Gonna jump into the conversation. The one thing i have to say is i think you can tell its urgently important to bring as many schoolkids as possible to come see the incredible exhibit. [ applause ] that is why am thrilled that last week the superintendent of the School District of philadelphia sat with me and announced that the School District and the Constitution Center are launching up program to bring tens of thousands of School Districts to the Constitution Center every year. Wow. [ applause ] they are calling it the Constitutional Ambassadors Program and they go seek support and the great kids are going to start to come see the civil war exhibit and see the Constitution Center and connect classrooms around the country using the virtual constitutional exchanges for our long conversations moderated by a judge or a master teacher. Wow, that is great. Its an amazing project that im so excited to share with you. It needs no introduction. He is author of the best selling book stony the road reconstruction White Supremacy and the rise of jim crow which is a companion to the pathbreaking series run on pbs. The book is superb and tells the story in more vivid detail and more powerful images that ive seen before of how the promise of reconstruction that we signed the gallery was brutally thwarted by the south and the heroic efforts of africanamerican intellectuals and others to try to resurrect that promise. We will jump right into the conversation but before we start we will see a from the series, let us watch it now. Most of us know that our country fought a civil war in the 1860s. Less is and what happened afterwards, the chaotic, exhilarating and ultimately devastating period known as reconstruction. Did you ever study reconstruction in school . A paragraph or two, we never really studied it. I didnt learn anything about reconstruction. Reconstruction was her shining moment. The second founding of our country. Overnight people who had defined as property take leadership positions in the south. This is an incredibly heady moment. But those black folks had no idea of the if they were heading towards. Reconstruction produced a violent backlash, racist backlash. I want us to tell the truth about our history, not to punish america, i want to liberate us but we can get the duration if we dont acknowledge what we dont. Do you believe that we are still undergoing the process of reconstruction . It never ended. Were still trying to go to terms to the end of slavery in this country. This is a chapter of our history thats been misrepresented and misunderstood. Its time what that we acknowledge the true story and complete the work of reconstructing america. [ applause ] thank you. I want to correct one thing that you said, you said that every school child in philadelphia could see this exhibition, every school child in america should see this exhibition. Absolutely. I learned things that id never seen the different drafts of the three reconstruction amendments and thank you to members of the board and all the people who support this marvelous center for making this education possible. We have never really dealt with the issues raised by reconstruction. Thank you so much for the and i learned so much from that interaction. Ill ask you what you learned but also what you want americans to know about the reconstruction amendments themselves. The 13th, 14th and 15th amendments. The 13th amendment abolished slavery and most people know it now because of the documentary if they didnt know it before. We will raise that the emancipation proclamation abolish slavery but of course it didnt. May be half 1 million formally enslaved people were able to get behind union lines and gain their freedom before the end of the civil war. But, the institution of slavery was only abolished by the ratification of the 13th amendment. The 14th as you said so eloquently, the equal protection clause and citizenship, do you ever wonder where birthright citizenship came from . Charles sumner and the colleagues from china try to figure out what is the status of the people whove been property for a quarter of a millennium . And, they came up with birthright citizenship which was brilliant, actually. Then, finally, is 1868 and then finally the ratification of the 15th amendment which, effectively gave black men the right to vote so that race cannot be used to prevent or prohibit any american from voting. , was very curious about the 15th amendment is that black people in the south who had been formally enslaved and freed in the 10 of the 11 Confederate States, got the right to vote three years before. This is a surprise to me, when i started doing research for what became our theories. It was a surprise for most of you that, if you were a former slave who had been free in the south, it was one of four reconstruction amendments that gave blackman the right to vote. That was what we call the first freedom summer of 1867 when the 80. 5 of all eligible black men in 10 of the 11 Confederate States registered to vote. But heres the kicker. You know how we demonize the south as opposed to the north and we have a fantasy that there was no racism in the north, if you were free you to send from three sets of free negroes as they wouldve called themselves the two sets were free by the outbreak of the American Revolution. The third set but they were free in 1823. They live 30 miles from where i was born. I have a tremendous amount of stability in my family. Now in West Virginia but it was in virginia at that time. My greatgrandfather john redman, fought in the American Revolution and because of him he was a free [ null ] and because of him my brother remember the sons of the American Revolution, go figure. [ laughter ] [ applause ] not exactly a predominately black organization, you know what im talking about x [ laughter ] so, all this in mind, West Virginia becomes a state and joins the union in the middle of the civil war. It becomes a state on june 20, 1863. My free [ null ] ancestors had cousins just across the border around winchester virginia. These cousins who have been enslaved but the right to vote three years before my free ancestors got the right to vote because of the north the white men could only vote in the five New England States in the state of new york if you satisfied a 250 property requirement. Isnt that amazing. That is so shocking but it is true. So even when West Virginia became a state they refused to give black men in West Virginia , were only talking about a handful of people, but they refuse to give them the right to vote. It was the for reconstruction acts that really laid the groundwork for citizenship and for the right to vote. Now i first studied reconstruction i didnt study at all in high school in piedmont, West Virginia. But i studied it at yale. My sophomore year i took a two semester survey course, introduction to afroAmerican History that we were afro americans at that time and caught the professor, William Mcfeely went on to get a Pulitzer Prize for his biography of ulysses s grant, he had us read w eb to voice his book, black reconstruction published in 1935. It was radical because it challenged the Dunning School at Columbia University and they were part and parcel of the mythology of reconstruction being a dismal failure and an embarrassment to the history of america and democracy. He took on the school and the chief consultant to our series its so ironic hes the leading reconstruction historian at Columbia University. Its almost as if hes about to publish his 10th book on reconstruction on the 13th, 14th and 15th amendments that will be out in december. Its a personal mission for him to refute the terribly racist claims made by the Dunning School, his own predecessors in the history of the department at columbia to set the record straight. So, mcfeely had us read the book black reconstruction and then a book by Rayford Logan. Most of you havent heard of Rayford Logan but Rayford Logan was the third or fourth black man to get a phd in history from harvard. At one time he was engaged to leticia gates, who happens to be my great aunt so im very biased about Rayford Logan. He wrote a book about the betrayal of the [ null ]. Its about the period immediately following reconstruction. Logans book begins in 1877 and that is the period of the rollback to reconstruction. But it takes a while to roll it back because blackman had an enormous amount of power, black people were the majority and almost in the majority, florida, alabama and georgia. So, there were 16 blackman elected to congress between 1870 and 1877 including two United States senators. The speaker of the house, secretary of state, he has all the reconstruction congressman on as well and systematically, stepbystep the redemption of the former confederates the south indeed rose again and they disenfranchise the blackman and they did it in such a clever way. Is started with the mississippi plan, there were state constitutions with then unfolded over the next 16 years in each of the former Confederate States. Thats when they establish poll taxes, literacy tests, comprehension tests that only allow professor could possibly understand. Do you want to know how dramatically affected the state constitutional conventions were . Louisiana, in 1898, before the constitutional convention, and had 130,000 black men registered to vote. The new constitution was ratified in 1898 and by 1904, the number of 130,000 black men registered to vote had been reduced to 1342. There were 2000 black men and elected to office during the reconstruction period. The last reconstruction congressman, George Henry White bids farewell to congress in 1901. There wouldnt be another black man elected to congress when Oscar Depriest of chicago was elected to congress, how is he elected to congress . Because all the black people to part in the great migration from mississippi to chicago and other Southern States north and because of the 15th amendment they had the right to vote. They vote northerner in to congress. So for my introduction and reconstruction its culture minute to a rollback. But the first two hours are about reconstruction and the great heights that black people believe just out of slavery in this great moment when lincolns desire for a new birth in the First Experience with interracial democracy. This was greeted by the rise of White Supremacy. The ku klux klan was invented december 18 65. There were eight massacres a major between 1866 and 1876 the starting in memphis. Starting in hamburg but this was not an untroubled period. The ku klux klan hearings and its come to a truth and reconciliation, the grants sent troops to suppress the ku klux klan and all these people had been victimized by the . Because it been trying to vote. Women were raped, black men were lynched, they were beaten, threatened and bribed or they were offered a i keep them from voting because they had so much power. I think that the manifestation and expression of all that power not only scared the daylights out of the south as you might expect but i dont think the north was ready for all that white power either. But the north was complicit as of the rollback of reconstruction. Certainly you can see signs of 1872, 1873 is called the panic now, the panic of 1873 until the Great Depression starting in 1929 it was called the Great Depression and they look around saying do we really need to protect these slaves, are they free and can they stand on their own feet, how you can enslave people for a quarter of a millennium. 250 years expect them to stand on their own 2 feet after a mere 12 years but that is exactly what happened. The president ial election of 1876 was deadlocked in 1877 the compromise to one of the agreements of the compromise was federal troops for the few remaining federal troops protecting black peoples right to vote would be withdrawn and black people would be on their own. The Supreme Court was complicit as. 1876, the decision and scholars argue about when reconstruction was over but black people basically had a funeral and a big church in washington 1883, right after the Supreme Court said that the Civil Rights Act of 1875 which established a quality, social equality, black people could write in streetcars and stay in hotels etc. The sip dream corps says that was unconstitutional richard t greener, the first black graduate all gathered in the church and the church was packed just like this. And how could the country do this and how could they do in the way that theyve done. The boy said famously if you want to think about the rise and fall of black freedom the slave went free for the brief moment in the sun and then moved back toward slavery again. That is a history of the rise in the fall of reconstruction. [ applause ] thank you for the incredibly moving recount of the rise and fall of reconstruction. And to think another funeral is held for reconstruction after the civil rights decision is stunning. You have a picture in the book of the first colored senators and representatives in new york and then what is so incredible about what you just said but the right to vote is the most important of the group because africanamericans were a majority in so many states and why the evisceration of the right to vote was the core of redemption tell us more about how the racist redemption base backlash eviscerated the right to vote for the Supreme Court decisions terrace, violence and discriminatory laws like whole taxes and literacy taxes. Sure. Could you hold up the lithograph from 1872. I dont know if you can see it. And during the depression the federal writers project they sent writers to interview former slaves. They wouldve been very young by the end of the civil war and still live in the 1930s. They found the grease covered and stated copies of 1812 lithograph. Theres jesus and Martin Luther king and others jesus, Martin Luther king and barack obama. They have the lithograph. I had to study the history of that lithograph. But we tend to forget and one was english. Robert Brown Elliott was born free in liverpool and theres so much excitement about reconstruction that elliott shows up in boston born free in liverpool, educated that hes part of the british navy, shows up in boston heres a bit of the opportunity in South Carolina goes to South Carolina, richard her making it been moved by the church from new york to revitalize mother emmanuel you know because that is where the nine martyrs but richard a harvey kane a great entrepreneur starts a black newspaper and hires elliott to work for him. Then, elliott runs for the state legislature and then for congress. When richard graduates from harvard in 1870, endless opportunities to go to new york, boston but he goes to charleston, South Carolina because that is where the action was. We cant imagine that today. We cant imagine how much promise, energy and optimism to think about it, think about what that was like if you had been enslaved up to 1865 endless horizons and then within 12 years, all gone. I was born in 1950, i often think and im sure you do too, what it wouldve been like to be black with the same capacities that we have now. You wouldnt have gone to oxford. I wouldve gone to cambridge. I wouldve gone to yale, where were you at undergraduate . Lincoln. Is historically black university, lincoln university. Right on, my brother. Of course you were. We would not of had those opportunities. And i have to imagine the heartbreak, when douglas goes to lincoln hall and makes a separate speech about the betrayal of the [ null ]. You ask, why would they do this well, what remains the leading export, cotton. Someone had to pick the cotton. You are moving from an economy where labor was free and performed by slaves and it needed to be replaced to maximize profits the form of neoslavery, sharecropping. Vagrancy laws. So three or four black men on the street could be arrested and put on the chain gang. Thats where they all come from the images of chain gangs. 300 3700 black men are lynched in the main dublin name of many accused of raping white women. As booker t. Washington pointed out, no one was accused of raping a white woman during the civil war in the south when the masters were away and the male slaves were black on the plantation. A white supremacist rhetorical superstructure. One of the most fascinating things and particularly when i was writing the book was that this was the time of americas first social media war. It was a battle between conflicted images of black people as thieves, liars, the resonated sambo art we call it. And this book is full of every chapter followed by a visual essay comprised of the horrible images which we have all seen called memorabilia now. But black skin, thick red lips, wide eyes with black pupils and wild hair. These were black men stealing chickens. Black people eating watermelon. Black people, male and female in every exaggerated and humiliated form which you can represent hundreds and hundreds of thousands of these images are produced at the fall of reconstruction and particularly in 1890s. Why . A technological accident, criminal photography is invented and it becomes cheap and 1890s. And it is widely used, posters and so its possible for a middleclass white family, by the time your alarm clock went off because the images were everywhere, youd hit the alarm clock in ut sambo staring at you. You put your feet down and bedroom slippers and they would be a sambo or aunt jemima figure staring up that had been embroidered into your bedroom slippers. You could have breakfast and your tea cozy was a sambo image. Your egg cups had sambo images on them. You would go to work and you would come home with one of the favorite games, 10 little knickers. That was one of the favored parlor games in america at that time. Everywhere a white person son image of a black person, it was of a sambo, it was of this racist caricature. The whole point was to create a subliminal hypnotic effect so that when my colleague now departed, Barbara Johnson who was a genius for once to find a stereotype as an already read tech think about how brilliant that is. An already read text. It means i can look at you, you are black i dont see you, i see sambo. I see aunt jemima. I know exactly who you are because society has constructed an image, superimposed on who you really are. You are forced to live up or down to that racist image of yourself. So, what do black people do they fought back with their own concept called the new [ null ]. The talented tempe, educated black people said would you cant win this war may be what youre saying is true about uneducated black people but we are educated and refined the concept starts in about 1890. I read the book in 1894 but a colleague wrote to me and said it started in 1877 but i have the essay. So now it starts in 1877 but the point is they fought back this concept of sambo with the concept of the new [ null ] and the new [ null ] was everything that the old [ null ] or sambo or uncle tom was not. Du bois even globalized the new [ null ]. The paris worlds fair, the exposition in 1900, du bois curated the knee will exhibit and took a 363 photographs of black people, many of whom were not even visibly black because he wanted to show the genetic diversity of the Africanamerican Community and they are all of course upperclass black people because hes trying to defeat this racist image that had been created by the redemption is movement with black and White Supremacy. It was true in art, it was true novels that it was true in folklore and even if you read joe Chandler Harrises uncle lemus tales, he had a lot to preserve traditional black folktale. Sometimes they would say things like we dont need the right to vote her all that education, its a real mistake but it was true of social sciences and racial sciences. You also know about the sciences. You know the horrible types he made and a person who claims their descendent is suing harvard for using those but the professor was a stone cold racist with social science, art, literature, politics, in order to put the genie back in the lamp, the genie of black freedom, the genie of black masculinity, the genie of the power of the vote and it was devastatingly effective. [ applause ] could have been otherwise . If the courts have ruled differently, if the election had come out the other way, if the compromise of 1876 wouldnt have happened, couldve come out otherwise and what were the grounds of hope and tell us about the title of the book as well and the song that inspired it. One time i asked, Madeleine Albright and are both on the board. It was about the time when obama was opening up cuba, that door was open about five minutes and then it was shut again. My wife is a cuban citizen and a historian and so now i can go as a family member, so nobody can stop me. So, i asked madeleine and they were debating whatever they were debating and i asked them to which is more important and i used cuba because it was contemporary. Giving people the right to vote were giving them Economic Freedom and predictably as you might imagine. He said one person, one vote. First, dont open up cuba unless everyone can vote. Madeleine said Economic Opportunity and independence, you give them that in the middle class will rise and sooner or later they will demand their rights. Of course we could see this in china now and in a couple other places where capitalism is going. I went to china in 1993, there were 1 billion bicycles. I went back 10 years later and there were 1 billion bmws and i couldnt breathe, it was like being in a time machine going back to london. But, it rained and i said oh thats the sky. Environmental controls had not yet been implemented. Why do i reset . Because i used to wonder. The booker t. Washington speech i cited downstairs where he said economics is more important than politics. Were willing to forgo the right to vote if we can develop this economically. We can be indispensable to society if a person a tradesman or a trades woman, a craftsman or crass woman is indispensable, then why would you discriminate against the best brick mason or locksmith or whatever it might be. Or, that was booker t. Washington, but he was opposed to douglas who said the most important thing was the right to vote. So, i love teaching, thats my day job and i taught a course in reconstruction and redemption in my phd is in english so i teach in the department of africanamerican studies and this is the concept of the new [ null ] leading up to the renaissance originally called the new [ null ] renaissance. I asked the students to play with this give me a scenario were booker t. Washington is not an uncle tom make the case for booker t. Washington. A lot of people do, they say look at china. If lack people had developed economically, but, what washington was training people for was not really going to put them in leading strong positions within a soon to be 20thcentury economy. He was training them more for a 19th century model of industry and trade. Many of the lynchings, many of the lynchings, though they were in the name of a black man attempting to rave for raping a white woman that when i to be well started investigating them in 1982 and other people investigated including walter white in the 1920s, it turns out it was an economic competition. The best friend had a grocery store, market and across the street was a white man and the kids were playing marbles and they got into a fight and it led to this huge conflagration that i was jealous of the black man essentially ignited the community in memphis to lynch the man who, very welleducated man who started this with a couple partners. That example repeated itself throughout the south at the heart of these socalled lynchings. So, could economics the black people had gone 40 acres of the mule. You all know about 40 acres of the mule and that wouldve been a radical transformation but you know the concept was a big plantation in 4 acre plots giving to former slaves and it was tried and called the rehearsal for reconstruction. The georgia sea islands liberated by the army early in the war, there were plantations and the person who single handedly rollback the policy was andrew johnson. Andrew johnson sent howard a hero of the civil war, to let People Living on this island on South Carolina that he had to give the land back to the former masters. It was horrible. That was a horrible thing, so they never had the chance to own land, never, i think by 1900, 20 of the African Americans in the south owned some kind of land and that was not enough to create economic base by the middle class that wouldve had sufficient economic clout to make a difference. But without the ballot, those economic rights could not be protected. So in this debate, in terms of specifically black americans from the civil war, the most important thing that couldve happened to change the fate of interracial democracy, protecting the black mans right to vote. And so only men could vote, of course thats why i said black men and the people who were trying to rollback the civil war , that was the vulnerable point. The could take away the right to vote by intimidating them threatening them, killing them, raping them, then, finally after 1890, taking it back these dubious conventions, then we can put them back on the plantation. They were slaves by another name. Starting with united confederacy in 1894, they even published guides to the textbook guides about the textbooks of the civil war and reconstruction. Rutherford, i taught her that technique, i always get the name mixup but i tell my graduate course, her book called the measuring rod had 20 principles and, if any book the library and was considering purchasing or teacher considered using in the classroom, if any of those books violated any one of the 20 principles, the order was dont buyer, to use it, dont teach it. The civil war was fought previously. Jefferson davis, any book that said anything bad about Jefferson Davis you couldnt do it. But the slaves are mistreated and they hadnt been happy in their condition and they couldnt do it as a book. That was for common core, a lost cause. That was the beginning of the lost cause mythology that culminated well in physical form with all of the confederate monuments. All of the confederate monuments, not literally everyone, were built in the 1890s in the early years of the 20th century. They were the physical manifestation of redemption of the rise of White Supremacy. And when i heard about the murders that mother emmanuel church, at first i thought that anybody who would pray that nine black people including the preacher and i did the last interview with the reverend, as it turned out, that anyone who would pray with the people wednesday night at a prayer meeting for an hour and then systematically kill them had to be purely deranged. There must be an unfortunate set at for someone who is suffering from an insane mental condition. He was a White Supremacists he picked the church because it was the heart of the black community in reconstruction and was quoted as saying they are stealing our women. They are taking our job opportunity. But the same kinds of lies and heinous accusations that the nazis made about jewish people in the 1930s. That is the logic of White Supremacy or the illogic. Thats why. If this could happen to black people with the 13th, 14th and 15th amendments, so close to the civil war in which now they estimate 750,000 americans died , if it could happen then to us, to our ancestors, it could happen anywhere and it could happen again. That is why we have to be vigilant, thats why i did this theory to remind everybody that the right to think our permanent can be snatched away at any time. Those of us who love liberty and justice have to fight to defend those rights. [ applause ] thank you. This is a special edition of American History tv a sample of the compelling history programs that air every weekend on American History tv like lectures in history american artifacts, real america, the civil war, oral histories, the presidency and special event coverage about our nations history. Enjoy American History tv now and every weekend on cspan3. Cspans washington journal lies every day with news and policy issues that impact you. Coming up thursday morning American University education and theology professor, Cynthia Miller idris will be on to discuss the history of White Supremacy in the u. S. And as part of the podcast week that we will talk with the cohost of the preno end ill tell you what. Watch thursday morning and be sure to watch the final day of podcast week on washington journal starting at 9 am eastern on friday for host of congressional dish. Heres a look its whats live thursday on cspan at 11 30 am eastern they talk about the future of the u. S. uk relations with the president ial candidates are speaking. Later in the day the Heritage Foundation for host a debate about interns about libertarianism versus conservatism. This is a 6 30 p. M. Eastern time. And come or live coverage on cspan2 in the morning as the center for strategic and International Studies looks at trade relations between the u. S. And china followed by a discussion of the ukraine and later, Foreign Policy experts discuss rising tensions between the u. S. And iran, thats at 2 pm eastern. Sunday night on q a. We were taken out of the home to this mob of angry people. This Political Science professor talks about being physically attacked in 2017 after an appearance by author Charles Murray on campus. At the end of your discussion , you left the room and went where and what happened . I dont really remember much of it. I couldnt tell you what door we went out but we