Transcripts For CSPAN2 Tiya Miles The Dawn Of Detroit 20171029

Affairs intellectual force. I want you to also know shes one of the nicest people you will ever get to meet. In addition to that she is an author, University Teachers ad public historian. She has two prizewinning works of afro afroamerican and natie american instead. The ties that bind us to open afro cherokee family and slavery of freedom. Published in 2005. Next the house on the diamond hill published in 2010. She follows those works for the study of race and gender in southern ghost stories titled tales from a haunted south. Published in 2015. She is also a writer of fiction, academic articles on indigenous womens history and feminist essays. Her debut novel is cherokee ros rose. The novel was named and publishers week weekly pick [laughing] is particularly as well. You should pick it up. In 2015. And selected for her books all of georgia should read. She teaches at the university of michigan as you heard in the departments of american culture, afroamerican african studies, history, native american studies and womens studies. She is a 2011 Macarthur Foundation fellow. [applause] her current work on slavery in detroit was supported by an Mellon Foundation fellowship. In that Research Result in a book were here tonight to launch to discuss and learn about and celebrate, the dawn of detroit a chronicle of slavery and freedom in the city of the straits. So please welcome again doctor tiya miles. [applause] im going to sit in the moment. Ms. Jones tells me this is my thrill for the evening. So i must listen to what has instructed me to do. I have to tell you how thrilled i am to beer and how happy i am, how warm this space is. I cant imagine a better place for the launch of this book and im so grateful to ms. Janet jones and my colleague stephen ward for inviting me to do this. Im also grateful for you for coming out to discuss this history with being all of us and to learn more about the city of detroit. So i think that where id like to begin is actually with telling you how i came to doing this project. We can talk about what we collectively think history and hisses like this would ultimately going back to the 1700s, watch they need for contemporary life and how they can to asset in trying to solve the problem of social division today. Let me tell you how i came to this project. I am from cincinnati, ohio, and i grew up with a strong identity as being the granddaughter of a woman who came up through the great migration of cincinnati, and also lived close to the ohio river as a child in my growing up years. I associated that river with freedom and with that allimportant line between slavery and freedom. You can stand at the banks and you can see kentucky. Just like you instead of the banks are at the Detroit River and see canada, that was meaningful for me growing up, the idea that i grew up in a free state. So time past, things happened and i accepted a position at university of michigan back in 2002. When i got here i had sort of relearned the place of the midwest because its not the same as ohio. They are close, connected, we share a border but this is a different kind of place. One of the reasons why its so unique is again because of that international border. One of the ways i began to explore this place was with my students, spatial in my africanamerican studies courses and im truly touched some of them are here today, graduate from years ago. It warms my heart they are here. One of the things we did was go on local history tours, put on by africanamerican groups such as africanamerican culture and historical museum, which is our county back in ann arbor. A tour that really stuck with me, focus on the underground railroad. I learned for the first time just how active southeastern son michigan has been in the underground railroad and began to recognize some important sites not just there but in our town of ann arbor. And got to the historical museum. I hope youll go if youve never been there, and also go to the Detroit Historical museum again. Im sure youve been there. At that museum had the underground railroad exhibitor it was small but enough to get our imaginations going. So students and i in that year, this was around 2009 i think, we did research, the projects and thats what open the door for me into local history, its what got me interested in what has taken place in this area regarding the underground railroad. Thats why started with the underground railroad. I was doing research on women in particular, and a woman named laura who was from, raised in that area. While i was reading her memoir and when i saw she kept pointing to the loss of michigan and the very proud way, the laws of michigan were against slavery, but i started to get some of those lost of michigan that she was talking about. She is long gone and was a wonderful activist. A white woman quaker who fought for black freedom of thought for black equality, she was correct that in the state of michigan there was support for insulate people who were trying to get their freedom in the years before the civil war. But one thing she didnt actually mentioned in her memoir was that previous michigan laws had made slavery possible, had actually tacitly indirectly sanctioned slavery. The underground railroad was my door into discovering that before the railroad, there was slavery in michigan. Once i realized that i thought that was the store and need to tell because there was not enough information. I grew up in ohio and did no think about it and ive been teaching at the university for a handful of years and did know anything about it. I really felt that the absence of this knowledge was disrespectful to our ancestors, disrespectful to our forebears and the people who came even before the abolitionists, and certainly before us, who lived allies of great suffering and great sorrow, but through it all were heroic, who pushed for the freedom, who banded together and did incredible things. So once i started down this path i had the good fortune of being able to apply for a program at the university of michigan at ann arbor which allowed me to work with students on a project. I applied for the project and we got the money. I was able to bring some students, to hide them and went to work. We decided to see what we could uncover, primary sources, on history of slavery in detroit. We spent a lot of time in the Detroit Public Library which has an incredible collection of primary source material. We spent time in the brittany library in ann arbor, when the students with some ontario, wonderful, she would go home on a vacation during the school year and should hit the archives in ontario and find out more information for us about our project. We spent about two years collecting information, seeing what we could find and also part of the process was translating some of that information. Because some of it was in french, some of it was in german. Part of that process was transcribing some information because some of these older documents in that fancy cursive, its impossible to read. I had a magnifying glass out, you know, to be able to see what is that it says. So it took us two years just gave get to the point where we could say we have a sense of the enslaved population. We have a sense of the numbers were talking about. We have a list of the people who just owned enslaved people get where the scent the jobs they were doing. At that point i realized even though itd taken us quite a long while to find the material and even though the primary sources, the records that existed were actually very few and far between, that there was enough material to tell a story about the enslaved people who are actually built this city. So from that point on i started working on trying to piece together that story here i felt like it really was dealing with breadcrumbs because its a little bit here and a little mentioned there, and name here. There were very few full and complete stories. Thats partly because we just dont have the same kind of records here that we have on slavery in the south, for instance. In the Southern States, scholars rely quite a lot of slave narrative. The life stories of enslaved people that theyre able to write in a published after the escape, or that a little about her, please. I will try to, sir. Maybe i will stand up and maybe that will help. So i was saying that in the Southern States scholars rely quite a lot on slave narrative. That is, the stories of enslaved people that they were able to write and have published after the escape. Or that they were able to tell the interviewers who were working for the federal government. But here in detroit we dont have slave narrative. We dont have personal stories. We barely have mention of enslaved people in the record. Thats in part because it wasnt the same kind of governmental infrastructure here. This used to be a military fort town. It didnt have a court for a very long time even. Its also because of the great fire of 1805 which wiped out the whole town, which meant the loss of many records. Piecing this together was looking with breadcrumbs, and illustration at times but in the end i felt that there was enough to at least create a composite picture of the lives of enslaved people. So im going to tell just a little bit about what some of these individuals did and what the mice were like as far as we were able to determine it, and i want to share a few of the findings that are included with included with. I think we would write about the time they will tell me we need to shift into q a. One of the most important things that became clear to us as we were doing this research was that the first insulate people in the city, in this state and actually in many places in this country were not africanamerican. But rather they were native american. When we talk the slavery in detroit were talking first about an enslaved indigenous population. And within that were talking especially about women. Native american women made up the largest population of enslaved people here in detroit. They came from multiple nations. Some of them were miami, some of them were fox. There were women who had been captured from other tribal nations, oftentimes at a distance but not always and were traded sometimes by other native American People and then finally traded into the hands of the european center. First the french, then the british. And then actually a few americans were Still Holding native american enslaved people into the early 1800s. Thats i think the most important and biggest thing we discovered on our Research Team was that slavery in detroit, i they kind of slavery that they endured was abominable. I think you can probably anticipate what im about to say. Enslaved native american women were put into european households and they did domestic work, and they were also the victims of sexual slavery. We are familiar with this in the u. S. We know at this point africanamerican women were sexually assaulted and abused. As the regular course of their experience. And to our research in detroit we discovered native american women were, too, and that, in fact, some of these merchants and traders in detroit, some of the richest ones would make specific purchase orders asking for native women. Now, the name they use, the truth is used for a native american insulate person was poni panis. And scholars have tried to work out where that term came from. A colonial historian has come up with a very good theory which is that this term probably is the collecting of various different native American Tribal names, especially panis. So every native american native enslaved person was not panis but came to be used for all native enslaved people here in detroit. Some of these merchants would write letters to one another between here, mackinac island, for instance, and they would say i need to pretty panis. They would say the ages of the girls they wanted. That kind of language is an indicator that these young girls were wanted for more than just cleaning up the kitchen, right . This was a very distressing fine for us in the we really need to recognize and look at, especially given the continuing vulnerability and invisibility oftentimes of indigenous girls and young women. We also found in addition to native american women africanamerican men are black d buy them. He wanted to bring black men with him to detroit. Its an indication he felt he couldnt really set up shop and launch its business and make a a success at it without black men. Over overtime James Stirling wae to buy a few black men, and his comments in his records about them, some of them, language, indigenous language. He even commented they were better workers in the white men that he was paying which is part of his life he preferred them. So black men were actually the Railroad Cars that were carrying those, that may display so successful, im talking about their bodies. Talking about their muscles. That was the motor for the distribution. Think about the fur trade, we hear about the fur trade. We recognize that it was the hunting that mandate of diva, the trade of the deeper, and then the shipment of those beaver to the east for east coast and also across the ocean, places like france and england. We recognize that was a major fuel of a worldwide, global industry. But until my students and i did this research i did know that black men did a lot of the labor of packing those furs, carrying those for, moving those across the water in canoes, and in some of the really efficient minded merchants here in detroit, once they had their enslaved black man who the first to places like new york, and the weather turned cold, they would rent these men or that their friends borrow these men over the winter, and then when the river thought and it got warm and they could come back, the enslavement would be asked, thats a wrong word, would be compelled to bring the goods that were exchanged for the first back here to detroit. Black men and native american men were also skilled both men. They were on these great lakes all the time with these for. And sometimes the wealthiest merchants such as john would say i cant spare my man, a black man for this job. I need him on my boat. But when it came time for him to be on those ships, his rations were less than those white men being paid to do that work. Enslaved black men died working the great lakes. Which really are inland seas. They have been described that way. When youre on them, at least to me they feel that way. Those were dangerous waters. These men were out there doing this work, not because they wanted to and not because they made a cent. There were separate from the family families doing this work. One story that stands out to me is a story of an enslaved black family owned by a wealthy detroit merchant named james may james may was a judge. He was someone who was actually very instrumental, who went to the university of michigan, and he kept one of his black man on his boat and he kept his black mans wife back at home working in his household. They were not importing up to him to name, but they were out in these roles and is a terrible shipwreck and the black man owned by may was killed in the wreck. May then wrote to his friend, john, and percy said he was distressed because you lost this valuable man. He didnt talk much about the brother. Hes thinking about this valuable piece of human property that is gone. And then he says but now that the man is gone, the black woman wont do any work. She just lays around crying. So this is a terrible story, but to this story we see, we get a glimpse of a black family, a a black family that loved one another, that cared for one another, that is distressed and falls apart when one of their loved ones is taken by the waters. So when james may black woman as he refers to or cant work because shes in morning, he gets this wonderful idea, maybe if i buy her son from my friend and bring her son into my household that will cheer her up. We get another indication of how this family has been split and divided. James may try to get the sun, but his friend says sorry, im keeping this black boy for myself here one more snippet before i conclude. And that is a rare look at the experience of a native American Woman who is enslaved in detroit. This is very difficult to get it because we just dont have the material. We just dont have the records, especially on native women. When we do have the material they come from Saint Anns Church. Saint anns church, very old, its the second oldest parish in the country, and im grateful to them for letting me see the records. I just had to say when i first told him what the topic was, at the archives, they were receptive but also said youre not going to find anything about slaves in these records. Well [laughing] not only were their enslaved people all up and down those records, the priest owned slaves. So going back to the story about a native American Woman coming out of the Saint Anns Church records, we dont know her name. Thats common in these records. We dont know her age. We dont get any kind of a sense of who she was as a person because the record keepers were not interested in that. But we do know she was enslaved and she was pregnant, and then she was imprisoned inside the fort. There was a debate, some conflicts over who was going to get that may be. Two men inside the fort were both saying the baby should come to them. Now, they were not saying Something Like this is my child, i want the child because i want to free that baby. They were just saying the panis should come to me. So turns out the master gunsmith of the fort one in that conflict, and he is going to get to have possession of this little infant. And what happened to the woman . We dont know. I have thought about this, thought about her many a night, about her being pregnant, enslaved, probably although the records dont tell is probably the victim of sexual exploitation, giving birth in the cell and then seeing her child taken away by one of these two european men in the fort who wanted to possess that child. But Saint Anns Church records are full of details of the deaths and of the burials of quote panis infant, panis children, little babies being born right here in detroit, enslaved native mothers and died before the even had a chance at life. Many of the stories was very upset to discover, very upsetting to discover and they are distressing for me to recount. I can see in your eyes its distressing for you to hear them. I want to tell you one of the things that has been important for me and that was important for the students in doing this work is that all those people whose stories have told you but even when we dont know their names, we are remembering them. In my view that means were honoring them, recognizing that they were here, they lived. Their labor contribute in an incredible ways to the development and the growth of detroit. And their suffering is not in vain because we hold them in our hearts. I know i do. We hold them in our spirit. In addition to that, the enslaved people of detroit, they thought why was that woman imprisoned . The records dont tell us but i did some wondering about that. Did she try to run away . What kind of rules did she break . I am betting she was imprisoned because she thought, she fought back, she thought somebody and they said we are going to punish you for this. But that doesnt take away the power of her fight. As enslaved people in detroit, native people, they fought all the time. The records have all this little tiny stories of soandso was upset because quote a negro woman hit her, or soandso brought the case to court because his panis man held a knife up to him. There were enslaved people running away constantly in these records, and they are so sappy, they know they can run in multiple directions. They are running south. They run to my hometown of cincinnati. They are running to canada. They are running to the indian communities and nations surrounding detroit. They are taking every advantage that they see to get free. One of the most dramatic moments in this history actually takes place after 1800, and this is a story, those of you been to the Detroit Historical museum mightve seen a plaque that talks about peter dinesen. Well, he and wife Hannah Dinesen were owned by a family that was up on the river, and when William Tucker the owner died, he basically willed the family to his wife. Though i said could have sold them at any time, and when she died they could go to her children of the children could have sold them and divided the proceeds and so on. So they ended up going to court and suing for their childrens freedom. After all, this is the northwest territory. Its supposed to be a free zone within the united states. The food that they brought the doubt result in the freedom of all their children, but it did result in the first legislation about slavery in detroit, which was a gradual emancipation plan that said people born after 1796 would be born free, and those born just prior to that would serve as enslaved people for a set number of years. It was not a total victory, but it was a partial victory. And they ran. They didnt like the ruling in the judgment. They took off to canada. Not very long after that, the governor of michigan territory william hall came to peter dinesen and asked him if he would lead a militia to defend detroit. You did hear what i just said. You heard what i just said. Governor william hall went to peter dinesen and asked him to lead a militia, and he did. He led whats described in records as a renegade militia or a negro militia. The cup couple group of enslavd black men who ran away, ran for michigan, to canada from michigan and took this opportunity to actually have their freedom guaranteed. That was possible because detroit needed then. Detroit was not going to last without without the william hall was so terrified of a native american attack. He was wrong on that score by the way. He was a little paranoid, but he was so terrified of a a native american attack he was willing to do anything despite the criticism of the people in the Mission Government about arming black men. Let me tell you, the letters that survived the canadians across the river who saw all these black men are incredible. They even say they have armed our slaves. They recognize those are our people over there. They might point those guns towards us. So yes, this material and the story is distressing, and we have to think of them and care about what they went through. But at the same time i think this material under the story is inspiring. Because it shows just what people can do the matter how oppressed they are. So i will stop there, and thank you so much for your attention. [applause] wow everybody take a deep breath. Well, the good news is we have a microphone in the back. Were going to use for the question and answer period those of you who are standing, i wish i could just break out the wall and have a seat for you. If you can find a more comfortable space up here, its okay. Will this bother while shes doing that, would you think about a question . We love comments. You can make them very short, but think about a a question tt you would like to ask tiya. Ill tell you in just a minute. What were going to do is i will call you. You will be number one, and you remember your numbers and i will call you by your numbers. So if you question think about it. I just feel like i need to take a breath. So you are one, two, three, four. Five and six, okay. Remember your number. Question. First of all let me thank you for [inaudible] the effort you spend putting into this work because its works like this that acts as therapy for the therapy that we didnt get upon socalled emancipation. But in going over this material, and that would include your team, it did did it exact and emotional toll from you and is a continue to . Because i notice when youre talking about the women, i could see your eyes, and it made me wonder. And we should feel this way when we come across this information, because that then becomes the therapy that we didnt get. We need to cry. We need to get angry, and all of those things that people go through when they have proper therapy after a trauma. And so your question . Does it, did it exact, or how much of an emotional toll did it exact from you . Thank you for that. Thank you for your recognition that the material is serious. Ive been studying slavery for a long time now, and i wonder sometimes really not why do it at how i do it and how i came to do. I remember many years ago when i first came across the wreck of the talk and enslaved man committing suicide, and how i cried upon reading that record and how i called my mother and told her about and i said to her why am i doing this . And she said you didnt choose it. It chose you. And i think that has to be the truth of the matter for all of us who do the kind of work, whether its historical or in the present day, where we are exposing ourselves to peoples emotions and to the needs and their suffering. I think about how at least a somebody who works with documents and records in the past, theres a little bit of distance. What about social workers . What about psychologists and therapists, teachers . You know, people who are hearing about these kind of dramatic experiences today, it is so difficult. I see my friends and wise mentor of mine back there and i just think about how she often emphasize the importance of actually having a spiritual understanding of what you were doing. One of the things she has done for me throughout this process is to tell me that she felt his work was important, and having that encouragement helps you to keep going. A wonderful presentation. Thank you so much. I read with great interest your article those in the New York Times about we have and gun cass street right never i believe that was one of the street and she mentioned her what are your thoughts on how we deal with the names such as past and macomb and all the other names you mentioned that are really recording the lives of slaveholders and the actions that they took . What are your thoughts on renaming that because thats a very popular thing our culture right now . I want to give a a short preamble as are responded to that question, which is my students and i came to detroit to try to identify the sites we found in a research. We were walking down streets, places where we knew things that happened and we looked up and realize the streets were named for the slaveholders we had research. We didnt expect that going in and quite the way. Its a very strange thing when all of a sudden realize you are on macomb street, cast right now. And once come when you realize i think two things happen. On the line and i know my students were angry and it felt like why did why didnt anybody tell us this . They felt a sense of offense that information had been withheld from them. But then theres also the question of, this is what i tried to get at in that these that you referenced, the question of even if we dont know if were not fully aware that we are surrounded by an infrastructure celebrates hierarchy, is that affecting as . I actually think that it is. So what do we do with a can of worms . If we started listing all the streets and looking at all the monuments we win it anywhere to walk down on where to go rb, right . [laughing] so i guess what you think about it is that its import first to recognize it, to be forthright about it come to talk about it, to discuss it, not to hide it, to bring out in the open. Anything to encourage communities to talk this through and to work it out. I dont think theres going to be one blanket approach. Some statutes serving need to be taken down. Some statues may not need to be taken down. There are some streets that might be we need. Others that will never be renamed. The properties will also be different depending upon the location, the community, the kind of monument that we are talking about. So i really think it needs to be a Community Discussion at that level, and at the very least people will talk to one another. Thank you for being here. Very, very special and necessary, and for the whole cspan crew, thank you for being here, too. A twopart question. Number one, it is obviously emotionally draining in covering all this truth that you did. What do you do to get rested from that, to recharge, number one . Number two, i was testing with the saint anns information and thats a book in itself. Have you thought about that . So in terms of recharging, other people have quite a lot, working with the students made a big difference, and also with other members of our departmental communities and with these people in detroit, have made a big difference. When youre not in it alone its not as, its not as what do i want to say . Damaging i i guess to work with these materials. What was the second part of the question . Reminding. Saint anns church. We didnt even do the whole run of that material. We had we had to choose some book ends in terms of dates. We also are not experts in french. I took french lessons but he can ask my teacher how i did, she was a im still at square one. One member of our team was very wellversed in french and she, we also hired professional translators for this for the french and for the german. So with more people and more time and more translation work, those records im sure could reveal a number of stories that we dont know about yet. I was wondering first of all, thank you so much for coming here and telling us the story with such a rich legacy that i never knew about before. I feel its a great gift that your opening that book for us. I wonder if in view of the indigenous nations day coming up, did you find, come across in your research any stories of collaboration or cooperation between the Indigenous Community and Africanamerican Community in escaping from slavery and winning freedom with their help and support between the communities for that . Yes. And thank goodness, and ill go into some detail in a moment, but i think that what of the major things i take away from this research is that when native peoples land are wrested away from them, it wrong to them and hurt them but also hurt africanamericans. Because in this region where we are in the great lakes, and the northern part of the country, native lands were a buffer zone. The records indicate that when black people ran in native spaces, their owners did not want to chase them there. They were afraid. And that fear was a protection for africanamericans. And as native people were being dispossessed in this area, africanamericans have fewer places to run and to go. In addition to that, there were a few examples of families that were formed, African American and native american individuals who are able to bond and to live together and even to run away together, not that they were not chased, but at least two individuals, ginny and joseph, were able to run away actually from canada to michigan which i know sounds surprising or remember canada was not always the free place. There is a historian here at detroit mercy, roy, was done a lot of work on this very question right now about native american involved with the underground railroad. Hes a person whose work you should watch because hes looking for additional snippets of information. One thing i can point you do is of the narrative of josiah henson, a person is believed to be the model for oracle, in Harriet Beecher stowe is novel. He talked about running into a native American Camp and he and his wife and child were taken in by the caprica spent the night there and theyre actually lost. They couldnt the native people they stayed with pointed in the right direction. I think there are many examples of this. Who was number five . Im interested in how you explain the different, the cultural difference, is a between the recordkeeping in the south and here . Is or Something Else . You said there were the fires. I dont think its so much of a cultural difference as as a population difference and structural difference. So in detroit the numbers were small. We are talking about 1300 people total, 2000 people total people total in the early years. So it if i can sleep deeper, 200 enslaved people from the early years and those nubs meant they would be few records just to begin with. On top of that there just wasnt the same kind of organization and infrastructure in detroit. A lot of people have talked about detroit in the early years describe it as a place where people are using their innovation and their creativity and their wit just to make a living here here because if you were not native you did know what you are doing. And so that meant it would be difficult to sit down and pay in all these about your enslave people. So it was really the environment, the isolation, the population and then once the fire again, that white a lot of things out. Two or three more questions. Thank you for coming. My question comes from the first page of your book, and that is detroit is not the scene of natural disaster, but rather the scene of the crime. Could you explain that . I can. Thank you for coming. Its changing out i think. You can tell its changed, but over the last several years, more than several. Over the last decade, the public eye from outside the detroit on detroit has been one that is focused on ruin. And ruination to me has this connotation to do something thats naturally became. But this Research Indicates to me that there is nothing natural about it. Its not that tree grew and then withered in detroit. Its that individual who were interested only in profit and were willing to exploit other human beings and to exploit the Natural World to gain that profit, making men and they tour the place up. Thats the crime im talking about. I think there is a correlation between the early history, the modern history, that things fall apart when people make decisions come when governments make decisions, when Companies Make decisions. Not because a tree withered and died. Thats what he meant by that. That only human beings owning human beings as a crime. Thats with us it is that of the its not unlike the united states. The whole country is founded on dispossessed native lands and enslave black and native people. Thank you for telling this story so well and bring to light things i think people never thought about as old history of detroit. Im curious about the records that you found. With these like diaries or letters . Have all this at saint anns but who was writing this down . So the saint anns records are in the form of a church register. So a list of this person. In the case of enslave people, panis or negro, their age and what activities they were involved in. They were baptized with the died and there reboot. Sometimes they were permitted to be married in the catholic faith. Every once in a while the priest would write a sentence or even a paragraph, and as a researcher you live for those moments when they give a little bit more of the story. But for the most part that record is a pretty barebones record. In addition to Saint Anns Church records, really majoriy of what were able to find where merchant records. So the list of transactions that detroit merchants were involved in, because they were by and selling people, you can find people in their transaction. Some of these merchants were also writing letters that had been preserved, and john is one of those figures. If you read a lot of early detroit history youll see his name often and its partly because he was wealthy and influential, but also because he wrote a lot. And as scholars we had a limitation of needing to have records to really help us to begin to reconstruct the pastor we can use other things which is part of whitest kids that i came here and tried tried to find the sites in detroit where we knew things had taken place. But because then if it actually survived, what we ended up feeling was our strongest site was the Detroit River. We began to feel, and effect with a website about this if youre curious, its called mapping detroit. Com and the students wrote about their experience and they took photographs, we began to feel that the river was, we were the only witness to describe the the only witness still with us. So church records, merchant records, legal cases, the notes of attorneys when they were dealing with freedom suits and things like that. Some personal letters and also the estate records and the wills of slaveholders. Number four, go ahead. A combination of [inaudible] is there any records you have come across either those people or others, the native people and African People fought for freedom together . I do know because i had a cousin who led the fight to defeat the ku klux klan in north carolina. Are there other, we apparently have come across africans and these other people thought together for freedom . What it sounds like, quite a lot about, i would recommend a scholar whose name is melinda lowry. Shes a historian and she has written a book all about that history which looks closely at the jim crow era and thinks about how those people and when and how to protect themselves from jim crow segregation and racism, but also tries to fight the klan. I would look for her work. In addition to that, there are a number of instances. Some of them are individual and singular because one family that decides to fight against slavery. Some of them are more dramatic in larger. The best example of that has to deal with the seminole nation of florida and africanamericans who were enslaved usually in georgia who were able to run away, and they went south into florida and were taken in by the seminole nation. The seminole nation and the black seminoles as they were called, they waged a collaborative or against the united states, and longstanding war that had three phases to it because they recognize their interest were yoked to be recognized the u. S. Wanted to take native land and to enslave black people, and if they actually worked together they could try to fight that. Theres a a whole other side to this. You didnt ask me about it so i dont know that i should say very much about it, but i do want to say all right. The past is never as simple and is never all pretty and its never all celebratory. And so at the same time that native people and black people did form alliances, they also did each other wrong. Some native americans on black slaves. I didnt talk about this in my time earlier because only have a certain amount of time, but i could have given examples, native american merchants in detroit who owned slaves, not just black safe but also native slaves, now, there werent very many. They were just made a handful of these individuals, but they were involved in the first trade, too. Fur trade. Its really not the case that people of color or even people at the same color, all black people are all native people saw themselves as natural allies. My question is not terribly i could barely hear in the back, but i would [inaudible] my question is, you mentioned [inaudible] the event that made people no longer safe quarter after 1796. Im wondering if there was a name to that . That was made in 1807, but the decision and is not really, its the denison b tucker case. Decided by a judge and was woodward avenue it was about whether or not the denison children could be granted the freedom. He decided that he had just to make the ruling based on international law. So based on what the u. S. Had agreed to with Great Britain. So he referred to the jay treaty, which was ratified and went into effect in 1796. That was a was a reason why he is the 1796 date for saying if people were born in 96 then they would be born free. But before that he was going to violate the previous treaty between the u. S. And Great Britain and Great Britain and france. That said, the original sellers could continue to own slaves. In your New York Times article you made mention of [inaudible] and i cant remember which street name person, mi to ben mccall or someone who owned them and enslaved them. Can you elaborate that on can you elaborate on that a little bit . I could affect so many examples. I think that id recently done unto them with the Detroit Museum to see the boat house there. The tour was very interesting, and yes, just be a place for black people could not join. But it wasnt until i was driving home that i realized i was passing by. This happen frequently and out of the blue in my experience, and so thats how it ended up in the story because it came to my as most recent place i had been where there was an intrusion of a slaveholder, of a slaveholder landscape. They saw what was happening in terms of increasing the european settlement and in terms of people who have guns and pressure to sell so those that wanted to strike it rich would seem to do three or four main things. They got a hold of as much mainland as much as they could and they were engaged in deferred trade and they got jobs with the government. Im tempted to talk about the evidence right now but i will just say these wealthy detroiters realized it increases the influence to get more wealth. So they were rich and fertile land and paid prop them up and helped. [inaudible] then we are going to break down and break up and do some book signing for those that have already bought the books. But we have a question from you. I saw on the instead ran earlier this week i find myself reading a lot of material from the authors that are trying to piece stories together out of not much. It can be difficult, but i know that who i was i was is who i ad knowing those stories is important to me. I dont know how to say why they are important to me, i just know that they are. My mothers family came from virginia and my fathers from new orleans. In the process of trying to figure out how we got to those places i know that its a great migration that took us west as im trying to piece those together and i do not have any dreams of putting together anything quite as expensive as the research that you have done, but i am wanting to find myself specifically. And for someone who has no background in the Historical Research document, do you have any suggestions or advice as to the best course of action for someone with a limited budget and no grand and no body backing Money Research . [inaudible] how long does it take to make the book i saw another hand somewhere. Put those two together. To write a book like this that takes a lot of research and a lot of timing and depends on the help of many other people can take a number of years. They feel the potential in knowing who they are and celebrating the family and to expand the understanding of who they are in the world. World. And so, not being alone in this to me is the first step to do it. This ties to something that we discussed earlier about not being alone in the research. Theres a number of websites that are hosted for individuals working on black Family History that you can visit. Its very helpful because you get to crowd sourced the questions that youre asking and you dont feel alone. You also get to experience the joy and pleasure of the research. You will see a number of families during the research and it would be the case of any Library Handle the places that your family have lived. So, that is one thing if you are not alone. Theres also books on how to guide the research. There are conferences and workshops and publications that are put on by the Community Organizations that learn how to do those kind of stepbystep ways. And in addition to that, i would say see if you can put together the steps the person took to create the above, see if you can identify the sources they used. In the belligerent about how to put it together you can try to do the same thing. We all have models for the work that we do [inaudible] they do conferences and potentially this month or next month helping the host their annual meetings and are a Great Organization and have the resources or the information of where to search. The Genealogical Society is one of the oldest societies here in michigan and we are fortunate to have them here and a Great Organization to tap into. I wish we had three more hours into space so everybody could ask a question that i know there is something burning in your heart just Say Something this morning so i want you to think about it because they want to shower her with our good wishes so when i say three you say what you want to say and shes going to get it all. One, two, three. [inaudible] [laughter] we are in our 22nd year of the festival founded in 1995 by then First Lady Laura Bush and an Amazing Group of dedicated volunteers who decided we needed a book festival to celebrate the authors and literacy and the support of texas libraries. Since those early years it has exploded and very quickly became a National Destination for the biggest books of the year. As jack said to me, jimmy carter was the most intelligent president of the 20th century. Katharine graham said so, tip oneill said he was the most intelligent and he could consume amazing quantities of information and assimilate them and use them. But i was having a conversation with Brent Scowcroft at one point and bush 41s Amazing National security adviser. He said we were talking one day and he said i love this guy and i can give him a 50 page memo in the afternoon and i get it back the next morning with notes in the margins on every page. Scowcroft looked and said thats the worst thing you can possibly do. He doesnt have time for that. Jimmy carter i think dot bogged down. In fairness, you know, they will give you a version of the legislation that was passed, more than any president since lbj. But he couldnt prioritize. You need a chief of staff to prioritize, to make sure that the narrative is consistent and make sure everybody is on the same page. None of that is happening in the present day, but he suffered from not having a white house chief from day number one, and in my opinion he would have been a great one. One of the things when you start your book you talk about what seems like just the most logical kind of meeting in advance of an administration taking office. To bring him up to speed, they have most of the chief chiefs of to give them advice. You were there. What was it like . The december 5, 20 of 8 t eight e president s outgoing chief of staff had gathered this group and that there were 13 or 14 of us and sat around a table and a chief of staff office. We went around the table and each of us made a very brief statement of a little piece of advice that we thought was helpful or would give some guidance. To give you an example, when it got around to dick cheney, you will remember he was the Vice President and he was the chief of staff that we met when they were elected. When i got around to him at the very end of the hall, he is an interesting man. He leaned forward like this and said keep your Vice President under control. [laughter] [applause] the other piece of advice i loved was Ronald Reagans final chief and he is a great storyteller and he said never forget. And when you open your mouth is and use it as speaking with thee president of the united states, to which he said zero blank. [laughter] and brought down the house. Next on after words, arizona senator jeff flake discusses his book, conscience of a conservative, which calls for the return of the return to the Core Principles of conservatism. Hes interviewed by the daily news columnist and