparents, and
no one else could stop us. We were going to do what we thought had to be done
in order to be free.

GROSS: Did you assume that your children would get involved in the civil
rights movement and would put their lives on the line the way you had, and did
you want them to do that?

Ms. STEPHENS DUE: No, no. I did not assume that they would have to do that.

GROSS: You thought it would be all over by the time they were grown up?
That...

Ms. STEPHENS DUE: And no--well, I guess I was a little idealistic on several
fronts. In 1954, with the Brown decision about school desegregation, May
17th, I thought in September all the schools would be desegregated, all the
children would be sharing the equipment and having the updated books and all.
I was wrong. 2003 we still have some problems.

GROSS: Tananarive, did you expect to be a part of the civil rights movement,
and was there a movement, an obvious movement, to be a part of when you became
a college student?

Ms. DUE: Yes. When I--I went to Northwestern University in 1983, and I
really felt as if I'd been a little civil rights activist in training. You
know, there's that age when you're an adolescent when you're just so full of
fire, just ready to make--to help change the world. So I went to the campus,
and it turned out to be a fairly conservative campus, so the days of--all the
pictures I'd seen from Kent State and all of the civil rights demonstrations
on college campuses during the '60s didn't quite match the picture of what I
found when I went to college. But there was one incident that was very
telling. The anti-apartheid movement was really the major movement on
campuses during that time. And I found myself sort of really accidentally
part of a student takeover.

I'd just been attending a rally and feeling stirred by speeches. I'd grown up
all my life going to NAACP conventions, hearing these stirring speeches, and
here were these speeches again, and I felt the fire and we were all shouting
`Divest now! Divest now!' And all of a sudden, we were inside the
administration building, but when we were warned that we would be arrested,
because the police were coming, I actually didn't stay. I thought I would
stay. I believed I would stay. But somehow my college roommate called me and
reminded me I had a dinner date that night. And I ended up slinking out, sort
of with my tail between my legs.

And I called my mother really feeling apologetic that night, saying, `Mom,
there was a demonstration, I could have been arrested, but I left beforehand.'
I thought she would be disappointed in me. And, in fact, what she said was
`Tananarive, I'm so glad you didn't get arrested. I went to jail so you
wouldn't have to.' And since that time, I've really had to sort of examine
where I think my place can be, and as a writer, in particular, working with
my mother, both of us researching this book together, I've learned that there
are many, many ways that we can create an ongoing civil rights movement even
though we don't have the marches today and the Jim Crow signs.

GROSS: My guests are Tananarive Due and her mother, Patricia Stephens Due.
Their new memoir is called "Freedom in the Family."

We'll talk more after a break. This is FRESH AIR.

(Soundbite of music)

GROSS: My guests are Patricia Stephens Due, a longtime civil rights activist,
and her daughter Tananarive Due, a journalist and a novelist. They've written
a new memoir comparing notes on the civil rights movement called "Freedom in
the Family."

Tananarive, your two sisters married white men. Your husband is
African-American, but his first wife was white, so your stepchild is
half-white. I'm wondering if having interracial children in the family is
making you rethink what the meaning of race is?

Ms. DUE: I think the next generation it will be interesting to see how they
grapple with this concept of race. You have talk about kids who want to call
themselves multiracial, for example. And, you know, in some cases it's
because they want to honor both sets of parents, and I think in many cases,
because our society is still so racist, that there's an eagerness to distance
yourself from that label, which has been so painful and which has been used as
a brand so much in the past. And I am curious to see how the next generation
will grapple with that. But it hasn't shifted my feelings or thoughts about
race because, as my mother mentioned, her mother was very fair, my father's
mother was very fair. We have always included all colors of the rainbow
within that group that is called black.

Ms. STEPHENS DUE: Since the time of slavery and segregation, as you look at
different communities, you see all colors in the black race, totally rainbow
colors. So we've always had these colors, but now it's by choice. It's by
choice, but it's not making me think differently about race.

GROSS: Well, I've got one last question for you both, and I'm not sure you'll
be able to answer this, but if you could, if you could each describe one thing
you learned about the other through the process of writing this book together.
Tananarive, you want to start it off? Anything you learned about your mother
through writing this book together?

Ms. DUE: I was quite shocked to learn that my mother was actually a normal
kid for a time of her life because...

GROSS: As opposed to what?

Ms. DUE: Well, you know, I think I had the idea that she and her sister went
to college with the notion that they were going to become civil rights
activists and help change the world. And it's really only in the research of
this book and in talking to her and in reading more about it that I discovered
that my mother and her sister, like a lot of these kids in these colleges,
really went just to get their education. The civil rights movement landed
on them, and it was both created by, but also just landing on top of them. So
the first two years my mother was in school, she went to Roy Hamilton concerts
and James Brown concerts, and she practiced her trumpet, and she did all the
normal things any college student does. And then as a junior, it all changed
very abruptly when she was arrested and was part of that jail-in. So I was
actually very surprised to realize that there is an alternate universe in
which my mother would not have been that same activist.

GROSS: Patricia Stephens Due, anything you learned about your daughter from
writing this book together?

Ms. STEPHENS DUE: Well, the thing that I learned about her and the thing that
she helped me the most with was to learn how to relax. And our personalities
are very different. I'm always serious, too serious many times. But writing
this book with Tananarive, she showed me we could relax a bit and still do the
book. And, in fact, if she had not shown me that, I don't know if we would
have been able to finish this book because it was really very stressful. So
she gave me a gift. She took my hand and said, `Let's relax. Let's go to a
movie. Let's find that dude ranch you're always talking about, those horses
of years past. Let's just relax a bit and then we'll go into our work.' And
I learned to compromise. I didn't mind if she came a little late. I didn't
mind if she didn't want to work 23 1/2 hours a day. I said, `OK, we can work
18 hours a day.' So I learned to compromise.

GROSS: Tananarive, I see what you were up against when you were growing up.

Ms. DUE: Boy, oh, boy. And, really, it's funny when you go back to her
stories from the movement, you know, the people would sneak around her because
she was directing the project and there were very strict rules. And everyone
thought my mother was bossy, so, yeah, she's quite a handful, but she's a very
strong and courageous woman, and I am so blessed to have had her as my mother.

GROSS: Well, it's great to speak with you both. I thank you both for talking
with us.

Ms. DUE: Thank you.

Ms. STEPHENS DUE: And thank you.

GROSS: Tananarive Due and Patricia Stephens Due are the authors of the new
memoir "Freedom in the Family."

(Credits)

GROSS: I'm Terry Gross.
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