europeans came in and said excuse me, we would like to do a lessa good job with your topsol if you don't mind. so until we are able to eventually get that right, i think we need to keep having that conversation. >> where the deer and the antelope play, the fifth subtitle the observations of one who loves to walk outside. thank you for being on booktv with us. >> we are providing lower income students access to affordable internet so homework can just be homework. connect to compete. >> along with of these other

television providers giving you a front row seat to democracy. >> good morning and welcome to the history and biology stage at the national book festival. i am the principal deputy librarian of congress. the theme of this year's book festival books brings us together so let me say how wonderful it is to see you here together in person for the first time g since we gathered here in 2019. [applause] we are thrilled the viewers are also joining us so welcome. c-span will be here throughout the day recording the events on the stage. at. this stage has a long histoy

of being one of the most popular stages. today you will hear from officers thatul delved into the role women play in the civil rights movement, the improbable history of america's relationship, a more complete accounting of the revolution and a strange history behind the source of the river and many other topics. you learn a lot here at the stage and we hope you will visit us at the library of congress to do research about the subjects you're interested and to experience the beauty of the thomas jefferson building or attend one of our live in the library events. on most thursday nights, we keep the jefferson building and all exhibits open until 8 p.m. and host dynamic events for the visitors. september 15th, academy award-winning actress francis

and radio and podcast producers the kitchen sisters will join for a conversation with librarian of congress doctor carla hayden and september 202nd, mosaic theatre willte present if preview of the plays titled the thrill trilogies and will also talk about the new novel lessons. the first event today features the undersecretary for museums and culture of the smithsonian institution in conversation with the pulitzer prize winner about his new biography of jim calf lit by lightning. sit back and enjoy, have a wonderful day with the library of congress national book festival. thank you. [applause] >> good morning everyone and thank you for joining us. it's my honor to be here today

with david. let's get right to it. so why did you choose him as a subject in the related books? he also represented the mythology of competition and success of american life of what it takes and what it costs and ballplayer and he rose and very few are but he was in the way he lived his life and the way he died delivering humanitarian aid. for what seemed to me the natural part of the trilogy in that he not only was a stunning

athlete but offered me the opportunity through his life to explore the native american experience from 1887 to his death and 53 such a critical year. it really means a lot to me. >> so as you point out they were important in the policy and you describe that in your book. >> 1887, i don't know how these things happen but the year jim crow was born was one of the crucial years in the government policy towards native american and in that it was the passage of the act that was really an effort t to take away the whole sense of properties that native americans had and send them to small parcels of land that were even then taken away from the

themand had to prove over 25 ye. that was part of this long process. 1953 the determination policy was enacted. >> the reservation that luckily that onene didn't prevail. >> if i started reciting all the things i didn't know, we would be here until midnight. >> i start the book with a parallel because they are both from the same tribes and from

the samed clan. it's unclear whether he was a descendent but there's some indication that the great-niece was his grandmother. in any case, jim thorpe's mother often told him he was the reincarnation of blackhawk and what i found fascinating is a way to explore both of these famous men, native americans were treated by white society. in 1833 after the 1832 war there was a massacre over the military

chase it killed many of them. three future presidents were involved in that. abraham lincoln of course was in the illinois militia and zachary taylor was fighting against rablackhawk and took them down o st. louis after he was captured. once it was captured, he was takene east and he became sort f an iconic figure. huge crowds would come out and

that represented the sort of notion of being romanticized and diminished at the same time. i found the exact trip to cincinnati and pittsburgh and washington, d.c. was paralleled after the greatest moment of his career after he won the olympic gold medal he had taken on parades to new york and philadelphia and he wasn't a prisoner of war. they were both sort of equally romanticized and mythologized. >> so, path lit by lightning. >> born in may of 87, the story is there was a thunderstorm and

he was a twin which is another thing people don't realize he had a twin brother charlie who died at age nine. anyway, the night they were born along the canadian river in oklahoma there was a thunderstorm and jim thorpe was given the name that is often translated but i also solve a more poetic translation and as soonon as possible that i thougt that illuminates everything, and that is how i chose the title of my book. >> so jim thorpe is like a great many native americans at that time in history raised in a very difficult circumstance but eventually ends up at the carlisle industrial school.

he kept running away from both of those individually, his father who was kind of rough and had five lives and 18 children altogether and the wife he was married to at that point she didn't want anything to do with them sowa they sent him as far away as carlisle, the carlisle indian industrial school which was the flagship government school. it was founded in 1879 only three years after the battle of little big horn. most fathers fought against many of the indian wars in the 18th century and luther standing there was one of those who later

wrote a book about the experiences and said he thought he was going east today to show his bravery and die. he thought he was saving the indians from the genocide and that the only way they could survive was by being forcibly and thoroughly assimilated in the culture into late society. it was a cruel and traumatic process for many of those who were sent there. many of them did literally die. the most daunting experience of my research was going up to

carlisle where much of the school is still there although it's now the army war college and the indian cemetery is there and to look at those crosses and gravesites of young indians who were taken there against their will and died in the process was haunting. so that's school of about 8,000 young native americans over the course. >> it seems in autoplay's. >> it does. it wasn't really a college. it was an industrial school, yet it had a fabulous football team thatfa played against the footbl powers of the era that wasn't alabama and lsu and oklahoma. itah was harvard and princeton d

yale and west point. as a part of the process that was this eastern elite sport would help the athletes so they had a brilliant football coach, warner was taking these great athletes and devising this system he was one of the early innovators. it was only legalized in 1905 and different formations. all these fascinating formations and he also loved to develop in

that early era of football, warner devised a kind of kangaroo pocket nobody knew where it was. [laughter] he also imagined us today way up on they sidelines he would go around thend opposition bench ad cam out the other side to catch the pass. that was football of the era but yes carlisle was playing against the great teams of college football in that era into beating them. including famously the team. >> i considered that game in november the greatest act of athletic retribution and history. it was on the plains of west stpoint and it was the indians against the army. and it was a level playing field

that last. it was jim thorpe and just a fabulous carlisle indian team against the west point team that had a dwight eisenhower playing linebacker, omar bradley on defense and the indians 127-6. eisenhower and one of his teammates, i mean, football has vialways been a violent sport so eisenhower would acknowledge because he was the greatest in america and they had one play they had high and low and he would lay low on the ground but he got up, kept playing and soon knocked dwight eisenhower out of the game. eisenhower would later say i

tackled him, beat him once in the whole game. [laughter] >> so that came just a few months after stockholm. how did jim thorpe end up in stockholm? >> he was the greatest all-around athlete so not only playing football for carlisle but also their trakstar. and again the track team was also dominant so much so jim thorpe who could compete in events of all sorts, the motto of the olympics involves jumping, running and throwing weights and he could do all those things. he and his teammate who was a long-distance runner could beat entire track teams by

themselves. so both of them competed to go to stockholm and they were selected. they went over to their coach. jim thorpe dominated imagine competing in 17 events which is what hein did because it was a shorter version of that and they competed in the high jump and long jump and he won two gold medals during that period and during one of the competition he couldn't find his shoes. i couldn't document that anyway he misplaced them probably so he had to find some shoes to wear to complete and they found a mismatched pair one was bigger than the other and there is

literally photos having to wear two extraat thick pairs of socks to make it work and he still won the event. at the end of those olympics, the sponsors of those olympics was handing out the metals and when he came up he said you are the most wonderful athletes of the world to which the mythology he responded thanks which is funny but it's also a little bit condescending in a way that he didn't know any better he really just said thank you but he was the greatest athlete in the world we will say he was. >> for one track f meet, they arrived at the stadium and it

was just pop warner and jim thorpe. >> he was an incredibly innovative and brilliant coach but not a reputable human being. in coaching he became so famous at carlisle and then where he worked at the national championships and then at stanford that he is in the college football hall of fame. some of you might know theea league but when you study what he did with carlisle, it's not so good. that's putting it mildly. there was an investigation in

1914 and among the many things that found was that he was betting on games, selling tickets and lobbies and mentally and physically abusing his players who turned on him at that point and then when his metals were taken away from him. >> talk a little more about that. in early 1913, the not so secret fact comes to light. >> they played in the eastern carolina league. for about two dollars a game or $30 a month and schools of

college athletes were playing baseball then but using an alias. so dwight eisenhower played in the league under the name wilson. it was cold the pocahontas league because everybody was named john smith. [laughter] jim thorpe played under the name jim thorpe. as hide it and to his name was in the papers for those two summers through the several key factors here, one is all of the powerful figures involved in losing the metals knew exactly what he was doing.

they had been sending them to play baseballle for years whose close associate in pennsylvania was the scout who brought jim and his teammates down and met with him at least twice in the period when he was away from school playing baseball once they went hunting in oklahoma together you would think he would ask why aren't you in school right now. anyway, after the story broke that heye played baseball the story broke in massachusetts in january of 1913. a reporter heard one of the former managers was in town in massachusetts and talked about how he managed him so it became

a big deal, got to new york. warner was asked about it, denied he knew anything about it. the head of the committee and on the boardrd of advisors on the athletic association he knew and would write about it to save his reputation. the superintendent he lied and said he didn't know about it. he even wrote the letter of conception and basically made the argument in his words he was an ignorant who didn't know any

better. as word of the other people who ran easy target. the easy aspects one is technical that in the olympic rules it's said to have a challenge it had to be filed within 30 days of the end of the olympics. the story broke six months afterwards which sweden even said when sullivan and warner and everybody else but it persisted but it was more reprehensible for the whole motion that was a sham. another member of the 1912 olympics team was george s

patton the future general who competed i which was a group of military events, targeted shooting, fencing, equestrian paid by the u.s. army to practice for those events is that amateurism or professionalism. it had nothing to do with the events that he was in. the entire swedish team was on leave for their jobs to train for the olympics but they are gettingg paid for their jobs to do that. many ways he was the fall guy. >> he competed in the 1912 olympics. >> the future president of the u.s. olympics committee and the

committee for decades i always envision him as a sort of fatcat traveling the world staying in posh hotels. he was a mediocre one but competed in the olympics against jim thorpe and he defeated them so overwhelmingly that theit amateurism it doesn't matter whether you win or what nation you are from. he was so humiliated he quit. anyway, that was the beginning of that relationship which then rose to power. he consistently denied and refused to give back the record. >> so after the olympics, these

days y you're out the decathlon and making money from endorsements. why didn't that happen for jim thorpe? >> not quite. baseball player today signed for 240 million. jim thorpe after he left the amateur status signed to play baseball in the new york giants for $5,000. he later played professional baseball making about $300 a game. he was never able to make the money out of the athletics as modern athletes to a do so that was always the struggle but he was still world-famous. one of the reasons he was slain to play baseball for the giants was because at the end of that season they were going on a world tour with the chicago

white sox. they went to japan and china and philippines and australia, egypt and europe. there is a lot of famous american baseball figures on that tour including the manager of the giants and the white sox and a lot of hall of fame errors. wherever they went everybody wanted to see jim thorpe and even as he lost the metals, he never lost that fame and world.ion from the >> one of the things that struck me i had no idea how mobile he was. he sold the world in 1913 and all those places and he saw it again and at age 57.

he wanted to participate in world war ii. of his sons they were all involved in the military he wanted to join them. the army wouldn't take him even though he was great with rifles, so he joined the merchant marines and went through the canal for the second time. after his athletic career was over, he was struggling to find footing. he took jobs ranging from at one point digging ditches in los angeles during the heat of the depression to serving as a greeter at bars and taverns to working for the chicago athletic

youth association to the most interesting period i think is when he was in los angeles on the fringes of hollywood studios and was an actor in about 70 movies. he was directed by john ford and frank cap and acting with all the famous hollywood stars of the era. but most importantly, in that period he sort of found his identity again in the leader of native americans and really helped organize them to get their jobs and he said irs and he became the spokesman for that as well as fighting to get the sort of stereotypes removed. >> and a phenomenon that hasn't been entirely invented yet. >> a lion in the book that

really rain huge for me, you pointed out the duality of honoring the ancestry while performing as a white man's version ofof an indian is the situation that jim had dealt with his entire adult life. >> he certainly didat at carlis. the carlisle indian team was the most popular team traveling. they didn't play at home, they played out all the other places. so here you have these exotic indians playing against all these teams for a school trying to rid them. then in the professional ranks, he playedd for two years for unbelievably there was an nfl team based on the small town in ohio and they would have to perform at halftime all these addresses into different road tricks and all this. it was a constant in his life

the expectation of the stereotypes. he andnd his teammates understod that dichotomy and what was going on trying to take advantage of it in different ways. >> that became clear to people like me what they were doing and going now you compared it at one point why would they do that but as you think about it and know the circumstances they were living at the time and how people viewed indians began to see it and understand it a little bit so i thought that was insightful. we are going to run out of time and i don't want to miss the question how did burt lancaster end up playing jim thorpe?

[laughter] >> he was 37-years-old, this is 1951. it started burt lancaster and it was directed by michael better known for directing casablanca. in that era even today it's starting to happen with other great things that are organically native american so it was burt lancaster so he is storing for starters but he was a good athlete i will give him that so she couldn't do

polevault. but he did a lot of the athletic parts of it himself and trained for it. it's a sympathetic movie. many people i've talked to said i read about it in fourth grade or i saw the movie and that got me fascinated in his life so to that extent, great but the movie itself like most pics is completely wrong. it has these big mountains in oklahoma but it's also wrong in a crucial respect which is the narrator of the movie is pop warner the white savior, the one who comes to try to shake jim out of his trauma and if only

you would listenen to me and assimilated into society you wouldn't have the problems later in your life and just so wrong i can't get past that to see the other side of the movie that is sympathetic. >> and pretty much every other at the time heard the same thing said to them so how did jim thorpe's body and the presiding in a mountain valley? >> this is another unbelievable story he died of a heart attack in california. he was living with his third wife and had told his children he wanted to be buried in

oklahoma. he was brought back to oklahoma, his coffin was. there was the beginning of a sacrifice ceremony, very important spirituals armani and he took his coffin away because she was unhappy with how oklahoma was going to honor him and eventually put him up to the highest bidder so she took the coffin to tow the site and tried to get pittsburgh and philadelphia interested. she was in philadelphia watching televisionon and saw a report about these small struggling towns in theto pocono mountainsn pennsylvania and developed this scheme she said if you merge and rename your selves, you can have him. she was like the music man not only can you have him at the

hospital, i might open atp style motel, the pro football hall of fame none of which happened but they did change the name to jim crow pennsylvania and they did get his body. nothing against the people there. it's notbo their fault, really, but he doesn't belong there. it's a nice little park on the side of the road in a place he never stepped foot his entire life. >> that tost this day they resit returning his body. >> it went to court and filed suit based on the museum act bringing the artifacts back toac where they belong. they won the first federal court then they overturned it, supreme court upheld the appeals courts the the legal part of it is over

and jim thorpe pennsylvania is taking some of his fame from him being there. they are not going to give him back it would take an act of integrity encouraged to be returned to where he belonged in oklahoma and laid-off see it i t happening. >> so jim thorpe continues. >> it was pretty good timing. only last month in july of this year were all the records finally restored after a long campaign on the olympic committee, robert wheeler the

earliest chroniclers many people were fighting for this forever and it finally happened 110 years too late. thee story here you had the poe going to canadaa to apologize fr the way the catholic church handled indian boarding schools over the years and we have a secretary of interior who made it one of the clauses to study what happened in the schools and the trauma that ensued. >> and much of the boarding schools now are closed, and good riddance. those that are a man are run by tribes themselves and so it is a fascinating legacy because there were as you point out the

failings for obvious and yet the students found a way to preserve your and make something of it. >> they became the lawyers and activistss. >> i will say this i went to a boarding school but -- i had relativesla that went with the native people who survived this period that's what they had to do to survive the period and didin so many ways lay the groundwork for the current generations who are doctors and lawyers and museum administratorsva and scholars so we owe them a profound debt.

>> that is the central thread of my book, perseverance and figuring out how to survive. >> i would ask you if you can quote the daughter when addressing the question whether jim thorpe was great. >> first of all i thought it was the father not this mythological figure but i'm terrible at remembering things precisely. she basically took the dictionary definition and in every possible definition of that. all the obstacles he faced and

he was constantly on the move but what he did he was the best at what he did and he fit the definition of greatness. >> we are at the end of our time but i want to congratulate you on a wonderful book. i would point out that it was produced during covid which is quite extraordinary but also to thank you very sincerely for such an insightful and sympathetic treatment of jim thorpe and the native people of this period because it was a particularly dark time in many respects and too little known and written about so thank you.

>> i can't say how much that means. thank you. >> joining us now at the washington convention center after the ivory tower falls how college broke the american dream and believe our politics and how to fix it. that's a lot of subtitles. >> i wrote it myself so you can blame me for the run-on. >> before we get to the topic of the book who should go to