York america in august of 1619. Good evening. [ applause ] im k. C. Matthews, chief of staff here at the somebuchombur center poo center. Im obviously not kevin young. Listed in your program. Kevin has been looking forward to this event for ytwo years an upset hes not able to join us tonight. Kevin is not feeling well and not able to be here. He hopes to join us tomorrow and saturday for the remainder of the program and is watching along online. It is my honor tonight to welcome all of you who are here in the audience and welcome folks who are watching online as well. This is the Second Annual conference presented by our Lapidus Center for the study of transatlantic slavery. This morning Public Library and vch shomburg city event the historical analysis of transatlantic slavery. Youll hear more about and from mr. Lapidus shortly. This is a banner week for the Schomburg Center. Just a few things i want to mention to you. We and our director are part of a documentary, t rary premiered week at the new york film festival. Hopefully some folks in the audience have seen it. One reviewer called it a treat for anyone who appreciates the printed word. I suspect that includes many of us in the audience. Portions shot in and around the Schomburg Center an our tremendous archives. The screenings have been sold out. I know its still showing sunday at 12 00 noon if youre willing to go standby, i might go as well. We do hope to have this documentary here back in new york city and hopefully at new york Public Library some time soon. Just today, if you have not seen it, we were featured in a press release where we announced the Ella Baker Initiative honoring women of color in the fight for suffrage and civil rights. This is a collaboration with Pivotal Ventures and investment and Incubation Company created by Melinda Gates. In reference to this initiative, Melinda Gates had this to say. As we approach the scentennial of the 19th amendment, it is critical that we highlight all the voices who fought so hard to gain the right to vote. By boetter understanding our ow history, we strengthen the bonds of community and by sharing that history broadly, we can inspire the next generation of leaders to continue the culture of advocacy we feed need to achiev equality in the world today. Though i mentioned this last, the reason we are, of course, all here, the foremost reason is were gathering here this ev evening and over the next two days to examine the Historical Institution of slavery in this modern context here at the 2019 Lapidus Center conference. Before proceeding, i ask that you take this moment to silence your cell phones. During this event, there is no flash photography and since we are live streaming, there really is no need for you to record it on your own. During the q a, which follows this program, just a friendly reminder, you in the audience are responsible for the q alone meaning you should ask a question, please no statements and speechifying. The a is to be done by the folks here on stage. Our fine panelists. Without further delay, please join me in welcoming the person responsible for organizing this very creative and thoughtful conference, the associate director and curator of the Schomburg Centers Lapidus Center, dr. Michelle commander. [ applause ] good evening, everyone. I am very happy to see all of you here tonight to open the second biennial Lapidus Center conference, enduring slavery, resistance, public memory and transatlantic archives. We begin tonight in the spirit of reverence, in commemoration and respectful interrogation of an important date in the history of slavery in this country. In late august 1619, the first known african men and women arrived in the english colony on the white lion ship at hampton, virgini virginia, as part of the ongoing transatlantic slave trade. Stolen by english privateers from a spanish slave ship, these 20 and odd negroes were later sold in exchange for food and supplies from 1501 to 1867, approximately 2. 5 million africans were captured, sold, traded and transferred as unpaid laborers and brutally treated laborers throughout the Atlantic World. This year marks the 400th anniversary of that occasion and prompts the need for reflection. What did enslaved people endure . How did they respond to the inhumane conditions of their bondage . How did they get free . What can we learn from their persistent struggles for survival . How do we get free . What is the state of black American Life in the aftermath of slavery . What traces remain . Our panelists tonight and throughout the next couple of days will show that transatlantic slavery was a complicated brutally violent and dehumanizing institution whose full history we will likely never know. Yet, we must look back as well as across and through the Atlantic World to reckon with the larger history of transatlantic slavery and its afterlives. As youve probably already noticed, the Conference Program is dynamic and wide ranging. Thanks to many of you who are here right now. So thank you to our speakers, many of whom are right here in front of me, for engaging and joining us for this event. I also want to thank doctors Vincent Brown and yuko miki for their assistance in selecting our panelists as well as the Schomburg Center staff for stepping up to help the Lapidus Center host what i hope will be a very succeacuccessful event. 2014, the center was funded by a generous 2. 5 million gift from ruth and sid lapidus and matched by the nypl. The initial 2014 gift also included 400 rare printed materials making the Schomburg Center home to one of the worlds premier collections of slavery materials. We are now in possession of around rare items in our holdings. Mr. Lapidus continues to donate items j items generously. Scholar, knowledge, on the slave trade, antislavery, pertaining to the Atlantic World. To that end, the Lapidus Center supports the work of researchers with longterm and shortterm fellowships and also try to raise awareness and historical literacy by doing the following things. We engage with the public with a variety of evening programs. Evening discussions. Film screenings. And open archives. We also award the annual Harriet Tubman book prize which is coming up later in the program. We curate exhibitions. We host this biennial conference and we also partner with local, national and international institutions. Tonight, we are very fortunate to have with us sid lapidus who will come up and give a few remarks. Please join me in welcoming him to the stage. [ applause ] its bright in here. I cant tell how many of you are here, but welcome to our home at the schomburg. Thank you, michelle, for the kind introduction. Im honored to follow kevin and michelle in welcoming you to this third Lapidus Center conference at our home here in the schomburg. Kevin mentioned, too, there was one earlier, we are very glad that michelle joined us last august. Shes doing, as you can probably tell already, a great job. She deserves special kudos for arranging this conference with its impressive set of panels and panelists. And also for administering and help selecting the winner of this years Harriet Tubman prize. My friend, the great historian, ed gordon reid, is a member of the Lapidus Center advisory board. Among other things, and shes a very busy woman, shes now chair of s. H. E. A. R. , shear. Whose annual conference was this past july. Annette asked me to sponsor one of their programs. I agreed but opted not to sponsor a particular program but instead an ice cream social. Im a lover of ice cream. I dont know whether any of you were present at that conference, but i was told by annette and others that this social was one of the highlights of the conferen conference. Since this is such a success, im sponsoring tomorrows ice cream social here. Please come. As [ applause ] as we now all know, 1619 was an important year for the nascent american colony. Our following session has three distinguished scholars discussing 1619 in u. S. Memory. Next friday, in williamsburg, virginia, another conference starts at the william and Mary Law School entitled law and legal culture in early america. This is also about the short and longerterm consequences of 1619 but through a very different lens. Im pleased to report that this Law School Event was like tonights event triggered by my book collecting. Im called a bibliomaniac. The williamsburg event is an indirect beneficiary of my gift of my collection of slavery items to the schomburg. Since then, since the start in 2014, as kevin has mentioned, i have bought lots more items. And i continue to buy. May it continue. My goal is to live long enough to get to a thousand items. Were only at 700. But this depends on me being in good health and receiving money from my various book deals, many offers to sell these items. Aristotle is reported to have said, nature abhors a vacuum. The vacuum i faced was the newly emp empty shelves in my library in new york created by the delivery of these items to the schomburg. I asked myself, what do you want to collect next . The year 1619 is also being echoed in the william and mary conference. Among other things, it may consider what, in particular, i am interested in which is the emergence in virginia and the other american charter colonies of the seemingly almost automatic adoption of the English Common law in our representative assemblies. But how did this happen in an america without lawyers, without law schools, and without lawbooks . I intuited it was based on the common law in the postelizabethan era. Grappled with the tyranny and beheading of the king. The cromwell period. The restoration and its fall. And the glorious revolution. Since there were few, if any, lawbooks prohib s printed in a until the 18th century, the colonists had to learn from each other and those few english books that made their way to the various american colonies. So what did i do . To fill these empty shelves, i began buying books published in england in the 1600s about the evolution of the common law and the practice of law. The about 125 books that i acquired over the past 5 years have recently been loaned to the william and Mary Law School. These books form the basis of the exhibition at the law school entitled british and colonial antecedents of american liberties. Both the exhibition and conference open next friday october 18th, and if any of you just happen to be in southern virginia, please stop by. These two conferences are important mirror images of each other. The one in virginia concerns the creation of the Legal Framework for americans, but it was only for white male americans. At the same time, the various colonies passed laws to enslave black people. Before i end, i would like to bring your attention to a powerful novel i just read, and i dont read novels much, novel by the pulitzerprizewinning africanamerican author, culson whitehead called the nickel boys. It brilliantly dramatizing the story of two black boys sentenced to a hellish Reform School in jim crow era florida. It is a powerful book about a horrific slice, too big a slice, of the africanamerican experience in 20th century america. It brings to mind William Faulkners off cited quote, the past is never dead, its not even past. We in America Today must continue striving to overcome this past to make a better future. All of us, black and white and in between, should realize how far we have progressed. For example, just two days ago in montgomery, alabama, they elected their first black mayor. Think of it. Montgomery, alabama. [ applause ] but we must address how much more we have to go to overcome the centuries of oppression that are such a bloody stain on our American History. One of my goals in creating and donating my collections is to advance scholarship, in this instance, by making the original materials about slavery, the slave trade and abolition, available in one place and also digitally in a few years, for scholars in the general public. And theres no better place than the schomburg here in harlem. Please ask those scholars who are here, please ask michelle about applying for short and longterm fellowships. They are available. Thank your for attending and have a successful conference, and nothose who are here tomorr, enjoy the ice cream. [ applause ] thaurnk you for your wonderf remarks, sid. We are grateful for your support of slavery studies at the vs Schomburg Center. The Lapidus Center is delighted to announce dr. Kevin dawson, associate professor of history at the university of california merced is the winner of the 2019 Harriet Tubman surprise for his book under currents of power, aquatic culture and the african diaspo diaspora. The Harriet Tubman prize awards 7,5 hurk 7,500 to the best Nonfiction Book published in the u. S. On the slave trade, slavery and antislavery and the Atlantic World. A jury of prominents historians including doctors christopher brown, tamara j. Walker, selected the winner from three finalists chosed by a committee of librarians and scholars across the United States. The jury found under currents of power, quote, moves us beyond the agricultural fields and plantation households that long served as the sites for studies of new world slavery by drawing our attention to the diverse waterscapes that africans and descendants expertly navigated for four centuries. Although the importance of black Atlantic Sailors has been established for some time, brings into focus a culture created by a wide array of participants such as crocodile hunters and fleets of scaled canoe women paddle their boats to market. This eloquent account showcases the ways in which water funct n functioned as an economic, social, cultural and spiritual space, thus demonstrating water was not just the site of brutality and labor but potential space of refuge and freedom as well. Moving across vast regions and time periods,ricans and descenda descendants swimming, diving and canoeing abilities across a multitude of sources dawsons work opens up new ways of studying african history and African Diaspora. Were overjoyed for dr. Dawson and hope that you all will come back in the spring to hear more about his fascinating work on water culture here at the Schomburg Center. You can look for that Program Announcement hopefully very, very soon. Please join me in welcoming the 2019 Harriet Tubman prize winner, dr. Dawson, to the stage. [ applause ] thank you. Thank you. Didnt realize it was going to be quite that loud. Let me put this down. So i have a few brief remarks. Receiving the Harriet Tubman prize is an honor and humbling experience. I had actually been struggling with quite a while with what to say when i received an iwaaward named after such an indomitable woman who dedicated her life to the cause of freedom. Dr. Commander suggested that i talk about what inspired the book. And in many important ways, i have to say that my mother inspired the book. By inspiring both my love for water and my loves for learning and for history. By inspiring me to swim and serve, my mother helped me to increasingly understand that water can be an important social and cultural space. My mom started teaching me or taking me to swim lessons a the local ymca when i was about 3 months old and as a kid, we often loaded up our blue 1970s volkswagen van and headed off for adventures at beaches, lakes, museums, and historical sites. In the 1980s, she upgraded that van to a red volkswagen van. And broadened my horizons even more taking my cousins, me, and friends on road trips throughout california, oregon, down to baja, california, and these trips always included wet spaces and historical sites. Relationships with other family members were equally important in shaping my perceptions of water. My grandmother lived a few blocks from here on 145th street and edgecomb avenue across the street from Jackie Robinson park, and my cousin, michael, and i would oftentimes walk by the park and look through the fence and think about how much fun wed have if the pool actually had water in it. As a husband and father, there were trips to beaches, lakes and pools with my wife and later our kids. I snorkeleder and surfed with tm in hawaii, california, mexico, we swam through clear italian waters. Now i realize that this doesnt sound scholarly at all, right . But i bring it up because too often, we as scholars forget the lessons and memories of our childhood and how they shape our understanding of the world. Right, as dr. Commander mentioned, most histories have been about histories of slavery have been about land, about plantations, about cities, about mines, but for me, my childhood interactions were central in inspiring and informing the writings of undercurrents of power. As a kid, i also raced in addition to being places of pleasure, oceans and lakes could be places of pain. My First Experience with racism occurred when i was 5 or 6 at cabrio beach near los angeles. While playing in the sand with several white kids, i suggested we go swimming. One of the kids who older than colored people dont know how to swim. Admittedly, i didnt know what a colored person was. This was the 1970s. But i did know that i was a strong swimmer and i challenged him to a race. And i won. He then wanted to beat me up. But i was able to antagonize by antagonist by allowing him to dog paddle close to me and then jet off. And the incident stuck with me because it reminded me how power relationships defined ashore did not necessarily prevail in the water. On land, my playmate undoubtedly would have beaten me up, but in the water, he was powerless against me. As i wrote the book, i increasingly realized that my personal experiences, the lessons of my youth, could help me consider how enslaved africans understood and experienced their local waterways and how those waters were both places of pleasure and of pain. I want to share an anecdote from undercurrents of power which mirrors my experiences at cabrio beach while capturing one of the books core themes which is that slaves ability to recreate and reimagine african aquatic traditions allowed them to temporarily enjoy their bodies even as enslavers brutalized them. Enslaved women understood how white men often objectified their bodies knowing that rape could be a cruel rite of passage from childhood into womanhood. On land, womens ability to escape Sexual Exploitation was limited. Conversely, water and aquatic expertise permitted women to thwart white aggression in a manner that could preclude future rath. A group of nonswimming male can yours toured jamaica in 1823, they paused to covetously watch nude women with some, quote, washing their clothes, some wau washing their clothes, others swam about. The women, quote, onshore, dashed into the water. When they were far enough from our masculine gaze, they popped their heads above the water and laughed and made fun of us, end quote. Emboldened by the mens inability to swim, the women gladded with the waters, silhouetted their nude bodies as they provocatively sang a song about a white preacher who, quote, crossed the sea to make love, end quote, to enslaved women. Like greek sirens, they allured the men to swim out and fulfill their sexual cravings. Williams thinly veiled a greek goddess who had been raped by haities. The waters were an empowering sanctuary encompassed by the cruelties of plantation slavery. Here, enslaved women retained control of their nude bodies taking pleasure in their ability to defy landbound hierarchies of power even as men a few feet away sought to sexually dominate them. Id like to close by thanking a few people. First, my adviser, dan littlefield, who always encouraged me to be bold, creative and take intellectual risks. Another was my was mark smith who was on my Dissertation Committee and cautioned that readers might not get my scholarship while simultaneously encouraging me to be creative and to push on. Bob lockhart, the university of pennsylvania acquisitions editor, took a risk by allowing me to write a book that challenged many geographic, temporal, methodological and thematic assumptions. I should also thank jim sidsbury, who as the blind reader of my manuscript generj s generously revealed his identity allowing me to engage in a sustained and productive dialogue with him. Id like to thank the eight scholars and librarians who selected the finalists for the tubman prize. The historians who selected under currents of power for the prize. We should also acknowledge the scholarship of the other fin finali finalists. Id like to thank michelle commander for organizing this amazing event and must thank ruth and sid lapidus and new york Public Library for making the center an this award possible. Lastly, id like to recognize the dispossessioned, nameless, and often voiceless enslaved africans whose history i had the honor of telling. Thank you. [ applause ] [ applause ] this evenings opening will be a discussion between three slavery scholars whose groundbreaking work has been instrumental and instructive to scholars and everyday readers alike. Our first speaker is dr. Herman bennett. Dr. Herman bennett is a professor of history at the Graduate Center who most reer recently published african kings and black slaves sovereignty and dispossession in the early modern atlantic. His previous books including africans in colonial mexico. And cloolonial blackness a history of afro mexico. From 2013 to 2019 he served as the executive officer of the Educational Opportunity and diversity programs at the Graduate Center. The director of the Pipeline Program and the project director of the Graduate Centers black male initiative, he administered various enrichment, mentoring and fellowship programs aimed at supporting underrepresented minorities to attend and complete graduate school. Aside from his administrative experiences as a scholar and teacher of the African Diaspora, professor bennett has worked extensively with graduate students producing ph. D. S and mentoring junior faculty. Recognition of his service as mentor alongside his contribution to institutional inclusion and transformation, the American Historical Association awarded him the 2013 equity award. Please join me in welcoming dr. Herman bennett to the stage. [ applause ] our next speaker is dr. Rebecca goetz, associate professor of history at new york university. A historian of race, slavery and colonialism. Her first book the baptism of early virginia how christianity created race, appeared in 2012. Shes currently at work on a book about enslaved native people in the caribbean from the 15th to 18th century. Lets welcome dr. Goetz to the stage. [ applause ] and finally, dr. Ed baptist is professor of history at kcornel university where hes taught since 2003. Prior to that, he taught at the university of miami. Dr. Baptist received his ph. D. In history from the university of pennsylvania and his undergraduate degree is from georgetown university. Dr. Baptist is the author of various articles and essays and of the prizewinning books the half has never been told sclafsclaf slavery and the making of american capitalismand creating an old south middle floridas plantation frontier before the civil war. Hes the coeditor of new studies in the history of american slavery and american capitalism a reader. Focused on the history of the 19th century United States and in particular on the history of the enslavement of africanamericans in the south. Dr. Baptist is current yet again and i its also an honor to be in the presence of an audience that has the highest expectations and i want to thank you for always exacting the best out of us. I would also like to say thank you to the stewards who have been lapidus for their support, their generous support, for this for the work that allows us to do this kind of work. I want to get right down to business because weve been charged to talk for 15 minutes, no more, no less, and i think were running a little behind already. And so what im going to do is get right into my talk and then make room for the next two speakers and then in the q a, we ill be able to say some more thank yous to the various folks who are responsible for todays event. Years ago can you hear me . Years ago, entering portugals national archive, an exhibit on the early modern exploration caught my eye. It was 1998, 6 years after spain had commemorated the anniversary of Christopher Columbus 1492 voyage. Purr ru perusing the con tertents of th exhibit, one could not notice the scrolls, and texts, announcing far more than the portuguese exploration. The Portuguese Court received inhabitants of north and eastern africa, westcentral africa, the middle east, south and east asia, has notables. Dignitaries who on delivering their respective solve various display reflected a protocol steeped in innate forms of address. They stood and spoke as equals. A status conveyed by lords, emperors, pashas, and princes, through the detailed invocation of their royal titles. Pressed for time, i pushed on and into the archive but not before a long look at the letters crafted that ethiopias ruler addressed to his christian brother and peer. The portuguese sovereign. The conventional representations shared by contemporary africans and their global descendants regarding the early modern european encounter with the larger world is troubled by this correspondence. Were not accustom to seeing europeans courting africans this kind of diplomatic respect. In the popular narrative defined by conquests and colonial imps so, possession and dispossession, what role, if any, did this correspondence saturated with royal titles play . If titles did not matter, why were all the parties involved constantly invoking them . In the eyes of europeans, what function did they serve . How might these titles reveal Something Different about a wellknown past typified by the easy juxtaposition of conquerers and conquered winners and victims, colonizers, colonizers and colonized masters and slaves. Our foundational premise surrounding these juxtapositions evidence of 1619 in american memory, resides in the abject violated body of the enslaved, alienated from all preexisting ties. Objectification always already conceived as secular in form does not engender an inquiry into a previous status much less an exploration of a moment seemingly defined by the mutual recognition of the importance of diplomatic protocol. The history of enslavement fore closes an engagement with the past. As it constitutes to slave as an epistemic object of the here, now and future, simply stated, a master of a master and a slave a slave. Language matters. As a historian of africans, i was keen on knowing if the use of royal terminology in the text was more than a was more than just a dismissive gesture of african clownishness or culpability. I felt compelled to ask whether these descriptions were related to a grammar of politics that, perhaps, informed both europes encounter with africa and the subsequent histories that unfolded. Further, what role, if any, did the acknowledged existence of the political and africa play in shaping articulations of sta statecraft in europe, to which a final related question needs to be appendant. How might this political grammar be illustrative of pasts that have been lost under subsequent weight of successive colonial and our restrictive political imagination. In using the terminology of the letters as a starting point, i soon understood the pervasiveness of which european chroniclers and travel writers employed royal traupes to describe the earliest encounters with africa. Royalty saturated the landscape. Ive reimmersed myself in the travel logs and chronicles describing the european encounter with africa. Its immediately clear that the terminology forms a register, if you will, questioning the idea of a hermetically sealed european ascendency one from which the slave trade emerged and divolved in the absence of political negotiations. Driven only by force and commodification in which tenuous relationships were market driven. In pondering in pondering the ubiquitous use of royal terminology, im asking how might one read this phenomenon as an acknowledgement of african sovereignty that was simultaneously early modern imperial statecraft, though my focus on the europeans per v s pervasive deployment of royal terminology, i intentionally rely on the narrative literature composed of chronicles and travel logs that has been foundational to the framing of the earliest encounter between africans and europeans. In the extent documents familiar to the point of being overlooked, yes, familiar to the point of being overlooked, it is possible to glimpse traces of a past between african and european history which begs for reconsideration of the early modern African Diaspora atlantic history and new world origin story of blackness. The interpretive practice of rereading the early modern Colonial Library and for evidence, understandings and events, complicating the inaugural moments of european expansion, ingenders an origin story still in need of being conceived. That has implications for how future pasts will unfold. While the narrative of slavery and freedom stood on the hori n horizon, a strategic rereadsing of the early library also questioned truths bequeathed to us from a subsequent liberal era that to this day still colonizes our imaginary when it comes to framing the 15th century european encounter with africa. Such truths include for one the idea of a progression from machiavelli, thomas hobbs, that europeans, alone, european st e states especially at a distance, and the experiences of africa and africans. The race was foundational in the african european encounter. That commodification was nearly ascendant in that encounter. Stated less abstractly, the european encounter with africa is generally not seen as theoriization with regard to the political. Rhetoric and performances of lordship alongside legal regimes, ceremonies and pomp, early politics in the form of sovereign power and sovereignty. Scholars of the slave trade usually look at these at anecdotes, at best, curiosities that configure a cultural history. As exceptional instances that are quickly relegated to a curiosity in favor of data or abstraction in the service of telling the predictable story of slavery slavery. Im intent on reading the rhetoric, incidents, ceremonies and rituals embedded in these chronicles and travel accounts as political tropes. These tropes and anecdotes prominently manifest in the Colonial Library demand an equally valid reading of the clone yolonial past as it relat africa and newworld after rick c africans and the formation of the African Diaspora and National Narratives that animate the stories we tell about 1619. A history of the african european encounter that begins in the middle decades of the 15th century troubles the status we accord of 1619 but also 1492 since it magnifies a field of politics concerning early modern sovereignty that culminated in a taxonomy of african difference which in turn rendered some pointo slaves. An example would be, for instance, those individuals, and i believe that professor goetz is going to mention talk to usafrica, right . And i think its really important to understand that those individuals who came who landed, who were forcibly landed, also had particular kinds of political histories that explain, like, why they were enslaved, right . Unless we actually do that kind of work, we already are engaging in a process of objectification of their histories. And what we have to understand is that there is a political there is a politics, right, of, like, why congo people were, in fact, on those boats in 1619 as opposed to other folks because 50 years before then, there were almost in congo peoples on those boats. So the kingdom of congo civil war played a significant role in why africans, why specific africans were part of that. Similarly, with the kingdom. When before, in many ways the predominant westCentral Africans caught up into the vortex of the slave trade. So even tire to systemization of the slave trade and slavery which only two centuries later would be firmly linked, we see how christianity mediated encounters with pagan politics. These encounters were marked not by the confident reliance on european superiority but rather mutual recognition that navigated such encounters, but rather on a mutual recognition that navigated such encounters required careful diplomacy. Such maneuvers shaped both the encounter, itself, but also the selfconscious performances of state power on both sides of the encounter. To say as much calls into question the telios that long served to absorb the african european encounter and its immediate history into the story of new world slavery, thereby overlooking the part that africa and africans played in the evolution of iberian sovereignty and imperial identity prior to 1492. Scholars rarely reflect on the earlier sequence of events involving europeans interacting with africans and how that history might trouble the existing narrative of the west and its emergence, instead the emphasis has been on the inauguration of the slave trade and slavery and how the slave trade unfolds in the economic and social histories of the americas. What i am arguing here is not an assertion of african agency. Im interested in the implications that this past that im sort of alluding to might have for narrating the history of europe and by implication the american story. The narrative of power, historians and theorists associate with the west, has woefully underexamined and undertheorized the african presence. This presence, i argue, comprises a site yet to be examined for its role in western formation. A history in which africa and africans figured as objects, yes, but occasionally also emerged as historical subjects. In the hands of scholars whose eyes are fixed on the emergence of the slave trade, africa and africans rarely emerge from the earliest narratives of the portuguese and spanish pasts. Already detached from what in modern terms might be described as political economy. Consequently, the objects of the trade, of the slave trade and slavery, history, that is the european past, devoid of any claims, ties, associations, that have positioned them as subjects, clients, vassals of african lords and elites whose own status fluctuated over time. From this perspective, its easy to imagine and project alienate, social death, as a timeless phenomenon rather than as dramatic and historisized acts, sundered roots into ruthlessness. What is more, we ascribe a hegemonic singularity to the early modern past. The early modern european past. Despite what we fully know to be the role of the Catholic Church and christian ideology and the encounter, europe in its ro relationship to africa is a secular and dominant secular and dominant fully forged entity with a singular political rationale. Europe in this configuration of the past is already the west rather than an entity, identity, that emerges through time and through its encounters with africa. From these aforementioned observations flow an assertion. Until europe is understood in its historical specificity, neither its early modern encounter with africa nor africas encounter with europe can be fully realized. We understand the unrelenting violence unleashed by europe on this encroachmentunleashed on e violence that highlights the phase at the core of modern life. But this representation also flattens and condenses a complex past that grants europeans far too much power. For africa and africans, the stakes are considerable. Concepts like tradition, authenticity, autonomy, cultural memory, agency, and resistance which always acquired valence through analogy and negation in the wake of encounters cannot be conceived in their complexity until the historical specificity of the european past is clarified. As a postcolonial historical intervention but also a history that acknowledges the complex entanglement with africans in the making of European Social formation and by implication the earliest histories of the u. S. And or british north america. I point here to a need for an earlier european past as a necessary condition for writing the early modern and contemporary african dispora. Thank you. Good evening. Thank you so much, dr. Commander, for inviting me here tonight to talk about 1619 and thank you also to professor bennett and professor baptist who are friends from other context for the opportunity to have this conversation. I think its very important to talk about 1619. As a historian of virginia, 1619 has been on my radar screen for a long time. But i could not have predicted the political valence that this year and this 400th anniversary has taken on in the last few months. And i think that is something that is absolutely necessary to talk about on september 15, 2019, two con federal memorials for contextualized. I say contextualized rather than vandalized because i look at this statue of robert e. Leon the memorial road in richmond not as an act of vandalism or an act of graffiti. I see this as a historical comment with a deep political meaning. I think this is actually really remarkable. And it happened after, of course, the New York Times magazine special issue edited by Nicole Hannah jones about 1619 and its past and its present. Lee was not the only statue to get this treatment that night. Stonewall jackson got it as well. I couldnt find as good a picture of it. But a few days after this, my friend and colleague at the university of virginia reported on twitter that the tablet marking charlottesvilles slave market was also contextualized. She uses the word contextu contextualized here as well. Not only are the flowers placed there, but you see the 1619 very clearly marked on the lamp post in this particular image. So, 1619 i think is now a powerfully political statement rooting slaverys past in our present. It references the first documented arrival of enslaved africans in english north america in a space that would nearly two centuries later become the United States. Because i think of the New York Times magazine and Nicole Hannah jones work on this, the things that scholars have been talking about in this context for quite some time are now not only the shorthand for understanding the history of slavery in this country but also a shorthand for understanding racial inequality in our present. 1619 is a call for justice expressed in distinctly historical terms. And it is an aspect of this history that i want to talk about today because i dont think 1619 should become just a shorthand. We should understand how the people who came in 1619 got here. In essence, this is a little bit of response to the call that Herman Bennett has made for us to try to understand the african context in more detail. What we know about this 1619 initially came from a letter written in january 1620 by john wolf, a name you may know as the man who eventually married pocahontas. It referenced an event that took place in or around august of 1619, the arrival of a dutch man of war of about 160 tons at Point Comfort on the virginia coast. We now know that ship was called the white lion although john wolf didnt tell us that, and that it didnt carry much of a co cargo. But as wolf put it, 20 and odd negros. The captain of the ship traded for necessary food supplies. The letter makes it very clear that there was basically no vick eventu vickual at all on the ship at that point. I think starvation was very much a part of that experience. Wolf also noted that the white lions companionship turned up a few days later. We know from martha mccartnys research that before it departed from virginia it left behind two or three more enslaved africans, including a woman whose name we know as angelo. The treasurer went on to bermuda where the captain sold perhaps as many as 25 more enslaved africans. The reason that we have this information is that the white lion and the treasurer were likely engaged in illegal pirating activity. John wolf and others wrote about the enslaved africans who arrived in virginia in 1619 not because they were concerned about slavery or because they cared about enslaved people. I dont think they cared about slavery and i dont think they cared about enslaved people either. They wrote about them because they were engaged in a cya maneuver to distance themselves from illegal activity. The Virginia Company feared being associated with an event that exappropriatiated property from the sing of spain. So, the concern here was not human beings. The certain here was property. The white lion and the treasurer had met up in the caribbean in the summer of 1619 for the expression purpose of disrupting spanish shipping. And one ship they did disrupt was the san juan bautista, a slave ship carrying perhaps as many as 350 enslaved people from west central africa. The portuguese captain of the San Juan Batista reported in veer cruise, that is in present day mexico, that lutheran core sars, a catch all term for Northern European protestants, had robbed him leaving him with only 147 pieces, objects, property. Mendez did not say how many enslaved people the white lion and the treasurer stole from him, but based on the numbers, these two ships later sold in virginia and bermuda, the number was probably somewhere between 50 and 60. Mendez also told Court Authorities that he had stopped for water in jamaica and that by then sickness was already rampant in his ship. Mendez told port authorities that he had come from rawanda in west central africa. Between 1618 and 1622, the portuguese prosecuted a war against the interior kingdom. They contained several large walled and fortified towns many of which at that time were bigger than most european cities that had become sites of resistance against the slave trade and particularly portuguese prosecution of that trade. And the portuguese wanted that resistance neutralized. In the four years of the war, the portuguese exported as many as 50,000 west Central Africans. Many of them being come bun doe speakers. We do not know for sure if the woman named angelo who arrived from virginia in 1619 was from nadongo but it is a possibility. I mentioned this so we can think about how angelo might have experienced warfare in nadongo and how she might have conceived her enslavement and thought about resistance. This complex history of european invasion of africa, of portuguese slaving, of the slave port of veer cruise, of english and dutch pioneering in the caribbean connects this moment of enslaving in virginia to this larger atlantic complex. 1619 was a beginning, but it was not the beginning. It did represent the entrance of colonies controlled by the english into this atlantic culture of slaving and of slavery. And it does, i think, represent the beginning of the history that shaped the United States. We can imagine, perhaps, something of angelos experience although i think much of it will remain out of reach for us and perhaps even unimaginable. Torn the from friends and family likely in nadongo and during a forced march to the sea, the terror and the deprivation of the hold where lack of water and the rapid spread of an unnamed disease likely killed people that she knew. Perhaps they were people that she knew from home. Perhaps they were people that she had met and bonded with in that long march to the ocean. Perhaps they were simply people who shared in the terror. We might imagine the additional fear engendered by an english and dutch pirate attack, what that must have been like experienced by people who could not escape who could not jump overboard, who could not run from this onslaught. We might also imagine her terror at confinement in the hold of yet another vessel and then what might her emergence have been like in virginia, what uncertainty might she have felt. But what politics and what understanding of her situation did she bring from nadongo and how did that shape her experience in virginia . All of these things are things that i like to think about and i think that its important to think about. But these are also things that cant be known in the traditional ways of doing history. I see the echos of our collective american struggle to understand angelos life in the contextual za contextualizations that i showed you, the 1619 with robert e. Lee here. Because i think that what our newfound discussion of 1619, this very public conversation that we are now undergoing, i think what this is doing for us is allowing us to begin to think about what 1619 meant to the people who experienced it and what those meanings can take shape for us today. Part of what we must do is understand and incorporate the history that ive just talked about into our classrooms, our textbooks, our journalism, and our politics. And i think ultimately in the context of controversies over confederate memorial zags and the extreme violence charlotte experienced two years ago, 1619 is taking on a new meaning and the people who did this marvelous act of politics are actually engaging that in important ways that we should consider. But i think that this also represents a shorthand critique for the whoaful state of our organization and the collective ignorance about the long shadows of slavery in this country. Robert e. Lee gets this magnificent statue. He and so many other slave holding confederates are represented on this long boulevard in richmond, virginia. The slave market in charlottesville, a place where human beings were bought and sold, in a city where 14,000 enslaved people lived in 1860, the home of mr. Jeffersons university, this slave market is only marked by a plaque sunk into the sidewalk now contextualized too as the other image shows with slave replaced with human with the flowers placed as a memorial with 1619 scrawled on the lamp post. As my colleague said to me this morning, someone took it upon themselves to write 1619 on the pole beside the slave Auction Block and place flowers. I like to think that perhaps our conversation can now consider these flowers are for angelo too. So, remind me to never follow those two scholars geb. I was making notes and just started to get a little bit blown away. Yeah, i want to take a moment to congratulate kevin dawson as well. I told him before, but ill say it now that his 2005 journal of American History article which is part of the project, right, the project that became the book . And its just an amazing fore taste of this great book but its been shaping by teaching for years. I use the lessons from that article to destabilize my students understandings of, you know, what is and what supposedly always has been and what race supposedly means and what it supposedly has always meant in history. And its fantastic for that and i want to note also the other two finalists, professors black and crew whose work on resistance to slavery and other forms of domination, solidarity, politics is also exceptional. I want to thank the center. I hope im going to repay a little bit of the debt tonight, and i already mentioned these two who have set the stage. Since this is 2019 and were talking about 1619 in the wake of a whole year of commemorations, some of them quite ambivalent, some of them transformative, recontextualizing even, i wanted to mention the account that the 1619 project gives of u. S. History and to try to close the circle and bring the story along with what these two scholars have done up to the present. And i think if i could shorthand the account or at least my own perspective on the account that this amazing journalistic project gives, its that the arc of an africanAmerican History begins at 1619 and although we know now beginnings are quite complicated. But in some meaningful way it begins then. And this history has perhaps more than any other shaped the u. S. Of 2019. And it did this shaping action in many ways through the ways that slavery shaped u. S. Politics, culture, and the economy of the young u. S. To the way that the domestic slave trade enforced migration, helped drive the expansion across the continent, through the ways slavery shaped white identity. And through most importantly in the long run the ways that resistance to slavery and jim crow and Everything Else shaped not only black identity but the very identity of politics in deeper and wider freedom so any movement calling itself a movement for freedom for all is still working on, at least in this country, among other influences the profound influences of black abolitionists and all the Freedom Fighters that succeeded them. Where black abolitionist means not only Frederick Douglas but Moriya Stewart and countless run aways, fugitives or selfliberating people as historian Graham Hodges urges me to call them, countless selfliberating people who ultimately brought slavery in the u. S. Crashing down. And not only abolitionists fighting slavery in the u. S. But abolitionists fighting every form of oppression that they have fought since. Now, the project itself is in key ways not only shaped by and responding to that long history but literally of that long history, not just by building on scholars who have worked in those traditions but building on journalists who have create wd d what the historian calls counterpublic or series of counterpublics. I find that a very exciting notion to think with. And the account challenges White American subjecthood in crucial ways and not just by charging the White Americans in general have been and are profited and privileged by the history of enslavement and exploitation that succeeded enslavement, but at least as importantly the account decenters white people in the history of the United States suggesting in the wake of enormous efforts in historical, literary, philosophical, that whiteness has been defined against blackness and ultimately depended in multiple ways on black bodies. Such an account rejects the long project of defining america as a white state that is triumphant and innocent, innocent of both crimes and debts. Well, the accounts certainly received various kinds or the 1619 project received certain kinds of push back. And what i want to do is to talk about one in such a way that i dont know if its going to square the circle between the two speakers we just heard or that it needs to, but to suggest the ways in which i think thinking about 1619 can be much more open than perhaps the critique might make it out to be. And maybe to suggest we need a 1492 and 1607 and 1455 or 56 whichever date the first ship is coming from the congo to portugal and perhaps me need not only do we need all of those things, but those things inherently i would argue i dont know if ill prove this point or any point, but i think they do in fact work together. But one critique and i think it was a critique that troubled Nicole Hannah jones a little bit was the argument that 1619 assumes that africanamericans have a specific and distinctive experience that starts in 1619 and that that excludes those who might identify as black or colonized in various ways but who dont necessarily identify as africanamerican. And this gets of particular urgency because of the increasing size of black populations in the u. S. That do not identify as or primarily as africanamerican and some of which do not identify with any historical experience of slavery in the americas. Well i would submit that the framing of the 1619 project seems to suggest that not just traditions of resistance in africanamerican Political Organization in the u. S. But the democratic tradition that exists in the u. S. To the extent that its democratic is the product of and the project of particular and perhaps historically distinctive kind of black solidarity. Thats invoked in the idea of history that begins in 1619 and runs up to the present. What i mean here by Democratic Politics especially is what we mean when we invoke the kind of freedom politics to use a term deployed by Hasan Jeffreys in his book on the gritty realities of Civil Rights Era struggles in lowndes county, alabama. The kind of freedom politics that are broud, that are inclusive, that go beyond civil rights to incorporate much larger groups of people and much more significant and deeper demands. Well, anyway is the claim that this comes out of the africanamerican experience since 1619 an exceptionalist claim . Thats what i want to talk about for just a minute. Historians of africanamerican ethnoj ethnogennettists might dispute flows from africa. I would argue that out of the experience of slavery, resistance to slavery, the conversion to christianity, the experience of emancipation, reconstruction and redemption, jim crow disfranchisement, and the great migration emerged something variously described as africanamerican culture and identity. Particularly shaping that in the u. S. Include the imposition of one drop these are shaping it from the outside, right . The imposition of a onedrop rule in a white majority environment, relatively early demographic transition to creole born in the new world majority, the early creation of a politics of whiteness predicated among other things on the right to police black movement and black bodies and this right spread universally among white people not confined just to professional police. Settler colonial independence under ideology of republicanism, the early closing of escape hatches, but at the same time the emergence of a dual system, a kquasi freedom in the north described as a set of maroon colonies in the north and a south where slavery was expanding and deepening in the 19th century. Well, the question is is such an argument or such a set of definitions or descriptions of the africanamerican experience acception nallist . It certainly could be. And we might also think about what we mean when we say exceptional. There could be two definitions. One means better or even innocent, unique, america as a city on a hill. This is not usually an american or a definition of exceptionalism based on american experience. Another definition could be a unique specific history conditioned by specific historical processes and with particular kind of influences exerted by that people or that group who has their own exceptional history. And of course this means that there could be hundreds or thousands of groups that have histories. And not just conditioned by specific processes but by the responses to those processes, the shaping of those processes, both internal acts that we might call agency shaping a new culture and a new politics and what we might call external acts, reshaping the world around them. And i think my key point on that subject, you know, what is the way to classify the responses to those external influences and the internal processes. What is a way to classify the internal processes themselves . The key idea here is that enslaved africanamerican in their free or somewhat free brothers and sisters built a specific culture of black solidarity that was and continues to attribute. Over time it has come to mean a political identity under an inverted reappropriation of one dropness. Reading tommy shelby and Michael Dawson i would gloss this as visible african ancestry plus acknowledgment of the linked fate equals a form of solidarity. And this process of incorporation that comes out of the solidarity has continually widened and deepened not just the u. S. Concepts of black solidarity but what that black solidarity is capable of, in other words what kind of power and institutions, what kinds of agency it can act and who is part of it. And the process of incorporation has never been universal or without struggle or contradiction. The significant role and the significant struggles of lgbtq, afrolatin activists to play a larger and larger role in social movements is just one obvious recent example, but its examan example that keeps growing and significant. Black immigrants to the u. S. Have always been crucial to a continual remapping of solidarity, changing what it means. Here we are in the house of art row schomburg after all. Historically in the u. S. , africanamerican concepts of black solidarity could perhaps be seen as a line of merge or line of contact, in some cases solidarity extended, some cases solidarity requested. In some case going beyond solidarity to lifelines. This is a history and a set of identities thats different from and works out differently in some ways than we might see in brazil or jamaica but it is at the same time a history of identities linked to the histories with every single day. So, this kind of the critique that the 1619 project thus impli implies as sort of closed circle seems to me to miss the point of the last 400 years of africanAmerican History. Which has, as i said, been a continual process of wider and wider incorporation. And it seems to fade next to the accomplishment that all the writers and in particular Nicole Hannah jones have made. Theirs is accomplishment in the years of making and one that is made deep by and made possible by the kind of solidarity, the construction of counter publics that i talked about. Generations of black journalists paved the way and forced open the doors of white news rooms, scholars who shaped the work and who shaped the scholars who are alive today. I think its fair to say are primarily or were primarily africanamerican or of african decent. And i think even more significant to the accomplishment of 1619 is the fact that its narrative builds upon foundations laid by the work of millions of people, africanamericans in the broadest definition who created their own historical understandings, their own ins substitutions of education, their own traditions of journalism. They created this counterpublic and history grew upwards from vernacular history, from personal experience, from endless debate. This is a solidarity that is built not out of unity or people agreeing with each other. Its built out of people debating with and ultimately struggling together. And this reshaped all this process reshaped what white historians and journalists would say too. But more importantly produced generations of black journalists, historians, writers, and of course activists who changed the u. S. And how the People Living in it can see the year 1619. I just want to close with what i read upstairs in the exhibit which i think really speaks to this which is the Langston Hughes piece from montage of a dream deferred. Ive watched us spread out from penn station, the dark tint of a nation out of plains from puerto rico, from cuba, haiti, jamaica, out of buses marked new york, from georgia, florida, louisiana, harl lem, san juan, the bronx, most of all to harlem. Thank you. I guess now the conversation begins. So, we should open it up to the did you want to say anything to each other, i guess . While the questions are being formulated . I think were all just like we just said our piece. Weve done or speaking. We want to hear from you. We cant actually see the mics in the back of the room. I said at the beginning it is very bright up here. Okay. We have a question here. Hello. Yes, we can hear you. Yes. Okay. I want to mention couple of small things that i noticed Like National public radio, npr. I listen to them a lot and i didnt bring a list but i always write down the days and times when they call us slaves and continuing. And we were never called slaves to ourself, our mothers and grandmothers and grandfathers never called us slaves. They always told us youre not a slave, so this persistence is atrocious. And, you know, take the slave out of these history books, calling people slave and these history books, and i heard recently as everybody know about this thing with the lady, the teacher, and they had a skit or play or whatever. But thats where its coming from because you continue to let these people call you slaves. And this is to the schomburg. Also, theres a thing about a new thing that ive heard on the radio, npr, that white people were africans before black people. They say white people were in africa before black people. Anybody ever heard that . Yes. Thank you. Im not the only one. Okay. It aint true. Like he said do you have a question, sir . My question is if that is true, where are the fossils in the ground . That is not my real question is this my real question is do i have a question . Why are you people here . Why are you here . Mr. Grandville t. Woods died in the hospital. He sued Thomas Edison once or twice. Hes the greatest inventer ever lived. And schomburg has his name out there on the wall. And this is another atrocity. And i mentioned to the first director that was here. I aint going to talk to nobody else. Okay. Thank you. Thank you. You heard. Okay. Those with questions please form a line. Good evening. Thank you all for your presentation. Im dr. Anna maria thomas. Im a retired educator of 39 years in the new York City Public School system. My question is that you mentioned the run away slaves and the militia that was developed to capture them which still exists today in our police. What are you going to do about addressing that particular issue which continues to take our children from us . So, i dont i know this is not going to fully answer the question, but the book project im actually working on sorry. Sorry about this. I didnt give you the updated bio, so thats my fault. But im working on a book that looks at the long history of rationaliz rationalized racialized policing in the u. S. Thats why i was talking about solidarity because thats resistance to racialized policing. As a scholar, thats not what i can do with my work in response to the problem. But certainly im interested in the book because i see people organizing out in the world and out in the streets and putting their lives on the line to address this longstanding issue in the u. S. That i agree is deeply rooted in slavery. If i can just add to that, one of the things that i think was particularly powerful about the 1619 project was it connected that particular moment with things that we often just consider to be modern issues, with redlining, with disfranchisement, and with mass incarceration and racialized policing. And i think making those connections with slaverys past and our present is extraordinarily important. And as a scholar, those are connections that im able to try to make, in the classroom especially. And i think thats a down payment on the work that needs to be done to actually change policy in the u. S. Okay. My name is carl dicks, life long activist, revolution aint something im going to retire from despite my advanced age. Your discussion of 1619 and where it fits into today takes me back to two things that ive been grappling with from quotes from bob avakian. One is theres a direct line from the confederacy to the fascist in the white house today. And the other is that White Supremacy and capitalism are one in the other. I dedicated my life to revolution and to drive trump pence regime from power, not through the democrats but through people taking to the streets. Im working on that right now. You can talk to me about it. But for this program, what about this question of the relationship between White Supremacy and capitalism . What does your Research Bring to bear on that including the fact that theres been struggles to deal with that . Reconstruction was a concentration of it . The 1960s, 70s was another concentration. But what comes out of each of them is not only is rejuvenated White Supremacy continuing to rule and the regression that were dealing with now because, you know, the president talking about go back where you came from to people who are u. S. Citizens including one whos an africanamerican who wheres she supposed to go back to . I remember that from when i was a teenager coming now. So, basically the question is what does your research say on this question of the possible accept rahbili accept rablt . My own argument is i dont know about the future but what i think i see in the past is that the two grow up together like two vines rapped together supporting each other. Theyre closely interlinked. Maybe its historically possible that capitalism could have emerged without White Supremacy and slavery. We just dont have the example of that in the u. S. They did emerge together. That upsets the economist to no end to hear it framed that way, but it is in fact true. One of the things that i would add to that is Eric Williams 1944 classic capitalism in slavery is a fantastic book reissued in 1994. It is still in print. Theres a reason its still in print because historians have been talking about the relationships among slavery, White Supremacy, and capitalism for a very long time. And you can get into these little debates about little tiny things that just dont matter, right . It seems to me that the connections there are so apparent and so obvious that trying to deny it is utterly useless. Nevertheless i also join in saying i dont know what happens next. I can tell you about 500 years ago, but the future is hard for me. Ill also say that i want to be very respectful of that question, and at the same time i think that the work thats represented by many of the scholars who are actually trying to historicize that question rather than just sort of allowing it to be a kind of timeless relationship, that the work of historicizes sort of speaks to the very complexity of power but also the very complexity of the antithesis of power, right . And so when we talk about the relationship between White Supremacy and capitalism, its also really important to think about that when are we asking that particular kind of question. In the early modern period, there is a particular kind of relationship that configures ethnicity in relationship to dominance and power. But its not necessarily a fully formed or its not something that necessarily leads to what becomes White Supremacy in some kind of direct way. And i think that thats sort of where the historians and the scholars are really trying to add to this whole process because what were really trying to get at is complexity not because its complex for the sake of being complex, right . Its actually trying to make a case that we need more subtle understandings of power in order to understand how it kind of morphs into Something Different so that we dont just think that oh here we are. Now we understand what White Supremacy is and it could look completely different and yet we think we have sort of overcome something. Thats where scholars have really good especially in the older periods of trying to say lets being a little more lets add a dynamic to this that isnt always acknowledged. And i think that, you know, to me i find more recently the engagement on the part of folks who are picking up on cedric robinsons work around racial capitalism has been very generative but it also makes a case that the very configuration of europe itself even prior to the encounter with africans already had an ethnic racial component to it in relationship to europeans among themselves. And so the problem of race isnt a black problem. Its a problem that has been historically embedded in the ways in which people configure difference with or without blackness. My name is alissa and i really appreciated dr. Baptist kind of highlighting the problematics of benchmarking the 1619 project on the year 1619 and i would love to hear some of the other scholars thoughts on those issues and in particular im just thinking about one, how the year 1619 really kind of gives too much credit to the british, if you will. Its really based on, you know, kind of a british event. Its based on an event and a document that are embedded in british and u. S. Histoyog if i. And as dr. Baptist put it, if were really kind of trying to move towards decentering whiteness, how can we do that if were projecting this british and u. S. Hiss tor yol ifhistory. Im curious if you know what the alternative might be. And two, the other thing i keep thinking about with the 1619 year is, you know, that it really doesnt shine full light on perhaps why slavery really was able to exist and thrive here at that moment and going forward. And im thinking about the spanish colonies that were here which employed native american slaves and just the fact that slavery was already embedded in the dna of this land much prior to 1619. Thank you. Well, ill just quickly say that i think that what i was suggesting in my talk is a certain kind of claim towards an african history, right . One of the things i also want us to i think the first questioner, one way to think about the person im not sure if the gentleman is still here but the question he was asking about slave is an important one, right . And its an important question because and part of it is if theres a refusal to sort of take that as making that term synonymous with the black experience, right . And but that doesnt but just substituting that with black isnt enough in 1619 because part of what part of the violence of this history around 1619 is the obliteration of african history that was actually front and center in terms of what becomes the black experience, right . And we might not necessarily need to start with telling that story only in the cultural sense. There have to be other ways, other kinds of narratives to tell that, right . Because only telling that as a cultural story, then there are certain things that might be lost in terms of saying whats what people are creating on the ground as opposed to what they might be bringing with them, what kind of political traditions might have been coming from there. How people what were their ideas in terms of their political thought with regard to philosophy in term of hierarchies . What were their ideas with regard to traditions and other things of that sort that would actually shape how individuals themselves are going to carve out something fundamentally in structures of domination, right . And so its not a surprise that weve had weve had much Better Success in the context of the United States talking about slavery or and more increasingly about blackness. But at the same time, theres been an almost systematic disavow of an engagement with the african past on its terms, right . That its not terms that were sort of telling africans like this is what we need if are you but actually trying to do the work, right . And thats sort of where i think that we are trying to move now. Some of us. I get the historic complaint that 1619 is not the beginning of slavery anywhere. And this complaint has been particularly strong among latinamericanists who have been studying the history of slavery for a long time, 1619 aint it. And im sympathetic to it. But im also symp thet toik the claims making around the 1619 project which is taking this specific event, calling it a beginning, and then linking it to larger problems in United States history and in our politics in the present moment. And i think that thats where 1619, 1619, right, is having an impact. And i dont want to say as a professional historian i dont want to get nitpicky. I can, right . I can be like oh, look, actually the first example of slavery in english virj virnl is 1608. We can have that conversation and we should have that conversation, but the 1619 project, 1619 think as done is focused our attention and has the potential to focus our politics in a way that can change the conversation about race in this country. And i wouldnt want even as sometimes historians hackles get raised, i wouldnt interrupt that conversation to be like but, but, but. I think thats where the professional side of me and the side thats trying to communicate to a wider audience can sometimes clash. Yeah, i would say i appreciate you appreciating the problem and at the same time what i also want to do is from a different perspective endorse that period zags, 1619 to 2019. And i think of the kind of one way of looking at the history thats implied if one of the things is suggesting is that african America Today or black America Today, however we want to define it, is in some significant way descended from 1619 where obviously were not talking about geniological descent because hundreds of thousands of people during the slave trade were brought after that and millions of migrants have come sense then. And many of those people and their descendants and even if you think about the way racism works in this country, lots of descendants of white migrants to this country would identify under the category black or africanamerican as one of their multiple identities. And that the generative process that builds that process starts in 1619. But what i did want to suggest is that theres constant debate and openness in the long process of building that solid identity overtime. And thats a fascinating, fascinating thing to look at as a historian. If youre looking at 400 years of this, even as if youre looking at 400 years of this, youre generalizing a lot, right . And so youre always going to make mistakes. But its also possible to appreciate what an amazing achievement it is at the same time. And thats also whats going on in this 1619 project, stepping back and saying, you know, that the process of resistance and building and solidarity that starts in 1619 is the on verse of that process of violence, that that process has changed the world and its not just the u. S. , right . But changed the world too. And thats pretty amazing. Thats something to step back and use this occasion to also look at. Okay. Great. Great discussion. Im a writer. Just two general questions. One is maybe for the all the panelists to maybe talk a little bit about. But one is the issue of violence maintaining slavery. I know slavery is a very violent thing to maintain. Maybe you can kind of discuss the thought of these people and why, you know, violence was very important to maintaining slavery r. And then to mr. Baptist, im fascinated by the american civil war. Some reason i love hearing scholars on cspan discuss the civil war. Its just fascinating on why these two group of people, north south, white people fight each other, over half a Million People died to protect this institution of slavery. Humans trying to kill other humans to protect something. Its just beyond me that so many people died and a lot of those white people didnt benefit from the civil war. So, those are my two questions. All right. So, this is the part where i say that last name is baptist like the church. But thats all right. Everybody does that. But the question about violence is right on point. Its absolutely i think the question asked and one of the key questions we have to ask, if were trying to figure out what the longterm influence of slavery is in this country. There are lots of important ones, but this is certainly key one. The great scholar stephanie camp argued that slavery was predicated upon the control of movement. The control of individual enslaved peoples movement. Thats literally how they were enslaved, by keeping them from going where they wanted to go. Obviously they didnt want to be working for someone else, or, you know, prevented from going to see their family and things like that. So, that is the reason why all of the colonial laws at one point or another before the American Revolution give white people, all white people, the control over black movement, the control over African Peoples movement. In most cases theyre pretty explicit about this is the right to life or death, right . That they have the right to take a life to control fugitive movement. So, thats absolutely crucial. And another work i would in addition to her work, closer to freedom, i would recommend me go back and look at john hope franklins a militant south which describes an Enslavement Society which is an older work but i think is still very relevant which is fundamentally built around the violent control of other peoples movement. And as for the civil war, how did it happen, the short answer i would say is that enslaved people kept unenslaving themselves. They kept going to the north. They troubled the politics of the north first by teaching some white people how to be abolitionists and together black and white abolitionists then basically broke up the Northern Whig Party and after that the stability of the political system was gone. So, the short answer is that selfliberating people brought on the civil war. I would also just add, not that you asked me, but i would just add that we do have a fantastic panel on the civil war. I believe its on saturday. But we do have the programs available, so you are more than welcome to attend that session and engage with those civil war experts. Thank you. Youre welcome. Okay. I think we have time for one more question. We have a reception to get to. Theres a second part of this evening. So, well take one more question. Take two please. Good evening. My name is renaldo ortiz. I teach at brooklyn college. My question is for dr. Bennett. In your intervention, you alluded to that the african history experience has been undertheorized. So, in that same strain, following the works of joseph inequity and cedric robinson, my question is how do we approach perceiving of political economy. And then for the panel, how do we then also conceive of looking at resistance resistance and particularly slave resistance as a structure within the understanding of different labor forms . Thank you. Im sorry. Could you ask your question again . The first one or the second one . The first one, please. The first one. So my question is, how do we approach the idea of articulating a political economy of chattel slavery if within, for example, again, following the works of cedric robinson, understanding that slaves were perceived as fixed capital, but if slaves are perceived as fixed capital than the theory of surplus value becomes void. Secondly, how do we then understand exactly how to incorporate the theory of the experience of the slave regime into the understanding of the formation of capital itself . Okay. Great question. And one way i would answer that is, the work that the work that im engaged with is actually trying to think through questions around capital that doesnt already privilege the ascendency of political economy, right . And because political economy itself has a history. And just like the separation of the economic from the social and the cultural, that itself has a history. That is associated with a much later period. So then when were talking about these kinds of questions in relationship to the 17th century or for that matter in the 15th century, it becomes very difficult to sort of talk about capital in the way that we would talk about it say in eds book on the 19th century, right . And but theres a way in which when we sort of think through the question of slavery, we havent been doing a lot of that kind of that kind of histo were not simultaneously historicizing what it might mean to be a slave before there are such things as absolute private property, right . And what does that then mean for the very notion or very definition of a slave in relationship to the 15th century . It doesnt necessarily mean that people werent necessarily being owned by a person, but if a person doesnt have absolute mastery over private property what does that then mean for fixed capital and other things like that . So that requires us then to have a much more subtle language of value, of how we think or commercialization and commoditification and so on that arent just simply imposed on to a history, on to a peoples experiences from the 19th century, right . And its not to disavow a historical materialist foundation. Its to acknowledge that that historical materialist foundation is historical. Thats how i want to get at it. Okay. And thats that. Oh, did did we not want to talk about resistance really quick . His second question. Absolutely. Sorry. I mean, i think thats a great question, and i think the 1619 framework gives us an opportunity not only to talk about violence and terror but also about how the people who arrived in 1619 were thinking about resistance, and one of the most interesting book that ive read recently is fugitive modernities which kevin dawson namechecked in his speech, which is kind of theorizing a west Central African anarchist politics of resistance. Not only being a place but also a state of politics that you didnt have to be from that geographical space in order to practice this kind of anarchist resistance politics. And then she kind of traces this out into the Atlantic World. After i read the book, i started thinking about somebody like angelo who was from that particular region or somebody like anthony johnson, right, who basically forms a community of free black people on virginias Eastern Shore and his grandson calls his farm angola, right . That there is this long and deep memory of african past among enslaved and free people in the space that becomes the United States. And i think professor bennetts work is pushing us toward thinking arb the ways in which if we understand african publics and african sovereignty in the way that he wants us to, that can help transform how were thinking about resistance after 1619. Okay. Lets give our panelists a round of applause. [ applause ] thank you very much for your riveting discussion. I just want to say that the 1619 project was namechecked several times throughout your conversation. Each of you will leave here tonight with a copy of the 1619 project issue. [ applause ] i guess we should say thank you to the New York Times for reaching back out to us to see if we wanted to have more copies at the Schomburg Center and they gave them to us. We will have a book signing and reception out in the links and hughes lobby. Please note their books are available in the schomburg shop as well as the books of our panelists. Please take a look at the things we have in that space. Thank you all very much for coming out and we hope you join us for the next two days of the conference. Youre watching American History tv. 48 hours of programming on American History every weekend on cspan 3. Follow us on twitter cspanhistory for information on our schedule and to keep up with the latest history news. American history tv is on cspan 3 every weekend featuring museum tours, archival films and programs on the presidency, the civil war and more. Heres a clip from a recent program. The most interesting thing to me was the process that that president undertook on all his decisions. He was a president that listened. He was a president i could discuss things with. Sometimes not agreeing with him. But certainly someone who solicited your opinions and tried to find all the views before he firmed up and solidified his decisions. So for me it was an experience that i call one of the most fun i ever had in my whole life. It was a wonderful time to be chief of staff. The world was changing before our eyes on a daily basis. The soviet union was collapsing. Driven primarily by the astute leadership of George Herbert walker bush. And it was fascinating. It was fun. And certainly for me one of the highlights that i constantly look back on. Im going to open up by saying, first of all, you dont apply to be the president s chief of staff. [ laughter ] its not like the president goes to monster. Com or ziprecruiter to find a chief of staff. So i was shocked when i was invited to be a president s chief of staff, george w. Bush, when he was asking me to be his chief of staff, i thought he was asking me to run his transition into government. And it happened to be a thursday morning before election day in 2000. I was he had asked me to do some things and he i had breakfast with him and he said, so, are you ready to do this . I said if you want me to be running your transition, id be glad to do it. He said, im not talking about that. Im talking about the big one. That was the term he used. I knew what he meant. It was chief of staff. Election night came and didnt go away. [ laughter ] and the next morning he formally asked me to be his chief of staff and i was flattered. I think he asked me to be his chief of staff because i had served under every chief of staff that served Ronald Reagan and george h. W. Bush. You can watch this and other American History programs on our went where all our video is archived. Thats cspan. Org history. On september 21st, 1976, a car bomb exploded at Sheridan Circle on embassy row in washington, d. C. Just over a mile from the white house. Next on American History tv, historian Alan Mcpherson on his book ghosts of Sheridan Circle. How a washington assassination brought terror state to justice. Mr. Mcpherson gives an illustrated talk
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