A little bit about her publications, which are multiple awardwinning, her most recent book is bound in wedlock slave and free black marriage in the nineteenth century. Published in 2017. A book about African Americans and marriage in the 19th century, a winner of multiple awards. And a variety of other prizes. The list goes on and on. Let me mention her first book about women after the civil war. Another multiple prizewinning book. Dr. Hunter has agreed to come here today and talk with us specifically about the history of emancipation, the end of slavery during the civil war, a topic always on peoples agenda for teaching and discussion but particularly widely discussed earlier this summer the anniversary of juneteenth. That is what got us started thinking about inviting her to speak with us about that history, which is complicated, exciting, and always in need of clarification. Let me turn it over to tera hunter to talk a little bit about the process of wartime emancipation. What happened, and what are some of the most important things people need to know . Dr. Hunter thank you for inviting me to be part of this. Thanks to all of the people out there listening and watching. I thought i would start with giving an overview of the process by which slavery was destroyed during the civil war. It is important to keep in mind that the process of emancipation is part of a much longer movement of resistance by African Americans and their allies going back centuries. But this Movement Really picked up speed in the early part of the decade of the 19th century and accelerated great deal during the civil war between 1861 and 1865. There are three things i want to emphasize about what we need to understand about this process, how emancipation was achieved. The first thing to understand is that emancipation was not the achievement of one person alone. The second thing is emancipation was not the result of one event or one policy. And the third thing is that emancipation was the result of a process, a kind of drawnout, contentious process, that took place over the course of the war. Lots of people played pivotal roles in bringing about emancipation. The president , abraham lincoln, commanderinchief, the congress, the military, civilians in the north who helped to shape public opinion, but also African Americans, both enslaved and free. I want to particularly highlight the roles African Americans played because that typically gets left out of more traditional accounts, the kind of history you are typically taught below the college level. African americans made it clear from the very start of the war that they saw the war very differently from lincoln, the other leaders on the union side for the most part, because they saw it as an opportunity to end slavery. They made themselves a thorn in the sides of both the United States and the confederacy by running away from slavery whenever they could. We started to see this at the very start of the war in april. But it is the actions of four enslaved men in the hampton roads, virginia, area that set off a chain of events by fleeing to fortress monroe in may of 1861. They ran away basically because their slave owner was planning to take them with him when he was going to fight in the war, going to the battlefield in north carolina. Benjamin butler general Benjamin Butler decided to treat these four men as contraband of war, which allowed them to stay at the army camp. Rather than sending them back, which is what the policy was previously. Butler realized these were people being used basically to help the other side, and he did not see a reason why that could be allowed to happen. Butlers decision was copied by other officials in other parts of the areas where the union army was making progress and was eventually formalized by congress as a policy. Wherever the union army appeared in confederate territory, enslaved people fled. They were housed in what were called contraband camps. These were makeshift campsites that were situated next to union army camps. They provided very important source of labor in the camps. They provided intel, information, that proved crucial to the war. Also over the course of the war, African Americans, even those who did not run away, basically started to make mischief. Many of them made mischief by being unruly, cutting down on the quantity and quality of their work, sometimes not working at all. In essence, African Americans initiated the process of their own emancipation. They forced themselves onto the National Agenda by refusing to stand by on the sidelines, and they helped to shift northern opinion. They pushed lincoln to eventually push the military to see the military necessity of having the kind of vision African Americans had as seeing the war as a war of liberation. By the time the war ended, there were 500,000 formally enslaved people who had interceded, ran away, who were military workers, spies, that worked on plantations. There were another 186,000 or so who served in the army, the navy. And then there were 2 million to 3 million who remained on plantations and in cities and towns. Some of them were basically helping to undermine the institution where they were. President had to be persuaded over the course of the work to embrace emancipation. He had promised at the outset not to interfere with slavery. But he was forced to see implementing emancipation was crucial to winning the war. By the summer of 1862, lincoln came to see emancipation in those terms. The union army was not doing as well as expected. He understood how African Americans were playing a vital role as military workers. There were manpower needs. There were not enough white soldiers being recruited into the army. Northern opinion was also shifting. He came to embrace emancipation, as well as he wanted to stop the possibilities that europeans would side with the confederacy and recognize them as a legitimate breakaway nation. Lincoln did not take the lead on the issue, but i would say he played the most important singular role as the president , as commanderinchief. He was ultimately willing to change his position as the demands of the war dictated, which he did quite dramatically when he issued the emancipation proclamation in january of 1863. I will come back to that. The second point, it was not just one person who can take credit for emancipation. No one event or policy can also be attributed to bringing slavery down. Most people think of the emancipation proclamation as ending slavery by itself. But it did not really do that. The federal government, as well as army officials, initiated several policies before the emancipation proclamation which helped to chip away at slavery as an institution. Butlers contraband policy was one step. Congress followed up with other policies prohibiting the return of fugitives, outline slavery in outlawing slavery in d. C. , in the territories. They passed legislation to free the families of black men who worked as military workers and eventually as soldiers. When the emancipation proclamation was issued in january, it announced a major change in the objective of the war. Initially, it was a war to bring the union back together again. Now, in addition, it would be a war to bring down slavery. But the proclamation was not a universal emancipation plan that most people assume. It applied primarily to enslaved people in the confederacy, and not those living in the border states where slavery still existed but where those states had remained in the union. And it exempted some areas that were controlled by the union army, in the areas of louisiana, virginia, tennessee. Historians estimate it did free about 20,000 people who had already come under union control. These were people who were captured, who ran away, were in the military, or working on plantations leased to northern entrepreneurs. There were inherent limitations of the emancipation proclamation. President lincoln could not force the confederates to free enslaved people. They had broken away from the United States. But the e. P. Was important for other reasons. It provided an open invitation for enslaved people to run away and to receive protection from the United States military. And most revolutionary of all, it basically authorized the enlistment of black men as soldiers. This was the thing slave owners everywhere feared most, having armed soldiers, enslaved men be armed as soldiers. That was the most revolutionary part of the emancipation proclamation. And then, the third point i wanted to make is that we have to think about this emancipation as a process. As i said, it is a protracted process that began at the outset of the war. It was not a Straight Line from slavery to freedom. There were fits and starts. There were retaliations by confederates. Not even all people on the union side necessarily supported emancipation. And so, it was a process. It took a while. It took basically working over the course of the entire war for emancipation to be achieved. And when the war ended, in order to secure emancipation, we needed to take another step which was to abolish slavery. And so, it required abolition to put the final nail in the coffin which was done with the 13th amendment which Congress Passed in january of 1865. And then enough states ratified if by december. So, that is a long answer to your opening question. Thank you so much, professor hunter. One thing we received a number of questions about was about juneteenth, especially in relationship to your much distributed and widely praised piece that ran on june 19 of this year on the history of juneteenth. I wonder if you can talk about that. We had a number of questions. If you could talk about that, starting with a history of it and the movement was emancipation shifting by time. What happens if we understand emancipation is also shaped geographically . Having a geography as well as a chronology . Dr. Hunter juneteenth is basically the holiday that African Americans in texas declared because they were freed on june 19, 1865. They began celebrating cap emancipation a year later. There are a couple of key facts to keep in mind about texas. It was the last state where African Americans gained their freedom after the civil war. It was on the western edge of the confederacy. It was very isolated from the actions taking place mostly east of the mississippi river, not entirely, but mostly. It was largely untouched by the union army. It actually became a place of refuge fleeing slaveowners. They left louisiana, arkansas, they left missouri as they were being encroached upon by the union army. It was kind of a haven for slavery as it was deteriorating in other parts of the confederacy. There were very few black soldiers who came from texas. And another key consideration is that there was a violent backlash by confederates. That is partly what caused the delay. After the war ended in april, they were still armed, still basically attacking African Americans who tried to claim that freedom. They started in galveston and worked their way across the state. They lynched African Americans. They caught them fleeing. And so, the process was fiercely contested in texas. It is kind of ironic because texas did not see a lot of action during the war. And so, the action really heated up, oddly enough, when the war came to an end in april. But texas slaveowners thought that they could help sustain slavery for a longer time. They were hoping they would get compensated, if nothing else. Most enslaved people were not freed until the army came in, in june, and basically had to fight again to put down those confederates who were living in the state of texas. So, i think there is this notion that African Americans did not get their freedom at the time of the emancipation proclamation in texas, and that that is what marks what is different about them. But as i have already said, not very many people got their freedom as a result of the emancipation proclamation. What was different in texas was what was happening between april and june, and the fact that there were those retaliations going on. And so, they were moving backwards while the other states had pretty much resigned themselves in defeat. And so, African Americans started to mark this occasion, this victory, because it really did take another year for them to realize their freedom in 1866. A year from when general frazer came into galveston and announced they were now free. Now, we are having conversations about confederate monuments, for example. One of the ways that i like to think about juneteenth is to think about it in terms of almost a kind of counter history, because part of what those confederate monuments represent is they were erected to reinforce a counter history of actually what happened in slavery and the civil war. And so, African Americans in texas were celebrating this history and their achievement. They really emphasized the fact that this was not something given to them, but this was something they fought for and they achieved. When we think about these commemorations, they started in texas. They migrated to other states, as African Americans left texas. And now, they are being celebrated in virtually every state and even in some foreign countries. Thanks so much. I think another thing interesting about that story is the emancipation that juneteenth commemorates is an example of that process you described at first where freedom comes to different people in the south at different points. There are a lot of contingencies involved. Where are the u. S. Forces at any given time . Who is able to escape and to where . Who has power locally, whether it is occupying Union Soldiers and enlisted black men versus areas of the confederacy where there were no u. S. Forces until the war ended or afterwards . It is an interesting example of that process and the variability of the process. We want to come back to some of these questions about commemoration and things like that. Before we talk about that more, i wanted to ask you, since your work has been so particularly important when you have written about the experiences of African American women and more recently about black families and marriage, if you could talk first of all about how the experience of wartime emancipation might have been different for women compared to men. And maybe, you can add children if you want to. Youre welcome to open the door to talking about marriage, or we can deal with that in a separate question. A reminder for people in attendance, feel free to use the q a button to ask questions which we will come around to in a little bit. Dr. Hunter ok. One of the ways in which men stood out was in terms of the opportunities open to them in terms of routes to freedom as compared to African American women. I mentioned the first runaways in virginia. These were men. Interestingly, they were motivated by the fact they were going to be separated from their families when they were running away. Initially, we have a flood of men running away. And then, women and children follow them. But the men are much more welcomed in the union lines. The military officers could sort of envision what they could do with the men. They could envision the kind of work that they could put men to doing. They were much more ambivalent about women and what women could do. They even saw women as interfering and lots of different ways. One army officer referred to them as a weight and encumbrance. As the war progresses, it became clear that womens labor was crucial. They washed. They were nurses. They did a lot of the labor on confiscated plantations. They were hospital attendance. Children as well, when they were old enough to perform these kinds of jobs, were also very important. Some of the people tuning in may have read or heard about susie king taylor. She was a woman who was a fugitive, former enslaved person, who worked as a cook, nurse, teacher, laundress, for the regiment. If you read her memoir, which wrote after the civil war, it is striking she is making a case for future generations to understand that women were important, that they played important roles. That they were brave, they were loyal, that they basically put themselves, put their bodies on the line. Not in the exact same way that men did, but in ways that were important for the war effort. And many of them were punished for taking the stance they did. And then, i would say the biggest difference between women and men is the fact that men were allowed to enlist in the army and navy as soldiers. And being in the military came with privileges. And what was really striking to me when i was doing the research for the book is noticing how quickly northern allies were willing to acknowledge black men as citizens because of their service. Even before they joined the military, but especially when they were allowed to join the military. That was considered a baptism by blood where men literally put their bodies on the line, put their lives on the line, fighting for the United States. That put them in a different position than women. And so, it was men who were considered sort of being ushered into freedom, ushered into citizenship. And women basically were secondary. They received their emancipation and ideas about citizenship basically three men, being the wives of men, the daughters of men. And so, that is the real distinction. But it is important to emphasize that women saw their services as vital. They said things like when we entered the army, so the things they were doing for the army, they saw themselves as making vital contributions. Thank you so much. I wonder if we can bridge from that to the question among the central questions of the book about the gendered experience of emancipation. You make a strong case for the gendered roots of emancipation. What is it about centering marriage that helped you catch that gendered experience in bound in wedlock . Dr. Hunter marriage reached a turning point for African Americans during the war. It is because of the federal government interventions, outsiders coming in, northern missionaries especially, that African Americans were sort of ushered into legal marriage, even though what legal marriage meant in the context of the war was still murky. But northerners really started to embrace the idea. It grew from even antebellum ideas within the abolitionist movement. One of their strongest critiques of slavery was the ways in which it basically destroyed family integrity. And so, they were very eager to put marriage on legal footing for African Americans in the context of the war. And so, when i was doing the research, i was really interested in tracing how that process occurred. I found what i think is the first missionary, reverend lockwood, working at fort monroe, who was very interested in the question of marriage and immediately started to see the value of marrying couples, often in groups, marrying multiples of couples at the same time. Giving them certificates to mark their relationship as being newly sanctioned. And so, the civil war starts to show us this process of African Americans adopting the process of marrying under the flag, marrying under federal authority. We see them on the one hand eagerly embracing marriage, marriage is being formalized, but we also see some resistance because, for many of them, they did not think their relationship needed to have that extra sanction from the state. And so, we see this process unfolding in the contraband camps. We see it on the plantations, confiscated plantations that were taken over by northern entrepreneurs, military officials, and so on. The federal government was really interested in creating what they called free labor experiments, sort of putting slaves, former slaves, into the process of becoming fullfledged citizens, becoming wage workers. And so, they were interested in creating a familybased labor system. So, marriage was considered the basis for organizing those families along a patriarchal ideal. Missionaries saw marriage as a way to inculcate certain values like sexual morality, work ethic. Married men were told to assume the role of being the head of household and basically have wives and children as their dependents. We are seeing that happen on the plantations. And we see also on the plantations the sort of double standards about marriage. Because in those circumstances, women are still expected to work for the patriarchal family ideal not being fully applied in the case of African Americans. Another arena where we see marriage start to take hold is and then another arena where we see marriage start to take hold is in the case of the military. The federal government is very eager to marry men when they joined the army, to encourage those who already have families, who already have wives to basically formalize those relationships to remarry under the flag. Im reminded of one particular florida,r young from who ran away to South Carolina and his wife followed behind him shortly thereafter. He was told byed his superior officer that he needed to marry. He was married in the camp. That was a common scene of soldiers being married at campsites. Marriage was also important because it gave men power as soldiers. It became a way for them to advocate for their families. Women and men are in a very different position. But, it allows men to write letters on behalf of their families to ask for resources, ask for protection on behalf of their wives and children. Kate thanks so much. That captures so incredibly why the various ways that marriage was so central to the process of emancipation, but also the different kinds of investments in it so these state actors, whether it was white ministers or army officers, they were looking for one set of issues to be resolved through marriage among africanamericans. While africanamericans themselves, who had been deprived of the right to marry for the most part during slavery were looking at these institutions in different ways. I wonder if you would be willing to kind of tell us a little bit more, maybe this grows out of our direct purview to connect to your current work, but more on what you see coming back to the institution of marriage in africanAmerican History. What keeps you interested in that complexity. Dr. Hunter well, i think i always come back to where i started with this project. What became a book, but initially, i had not planned to write a book about it. I had put aside some research that i had done, when i was revising. I had accumulated more records related to family and to marriage, and was really struck by what i was seeing in those records. I felt that the literature at that time did not capture the kind of complexity, the ambivalence, the contradiction, the ways in which africanamericans were negotiating what family meant to them. That is where i started to think about. At first, i would do an article on reconstruction. And then, really thought to fully understand what was happening in those records after slavery ended, i really had to go back and trace the family going back to the antebellum era and Going Forward to beyond reconstruction, going towards, into the 19th century towards the 20th century. Thats what really has always drawn my attention. Africanamericans themselves, how do they understand marriage . What does intimacy mean to them . There is a tendency to look at men as providers and protectors. But, what i saw in those records was like emotion, affection. Men saying, writing letters, having letters dictated to their sisters who they they had been separated from for a long time. Catching them up on the news, but also saying can you send me a lock of my nieces hair . That kind of affection we dont see represented. We had not seen represented in the literature very much. I think thats what brought me to it. The fact that family was so central to freedom, to the way africanamericans defined what freedom meant to them. So, they were constantly reminding, you know, the federal government, northern missionaries, entrepreneurs, the people they were coming into contact with in the context of the war that they were not just individuals. Even if they just appeared on their own, they had a family somewhere else and they wanted to make sure those people were being taken care of. Soldiers were very clear. They volunteered to fight. They wanted to fight from the very beginning. They offered, they were rejected. When they got the chance to fight, they were clear why they were fighting. Yes, they were fighting for the union, for the United States, because they saw that as their source of their liberation. But, they were fighting also for their families, and to the extent that the government could not protect those families while they were on the battlefield. They didnt see any reason that they would want to give up their families if they, you know they wanted to make sure they could do whatever they could to protect their families and have the benefits of being soldiers and treated fairly like other soldiers would have been treated and their families would have been protected. It is such a theme of importance in terms of the ways in which how the family has been used against africanamericans. How its always seen as a mark of something that is lacking, something that is wrong. Something that goes against what is supposed to be preferable, supposed to be ideal. That is kind of a moving target that has happened over the course of centuries now. That was also of interest to me as well, thinking about the controversies around marriage and the family that have trailed africanamericans throughout the entire history of africanamericans in American Society. Gregory thanks so much. Thats a terrific answer. We are going to start interweaving some of the questions that have been submitted. Just a reminder to people that are watching. If you want, use the q a. Function. I want to thank the person who submitted the question. I know the links i mentioned in our introduction were not visible yet in the chat. We resubmitted those so hopefully they are. If they are not, feel free to submit that as a q a. We have a couple of questions that relate to this. One of the first relates to the questions of women who can disappear in the context of the history of marriage or family, especially of women who remain unmarried whether by choice or not. And by other people, whether orphaned or abandoned, who exist outside of that family structure. And how should we understand their terms of emancipation . Does that make sense . Dr. Hunter yeah, definitely. So, single women are interesting because they were very much marginalized because they were not married, not attached to men in the context of the civil war. That subjected them to often being treated poorly because they didnt have they didnt have standing in the same way that a woman who was married, even a woman who was married under the terms of slavery. Single women were suspect especially around the army camps, they were considered sexually compromising in some ways. Compromising the men. Single women had a hard time working against those kinds of stereotypes. Its interesting, i focused a lot on the rural areas. Whereas in my first book, i focused more on cities. If we look at the two in conversation, the single women are leaving the countryside after the civil war because there is a lot of pressure coming from plantation owners in the period of reconstruction and beyond. They want intact families, husbands, wives, children. Family units to work on the farms and plantations. Those women who are single or widowed or never married, they end up going to the cities. They get pushed into places like atlanta or nashville or raleigh or new orleans or wherever because they can find work there. They are finding work as domestic workers. So, its important to see whats happening, sort of how the marginalization of single women, you know theyre marginal on especially if we think about the 1880s. Once we get into sharecropping, it becomes even more rigid because those landowners actually enforced they have in some contracts in some states that they want to hire family units. That really puts women in the position of not being able to make a living in the country. Whereas, it is different for single men. There was a place in the agricultural economy for single men. They could move around and do odd jobs. And be fine. But, women basically had to move in order to be able to take care of themselves. So, we see a disproportionate number of women living in cities as a result of that. Kate thank you so much. And thanks for connecting us back to how labor also informs the shape families took and vice versa. Since were in the middle of the commemoration of the 19th amendment, i think Voting Rights for women are on peoples mind. Weve had questions come in about the relationship between emancipation and womens right to vote. Whether you have seen any initiatives during the civil war for people arguing for africanamerican womens right to vote. And then the question about what were some of the twists and turns of the discussion of black womens right to vote that came at the end of the war . If you could address that in some way, that would be great. Dr. Hunter theres definitely there is sort of opportunities as well as tension around who should get to vote in the aftermath of the civil war. Theres the Womens Movement growing out of the abolitionist movement, advocating for womens rights after the civil war for Voting Rights. It ends up that black men who end up getting to vote first. But, even in that process among africanamerican women, we still see a kind of viable Political Engagement on the part of africanamerican women in terms of the ways they are participating in the political culture. Even though they dont legally have the right to vote, especially in those early reconstruction years, theyre defining the vote as theirs, partly theirs. As the vote like, who what the vote will be, who will be voted on, what positions people will take. Those decisions are made collectively in very boisterous political gatherings. Women are participating, children are participating. Men are expected to go to the polls. They are expected to go and represent the sentiment of women and children that had gathered together and deliberated. So, we see women taking off from work to go to the polls, to guard the polls. They are carrying rifles to guard the polls because there is a threat from the other side, the opposition. We see women wearing buttons to represent their candidates. Its happening in the rural areas, the cities. Domestic workers are complaining about the women taking time off from work. Even the women dont have the right to vote, they really are being very active in the politics that is emergent in the aftermath of slavery. Gregory great. Thank you so much. We are pulling from another question that was submitted during the talk. And that is about the attention given the complex dynamics of families now, how do we tell accurate history of africanamericans of the age of freedom without romanticizing them . Dr. Hunter yeah, i think that is a great question. Because there is that tendency, or there can be that tendency and certainly some have fallen prey to that precisely because africanamerican families have been under attack. It makes scholars defensive in trying to sort of tell the story from the other perspective that is not being told. So, for me in writing this book, there are lots of moments that come up in the book where it does not look favorable to the individuals involved. So, i kind of embrace that. Again, it goes back to that, to me, the idea of the complexity. So, not sugarcoating for example, the problems of couples, right . In writing about marriage and all the things that are wonderful about it and how important it was for africanamericans to embrace it, it is also important to understand that the process of marriage making is contentious. If you think about what africanamericans had to do, they had to sort of bitterly reconstruct their families, their marriages under vastly different conditions. The slaveowners were no longer factors. Now you have these two people who have to negotiate what marriage means to them. What is their relationship going to look like . Is it going to look like more of the conventional patriarchal family . Is it going to look like something more egalitarian . These conflict are all over the record. We see it especially with couples not getting along. They are going to the freemans bureau. Theres fighting, anger. Theres resentment. Theres cheating. So, this is what happens in families, period. This is part of what it means to be family in American Society and it is no different for africanamericans. I think just embracing that and acknowledging the entire history and not just choosing to only focus on the socalled positive. We get that it comes up a lot in popular culture. In movies. Why cant we have more positive images . That kind of thing. It is important that we have images that actually reflect the real human being more than it is for us to have socalled positive images. I would rather be more true to how people represented themselves. How they understood their own life. How they lived their own life. So, that is the challenge i think scholars should embrace. Kate thank you for that answer. Part of whats amazing and probably a lot of people here know, and you have viewed these records so well, just what kind of personal dynamics are revealed in those records and other records from the time that are amazingly rich and kind of unusual also from the 19th century. Well, ok, in the interest of time and to get through one of the things that a lot of people really wanted us to talk about, i want to come back to these questions about commemoration. We could talk forever about the social history of emancipation in the civil war and africanamericans during that period. Thinking about the specificity of juneteenth. We know there have been local celebrations of emancipation and differing traditions of celebrating emancipation throughout American History. There is the celebration of august 1 which drew on the emancipation of the british empire. Washington, d. C. Had its own celebration of emancipation. There are other traditions throughout the country depending on where emancipation came to that particular place. I just want to hear your that, firstthe idea of all, the growing awareness of juneteenth. The idea that could potentially become a National Holiday or what would you think about that . What is gained, what is lost . Also, the question of the tendency that when these things become increasingly recognized, that they could also be coopted or commercialized. That some of the meaning, whether subversive or specific to africanAmerican History, gets sucked out of there when those things happen. If you could speak to the set of issues, that would be great. Dr. Hunter yeah, so, i think i am all for making juneteenth a National Holiday. Im certainly open to that and i think we should have more conversations about it. I think it does not negate necessarily continuing those local traditions of celebrating emancipation. A lot of them have fallen by the wayside. They dont have the same longevity and vitality that juneteenth has managed to create over a very long time. I think having a moment that we can mark, you know, the end of slavery, juneteenth seems like a perfect way of doing that. I think just looking at comments from people in texas, a kind of ambivalence on their part. Some of them want to keep it local. They dont want it to be necessarily broadcast. But i think it marks new beginnings. It marks what is called the second founding, kind of like a reset button after the civil war. We were able to sort of go back to those founding principles and universalize them. To make freedom more meaningful. All those kind of amendments that happened in the period of reconstruction. All the protections that were afforded. So it is a reminder as it was celebrated going back to 1866 as the beginning of something that really was a significant achievement. The end of slavery, the beginning of citizenship rights. The beginning of american democracy. A real democracy or at least there was a period when we had this real experiment in creating a real democracy. It would take another century after that to fully realize it, what we might call the third founding. The civil rights movement. In any case, i think it is worth considering as a National Holiday because also not just important for africanamericans to celebrate. If we think about it as marking the second founding, then it becomes a holiday that everyone can embrace. As far as being coopted and commercialized, it is hard to avoid that in our country. What holiday hasnt been coopted . Martin luther king day. Lincoln, it used to be abraham lincolns birthday, president s day. Sales everywhere, the commercialization, products being sold. I think there are ways of working against that with communities working to remind people, having celebrations that are actually authentic that remind people of the value of this history and this moment of commemoration and what it means. Again, as we are thinking about tearing down statues, it is another reminder of that history that the lost cause tried to erase. It brings us back to a reminder of what emancipation meant. What and how important it is in our nations history. Gregory thanks so much. One more question. We want to apologize for the many excellent questions we have received beforehand and during. It is a tribute to your work and your presentation how many questions we have received, from the very detailed to the very broad. But we are conscious of peoples time. We will ask one last question and then we will look towards wrapping up. This is a question submitted ahead of time. It is one of my favorite questions but i did not submit it. Your books are so moving and powerfully written. Can you share any writing advice for new authors and historians . Dr. Hunter ok. My writing advice is very simple. Write. Write often. I think that is the best advice, or that is the lesson i have learned over the course of my career. After you make it past that first book, you turn it into a book. Future books, you are starting from scratch. It is a hard thing to do in the context of Everything Else that you have to do, as a professor teaching undergrads, graduate students. Being engaged. Whatever it is you are doing, not to mention anything else in your personal life. So, one of the things i have learned over time is, you know, when you are working on something to keep your head in it. So, writing even if you are just writing a paragraph, a page in a day. Just keeping that rhythm if you have 20 minutes, half an hour, it is better to do some writing than not do writing. Because once you get to that point where you may be blocked off a larger block of time and you havent been writing, you are kind of backtracking. Where was i the last time i went to my computer screen and started writing whatever it is you are working on. Develop ais to in which writing is youre writing consistently, regularly even if it is just little bits at a time. Because it then accumulates. You end up with more than you think you will end up with if you do it that way as opposed to waiting for those elusive moments. I will write on friday, but i have not done anything monday through thursday. Kate thank you so much. That is great advice for everybody, including myself. Announcer this is American History tv on cspan3 where we feature 48 hours of programs exploring our nations past. Every saturday at 8 00 p. M. Eastern on American History tv, go inside a Different College classroom and hear about topics ranging from the revolution, civil rights and president s, to 9 11. Thank you for your patience and for logging into class. Closed,most campuses watch professors transfer teaching to a virtual setting to engage with their students. Corbett job did most of the work to change the soviet union but reagan met him halfway, reagan encouraged him, reagan supported him. Freedom of the press, madison called it freedom of the use of the press and it is freedom to print and publish things, it is not a freedom for what we refer to institutionally as the press. Lectures in history on American History tv on cspan, every saturday at 8 00 p. M. Eastern. Lectures in history is also available as a podcast. Find it when you listen to podcasts. American history tv is on social media. Follow us at cspan history. Announcer up next, Carl Sferrazza anthony, author of Florence Harding the first lady, the jazz age, and the death of americas most scandalous president , discusses the life of the woman married to president warren g. Harding and dispels some myths around her time in the white house. The White House Historical association hosted this event and provided the video. Ms. Mann today, we are welcoming Carl Sferrazza anthony, the author of a dozen books on president ial families including four first lady biographies and a conference of overview of all the first families. He wrote a two volume history, an inside view of 200 years of private life in the white house. He served as a consultant to the first ladys exhibit and was the National First ladys historian