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Author of the "The Beautiful Struggle," tells Tavis how he came up with the title and why he wrote the book. (2:40)
 

Full interview. (14:13)
 

Tavis: Ta-Nehisi Coates is a freelance journalist whose work has appeared in "Time," "The New York Times" magazine, and the "Atlantic." He is joined tonight by his father, Paul Coates, founder of Black Classic Press and the basis for Ta-Nehisi's acclaimed new book "The Beautiful Struggle: A Father, Two Sons, and an Unlikely Road to Manhood." Ta-Nehisi, nice to see you, sir.

Ta-Nehisi Coates: Oh, thank you so much for having me, Tavis.

Tavis: And Paul Coates, good to see you.

Paul Coates: Great to be here, Tavis.

Tavis: Glad to have you here. Let me start with the title. When I first saw the book, Ta-Nehisi, I was just so turned on by the title - "The Beautiful Struggle." You came up with that how?

Ta-Nehisi Coates: You're not going to like my answer. (Laughter)

Tavis: Just tell me the truth. Just tell me the truth.

Ta-Nehisi Coates: I had about 10 other obscure, esoteric titles that I wanted to use, and my editor, Christopher Jackson, came up with that. I called my dad and fussed with my dad about how (laughter) - what were my options, should I go with "The Beautiful Struggle?" And Dad said, "Man, you got to go with it." And see, it shows that I don't know everything. It was a very humbling experience (laughter) in that you, Tavis Smiley, expressed when I was obviously wrong, so.

Tavis: No, no, it's not about being wrong. Those other titles might have been just as good.

Ta-Nehisi Coates: They weren't. They weren't.

Tavis: But editors and book publishers have a way, as your daddy knows -

Ta-Nehisi Coates: They do.

Tavis: - of forcing stuff on you.

Ta-Nehisi Coates: They do.

Tavis: But what'd you make of it, Paul, "The Beautiful Struggle?"

Paul Coates: It took me a minute to be with it, but the subtitle, I thought it was a perfect title, and it's proved to be a title that resonates with people, so I think Chris did a good job. Chris and the team at Random House, they did a good job.

Tavis: Yeah, I think that oxymoronic nature of it - it's struggle, but it's beautiful.

Paul Coates: Yeah.

Tavis: There's nothing quite like a beautiful struggle. Brother Jackson, I think you did a good job brother - it is a brother, I assume?

Ta-Nehisi Coates: It is a brother, it is a brother. (Laughter)

Tavis: All right. Brother, you did a good job on the title. Let's move beyond the title, because it is - it's a wonderful, wonderful read. You decided, Ta-Nehisi, to write the book, why? We all have a story, yours is a fascinating one, but what gave you the courage to put it out there?

Ta-Nehisi Coates: Well, I tell everybody I've been working on the book all my life, really, in various forms. I go through it in terms of being involved in hip hop, later being involved as an African drummer. I was always looking. Hip hop at its best is memoir, and I always - what I want to do is to honor that tradition, I really did.

In terms of the literal, tangible essence of writing a book, my dad had an idea to write a book, a father-son thing, more looking at a father from a son's perspective, and so we started from there and moved through the process and eventually ended up here.

And where we came out was very different. I did not imagine it being that way.

Tavis: Different in what way - from what you initially thought?

Ta-Nehisi Coates: I thought it would just be more - be recording my father's stories. It had not - I had not made the connection of how important that - my generation, that particular - the late '80s, early '90s generation and what that struggle was. I was more interested in looking at his struggle and looking at it from my perspective, and I didn't immediately make the connection of what I myself had been through.

Tavis: Folk will see it when they read the book, of course, but the struggle you're referring to in the '80s and '90s in Baltimore is what?

Ta-Nehisi Coates: Is the crack war, the advent of HIV. Baltimore was absolutely ravaged by HIV. It had always been a big heroin town, am I correct?

Paul Coates: That's right.

Ta-Nehisi Coates: Yeah, so that was why it hit Baltimore so hard. And I think what that combined to give was a sort of general shock. One day things were orderly, and the next day people are being shot over starter jackets and people are telling there kids they're not going to buy them certain tennis shoes because they might come home walking in their socks. It was a level of violence that escalated to a point that I think folks had never seen. I myself didn't know anything else but I had a sense that this was not ordinary, and so just making your way through in that time.

Tavis: Paul, I'm going to get more to the father-son part of the story, because it's wonderfully told here by your son, as you well know. But parallel for me, to Ta-Nehisi's point now, parallel for me the struggle of your generation and everything you did because you wanted the best for Ta-Nehisi and his brother, and yet the struggle that they had to endure in their own generation, as he just lays out. Parallel your struggle for them and their struggle for themselves.

Paul Coates: I think Ta-Nehisi does a good job in the book of helping me understand that struggle. We came out of - people of my generation, particularly people who were, quote, unquote, "conscious," came out of a period in which we recognized that our community, the Black community, depended so much on what we put into it and what we put into our families.

Ta-Nehisi was a product of that, and when I say he chronicles it, as I've talked with people around the country about the book, Ta-Nehisi has actually captured the efforts certainly reflected in me, but he's dealing with so many other people. It was very important for all of us that our children be educated in a sense that taught respect for the Black community, that taught the importance of being a contributor to the Black community so that our community ended up as a net gain.

These are the types of things that were infused into Ta-Nehisi, infused into his brothers and sisters also, because he's a product, as you know from the book, he's one of seven and I think his book has become a - I don't want to say manifesto, but like an anthem of that generation, so that when he's reflecting on our family he's really reflecting on so many people that came out of that Black consciousness, period.

Ta-Nehisi Coates: And I just want to add this real quick. One of the essential points of tension in the book is how do you become a contributor to a community that, on the surface, often appears like it don't want a contribution from you, and in fact is pushing you to get out as quick as you can? And a huge part of the book is me learning to master that.

And once I got it, I got it, it was a great lesson, it was a great, great lesson. At the time, I wanted to get out (laughs) as quick, fast as I could, but it was really a great lesson.

Tavis: Top-line the answer for me that you come across in trying to figure out how to contribute to a community that you feel at one point doesn't even want your contribution? You figured that out how?

Ta-Nehisi Coates: Well, I figured out that I had no choice. One of the things about - obviously I was pushed very hard in school. School grades, all of that, was very important to my parents. But on top of that was this idea that there's knowledge in all things, you know what I mean? And these little boys you see running up and down the street, doing whatever, there are things that you can pick up from them.

Even if they ain't on the right thing right now, that doesn't mean that there's nothing that you can't learn from them. It was a matter of becoming bilingual. It was a matter of having a way that you be out in the greater world, and at the same time understanding how things are in the world that you live in.

And from that, what I really picked up is I wanted this book to fully show the humanity of Black people. Black people are complicated, and so there's a mask that young Black boys wear often to deal with the environment that they're in, but that doesn't meant that that's who they are. And once I got that, I understood so much more.

Tavis: Ta-Nehisi mentions, of course Paul, the importance of education - we come back to the mecca here in just a moment, but there's a wonderful school in there that you refer to as - that Ta-Nehisi calls "the mecca" throughout the text. Again, we'll come back to that in a moment.

Before we get to that, though, his point about, if I could put it this way, the contested humanity that so many Black people, certainly Black men, have to navigate every day - if there's anything Black men understand, even if they don't know the phrase, they know what it feels like, what it means, to have on a daily basis their humanity contested. What were you putting into Ta-Nehisi and his siblings, certainly the Black boys, about how to navigate this journey every day, where as a Black man your life, your humanity, is going to be contested?

Paul Coates: One of the things, and it comes out again in the book, is I think what Ta-Nehisi got and what my children and children from that period got were overdoses of our history. Overdoses of our history, overdoses of examples of those folks who stood up and resisted their humanity being contested.

Tavis: Let me cut you off right quick. How can you - I hear your point - how can you OD on that?

Paul Coates: Oh, boy. (Laughter)

Ta-Nehisi Coates: You can OD on it. (Laughter)

Tavis: How can you OD on that kind of goodness?

Ta-Nehisi Coates: You can OD on it.

Paul Coates: A good example is like for a mind that has not been exposed to it, and that mind or that person being required to confront, to read, to study this, that's like an OD, you see? Now at a point, it isn't an OD. At a point, it is like being in paradise. But initially, there's a resistance. George Jackson said it best, I think: being Black is not popular. It's one of those things.

So when the mind is in that state, and many of us are - I mean this is the way we're conditioned, oppressed people are conditioned like that, that there's no value here. That's what Ta-Nehisi was talking about, about how young Black boys going down the street do have value. Well, if you don't understand that, then anything positive that is thrown at you is an OD. It really is an OD, and I'm sure that that's how Ta-Nehisi experienced me coming at him.

I don't know if I experienced it that way when I was younger, but certainly there was a period of unconsciousness and then it went into consciousness. But I know that from that base of consciousness I could give to my children what they resisted at the time, but all of them love it at this point.

Tavis: I know that for all the Bison who are watching tonight, they will appreciate this story.

Ta-Nehisi Coates: Yes,sir. Yes, sir. (Laughter)

Tavis: But to those who happen not to be Bison -

Ta-Nehisi Coates: (Laughs) It's all right, we won't hold it against you.

Tavis: Tell me about the mecca and how - the mecca for me is really a character, not just a place, it's a character in the story.

Ta-Nehisi Coates: It's a character in Black America, it's a character in the story of Black America, and I can just tell you I was down at Eso Won books yesterday, I have not done a reading yet where there ain't been some Black folks from Howard -

Tavis: Howard University, yeah.

Ta-Nehisi Coates: - showing up to support. But I think - and this is true of all our institutions, all HBCUs, and I think for a lot of people, it was just true of higher education in general. One of the things is my folks coming out of the '60s I think very much felt that we had opportunities that they did not, and so there was this big push. There were a lot of bad things going on in the Black community at the same time.

There was this whole other group of people who were very much about no, you're going to get your butt together and you're going to go to college. You will go to college, there's no other option, and I was very much raised with that. My dad - and I'm going to try to get this story right, I tell it in the book - my dad was over at Howard University, selling books, dealing with various conscious folks and, I think the person who gave him the most information was a brother who wasn't even conscious, but was working as a janitor there and told my dad, he said, "Yeah, man, I got -" what'd he have, he had a daughter in school there, Dad?

Paul Coates: He had a daughter there, yeah, he had a daughter.

Ta-Nehisi Coates: The daughter was getting through on a tuition waiver, and she was getting ready to graduate.

Tavis: Because her father worked there.

Ta-Nehisi Coates: Because her father worked - as a janitor.

Paul Coates: That's right. He was a janitor.

Ta-Nehisi Coates: He was a janitor.

Tavis: Yeah, exactly.

Ta-Nehisi Coates: As a janitor.

Paul Coates: A groundskeeper, that's right.

Ta-Nehisi Coates: And that put the seed into my dad's head. Now it just so happened that Howard was also a great school and occupied this great place in African American history, but I think at the very initial level it was, "I got seven kids, and here's a way to possible get it." I think five of us went there, ultimately? Five out of seven?

Paul Coates: That is correct; five out of seven went there, yeah.

Ta-Nehisi Coates: So yeah, it was just a great opportunity, it really was.

Tavis: And the sacrifices you had to make to do that meant what, essentially?

Paul Coates: Do you know, I never think about it, Tavis, as sacrifice.

Tavis: In that way, yeah.

Paul Coates: Because I don't - I'm particularly blessed and gifted. I went to library school, Atlanta University. I went to get a master's degree so that I could come back and hopefully work at Howard University, work in their Black history collection, and thereby satisfy the inner part of my soul, you know, see? And in doing that, the way was made for Ta-Nehisi and for my other kids to go to school.

So it wasn't a sacrifice at all. I loved going to work every day, working at Howard University. The rich history of that particular HBCU and the rich history of our Black colleges, period, and what they've contributed to us as people, to be involved with that and engaged with that is a fulfillment that I'll honor and cherish the rest of my days.

Tavis: Ta-Nehisi, I could do this for hours, I wish they gave me that kind of time here on PBS, especially for conversations like these, featuring Black men who have something to say to the rest of America about how Black men ought to be treated and dealt with. That said, what is - is there an essential lesson? Is there an abiding lesson you want the reader to take from this text, no matter what color he or she may be?

Ta-Nehisi Coates: Yeah, I do, and that is to never, never underestimate what you have at home. What this is about, and I think this can be applied to institutions wherever that may not be shining and gleaming. This book is about institutions - that being families, that being the broader family, that being Howard University, the broader network of HBCUs.

As my dad said, he went to school down in Atlanta, and how these things work together and come together and can lift us up as individuals, because I don't know what I would be without that, and we have to see the strengths and the ties that bind in our community and make use of them.

Tavis: I believe, have always believed, that every race of people ought to be judged by the best they've been able to produce and not by the worst. And these Coates brothers are some of the best that our community has ever produced. Father and son. The new book by Ta-Nehisi Coates, the son, is called "The Beautiful Struggle: A Father, Two Sons, and an Unlikely Road to Manhood." Of course, the story of his relationship and growing up with a great dad like Paul Coates. I highly, highly recommend this, and I don't do that very often around here, but you've got to put this in your collection. Paul, good to see you. Ta-Nehisi, nice to see you as well.

Paul Coates: Great to see you (unintelligible).

Ta-Nehisi Coates: Thank you, Tavis. Thank you so much.

Paul Coates: Thank you, Tavis. Thank you.