Anne C. Bailey, author of The Weeping Time, talks to John Fugelsang

this is Sirius XM insight you're listening to tell me everything with John Fugelsang what a pleasure to welcome professor and C Bailey to Sirius XM insight well thank you and I have to say this subject of your book might not seem like the ideal thing to discuss at Christmas but if Christmas is at its

core about humanity then I have to praise you for writing a book with a lot of love in it when did you first learn of this mass sell-off of humans at the butler estate and what was it that inspired you to devote a chunk of your life to researching it and writing it

well first to first of your first comment I also when you think of a book named the Weeping time and of course it's called the weeping time because that's what the slaves on the auction block called that time it was a time of weeping you don't really think you're right of something happy but I think the

good news about the research effort and the book itself is that it starts with weeping but it doesn't end that way the rest of the story as you know is really a story of the strength and resilience of those very same black families who were sold on the auction block and how they did everything in their

power in spite of the odds to find one another and to retain and reestablish those family ties so it really I'd like to think that there's a kind of a occur I really like a curve if you will with this story it's like it comes full circle in terms of these families reestablishing ties but in terms of how

I got interested I got interested through Thomas Jefferson I heard in your intro you mentioned something about the founding fathers yes which is which is really on point right that we have to wrestle with the fact that the founding fathers including Thomas Jefferson you know he was a slave owner and I was