Supremacy. The National Constitution Center Hosted this event. Welcome. You heard the passion of professor gates downstairs. Were going to jump into this conversation. I think you can tell it is important to bring as many school kids as possible to come see that incredible exhibit. William height stat with me and announced the School District and the Constitution Center are launching a program to bring tens of thousands of philly School Districts to the constitution School District every year. Wow. Were calling it the constitutional ambassadors program. Were going to go seek support, and those great kids are going to start these experiences in their class, come see the civil war exhibit and the Constitution Center and connect to classrooms around the country using our virtual constitutional exchanges for our long conversations about the constitution, moderated by a judge or a master teacher. Wow. Thats great. It is an amazing project and were so excited to share it with you. Professor gates needs no introduction. He is author of this bestselling book, stony the road reconstruction White Supremacy and the rise of jim crow, the companion book to the series run on pbs, the book is superb. It tells the story with more vivid detail and more powerful images than ive seen before of how the promise of reconstruction which we saw in the gallery was brutally thwarted by the south and the heroic efforts of African American intellectuals and others to try to resurrect that promise. Were going to jump into the conversation. Before we start, were going to see a clip from the series, let us watch it now. Most of us know that our country fought a civil war in the 1860s. But less is known about what came after. The chaotic exhilarating and ultimately devastating period known as reconstruction. Did you ever study reconstruction . School . No. A paragraph or two. We never really studied it. I didnt learn anything about reconstruction. Reconstruction was our shining moment. Its the second founding of our country. Overnight people who had been defined as property take leadership positions in the south. This is an incredibly heady moment, kind of like barack obama becoming president. But those black folks had no idea of the cliff they were heading towards. Reconstruction produced a violent backlash, a racist backlash. I want us to tell the truth about our hifrt, not to punish america. I want to liberate us, but we cant get to liberation if we dont acknowledge what weve done. Its our town now. Do you believe we as a nation are still undergoing the process of reconstruction . You might almost say it never ended. We are still trying to come to terms with the consequences of the end of slavery in this country. This is a chapter of our history thats been misrepresented and misunderstood. Its time that we acknowledge the true story and complete the work of reconstructing america. [ applause ] thank you. Thank you. Thank you. You said that every school child in philadelphia should see this exhibition. Every school child in america should see this exhibition. Absolutely. This is the most amazing exhibition about reconstruction that ive ever seen. I learned things on our tour that i had never seen the different drafts of the three reconstruction amendments. Thank you. And thanks to members of the board and all the people who support this marvelous center for making this education possible. We never really have dealt with the issues raised by reconstruction. Thank you so much for that. I learned so much from that interactive, too. Ill ask you what you learned, but also what you want americans to know about those reconstruction amendments themselves. The 13th, 14th, and 15th amendment. The 13th amendment, of course, abolished slavery. And most people know it now because of a documentary who didnt know it before. Because we were raised to think the emancipation proclamation abolished slavery. It didnt. A million and a half slavery people got behind union lines and gained 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 birthright citizenship. You ever wonder where birthright citizenship came from . Charles summer in and his colleagues were trying to figure out what is the status of these people who had been property for a quarter of a millennium. They came up with birthright citizenship. It was brilliant, actually. And then finally thats 1868. Finally the ratification of the 15th amendment which effectively gave black men the right to vote. It said that race could not be used to prevent or prohibit any american from voting. But whats very curious about the 15th amendment is that black people in the south who had been formerly enslaved and free in the 10 of the 11 Confederate States got the right to vote three years before. This is a surprise. It was a surprise to me when i started doing research for what became our series, and its a surprise i think for most of you. That if you were a former slave or had been free in the south, it was one of the four reconstruction amendments that gave black men the right to vote. And that was the what we call the first freedom summer. The freedom summer of 1867 when 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, i descend from three sets of free negros as they would have called themselves. Two sets were freebie the outbreak of the american revolution. The third set on my mothers said. The third set was freed in 1823. They lived 30 miles from where i was born. I have a tremendous amount of stability in my family. Its now in West Virginia, but it was in virginia at that time. So and my fourth grade grandfather john redman fought in the american revolution. Because of him, he was a free negro. Because of him my brother and i are members of the sons of the american revolution. Go figure. Not exactly a predominantly black organization. You know what im talking about . So hold this in mind. West virginia becomes a state. It joins the union in the middle of the civil war. It becomes a state june 20th of 1863. My and they had my free negro ancestors had cousins around winchester, virginia. Those cousins kpa opiniwho had enslaved got the right to vote three years before my free ancestors got the right to vote, because they could only have a 250 property requirement. That is so shocking, but it is true. And even when West Virginia became a state, they refused to give black men in West Virginia, they didnt have that many black people in West Virginia today. Were only talking about a hand full of people. They refused to give them the right to vote. So it was those four reconstruction acts that really laid the groundwork for citizenship and for the right to vote. Now, i first studied reconstruction i didnt study it at all in high school. But i studied it at yale. My sophomore year, i took introduction to afro American History. We were afro americans at that time. And the Professor William mcfeely who got a Pulitzer Prize had us read a book, black reconstructi reconstruction. It was radical because it challenged the Dunning School of historians at colombia university, and thuey were part of the and parcel of reconstruction being a dismal failure and embarrassment to the history of american democracy. And they took on the Dunning School. And erik phoner, the chief consultant to our series, is its so ironic that hes our leading reconstruction historian at columbia university. Its almost as if i think hes about to publish his 10th book on reconstruction on the 13, 14th, and 15th amendment. It should be out in september. I think its a personal mission for him to refute the terribly racist claims made by the Dunning School. His own predecessors in the History Department at columbia and set the record straight. Mcfeely had us read black reconstruction and then a book by rayford logan. Rayford logan was the third or fourth man to get a ph. D. In history from harvard. At one time he was engaged to my great aunt. Im very biassed about rayford logan. He wrote a book called the betrayal of the negro. Its about the period immediately following reconstruction. Reconstruction people argue about it. But generally accepted dates, 18 65 to 1877. So the bookends in 1877. Logans book begins in 1877. And that is the period of the rollback to reconstruction. It takes a while to roll it back, because black men had an enormous amount of power. Black people were in the majority South Carolina, mississippi, and louisiana. Almost in the majority in florida, alabama, and georgia. There were 16 black men elected to congress between 1870 and 1877 including two United States senators in South Carolina. Speaker of the house, secretary of state, one of the great moments of the film, i go to jim clyburns office. He has all the Office Reconstruction men on his office. Step by step, the redemptionist, the former confederates, wrote the south rose again, and they disenfranchised the black men. And they did it in a clever way. You couldnt what are you going to do in the 13th and 14th and 15th amendments are ratified . You cant get rid of them. You can go around them. Starting in 1890 was the mississippi plan. There were state constitutions which then unfolded over the next 16 years in each of the former Confederate States. Thats when they established poll taxes, literacy tests, comp hence tests that only a law professor could possibly understand. You want to know how dramatically effective these state Constitutional Conventions were . Louisiana, won the majority black states. In 1898 before their state Constitutional Convention had 130,000 black men registered to vote. The new constitution was ratified in 1898. By 1904 that number of 130,000 black men registered to vote was reduced to 1342. There were 2000 black men elected to office according to erik phoner during the reconstruction period. The last reconstruction congressman George Henry White bids farewell to the congress in 1901 and there wouldnt be another black men elected to the congress until 1929 when oscar d dupris is elected. How . The black people went from mississippi, particularly to chicago, north, and because of the 15th amendment, they had the right to vote. And so they vote a northerner in to the congress. So my introduction to reconstruction was with the introduction of rollback. Thats why theres a fourhour series. The first is about the great heights that black people achieved just out of slavery. And this great moment when lincolns desire for a new birth of freedom was realized. The first experiment with interracial democracy. It was greeted by the rise of White Supremacy. I sa the Klu Klux Klan was invented december of 1865. There were eight major massacres between 1866 and 1876 starting in memphis and in South Carolina in 1876. So this was not an untroubled period. The Klu Klux Klan hearings in all these volumes or online now and you could read them. Thats the closest weve come in this country to a truth and reconciliation commission. When grant sent troops to suppress the Klu Klux Klan, and they ask all these people victimized by the Klu Klux Klan because they had been trying to vote. Women were raped. Black men were lynched. They were beaten. They were threatened and even bribed or there were offers of bribes to people them from vote baugz they had so much power. I think the expression of all that power, not only scared the daylights out of the former south as you might expect. Right . But i dont think the north was ready for all that black power either. Because the north was complicitous with the rollback of reconstruction. Certainly you could see signs by 1872. 1873 is the first Great Depression in the United States. Its called the panic now. Its called the panic of 1873. Until the Great Depression starting in 1929, it was called the Great Depression. They were saying do we need to protect the slaves . Arent they free . Cant they stand on their own feet . How are you going to enslave people were a quarter of a millennium and expect them to stand on their own feet after a mere 12 years . But thats what happened. There was a compromise. The president ial election of 1876 was deadlocked. In 1877 the compromise went one of the agreements of the compromise was federal troops would be the few remaining federal troops protecting black peoples right to vote would be withdrawn, and black people would be on their own. And the Supreme Court was complicitous. 1876, the decision, and the death now scholars argue about when reconductistruction was ov. Black people basically had a funeral in a big church in washington in 1883 right after the Supreme Court said that the Civil Rights Act of 1875 which established equality, social equality as it was called then. Black people could ride in streetcars and stay in hotels, et cetera. Supreme court said that was unconstitutional. And Frederick Douglas, the former United States senator, john mercer langston, richard t greener, the first black graduate of harvard, all gathered in the church and the church was packed just like this. And langston spoke. And it was they said how could the country do this to us . How could they abandon us . How could they throw us to the wolves in the way that they have done . It was it was said famously, if you want to think about the rise and fall of black freedom, the slave went free, stood a brief moment in the sun, and then moved back toward slavery again. And that is the history of the rise and fall of reconstruction. Thank you for that incredible moving account of the rise and fall. You have in the book the funeral for slavery after the civil war, and another 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 the e vis ration. Whats incredible about what you just said was how central the right to vote was. Now i understand why Frederick Douglas said why the right to vote was the most important and why the e vis ration of the right to vote was the core of the redemption. Tell us how the racist redemption based backlash eviscerated the right to vote through terrorist, violence, and literacy tests. Could you hold that picture up . This is from 1872. I dont know if they can in the back maybe you cant see it. Its famous. Its called the first colored senator and the u. S. Representatives. Do you know that during the depression, the federal writers project sent writers to interview former slaves, people obviously who would have been very young by the end of the civil war. Still alive in the 1930s. And in these very small often they were former homes occupied by slaves on plantations. Right . They found grease covered faded copies of the 1812 lithograph. You know the way you go to a black home, theres jesus and Martin Luther king . Now theres jesus, Martin Luther king and barack obama. They had that lithograph. I studied that, the history of that lithograph. Three of these men were born free. One was english. Robert brown elliot was born free in liverpool. There was so much action, so much excitement about reconstruction that elliot shows up in boston. Hes part of the british navy. Born free in liverpool. Educated. Hes part of the british navy. Shows up in boston. Hears about all this opportunity in South Carolina. Goes to South Carolina. Richard harvey cane had been moved by the ame church from new york to reviet latalize mother emmanuel. Thats where the nine murders were so horribly murdered that day. Richard harvey cain starts a black newspaper. And he hires elliot to work for him, and then elliot runs for the state legislature, and then for the congress. When richard greener graduates from harvard in 1870, endless opportunities. Does he go to nooi snooi does he go to boston . Stay in boston . Does he go to philadelphia . No. He goes to charleston, South Carolina. Thats where the action was. We cant imagine that today. You cant imagine how much promise and energy and optimism. Think about it. Think about what that was like if you had been enslaved up to 1865. Endless horizon. Within 12 years, its gone. Its horrible to contemplate. I was born in 1950. I often think what it would have been like to be black with the same capacities that we have now. You wouldnt have gone to oxford. I wouldnt have gone to cambridge or yale. You were an under graduate at lincoln. The first we would not have had those opportunities. And i can imagine the heart break. When you read the speeches made that day at that church in 1883, and then douglas went to lincoln hall three days later and made another speech separately about the betrayal of the negro. And you ask why would they do this . Well, what remained the leading export from the United States through the 1930s . Cotton. Somebody had to pick that cotton. You were moving from an economy where the labor was free as performed by slaves, an it needed to be replaced to maximize profits with a form of what . Neo slavery. Sharecrop, vagrancy laws. You saw three or four black men on the street, they could be arrested, put on the chain gang. You know all the images of chain gangs, thats where they come from. Between 1889 and 1930 or so, 3700 black men are lynched. In the name of many, not all, but many accused of rape. Raping white women. Right . Both Frederick Douglas and Booker T Washington pointed out that nobody was a virtually was accused of raping a white woman during the civil war in the south when the masters were away fighting and the male slaves were back on the plantation. Think about that. Isnt that curious . Lynching was a trope that was invented as part of a larger white supremacist rhetorical superstructure. And one of the fascinating things that i figured out when we were making the series, and when i was writing the book was this was the time of americas first social media war. It was a battle between these confected images of black people as thieves, liars, venal, deras nated sambo art, we call it. And this book is full of every chapter is followed by a visual essay comprised of these horrible images which we all have seen. Its called memorabilia now. But black skin, thick red lips, wide, white eyes with black pupils. And wild hair. And these were black men stealing chickens. Black people eating water melons. Black people, male and female, in every exaggerated humiliating form through which you can represent a human being. Hundreds and hundreds of thousands of these images are produced after the fall of reconstruction and particularly in the 1890s. Why in the 1890s . Chromo lithography is invented. You can widely distribute four color images. Posters, postcards, on games. So it was possible for a middle class white family from the time your alarm clock went off was the images were everywhere. You hit an alarm clock and see sambo staring at you. Put your feet in slippers and theres an image embroidered into your bedroom slipper. You go to have breakfast, and your tea cozy was a sambo image and your egg cups. You go to work and come home. Whats one of the favorite parlor games . Ten little niggers. That was one of the favorite parlor games in america at that time. Everywhere a white person saw an 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. My colleague now create an effect. My colleague, Barbara Johnson who was a genius once defined a stereotype as an already read text. Think about how brilliant that is. An already read text. What does that mean . I can look at you. Youre black. I dont see you, i see sambo. I know who you are because society has con fektd an image superimposed on who you really are and you are forced to live up to or down to, however you want to put it, that racist image of yourself. Black people fought back with their own concept called the new negro. The educated people say, all right, we cant win this war. Maybe what youre saying is true about the uneducated black people. But we are educated, refined. The concept starts in about 1890. I wrote the book, it said it started in 1894 and a scholar wrote to me last week and said, no, no, it started in 1877 and i got the essay. So i said, okay, now it starts in 1877. But the point is, they fought back this concept of sambo with the concept of the new negro, and the new negro was everything that the old negro or sambo or uncle tom wasnt. And dubois even globalized the black negro. The paris world fair called the paris exposition in 1900, dubois cure rated with negro exhibit and he took 633 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 theyre all of course upper class black people, because hes trying to defeat this racist image that had been created by the redemptionist movement. It was true in art, novels, and even if you read Joel Chandler harris uncle rhemus tales, sometimes hell put words in uncle rhemuss mouth like black people dont need the right to vote or all that education. Thats a mistake, a waste of energy. It was true in the social sciences and it was true with racial science. You all know about the science of eugenics. A person who claims that they are a descendant is suing har ward for using those. But the professor was a stone cold racist. So all the discourses were united, social science, literature, politics, in order to put that genie back in the lamp, the genie of black freedom, the genie of the power of the vote. And it was devastatingly effective. [ applause ] could it have been otherwise . If the courts had ruled differently, if the election had come out the other way, from the fraum of 1877 hadnt happened, could it have come out out otherwise . Tell us about the title of the book as well and the song that inspired it. One time i asked im on the board of the Aspen Institute and Madeleine Allbright and condoleeza rice are both on the board. It was about the time when president obama was opening up cuba, that door was open about five minutes and it was shut again. My wife happens to be cuban, a cuban citizen and a historian on various parts of cuba. And now since its a family member, nobody can stop me. So i add madeleine and walter icicson gave me the first question. They were debating whatever they were debating. And i asked them which is more important in terms of and i used cuba as an example because it was contemporary. Giving people the right to vote or giving them economic freedom, right. And predictably, as you might imagine, condoleeza said one person, one vote first. Dont open up cuba unless everyone can vote. Madeleine said economy opportunity, economic independence, you give them that and the middle class will rise and sooner or later, they will demand their rights. And of course we could see this in china now and a couple other places where capitalism is. I went to china in 1993 and there were a billion buy cycles. I went back ten years later and there were a billion bmws and i couldnt breathe, either. It was like being in a time machine going back to london in dickens time. It rained and i went, oh, thats the sky. Environmental controls had not yet been implemented. Why do i raise that . Because i used to wonder remember booker t. Washington speech i cited down stairs when he said economics is more important than politics. We are willing to forego the right to vote if we can develop economically. We can be indispensable to society if a person, a tradesman, a tradeswoman, a craftsman is indispensable, why would you discriminate against a brick mason in philadelphia or a locks smith or whatever it might be . But that was booker t. Washington. But he was opposed to Frederick Douglas who said the most important thing was the right to vote. So i love teaching and thats my day job, and i taught a course on reconstruction and redemption. My ph. D. Is in english, so i teach english in the department of africanamerican studies. So this was about the concept of the new negro leading up through the harlem ren squans which was in the 1920s called the new negro renaissance. So i asked the students to play with this. Give me where uncle tom is not selling out Frederick Douglas or the race and make the case for booker t. Washington. A lot of people do. Theyll say look at china, right . If black people had developed economically. But what washington was training people for was not really going to put them in leading strong positions within a soontobe 20th century economy. He was training them more for that 19th century model of industry and trade. And many of the lynchings, many of the lynchings, though they were ostensibly in the name of a black man attempting to rape a white woman, when ida wells began investigating them in 1992, then other people investigated them, including Walter Wright in the 1920s. It turned out it was economic competition. Ida wells best friend had a grocery store, a market, and across the street was a white mans. And kids were playing marbles, black and white kids. They got into a fight. It led to this huge conflict and the guy who was jealous of the black men essentially ignited the community in memphis to lynch the man who very well educated man who had started that store with a couple of his partners. And that example repeated itself throughout the south at the heart of these socalled lynchings. So could economics if black people had gotten 40 acres and a mule, right, and you all know about 40 acres and a mule. Spike lees Production Company is called 40 acres and a mule. That would have been a radical transformation in Property Ownership without a doubt. The concept was that big plantations would be divided into 40acre plots and given to the slaves. And it was tried. You can read a book called rehearsal for reconstruction, when in the georgia sea islands liberated early in the war, there were plantations that were divided up and black people were given parcels of land to develop. The person who singlehandedly rolled back that policy was Andrew Johnson. And Andrew Johnson sent certainly o. O. Howard, the hero of the civil war, to those black People Living on those georgia sea islands to tell them that they had to give the land back to the former masters who had enslaved them. Its horrible. That was a horrible thing. So they never had a chance to own land, never i think by 1900, 20 of the africanamericans in the south owned some kind of land and that was not enough to create economic base, to create a middle class that would have sufficient economic clout to make a real difference. But without the ballot, those economic rights could not be protected. So in the debate between condoleeza and madeleine in terms of specifically black americans following the civil war, the most important thing that could have happened changed the fate of democracy in america was protecting the black mans white to vote and only men could vote, which is why i said black men. And the people who were trying to roll back the civil war understood that that was the vulnerable point. If we could take away their right to vote by intimidating them, discouraging them, threatening them, killing them, raping them, and then finally after 1890, taking it back through the dubious conventions, then we could put them back on the plantation. Then we can call them they were slaves by another name, and thats what they did. And not only that. Starting with the uniting of the con fed raes in 1984, they even published guides to textbooks, guides to textbooks about the civil war and reconstruction. Mildred lewis rutherford, i taught her fact check me, its either Mildred Lewis rutherford or rutherford lewis, but her book called the measure rod had 20 principles. And if any book that a librarian was considering purchasing or using in the classroom, if any of those books violated any one of these 20 principles, the order was dont buy it, dont use it, dont teach it. You know what was in there . The civil war was fought to free the slaves. Jefferson davis, any book that said anything bad about jefferson davis, you couldnt do it. That the slaves were mistreated, that they hadnt been happy in their condition, you couldnt do it as a book. Her common core was a lost cause and that was the beginning of the lost cause mythology that culminated in physical form with all those confederate monuments, not literally every one, were built in the 1890s and the first in the early years of the 20th century. They were the physical manifestation of redemption of the rise of White Supremacy. Whp i married about the murders at the church, the first thing i thought was and i did the first interview of the preacher as it turns out. I had a prayer meeting for an hour and then they killed them must be deranged. That must be an unfortunate, sad act by someone who was suffering from insane mental condition. But he was a white supremacist. He knew what he was doing. He picked that church because it was the heart of the black community in reconstruction and he was quoted as saying theyre stealing our women, theyre taking our job opportunities. 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 ill logic. Thats why if it could happen to black people with the 13th and 14th and 15th amendments so close to the civil war in which now historians estimate 750,000 americans died, if it could happen then to us, to our ancestors, it could happen anywhere and it can happen again. And thats why we have to be vigilant, thats why i did this series, just to remind everybody that the rights you think are permanent can be snatched away at any time. And those of us who love liberty and justice have to fight to defend those rights. [ applause ] thank you. Thank you. All week were featuring American History tv programs as a preview of whats available every weekend on cspan3, 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. In week nights this month, were featuring American History tv programs as a preview of whats available every weekend on cspan3. Tonight a look at a recent Conference Held at per Due University titled remaking american political history. Well feature programs from the gathering, focusing on u. S. Politics and government from the earliest days of the american public. It airs at 8 00 p. M. Eastern on cspan3. Sunday at 9 00 a. M. Eastern, a washington journal and American History tv live special callin program looking back at woodstock, the 1969 cultural and music phenomenon. Historian david far ber, author of the book the age of great dreams in the 1960s, joins us to take your calls. Drugs matter, but who takes the drugs and why they have the effects they did in the 60s and early 70s is something were wrestling with at scholars to understand. The technology of drugs, and weve got people who have thought long and hard about this, is imperative to understand not just of the 1960s, but of the production of history. What drugs we use as a given place have an incredible ability to change the direction of society. Call in to talk about david farber about the social moments of the 60s and its legacy. Sunday at 9 00 a. M. Eastern on c spans washington journal. Also on American History tv on cspan3. Next, legal historian paul finkle man and Randall Kelly on the role of the u. S. Supreme court in the reconstruction area. Mr. Finkleman explains why he believes the court
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