I'm Jonathan K. Parton, welcome to K. Parton. Drew Gilpin Faust was the first female president

of Harvard University and is a noted historian, particularly American Civil War history.

In necessary trouble growing up at mid-century, Dr. Faust puts her Civil War scholarship

into greater context by turning her gaze on herself. In this conversation,

first recorded for Washington Post Live on September 20, Dr. Faust chronicles her journey

from an upbringing that tried to steer her into being a southern bell to civil rights activism

in college that took her to Selma. When I saw the heads being bloodied on the Pettus Bridge,

when I heard Martin Luther King say that Americans should come and bear witness,

when I thought about the people I had gotten to know the summer before young African American

activists in the South who had been my companions during the preceding summer's activities.

I just thought to myself, if you don't do this now, how do you live with yourself for the rest

of your life? How do you explain not stepping up and acting on behalf of what you believe in?

I was touched by by your book, literally from the first page. It's not even

formally in the book. It is literally the first page and it is a copy of a letter

that you sent to President Eisenhower in 1956, like thundering about why you as a white kid

should have more advantage and be able to go to school simply because you're a white.

And I bring this up, the fact that this is even before the very first formal page of your book is

because it sets up a dichotomy as the right word, but you get your civil rights passion there

in that 1956 letter, but your first chapter is about the passing of your mother on Christmas Eve.

And that's where I want to begin because you struggle to connect with your mom. She often told

you, and this is a quote, it's a man's world, sweetie, and the sooner you figure that out,

the happier you'll be. And that sort of encapsulates how she raised you and how she wanted you to be

...