Transcripts For CSPAN2 Panel Discussion On Southern History 20170819

I want to get a few points across please put your cell phone on silent. If you would like to share on social bdm ago to Literary Lawn Party we want to welcome you to the next session on southern history but also thank our sponsor for this session. I will introduce you to robert who will be our moderator for today and is a member of the board of directors as well as the director at Jackson State University where he is also a professor and is also an author. Glad to see everyone here this afternoon. Digital and Television News outlets such as abc, 20 20 and fox news. Her investigation into the life of an american Bounty Hunter in afghanistan is currently in production as a feature film. Although adrienne was raised in the northeast, she does come from a long line of mississippi women, so well claim you. [laughter] at least five generations long are. Her mother was born here in jackson, and she and her husband jesse live on a farm in norge, virginia. Was that close enough . All right. [laughter] with an energetic corgi named clover. So welcome, adrienne. Yeah, please. [applause] to her left is Patricia Michelle boyette, she focuses on projects and programming that advance intersectional feminism. She also teaches courses for the department of history including comparative histories of oppression and resistance and gender violence and justice. She earned her ph. D. From the university of southern mississippi, her b. A. From Mississippi Valley State University and her bfa from arizona State University. Her book, right to revolt, was the recipient of the willte prize in 2016. Shes a member of several organizations that fight for the equality of all people including the social Justice Movement at loyola in new orleans, women living our values every day, now l. O. V. E. Patricia boyette. [applause] next we have otis sanford, economic and managerial journalism at the university of memphis and is the author of the criticallyacclaimed new book how race changed memphis politics. Sanford serves as the political commentator for tv channel 3, the cbs affiliate station in memphis, and he is a panelist for informed services, a Weekly Public Affairs program on channel 3. Plus, he writes a weekly viewpoint column. Before joining the university of memphis in 2011, sanford was editor for opinion and editorials at the commercial appeal and formerly served as the papers managing editor, the first africanamerican to hold both positions. A mississippi native, he is a 1975 graduate of the university of mississippi with a b. A. Degree in journalism. He began his professional journalism clear at the clarion career at the clarion ledger right here in jackson. He also has worked at the Pittsburgh Press and the detroit free press. Sanford is a nationallyrecognized lecturer on First Amendment issues. He is past board chair of the midamerica press institute. In 2014 he was inducted into the tennessee journalism hall of fame. Mr. Otis sanford. Thank you. [applause] and last but not least, Griff Stockley is a native of mississippi where his father owned a cotton plantation. The family moved to lee county when he was 2. He graduated from southwestern at memphis in 1965. He served as a peace corps volunteer on the northern coast of colombia for two years. In 1967 he was drafted and spent two years in the military. In 1972 he graduated from the university of Arkansas Law School in fayetteville and was employed as a Legal Services foreign for 32 attorney for 32 years. Subsequently, he was a staff attorney for the Disability Rights Center and the aclu of arkansas. He is the author of the fivebook gideon page lawyer novel series published between 19911997 by simon schuster. His nonfiction books include ruled by race black white relations in arkansas from slavery to the present, Race Relations in the natural state, blood in their eyes the elaine brace massacres of 919, and black boys burning. Griff is the recipient of a certificate of commendation at the American Association for state and local history for blood in their eyes. He was named the 2016 aclu civil libertarian of the year. In 2012 he received a Lifetime Achievement award for his, quote, pioneering investigations of arkansas racial history. Griff stockley. [applause] so i thought we would jump right into this and not tiptoe around some pretty sensitive topics. I know were here to talk about all of your books, but it seems to me as a civil rights historian which is my real gig at jackson state that perhaps more than any other panel at this festival this weekend we have an obligation as southern historians to make some comments on what weve seen happen in the last couple of weeks in this state. In this state and in others, in places like charlottesville in particular as well as whats going on in the white house and the current debate over the Mississippi State flag, something of particular importance if you consider the room that were all sitting in right now. And id like for us to begin there, and i think, patricia, maybe we can start with you and perhaps get your thoughts, consider how your own work on Racial Justice in mississippi informs your thoughts on this topic. Thank you very much for having me. Im very honored to be on this panel with all these wonderful authors, and thank you all for coming. And i thank my publisher too and everybody there. Ive thought a lot about this, obviously, so incredibly disturbing to see a lot of the images coming out of charlottesville. And i think sometimes we want to think of American History in this, like, linear, progressive line towards this great dream of enlightenment thought, of equality and justice for all. But thats not the reality, right . Its more sort of like a maze, and we have this dichotomy of these great ideals, but we also have in our constitution, you know, threefifths clause. We had great movements like the Abolition Movement and the civil war and the reconstruction, but then we had what they called redemption and jim crow, you know . Horrible oppression, white supremacist oppression. We had the Civil Rights Movement, and then you have the southern strategy and what Michelle Alexander calls the new jim crow with the war on drugs that is even though whites and blacks use drugs at the same rates, that theyre imprisoning africanamericans. So weve got this new jim crow going on. We had Great Strides, you know, in the 21st century. We have the first africanamerican president and a lot of Great Strides that happened under that time period. And now i think were in a backlash again. And in my research, you know, i think were always hoping, like, this becomes history. But in my research, you know, i noticed that there was always like these steps forward, and there was these steps back. I think what gives me hope though always is theres always resistance. Theres always resistance from the first moment that africanamericans were forced here as slaves, there was resistance. So when you see charlottesville, you know, you also see this, these people that are standing up against it. So i wasnt hered the, in new orleans theyre having a protest march there to support the antiracist protesters, so i would be there, right . But i think this is important too. And in terms of my research, i start the book, actually, i look at the long history of jones and forest counties, but i start on january 10, 1966, when eight klansmen sent by sam bowers came from jones county, drove into Forest County, and their mission was to murder a civil rights activist and the lead plaintiff in a Voting Rights case. And the orders were to burn the house and shoot, shoot at the people in it. He was living, his aunt was living in this store, and three of his eight children were living at home. Vernon grabbed his gun and shot back, and he called on his wife to get the children out. They did manage to get everybody out of the house but betty, who was 12, sustained severe burns on her forehead and hands, and vernon sustained such intense burns and such horrible smoke inhalation that he perished several hours later. Six days after that the fbi was already in mississippi because of the case. They sent an army of agents into Forest County, and there was a very powerful Civil Rights Movement there in had the tease burg hattiesburg, and they demanded justice in the case and also in implementation of civil rights laws and all kinds of other demands. Six days later at a funeral procession for vernon, a car, a load of three white men tried the drive into and plow into that funeral procession. They missed their targets, they grazed one person. And here we are 51 years later and, you know, were watching images of neonazis shout nazi slogans of blood and soil. We see them beating up mr. Harris, many of you have seen that video, and we see someone get in a car and plow his car into antiracist, nonviolent protesters and kill heather heyer. So as much as we want to believe were going forward, you know, weve made Great Strides, and im not saying they wouldnt, because that would be to insult all the heroes that i write about. But its also scary. We have the stand up, i think. I think we have to speak out, and i think that we have to continue that resistance, because we are in some really troubling times. Somebody else like to jump in there . Well, obviously, im a native of mississippi. I grew up in the 50s and 60s in mississippi. My older brother joined forces with white young men from the north to help register people to vote. I was about 10 or 11 years old, and i feared that he would never come back home when he went out to do this. And he integrated the lunch counter in my little hometown in the drugstore or at least tried to integrate it until they took out all the seats and said nobody was going to sit down in there, because they didnt want africanamericans sitting there. What i see going on right now with charlottesville and with the issues to over the statues and the flags is a kind of resistance and backlash that is, to be very honest, its so troubling that its just mindboggling. But i do believe that decency wins in the end. I believe that the statues, we have one in memphis we have two in memphis, Nathan Bedford forest statue right in the heart of east of downtown memphis in a public park, Jefferson Davis statue in the park that used to be known named after him but now has been changed. I think those statues, as the orrs, are going to leave public places. I have advocated this. As you said, i write a column in the newspaper every week, and i am steadfast in my call to get these statues out of public venues. I dont want my taxpayer money going to, for the upkeep of these statues. They need to be in a museum. You can put Nathan Bedford forest statue in shiloh, thats fine. He wanted to be buried in elmwood cemetery, he was buried there for 20 some years until they dug him up and put him in this public park. I think, again, decency is going to win in the end. And im going to keep shouting for it. And i just hope that the majority of voices keep shouting for it. And ill talk more about my book a little later. Great. Id like to say one thing just because i edit a daily paper in virginia, so this hits home in a lot of ways. My readership having kind of operated in a lot of different worlds, you know [audio difficulty] this is our history [audio difficulty] unfortunately, were experiencing technical difficulties in our live coverage of the mississippi book festival. Stay with us, and well return to our Live Programming as soon as possible. 400year ad campaign of turning atrocity into victory. And i think were going to see a lot of violence like this, because were up against this david an honor graduate of the u. S. Naval academy. He has earned a masters degree and a doctorate with honors in International Law and diplomacy. He is also a distinguished graduate of the u. S. Naval war college. He is also the author of seven prior books, this is his eighth, and over 100 articles about naval procedures, leadership and geopolitical issues. Even his wife laura is an author. [laughter] and a very good one. Since retiring as supremed our technical difficulties in mississippi have been resolved, and we now rejoin our live coverage of the mississippi book festival. Into federal law with the johnsonreid act of 1924. And so the idea that these are just statues and these are just, you know, crazy protesters, go get a job, what people are fighting against is actually rhetoric that can become law, and well have the fight that for, you know, generations to come. Griff. A little different and wanted to start by reading from the introduction just a couple of paragraphs from my book. All of yall, im sure, are aware of who l. C. And daisy bates were. My book really has to do with a fire at the arkansas negro boys industrial school, but i wanted to put the historical context, and im going to start with, its kind of in the middle of my introduction which is just a couple of paragraphs. Its l. C. And his wife daisy bates knew only too well, White Supremacy had been carried out by slavery, bad science, murder, rape, terrorism, lynching, massacres, mass incarceration, disenfranchisement, racial cleansing, arson, racial covenants, predatory lending, loan discrimination, redlining, blockbusting, segregation, intimidation, hue humiliation, discrimination, denial of free speech, termination from employment, a truly massive theft of Financial Resources for services law any intended for black lawfully intended for black citizens, quarantine rather than effective treatment of black persons diagnosed with tuberculosis, paternalism and a civil and criminal Justice System that routinely denied africanamericans due process and equal protection of the law. As an integral part of impediments to africanamerican rights, the official and unofficial writing of the souths racial past sometimes resembled propaganda rather than history in order to justify the action of white southerners. Notwithstanding the carnage and devastation caused by the civil war, accounts of the souths struggle and its defeat over time have often been transformed into an occasion for nostalgia, reenactments and legends rather than attempts to come to terms with its actual history. And im going to stop right there and just make a couple of comments. One of the things that has been, i think, important in our history and im talking about arkansas and mississippi. As we were saying earlier, arkansas had a saying which sounds ridiculous, but we used to say it, thank god for mississippi. Race relations, that was going to be the name of my book at one time. Thank god for mississippi Race Relations in arkansas. We know how poor arkansas and mississippi and the south has been, and we end up talking i do, have been inspired by the final address the president of the Southern Historical association in his book mississippi the closed society, and of course you all are aware of the great mississippi historian. And he said the allpervading doctrine then and now has been White Supremacy, whether achieved through slavery or segregation remarksallized by pro rationalized by profess add heerns to states rights and bolstered by religious fundamentalism. Of course, this was dr. Silver. Of course, some of you may not know that dr. Silver slept by a shotgun, had a shotgun in his house after he made sort of the furor he did over civil rights in the early 60s. And so what does this have to do with whats going on in charlottesville . I mean, so much of our history and, of course, has been White Supremacy. And now we have the president of the United States weighing in on history and culture, tweeting that the nation, that the statues of the forefathers of this country when they came out of washington and thomas jefferson, so we have a whole issue about what statues to take down. One of things at least we have in little rock right now is we have the statues of the little rock nine. And guess where they are . They are on the lawn of the state capitol. Which, i think, is something to think about when we contemplate what statues are going to be removed. Every day of my life i drive past those statues. I live two blocks from the state capitol, and almost every time i go by there, there are not necessarily dozens of people out there, but often there are busloads of mainly africanamericans who come there to get inspired by the nine statues of the little rock nine who integrated central high school. So one of the things i think we have to think about in removing statues is what we have and the First Amendment rights of people to protest. Ill shut up. Thank you. [laughter] let me make one other very quick point. Absolutely, please. One with of the best one of the best roads to tyranny is demonizing the media. And that is part and parcel of whats going on here. I was very displayed yesterday, or thursday when the senator from mississippi came to north mississippi and, when asked to comment on the issues around what the president has said about the statues and things of that nature and what and how he refused to criticize, really give a fullthroated criticism of the neonazis and the kkk, the senator here, senator wicker, basically blamed the media for being too hard on the president. And then made what i consider to be a very startling remark by saying its time to move on. From the incident in charlottesville. And im repeating what i said on television yesterday, im sorry, mr. Senator, we cannot move on from an incident in which a young lady was mowed down by a neonazi. We have to address these issues. We cannot just move on and forget and do nothing about what, about the state flag. We have to deal with these issues. We have to address them in a sober, clear way, and we have to understand the feelings of people who see them as oppressive symbols. And until we do that [applause] were not getting [inaudible] [applause] and, you know, i for one fully believe the work that we do as scholars and as historians and journalists and writers is important in addressing these issues in that the research that we do, the work that we do needs to inform our present. Absolutely. And complicate our past. And one of the things i think thats wonderful about each of your books is i think it complicates notions of the modern Civil Rights Movement, something that i really believe in. Understanding that the movement didnt just begin in 1954 with brown and ended in 1968 with dr. Kings assassination. The movement happened all over the country. It had different people involved than even just the black white dichotomy. I want to go down the line and ask each of you to talk about ways that your research complicates our understanding of that past and how it informs the present. And i thought we would start with patricia, where we started before, so well come back full circle. [laughter] it seems to me that in particular your book complicates the narrative of the modern Civil Rights Movement in terms of place especially, puts our anticipation on what john dittmer calls local people, right . And in a part of mississippi that gets very little attention. When we do talk about mississippi, we usually talk about the delta or jackson, we dont talk about the piney woods. So going to turn it to you there, and whatd we learn in that regard . Well, thank you for the question. I think youre exactly right, and i look when i first was looking at researching hattiesburg, the two counties i study are forest and jones county, and theyre what i refer to jointly as the piney woods, southern mississippi. It was looked at a lot as moderate. With the vernon case in 68, the fbi did come in, and the local authorities did cooperate with them. One of the fbi agents was a brother to a county prosecutor there. And so often the history is seen from that point forward. And they did actually get between 1968 and 1974 convictions of klansmen, three on murder and one on arson, and those were the first convictions in mississippi of klansmen killing a civil rights activist. So they were very important. They were water shed candidate cases. They did not get sam bowers, the imperial wizard, he had three mistrials. But then they did get him. We have to look at what happened before that, right . What led to that. Vernon damar murder did not come out of anywhere. They like to say, oh, they come from jones county. Jones county was a tough county, but so was Forest County. It had a long history. I go back in time and i look at, you know, i go back to the inception of the counties. But, i mean, you had in there was linkage between the two constantly. For example, there was a lynching during world war ii in jones county, but the fbi the trial, im sorry, federal trial was in hattiesburg. And ultimately, one of the jurors kind of tried to hold out for conviction of the lynchers, but they took a recess, and im not sure, you know, i couldnt find out what happened then. But there was obviously a lot of pressure, and he changed his mind. There was a case also, a willie mcgee case, where he was charged with raping a white woman. He was tried in a matter of hours with little defense. They no physical evidence, and it was so obvious he was railroaded. The jury very quickly found him guilty. He was to be executed, and then this Civil Rights Congress took on his case, fought for six years but, ultimately, he was executed. But these things were happening and together sort of jones and forest, one of those cases they kept retrying it, one of those willie mcgee cases was tried in Forest County, and he was found guilty again. On no evidence, i mean, theres no evidence at all. So i think thats important in terms of place and longevity. Also when youre talking about a lot of these, like, confederate symbols and so forth, Forest Countys named after Nathan Bedford forest who was a member of the confederacy as well as the first imperial wizard of the ku klux klan. And that name of that county actually, Forest County was originally part of perry county, seceded and thats when they took on the name. The confederate statues were in 1912, and jones county actually had a revolt against the confederacy led by captain newton, a white man who had a common law marriage, who had an affair with his grandfathers slave, rachel. And so the fact that they, you know, that our president , President Trump is talking about this history, hes not looking at what that history is. And the fact that, actually, in the south they were revolting against the confederacy too. Some places, obviously [inaudible] but i just think its important to talk about, to demythologize our history, its far more complicated, and when people are trying to say things are moderate, its important to look at the good things that happened but not trying to hide the darker history. And so i think its important to point that out. Thank you. Adrienne, i think really obviously your work undermines our notions of kind of the black white dichotomy, particularly in the movement one that often dominates our conversations about race especially in mississippi. What does the experience of chinese immigrants tell us about the complexity and social construction of race and how we understand the Civil Rights Movement . Well, im so glad that im sitting in this chair right now, because this is where one of most racist Supreme Court decisions was ever rendered in the state, and its what i wrote about. And i get to sit here in this chair and say that. [laughter] weve come a long way. But in 1924 there was a 9yearold girl named martha, she was of chinese descent. She and her older sister were attending a white school in rosedale, mississippi. And in that year this was three years after theyd been attending the school in 1924 they went to school, first day of class. By noon lunchtime principal pulled them this and said what are you doing here . Youre colored. Now, thats a 30minute conversation that they go from one side of the color line to another. And these are young girls. So i was just fascinated in the way in which we tend to talk about race in mississippi as this binary concept. And here we are, a chinese family which the history of chinese immigration in the delta of mississippi is incredible by itself. In fact, thousands of chinese slaves were bought and sold by Nathan Bedford forest through memphis. So hes got that on his rap sheet too. [laughter] so this family went home, the daughters went home as they were told to do, and they were put in the position of having to decide are we going to fight, and what does that mean to fight . And they found a lawyer who later worked for the naacp. He crafted a 14th amendment case which is eventually what brown v. Board was, very hinged explicitly on the. 14th amendment and the equal protection clause of that. They crafted this case and won it in local court in rosedale. And the decision that was rendered that said that children cannot be discriminated against in education on the basis of the color of their skin. So it was an incredible victory for 1924. But then, of course, it was appealed, came here where were sitting. They ruled, obviously, against it which made it became state law. And then it was appealed again, and it became law of the land and the country. And the u. S. Supreme court in 1927. And over the course of those three years, this family was really back and forth. They didnt know what to do with their children, they didnt know if they were safe in the south. They moved north. They eventually landed in arkansas in elaine, but the whole legacy of immigration and the role of immigrants in both the Civil Rights Movement and the just the overall construction of the south, i think, has been kind of pushed to the side because it doesnt really fit easily in four photographs in a textbook. [laughter] paragraphs in a textbook. Which is why i devoted this book to it. But i would love to see a lot more come out and just look at the fact that there were enslaved immigrants in the mississippi delta, in plantations outside new orleans, that there was this legacy of ethnic minorities being forced into really horrible conditions. And that transition from, into whiteness, right . That this family was in some ways fighting a really racist case which was we want to be accepted as whites. We want to be accepted into whiteness. Its all very confusing. And, luckily, i got to get my hands in it for a couple years, but im hoping to see a lot more literature coming out about this going forward. Thats wonderful. You know, one of the things that weve seen a rash of in recent years is a modern assault on black bodies, a public assault on africanamericans. And we all know that that is not a new thing. Thats a historic thing. And, grif, thinking about your book, when we think about the historic assault on black bodies, we often think about the institution of lynching, right . And we think about the newest report from the equal Justice Initiative lynching in america, which is in its third edition now, has recalculated the number of known lynchings in america. And its important we note its the number of known ones. We know there are hundreds if not thousands of others who just disappeared. Mississippi was number one in the nation per capita in total number of known lynchings. Over a period of 73 years, there were 654 lynchings in the state of mississippi. Thats a known lynching every six weeks for 73 years in the state of mississippi. Nationwide it was 4,084 over 73 years, so over a lynching a day. A known lynching a day for 73 years in American History. It seems to me, grif, that your story tells us a different kind of narrative about the assault on black bodies and would just love to the hear you talk about that. Love to hear you talk about that. One of the things that i think we have not done as a society in not coming to terms with our history is the fact that we still in arkansas i mean, and thats what i researched we still do not know the depth of the assault on black live ares. One of the black lives. One of the books that i wrote is about the elaine race massacres of 1919. And despite the amount of research that has been done, for so long there was an effort to believe that this socalled riot that occurred in eastern arkansas where im from near the town of helena was a riot by blacks who were attempting an insurrection as sharecroppers. They had formed a union. For up until 2000, the research cried out for at least a recognition that, in fact, what had happened was a massacre of africanamericans estimated at 200 to 250. Black women, men and children were shot down in the cotton fields by a combination of troops brought in from camp pike, and this was in 1919. And for up really until almost year 2000, historians just debated, well, you know, we really dont know what happened. In phillips county. In fact, we do know what happened. To the extent that we have enough evidence really to call it a massacre and that we know now that five whites were killed. And thats, thats the extent of how many whites were lost. But up until 2000, we still saw in our history books we really dont know what happened. And thats one of the things that i think we have to come to terms with, is that we have justified so much of what has been done in history without any evidence because of the pain of all of this is overwhelming if you really start and try to think. Anding and thats why i began this introduction with counting the ways in which africanamericans have been discriminated against. But even worse, what the consequences have been in our society. And, otis, we also dont often contemplate city politics, you know, when we talk about these stories, when we tell the story of the modern Civil Rights Movement. So what does the political transition from edward crump to Willie Harrington in memphis tell us . More than i can have time to tell you about today. [laughter] from boss crump to king willie traces the political evolution of memphis from the undisputed king or boss of memphis for over 50 years, e. H. Crump, to the election of the first africanamerican mayor in 1991. Boss crump maintained his political power for those many years because of the africanamerican vote. Africanamericans were voting in memphis, tennessee, long before they were voting in my home state of mississippi, just across the state line. Africanamericans were voting. Now, some people have said and historians have said that boss crump manipulated that vote, and in some cases he did. But at least for africanamericans, this growing africanamerican population in memphis who were leaving the plantations of mississippi and arkansas and in some respects louisiana going north, those who didnt go to chicago, detroit, milwaukee, cleveland came to, stopped in memphis or st. Louis. The ones that populated memphis, they at least saw boss crump listening to just a little bit of their concerns when nobody else would even care about their issues. So, yes, they gave their political allegiance to boss crump. Now, the book contains a lot of characters who were either courageous or cowardly in memphis when it came to racial equality and fairness. But the one thing that i took away from my research for this book and it was just an unbelievable, enjoyable experience for me as a person who grew up around memphis but living in mississippi. Boss crump was from holly springs, mississippi. I also talk about ida b. Wells who was also from mississippi, the first africanamerican millionaire in the south lived in memphis, robert church, also was from holly springs, mississippi, when fled mississippi for good and sufficient reasons at that tame. But the one at that time. But the one thing that really stuck out for me when we talk about that city politics, robbie, is this africanamericans just wanted a seat at the table in memphis. They just wanted some participation in public affairs. They wanted to hold a public office. They didnt want to run the whole city, but they just wanted some input. And at every turn for more than 75, 80 years, the white establishment said, no. No, were not going to give you were not going to even let you sit on the board of john gadsden hospital in memphis even though the majority of patients in the hospital were africanamerican. Were just not going to let you do that. And so they kept fighting and kept fighting and kept fighting, and it culminated with the election of dr. Harrington in 91 based on two factors. One is the assassination of dr. King in 1968 which started the influx or the outflux, if you will if thats a word of white residents from memphis the suburbs. And then the second one was the desegregation of memphis city schools through busing which also completed this outmigration of White Memphians to the suburbs. And that allowed the africanamerican population to be the majority population and then culminate with the election of dr. Harrington, the first africanamerican mayor, in 1991. The one major point that i took away from this book is that voting is critical. And its still the case today. Voting is absolutely critical for everyone. And said this ive said this, my wife has heard this a lot of different times. The message that i have is if you dont participate in the electoral process, you get who you dont vote for. And that and weve seen that. Weve seen that far too often. I think weve seen that last year. We got who we didnt vote for because the voting was not as robust as it should have been. There were times in the past, 1964, for example, when the voter turnout in memphis for the president ial election was almost 90 . Can you imagine any turnout thats 90 . Thats unbelievable. But it was in 64 because lyndon johnson, everybody was afraid. They didnt want goldwater in there. So people this memphis, in Shelby County turned out in droves to vote for lyndon johnson. And, of course, he won the election. We are lucky today even in president ial elections to have 60 , sometimes less than 50 , and local elections we may get 25, 30, 40 . Rarely gets that. But what this research told me is that if you dont participate in the electoral process, you are giving up your right to really, really complain about whats going on. And you do get who you dont vote for. And thats my message. Thank you. We are getting close to having q a with the audience, so if you have questions, i hope that you will come to the podium here and line up for our authors so that you can address them directly. And i just want to throw one more question down, i guess well start with grif and come this way as people come to the podium. It seems to me that all of these are stories that i wonder why its taken so long for them to be told. [laughter] thats a good difficult stories, and i wonder about that and the reactions that youve had telling them. I think its convenience on the part of whites not to come to terms with our history. I mean, its been part of our tradition at least over in arkansas. I mean, you can look at some im not an academic historian in the sense that i dont teach. I mean, in some ways too often at least at one point in our earlier history, i mean, academicians im not saying it right. Youre close enough. [laughter] are, you know, its, you know, they want to protect themselves. They may not like to hear that, but people want tenure, and we have a, have had a tradition that if we werent going to admit how bad things were in terms of the things ive listed, then we were just going to say, well, we really dont know the extent of it. And, of course, theres so few africanamericans who have been hired at the university of arkansas and our other institutions. Its getting better. But, i mean, until we have representative people who of color this academia, were not going to have that kind of participation. And is were not going to have that kind of truthtelling, im afraid. Thank you. Im going to be very brief because i do want to get to questions as well. I just think in my case, there have been books told about, obviously, the assassination of dr. King, going back as far as ida b. Wells. Obviously, there have been some great books written. But i dont think there was ever any attempt to connect the dots between the two most powerful political figures in the history of memphis. And when you look at memphis as a place that has a strong position in the midsouth, it was a dominant place going all the way back to the 1800s. Its a place where cotton came from mississippi to be, you know, sold and so memphis was just such a critical place. And i dont think anybody ever connected the dots between the two most powerful people, and thats what i was happy to do. I think with forest and jones county, marley Forest County particularly Forest County, theres this effort to make it look moderate, so people thought there wasnt much there. But there was tons of sources once you started digging. I think also the city fathers of hattiesburg made a real effort. There was a lot of violation that happened early on, but in 64 there was an amazing Civil Rights Movement that built from the 40s into the 60s, and 64 they really came out with these freedom day protests against the register [inaudible] because there had been a decision that he had to register black voters, but he defied it. So they came out and protested him every day. But what the city fathers had decided was they were going to try to make really sure the white mask of resistance was scienced. The media silenced. The media got bored and left. Were looking at charlottesville, that kind of violence is horrifying and terrifying, but nonviolent oppression is also really awful. And it also really does terrible things to peoples lives and keeps them out of city government, and so forth. And, you know, theres so many amazing people that i learned about like Clyde Kennard, we always talk about ole miss, but Clyde Kennard tried to desegregate ole miss in the 50s, and they framed him for something he didnt do, and he got cancer, and they didnt let him have access to the hospital. He ultimately died. They let him out a couple weeks before he died. When you really look at the resistance, i guess the greatest lesson i took away is that the resistance in the Civil Rights Movement, through the postCivil Rights Movement. I go into 2008, 2010, and they continue to resist and fight for their rights. And there was amazing women, i just have to say that too, some amazing women. One was 16 out there every day on the picket lines and daisy harris who was a mother who, actually, when they arrested her kids, she showed up at the Police Station in 1964 and started screaming at yelling and and yelling at them that they theyd better not mess with her kids. I guess my biggest what ive taken away is we just have to keep resisting, we have to keep demythologizing some of these things that are being said in the media, not what i would call in President Trumps media. [laughter] right. His alternate facts. Ill use a big word, im going to use one big word this whole talk, and thats the word historiography which is the study of how history is made. Thats something i bumped into. I think the reason this book wasnt written yet was because it was really hard to find any kind of record. The central family comes, is descended of undocumented immigrants who crossed the Canadian Border illegally at night across a frozen river. So to recreate that accurately as a historian, right . Historical fiction would have been great. I would have loved to write a fiction book. [laughter] but i needed footnotes, and that mean i had to go back and find people who hid from the census, who hid from government workers, who didnt keep letters around because they didnt want them to be found. I think if i were talking to someone a hundred years from now, its talk to your neighbors, get oral histories from the lady down the street. Get as much history as you can from the voices that are not the only white man in my book which, hes incredible, earl brewer. Lawyer, amazing person, he was governor here, his office was right across the hall. But i have what he had for breakfast every day, and his calisthenic routine and every prayer he ever said at bedtime. And the people that i want to hear from which is the 9yearold chinese girl has no voice in this narrative because nobody thought to keep it. And ill just say, you know, when the verdict finally was handed down by the u. S. Supreme court in 1927, that story was all the way at the back of the paper. It was the Associated Press copy. It was cut in half, and the a1 story was some debutantes wedding. So we, as journalists, have a responsibility for the sake of history to make sure that were maintaining voices and coverage that represent all of what this nation is. Absolutely. Thank you. All right. Lets have some questions from the audience. Please, tell us your name and where youre from. My name is annette, im from madison, and im struck by the fact that many of the Confederate Monuments were erected in the early 20th century, some 50, 60 years after the event. Woodrow wilsons racism is well documented. That was, you know, two to three generations after the great upheaval of the civil war. Were now 5060 years past the upheaval of the Civil Rights Movement. I wonder if the panel would comment on what parallels they may see and if this is because many those two to three generations in those two to three generations are we forgetting or are we remembering in a way thats painful . Who wants to jump in . Well, i think, you know, i think one of the things that was really frightening to me on those videos is how young a lot of those men were and some women at that charlottesville march. Because i think we want to think that racism is dying out, right . So as much as i think there has been this sense that was really built up in the 2016 campaign and before that, i mean, this doesnt come with trump. This has been building, all this stuff. This has been here. But its kind of been under this politically correct veneer, right . But there was all this rage thats under there. And i think that what you have is theres this sense among some whites in this country that they are being alienated, and there are people that are white that are suffering from poverty and so forth. And what a lot of elites have always done in this country is try to divide poor whites from people of color. If you could ever get all those masses together, then they wouldnt stand a chance, right . You would have a different political situation. So i think a lot of it has to do with this sense of alienation and, you know, quite frankly, white privilege. I mean, the sense that whites are, you know, owed, that this is their country. And its not. Its not my country any more than its anyone elses country who lives here. Its all of our countries. But i think people feel like its being taken away, and so in our fight to talk about all this, i think its also important that we figure out how to address that and that we teach our history better and truer. Please. Well, that kind of led to a question that i had which is, and i want to read if i can pull it up now two sentences from the mississippi declaration of secession. I cant pull it up right now, so ill just try to say it. But the first says ours is thoroughly are, our cause is thorough toly identified with the institution of slavery. Right. And then it talks about how none but the black race can do this due to the tropical climates. But we still here have debates over whether it was about states rights when the language is clear in that. Is my question is one of so my question is one of how you as writers deal with history and misstatements of history and how we in Todays Society engender some type of empathy for each other. Because getting back to the place at the table, i think without that empathy you dont have change. And so some of the greatest moments of change in American History arise out of empathy. So how do you see your role in that, and how do you see us go forward . Well, as someone who not only has written this book, i mean, i write a weekly column, and i write a weekly newspaper column. And i also do daily television commentary, so im writing and talking every single day on these issues. And i think the only way to do that is to just be persistent. And i think that, you know, my readers, half of them love me, the other half, well, you know. [laughter] you know how they feel. But everybody whether they love what i write and say on television or whether they hate it and they want the station to fire me or they want my president at the university of memphis to get rid of me from the campus, they know that im consistent. I have been consistent on these issues ever since i was, started writing opinion columns, and that was about 11 years ago. So we just have to be consistent about it. We have to continue to explain that history. A lot of people dont know. The ones who keep saying this is about states rights, they have never even read the constitution probably. And theyre hearing what ore to people are saying. Other people are saying. These young 20yearolds, 21yearolds who were marching in charlottesville, they have no idea about the history. They are just believing what somebody else has told them. And its just unfortunate that our political leaders are doing too much more political reasons and not doing what is right that we are in the shape that we are in. If only we could have some people who would have the political will to say i dont care about the next election, i care about equality, i care about the civilization that were in, and i care more about that than i care about whats going to happen in 2018. Ill just say one real quick thing. I loved what president obama tweeted, the stuff from melson mandela and said nobodys born to hate. And i think thats true. People are taught to hate, right . Thats why learning history is so important. I think as much as, you know, it makes you so angry to see only of these images, i take from the Civil Rights Movement too that it was about going out there with love and fighting hate with love. So i think that, you know, is something to think about going forward, and thats important. Absolutely. Please. Thanks to each of many thanks to each of you. Should we equate a memorial to confederate war dead or a confederate cemetery with a monument to a political or military leader . My thinking on this is somewhat nuanced by the memory of president reagan laying a wreath at a nazi cemetery. Anybody want to address that . I can tackle this. Did we get stumped . Well, i think its interesting because im actually before coming on here, i was texting back and forth to my reporters because we have a Confederate Monument in williamsburg, the city i cover, and the question is of what is our role now, do we just say, hey, theres a monument here, i guess thats a story. But i think what we do now in terms of this conversation were having, which i was living in mississippi when it was a Big Conversation about flag after what happened in charlotte. And so what i, what i dont want to do is say that taking these statues down is going to solve a problem. Because i dont think it does. And i think theres a lot of people that say that. I think what they should be i dont want to look at them, and i dont think they should stay there, but i dont think that the problem stops when the statues come down. I think thats when the conversation starts. And the same way with, you know, the flag of state of mississippi, i think if we just take it off our flag pole, were not doing justice to the history of how that flag was erected in the first place. And i think people should be made aware that this nativism, this virulent racism is a part of americas history, and toppling statues doesnt push it away. It just takes it off of, you know, the central square. But that doesnt mean its not there. So we have to be able to make it a first step but definitely not the last one. I think this is a long, hard row that were going to hoe, and theres no way to separate that from the creation of the nation itself. I mean, we go back to jamestown. Well, in at that time in 1607 weve got slaves on that ship. So i dont want to say that its not part of our country, but could i just add, thinking that were going to take statues down lets, may let people think theyre off the hook. Those are the things that i have listed in the introduction. I really hate to do this but please thank our panelists for this robust conversation. [applause] thank you all for being here and being at the book festival. Please buy some books. [inaudible conversations] that wraps up booktvs live coverage of the 2017 mississippi book festival and jackson. You can watch the entire days event starting at midnight eastern time