relations and programs for atlanta history center is absolutely my pleasure to welcome you to tonight's author talk. we are so lucky to be joined by adolf reed who will be discussing his book the south jim crow and it's after lives and he will be in discussion in conversation tonight with jim oaks if you have not yet purchased your coffee of the book. you can see all of my marks in here. i highly recommend that you do so they'll be a link to do that in the chat from atlanta history centers museum store. we live in atlanta. you can come pick it up from us or we will ship it to you if you're in domestic us shipping. as adolf and jim talk this evening if you have questions for them, please drop those in the q&a and we will get to as many of them as we can by the end of the talk just gonna briefly introduce to the two speakers and then turn it over to them because to dig into tonight adolf reed juniors a political scientist at the university of pennsylvania. he's the author of class notes the jesse jackson phenomenon w e b dubois and pull an american political thought and stirring in the jug. he's written articles for many publications, but including the progressive black agenda and many others. he's been politically active since the 1960s has been all over the south and lots of other places in the country all detailed in the book. he is in conversation tonight with james oaks. gem is a 19th century historian of america. he's written many books as well. he's tackled the history of the united states from the revolution through the civil war and his early work focused on the south examining slavery as an economic and social system that shapes southern life. he is a distinguished professor of history at the city university of new york graduate center adolf and jim. thank you so much for being with us tonight. oh, thanks for having us. thank you for having us. it's great to be here. absolutely. it's great to be able to cook for a little while with my old friend adolf. we've known each other what's going 35 years or so, that's right. he's talking to me, but it's the occasion is your wonderful new book the south jim crow and it's after loss and and for those of you who haven't had a chance to read i highly recommend it, but it's important to know that although the material of the book is filled with its filled with fascinating autobiographical detail. it's not it's not actually a memoir and in any traditional sense, right? it's it's right. it's not a personal triumph over adversity story, you know present yourself as representative of anything, right? exactly. thank you guys the various ways in which your experience was distinctive. the subject is really the dying of what you call the jim crow order, right? so you you bring to that subject a certain perspectives that that are helpful and useful these fascinating. anyway, one of them is is what you say is the justification for writing the book to begin with you were part of the last generation to have lived through. the jim crow order. why is that important? and what does that allow you to see that others might not. well, yeah, i think it's important for a couple of reasons. i mean what well, i'm one reason it seemed important at the time i started to work on it. is that old people always think that way but but i've one is is and frankly this was the immediate precipitate right? because the idea emerged from conversations with a couple of friends and colleagues who also had connections to it and they're both professors. and and and and the sense that of direct connection being lived experience was on the way out. i stood and stark contrast to the ways that both both academics. and lay people or you know non-academic writers were actually the representing of jim crow and and i mean the jim crow order or the south or life in the south between so between 1900 1970 that just seemed so out of so dissonant from what the social system actually was a my son often the first to the way that people like to think and write about that on in that period as as well as slavery. as there was the equivalent of white people's permanent. sadistic camp, right? like they did it all. but yeah, well, it's the torture and a brutalized black people. so it's kind of a corrective of yeah. but you're also talk about. the the specific time in which you experience this was, you know that the cliche is, you know, the old order was dying in the new was juggling to be born in that that gives you a certain perspective because it exposes the contours of the system in in which you know at the height of its power and significance you might not see right. well, yeah, i think that's right jim and and it's telling too because and look i mean, i think i mentioned if i make this point at least a couple times in a book as well like it's only with the benefit of hindsight. that i could look look back and see signs of the unraveling and the decomposition and more to the point. that that i could see germinal forms of of what was going or what could become or would become the order that that replaced it. but yeah, that's absolutely correct. yeah. so one of the basic observations you make in the that's critical to understanding. your larger purpose. is that the jim crow order what we usually think of as jim crow the manifestations of jim carlo the segregated schools segregated theaters segregated lunch counters, you know that those were in some sense superficial, but but not at all trivial in terms of the day-to-day experience and and that's where you book is so moving and and powerful you talk about you begin by talking about jim crow in your neighborhood in new orleans negotiating just the local codes. why don't you you talk a little bit about yeah, well yeah, i mean i like talking about this because because it helps helps to underscore a way that i was like really really stupid for a long long time and and it says that that so as in a number of other older southern cities, which doesn't include atlanta, but i mean places like charleston and probably i mean, savannah richmond. the patterns of racial occupancy by area or neighborhood necessarily strictly segregated, right and and what made me feel stupid was there's only when i read thomas hatchet's book on charlotte, you know, north from 1900 1975. that that i realized that neighborhood segregation in the south in the southern cities was first of all the product of the introduction of the idea of the neighborhood as a as a distinctive place where one lives as a way of giving a making a statement about one's position in the world. and that that didn't come into existence until the early years of the 20th century. it's part of um the spread of or the birth of of a real estate industry right in your urban areas in early 20th century and the moment at which a real industry was born which was precisely the moment of of a consolidation of this new what white supremacist order. so so my neighborhood in new orleans was an older one and and like a lot of them. there is like roughly 50/50. a black and white and and the patterns of separation were also appropriate right in some portions. it was like whites on one side of the street blacks on the other some portions of whites. and what half to block blacks and the other and and in that context people kind of had to figure out what? what would an unofficial etiquette of neighborhood life was to be like and and they did right they worked it out and it was improvised right? it was like folk, you know development. but also the case that when the whites who are sort of friendly and of course the friendliness is i would then boundaries right? there's no. popping into each other's houses for coffee, but but often enough what whites who are very friendly in the confines of you know of the neighborhood would stiff you basically they ran into you. in some other context and at the time and you understandably it felt like they were being two-faced. and the retrospective probably were like in some ways, but they were also trying to navigate this system that they didn't have any part in creating either. so so one of the the fact that these codes were local is also an aspect of the system on one hand. there's a kind of legal superstructure to jim crow that right a consolidated in the lab at the very end of the 19th century, but it also varies from place to place and that means for example traveling. is hard. oh was a colossal so you have yeah two experience three actually the experience of lying and stopping it at port where right you don't know which restroom is the right restroom, or is it getting on a trailways bus and wondering right, you know sitting in the back because if you stop that when you stopped at monroe, louisiana or something, i don't want to get off the bus right or driving with a car and having to stay with friends because you can't stay in so it's not just to get negotiating local codes. it's the not knowing what the codes are from one place to another that makes the system so irrational and arbitrary. oh totally and i and and even at the time in the 60s like i thought that if you're gonna do it, you should do it the way to south africans did it where it was the same thing everywhere, right? right, but like for instance probably some people like in the audience, i don't know this but in montgomery, alabama and this was one of the immediate precipitants of the bus boycott, but but the way that segregation and public transportation was acted out let's practice. a blacks would get got on the at the front. pay the money get off and then re-enter through the rear door. um and often enough the bus driver pulled off just out of spite, right? so one of the initial demands of montgomery improvement association was to end that practice right so were looking for some parity and dignity within segregation right but they're all kinds of local variations. right? right, but vitamin like that and and then i mentioned too that um in commercial culture, you know different with commercial enterprises were likely to set different rules. right? right. so like in new orleans or some department stores, we could try on hats but not shoes others. you could try and shoes but not hats right and then people so. a what picked from the buffet of offenses basically to to get a menu of the least on palatable. right so this i thought about two things as i was reading this one of them is the degree to which the arbitrariness and the irrationality of the system. is not it's not. i suppose in some ways is a symptom of its incompleteness, but in other ways is one of the things that makes it so oppressive. mm-hmm, right because you don't know. no, that's right. so terrifying is that you don't know when you go into the next town whether the rules are the same. oh, yeah. yeah. well the airport story so i was flying from pine bluff, arkansas to new orleans, and i thought that i had to stop. in el dorado, arkansas i didn't realize i had to change planes in el dorado, arkansas. so we landed el dorado in the dc3 promote trans, texas airlines and i get deposited with my suitcase on the tarmac. so it's 1966. so it's like two years after the public accommodations. act was passed. which what which means all the signs in places like airports. that the designated the racially separate. waiting rooms had been taken down. but it's a sunday afternoon. there's nobody around i think it was like palm sunday or something and i kept looking from the tarmac of into the terminal for some sign of life so i could read a q. as to which doors the appropriate door to enter. and look, it could have been fine. right it could have been that nobody. what would have cared. one way or another. but it could have been not fine and the black person was always expected to know what the rules are even if they just showed up. so i sat on a tarmac and and read for two or three hours and it kind of chilly air until my other plane came, right? but it's also it's also one of those stories where it's the dying old order and the new york. oh, yeah. you don't know you say you're at this attorney point and nobody knows what the rules are great. that's right, right. that's exactly right. that there are several, you know, one of the things that i find so so powerful about the book is is the humanity of it that is you already mentioned that you know. you could see your neighbors as two-faced because they won't recognize you in downtown the way they would in the neighborhood, but there are also you tell the story of the store owner who you know caught you shoplifting and right could have made your life miserable in ways that could have ended up and did you up it angola or right archman farm or something, but instead behaved like a humane decent person in the middle of this brutal system. yeah, and that kind of stuff was was common enough. i mean this was like either at the very end of 1959 or the very beginning of 1960, which was you know, what which which would have been just a few months of before the school desegregation controversy erupted right across the city. and i mean these people. were were decent and as i say in the book, i mean my my thought at the time was that they treated me the way. that i would expect they would have wanted someone to treat their own kid, right and they gave me the dutch uncle lecture and you know, and and and and you sent me on along my way and there were a lot of a lot of interactions like that, right i mean and and people tend to forget i mean that you know, the segregations order was imposed on everybody right? and and i'm not saying that most whites. fought against it tooth and nail but but they had to open. yeah, but it didn't emerge from the hearts and souls of the you know, the white mind or the white community or whatever, but they had a little bit too just like we did right. that's right. so with what was the kid who helped you build the model airplane? was that the sun of the storekeeper? and now that was a son of the of the store keeper in my own? yeah. yeah about the galliano family, right? they lived on the corner from us they lived next to there. they're corner store and they were so until well after mid-century like the largest nominally white population in the city was italian and the two neighborhood stores and like this. predates even like the coming of the first a&p right? i can remember what when the a&p opened but a few blocks away and and the neighborhood store owners were concerned about the impacts of whether the supermarkets, you know, the galiano family of news right on the corner. they were decent people the friendly enough not you know, not gruff they treated everybody with with the respect and dignity um, i mean, nobody was on a first name basis, you know with anybody so my grandparents were were the mr. mack and mrs. mack. and and and that they were what i'm a mr. tony and mr. tony basically and it asked about you know, how families are doing and whatnot. so, yeah, i mean and and this one year, i think i must have been 10 or 11. somebody giving me like a model airplane. and and that was kind of skittish about the gasoline and the wings or the motor. so their son who was probably 15 16. a buffered but right to come, you know come down to our house and go out in the backyard with me. show me how to set the thing up and and fly it and we spent the better partner afternoon talking like i would talk to any teenager, right who would ask about school and life and but baseball and so forth and so on and it was just and then right. um, yeah, i don't think i ever saw him again, but there wasn't it wasn't a particular reason to he had his life. i had mine and and i think he went on actually to be a plan or a local government, but i'm not sure it's the same guy. yeah, so it's it's these it's these human interactions in the context of a system. that is terrifying, you know in so many ways that that you capture so beautifully in the book the thank you the the afterlives of the subtitle are sometimes political and sometimes eat psychological right? so you tell several stories about experiences with police while driving. okay, they're terrifying because because of what jim carre was, right? and yet they're surprising because they turn out not to be what what could easily have been. oh, man. yeah. i mean the first one the one it really. the what? i'm knocked me for a loop. i was like and i'm sure a lot of people in atlanta know this. yeah, i was on i-65. from montgomery to mobile as about halfway. to mobile and there was nothing, you know on the highway, but at that point it was brand new and and was late at night. and alabama state trooper. clocked me breaking down to 83 which is at that point 23 miles over the speed limit. so i so so it's just the two of us on the side of the road in the middle of alabama. and you caused me back to his car i got in. first he coughs and the covers his mouth and and it turns me and says, excuse me, sir. okay, so i'm already not quite prepared for this. and then he said look i tell you what because i explained to him, you know trying to get to new orleans what had to go to a meeting, but i couldn't leave so i got off work. blah and and he said i'll tell you what, i'm gonna let you off with a warning it i i wrote you up. for under 20 miles or under 15 miles over the speed limit. and and i'm gonna let you out for the warning and just please don't speed speed anymore in alabama. okay? and i thanked him profusely and got back in my car and it was really a pleasant and an empathic interaction. the next one was about a year later. i think probably i was driving in south carolina from greenville to charleston and was about to get on i-26 from i 276 i think it was beltway. and i noticed that i that a car had been tracking me for several miles. so i tried so i made sure i stayed within 10 miles at a speed limit. and as soon as i got onto the ramp, it's got on a 26th. the blue light came on. and it was south carolina trooper. and he pulls me over. and he calls me back to his car and in south carolina that they actually did mount the shotgun right in the passenger seat, right? so the barrel was well was in my face. and and it turns out i had a the pan african the pen african liberation committee had called a boycott of gulf oil because a golf golf was invested in in a refineries and cabende which is a province of angola and they were subsidizing the portuguese war against the what against the andy colonial movement. and turned out this trooper wanted me to explain the gulf boycott to him. and this was also like just after the opec. crisis, so i mean there i was i was sitting and he was quite interested and i was sitting in his car standing to the shotgun. trying to explain the what this bumper sticker was all about, and he said to me and and you're especially concerned because they're doing that to your rates of people, right? that's it. yeah. and and then he thanked me and he but he did ask me where i was going to south carolina with the nature of business was so i told him that was going to charleston. and and i was it right i was off and he was also pleasant right? i mean, which was not exactly kind of interactions. i had i'd had to stay troopers prior to that. i don't want to make it sound like well your interactions were with humane and decent. oh, no, it worked. i mean one of the things that so that's so compelling about your description of writing on the trailways bus is the context in which there i took place right in the context of the murders of we're sure in our cheney and goodman, but also also at the same time and much less widely known. the bodies of several black people had been found floating in the nearby river center and things like that. and again, you just never know right whether or not when the bus pulls into the station. you're going to be safe or not. right? well, no, absolutely man. and i mean like i'd compounded it. i'd grown my first beard around the same time. and in that incident we were down so it's it was close to some kind of vacation, right? so there were college students who had gotten on the bus the different points. and and they were little groups together. and and we stopped in lake village, arkansas, which is down in southeast arkansas and elderly white couple got on and again, this is years after. segregation in in public accommodations, especially interstate travel, you know had been outlawed. and i don't know if there's a reflex or what but the old couple were infirm. um, and the driver gets up and instructs the two black college students who are sitting right behind his seat. to get up and let the old light couple sit down. and of course the students box. i mean at least because there are plenty of seats after the long long suit they could have taken. and there was a standoff right for so pardon me for several minutes. and i'm in the back of the bus with my pint achieved vodka and sipping. and just watching this wondering right and what's going to happen like this gonna be when we all get i mean disappeared. i'm sure everyone. well, i know everyone was very much aware of turner goodman and chaney it wasn't that far away. it wasn't that long ago, basically. but eventually and only about a dozen people on a bus at that point, but eventually the bus driver thought better of it for whatever reason got back in the seat and started driving. yeah, yeah. so i wonder if we can spend before we go to question and answers whether you can spend some time on some of the big important themes you develop you. you i mentioned earlier that you described these quotidian experiences superficial manifestations of a much. deeper system jim crow order and and i wonder if we can talk he can talk a little bit about what that order was. you have a quote. there are several places in which i could i could have quoted you but this one comes in the context of your discussion of floyd mckissick and the soul city project. you say something like it in one sense. the jim crow order was explicitly and definitively about race and and another sense. it wasn't about race at all, right? can you tell us what you mean by that? what the jim crow order was? sure. yeah, i mean i think of the jim crow order is something quite quite historically specific right and it's it's so even take what i mean take the big issue of segregation right charles charles lofgren's work on this is really good. but you know other people have done done quite good work on this too. so segregation didn't become a big hot button issue like in anybody's mind black black or white until plastic right until the plastic case. and and from emancipation forward at the state level and at the local level. regulation or racial regulation of of that sort went in all kinds of different directions, right? so in some cases trolleys were jim crowd. and and trains were and and and ships weren't i mean riverboats weren't well in some cases. it was the other way around. in some places segregation was imposed after emancipation and i rescinded later and then imposed again and and in some places that went the other way around. um, so segregation took on it's it's deep meaning in the context. of imposition of a codified social order that that implanted racial hierarchy and white supremacy at the constitutional level. right as a cornerstone of government. and and thereby of economic and social life. in every state the former confederacy, right and but it wasn't. imposed first of all until it it was. it it emerged. right right. i don't want to say it was crafted, but it emerged as a response to a problem. that the dominant planter merchant capitalist class in the south had had since emancipation which was the danger of busted white people and blacks voting together to challenge the ruling classes absolute prerogative. and for a long time i thought well like this must be. a freudian concern because there are some our side as it was never strong enough, the reality is yeah, the readjusted movement in virginia in 1879 was pretty successful the populist and colored farmers alliance it in insurgency like in early 1890s was dramatic and was successful especially in, north carolina. but also along the way there were kazillions of intermittent local fights over taxation and and and range control right or whatever public works. funding education so and after the defeat of the populist insurrection or insurgency um in one state after another um first first came this franchisement, right the first move was no disfranchising the up to 90% the black population. and you know depending on the state you ran up to a quarter to a third of the white population. so so you take the franchise away from these people and then you know the playing field in politics like thinking about what can a political issue. gets tilted very very sharply to to privilege. i don't like using that now as a verb, but up, but to advance the interest of the dominant class right and and often enough even now the people. will strain to try to figure out why the union movement is weak in the south. and and get all this -- right about american exceptionalism and conservative southern culture. well when the only thing it's you understand is it is at the working class was effectively disfranchised. right until after world war two so the ruling class got to set set all the rules so there was no like john aldgeld right look but writing in the governor's mansion to pardon, right the haymarket rioters or so all all public officials. hired hands of the ruling class and not to mention that not like it was and up and open question right until at least a 1964 whether the democratic party in the south should be understood as the above ground wing of the kkk or the kkk should be understood as the underground wing of the democratic party. so so white supremacy, then becomes certainly. as former governor charles aycock of north carolina said 1904 in in the reflecting on the on the reasons for the push in in 1898 that ousted the duly elected. populist populist republican fusion government that we needed to have the strength that all comes from thinking alike. right and what that meant was that white supremacy or the rhetoric of of a white supremacy as as the senate quan knowing of politics. was imposed on whites as what well it was on blacks. and it's that period right i mean the period of imposition to consolidation of that order and it's gradual disintegration after world war two. that i well that i described as a jim crow era and in fact, i often say to classes and stuff. that was sad when i had them that all four of my grandparents were sentient beings a couple of them probably full adults. by the time the jim crow order consolidated into a normal politics than a normal life. and it's back was broken by the time i was 18. right right, so so it's a finite moment. yes, it's historically. right, and and i want to stress that because people often say and this happened to me on a couple of podcasts not that long ago that that they have trouble. accepting the formulation that the jim crow era is over. and it's because we've become so accustomed to thinking about race and injustice. in a way, that's all about attitudes and doesn't have anything to do with like with with political institutions, right? so or political economy, right? that's right. exactly. yeah exactly. but when that when that merchant landlord political economy collapses, right? home politics changes. well, yeah totally and and it's not determinist either right? i mean well, i mean like you need. aggressive political forces, you know to kick in and open door even that right? exactly exactly. so so it one of the things that we have some more time, so maybe we can discuss your really interesting short chapter on passing as a okay. yes as a manifestation of how historically specific that right moment in time was from say 1890 to 1940. however, you want to date it. no, it's really interesting to me the way you describe that. oh, yeah. well, thanks. well, yeah, i mean so passing is of course. something i've known. all my life because it's just a common enough thing in the south, louisiana. but also been struck for a very long not long time about, you know, the overwrought ways. that people think about it right in novels and movies and whatnot for. for racists like thomas dixon like what this was, you know the horror, but but to be avoided and and and and and fought at costs, but for a racemen and women passing was marker. well, the a common fictional character is the black person the genteel black person who phenotypically could have passed but who didn't because of a sense of mission to the race. and of course the reciprocal of that is if you do pass the new turning your back on your mission to the race, right? but but what? found and saw and and understand to be true. is that a lot of so-called passing was totally instrumental and right flippant even right? um, i mentioned that that on my way to high school like i saw a guy who who on road the bus and all the black people on the bus were convinced. he was a possum blanca which what they call him there. and he had and he had a job. that permitted him to wear a tie. and and a pocket protector with some pens in it, right? so he was you're not many black people had such jobs like that. and this guy was probably passing to have got access to a job that he couldn't have had access to. otherwise, i knew a family in the seventh ward. who lived in two two sides of a double house? they had the same last name. the fathers were first cousins and look alike. and one side of the house lived this white the other side i mean lived as black and nobody made any bones about it, and there was no angst right? there's no like all right, and i mean as much as i love the version of sooner will be done with the troubles of the world that a mahalia jackson sings right in the crescendo of the second version of of of life. that that moment didn't really happen much. i mean it might have happened but in some cases, but that's not you know passing just wasn't a phenomenon that had all that snowman song about it and then when you think about it. um the idea of passing itself presumes a regime of strict racial regulation that that didn't exist basically after 1970 so so from that perspective. yeah. also, it's a individuals for all kinds of what all kinds of videos socratic reasons want to have an identity the other than the identity that they think they were assigned. but passing as a socially distinctive phenomenon basically ended between 1970 and 1975. right, right. so this this important point you're making about the historical specificity of the jim crow era you you use in your last chapter you use the controversial confederate monuments in a really interesting way to catch. like two big transitions, that is the one is represented by what the explicit message of those confederate ornaments did to distort and whitewash the history of slavery in the civil war its relationship to civil war, right? the second thing is the moment at which they are constructed is a moment in which a new order of the jim crow order is consolidated and then the moment at which they're torn down? reflects yet another order right? so you want to yeah, i mean through those. yeah, really really an interesting way to think about those and i think it's correct. well, thank you. well, yeah like on the first period the people forget right that while the monuments were erected nominally often to commemorate the treasonous insurrection by the elites of 11 slave owning states against the constitutional government every united states of america. some people call it something else somewhere, but i forget what but but for southern independence, oh, yeah that one. hey, man, look, i gave a talk at at winthrop in the miracle about a decade ago, and and it was a big with a packed auditorium. and i forget what the topic of the talk was but but in the middle of it, i stopped and read article one section 10 of the us constitution. and i apologize i said, yeah, i know this didn't have anything to do with my talk, but i've always dreamed since i was an undergraduate of giving a a talk to a predominantly white audience someplace in the south. and reading article one section 10 just to bring home that there was no such -- thing as a right to succeed from the union. but anyway, but the monuments the monuments trial deny that it had anything to do with slavery, right? that's a lie, right? that's falsehood. right? well, oh, yeah, totally totally and and even more telling is it the period in which they were erected because they're all erected between 1880 and and a 1915 1920. all right. they they were erected not not even to commemorate slavery. so or rather, you know the lost cause so much. as the lost cause was erected to commemorate imposition of the white supremacist order that was imposed after the defeat of populism, right so they weren't so much backward looking. a monuments to past gallantry and and and and and and failed struggle for independence. as they were the components of of an effort to to impose an ideological hegemony on on whites in in the south to create and impose this this notion of white identity right and then they come down when the what what we're not order is like swept into the aspirins of history. it's gone already for for decades. um, but it's of convenient as a war. to to denounce the expressions of of inequality that were associated with the jim crow era. uh while but to do so in a way that focuses on the white supremacist ideology and that the exploitation so you so so in the same breath you can denounce. um, you know the old order of exploitation and celebrate the new one right because it's not racing anymore. and that brings us to the the afterlife question right? because because that that i mean lots of people talked about the importance of them understanding the moment at which the confederate monuments were put up they didn't have to do with the civil war as much as they had to do with the the consolidation of the jim crow order, right, but you use mitch landrew and his his very moving speech justifying taking down them as for some reflections on where we are right now and and what has changed and what has not changed and why? why what has not changed causes people to misread? the times we live in as a continuation. rather than a break from the new deal or yeah. well the jim crow order, right? yeah, and i think that's yeah. i think that's really important too because so so at the time that that you know that the monuments came came down in new orleans and and yeah, and then landry's speech was like beautiful the best thing i've ever read and and and and practically brought tears to my eyes especially seemed quoting alexander stevens. speaking of georgia, but but at the same time new orleans is like the second most unequal city in in america. the poverty rates are high and i was actually looking at the numbers earlier today for something else. i'm writing now. blacks are in substantial disproportion represented among the populations who get the short end of the stick there. but then blacks are are represented in in substantial disproportion in the overall population. but but at least a third of the white population yeah works the same kind of dead-end jobs with no benefits from paycheck to paycheck. and with the same poor public health indicators and so forth and so on. one of the things that's happened is is a different system of economic exploitation has emerged. right over the intervening century. right and and and it's it appears to be a racial system still right because half a century it will more than half a century of post-war. racial liberalism that has disconnected racial inequality from you know from politically economy. sort of leads us to see what appears to be phenotypic when an overrepresentation of black people among the people who get the short shortening the stick as as evidence that nothing has changed. at the same time and and i know atlanta is as much like this as as new orleans is over the last half century. we've seen the emergence of a strong black political and business class. that's more or less seemingly or more or less seamlessly it. in incorporated or or messed with its white peers, i mean they live in the same neighborhoods. they go to the same clubs and stores. they consume the same class defining characteristics. they have the same. view of the world and they share governance, right? so it so so in that sense in and this is of the ironies of of of the hurricane katrina moment, right because everybody came away from katrina thinking that it provided. evidence of how divided i mean the city was what with respect of to raise. and and economic condition and opportunity. and ironically in the more than 15 years since katrina. the governing class in that city has become more seamlessly more seamlessly interracial than anyone would ever have imagined even a decade prior to that and i suspect something like like that has gone on. in in atlanta and elsewhere as well. yeah, so one of the observations you make at the end. i want to press you on this because i i'm not sure i understand it as you say that that the sense people have that nothing has changed it when in fact all of those horrific quotidian experiences have in fact been swept by the boards, you know, you know, you don't have to worry about you know, you don't you're not told to get in the back of the bus and you know, right those kinds of you know, you don't have to worry whether you stop at a motel when you driving stuff like that that's stuff that's gone and the the sense of psychological insecurity not to mention physical and security comes with this gun, but what has not gone is the class and equality right that that order represented and was designed to consolidate right? this is what this is where i want some a little confused. because i always thought of of the collapse of the jim crow order as a kind of not as dramatic a transition as the collapse of slavery and emancipation were but, you know a fundamental revolutionary transformation social right? nevertheless the collapse of a particular political economy and a new kind of class structure, so it's not so much the persistence of a particular class structure, but the persistence of class inequality, right, right? yeah, that's right. yeah, right, right and that causes people to look and say but correctly, you know, but african-americans still, you know, disproportionately lack medical insurance disproportionately, right? have housing and stuff like that, but one of the things that that is curious to me about and is eerie to me right now is how notwithstanding that fundamental transformation that i think that i agree with you has happened. is the sudden it's not sudden, but the the revival of intense interest in suppressing. the electorate especially especially the blacklight right? and and what does that represent to you and well look i mean tories never wanted everybody to vote right? that's true. that's true. right because they can count right and and i've said this a lot about you know, this franchisement in the 19th century, but that if if if blacks had voted 60/40. for democrats, right? then white supremacy quite quite likely what would have been imposed? but this franchisement probably will probably would not have been. um on the top shelf of the mechanisms that right that was employed to to imposing it. and and i think the same thing is true now, right and so that's why. i think it's a mistake for us to keep focusing on. voter suppression the analogy to to 1890 right what i was just writing about i'm what's a name the former governor of south carolina nikki haley. yeah haley she she and her own own way believes in racially quality, right? she appointed tim scott to the senate. she moved expeditiously to take the confederate flag down right after. after dylan ruth murders she also is very much in favor of of voter suppression right and she gets her -- on her shoulders if i can say that when people suggest that she wants to suppress black voters. because in her view she wants to suppress democrats. yes, right. and i mean that's what the key is here. right and and race has always functioned as a kind of shorthand. that that reads class conflicts into nature class class conflicts and class dynamics like into nature. that's what race does that's what it emerged to do. that's what it's always done and it's doing the same thing for the right now that that it did for the right then but i should just let us have thought to send this to you though because i might you know good friend in colleague professor willie the gat in, south carolina. um who i've worked with for, you know a lot of stuff there. call me a few years ago. what around sanders campaign around the first one and and pointed out that he'd been reading vo keys class classic southern politics in the state nation, right? and found keys description of how race worked. in south carolina in 1949 and found that it works almost verbatim with just a few words changed here for 2018, right and it works and the changes have to do mainly with the fact. that that systemic in incorporation of of blacks into mainstream politics and into governing. means that they use it in the same way as right. to keep to keep class and politically economy off the table, basically. right, so this this partisan imperative. that's it. it's it's not new right that in that sense it is it is similar to what morgan cows are described in the united then it was getting rid of republicans right. that's right, and i was going to democrats right and even then gone if you have a chance to read vangas recent book now, i haven't yeah, he also says that the first waves of different franchisement in in the post in the early 19th century north where a similarly driven. oh, yeah. that's right. i've read something inherited right? that's right some of his drafts like yeah working progress. that's right. and it's one of the reasons why we're misreading the cues. we think it's driven by racism entirely by this transistorical racism when it's it's this apart as an imperative, which means it's about power right? that's right and the extent to which we aqua yes in reading the racial cover story as the real story does the other side's work for them? right? yes. so i mean our job is people who believe in justice and equality and whatnot. should be to demystify this. that this claim instead of trading on it ourselves. i agree and i think that's one of the things you're booked as just brilliantly it's just thank you very much james. i really appreciate it. we're just about at a time. i don't know whether or not you have anything you'd like to say. no, no, we have any questions or well, i tried to read the one that was emphasized the what has changed and what assistant so i don't see. some of them are just a little more specific. i think you did that. let's go 10 minutes over we can do more questions and answers sir. so i certainly have time. let me see if i can see any questions here. what do you think jim crow? wasn't crafted when it came i can't came off the heels of reconstruction. why do you think it wasn't crafted when it came off the heels of reconstruction? i'm not entirely sure huh? this is a you mentioned the book on plessy, but it's also part. i mean i read that in like the strange career of jim crow, right? it was like, oh, yeah period of the determinacy and that's right morgan cowser gets more specific about it, right? it's right that it's not it in a sense. it's not until jim crow. gets hook gets linked with disfranchisement that it turns into something right? and i think that's absolutely right. and and yeah, i think it makes sense right to see the 30 years after emancipation as something like and a period of flux or i guess you could call it something like what like i mean the interregnum right but but but there was it was an open question, right what the terms going to be? on what's the south was reconstructed, which black? citizenship was was consolidated and especially in in a relation to the dominant economy in the south. and these things just got worked work through right over time. i mean, it's not. yeah, and it's it's you made the point earlier about what was at stake for the merchant landlord merchant class in the late 19th century that would cause them suddenly to consolidate around this franchisement, but but it wasn't just the large questions of who's going to pay for schools and even down down right at the local level. i remember reading a study that said that of lynching that said that lynchings didn't happen if the sheriff showed up. right here. that's when you got lynchings so that and that matters politically because even if even if a certain portion of your electorate your election depends on the presence of black voters, the sheriff is more likely to show up. right right when he got some of his votes from black voter, right? no, that's right. that's just franchised right the franchisement and the wave of lynching our simultaneous and right there connected. right right after. racial terrorist part of that that system, you know. so, let me see if there's anything else. when you look at america and the way black people are treated today, has it progressed at a rate that you could have predicted. did you expect the black community as a whole to be in better social and economic standing than it is today. wow. well, that's an interesting question. i'll say first of all. i'm not kind of social scientist to makes predictions. i predict what's already happened and we'll explain why it had to happen the way it happened right? i'm what but i'm that kind. so i didn't have any predictions and and as my old friend and former. physician quentin young with whom i in the book. said once that he was 80. two thousand two, basically but he said in response to a despairing a med student that well. nobody standing in 1950 could have predicted that within 15 years the back of the jim crow system was going to be broke. so and he's definitely right right about that. i think that it would be good for us. to stop thinking about the black community as a whole. right because i think that that's that's that's basically a class project. right. i mean what i just wrote something about the racial wealth gap for instance right on this. score there's a sense. so we know. that 3/4 of the so-called racial wealth gap and and the first place there's no such thing as black wealth and white wealth as wealth. that's owned by individuals and households who are black. and as wealth that's owned by individuals and households who are white. if we were to use racial wealth gap as a shorthand for that of your relationship fine, but that's not how people use it. we know that roughly three-fourths of the so-called racial wealth gap. lies between the richest 10% of white people and the richest 10% of black people. we know also that the bottom 50% of blacks and white have no wealth. now sometimes people who are committed. to to the notion of a racial wealth gap would well i respond to that point by saying. well, but this collective will but there's no collective black wealth, right? there's no collective white wealth. in fact the thing i just wrote was i mean since we all have have been. conditioned for a hundred years to think of black people as operating with a high of mind right so that we all want the same thing so i can speak what we can speak for everybody. you know that point may may not come through clearly enough, but but say imagine a white nurse. who is who who has fallen on hard times? and and is facing eviction. and then imagine the possibility of her trying to dip into the pool of collective white white wealth. but i think to pay our landlord or pam mortgage. or even better that she texts jeff bezos. and and and asked him to pitch in but because they're way together. i mean that doesn't happen. so what so what's going on here is that the whole wealth focus, right? is is is an extrapolation of the mindset of of the investor class right onto all black people. right. so making rich black people richer doesn't do anything at at all good for the rest of us and in fact to the extent that it a legitimizes the larger patterns of inequality because they are richer that than it does bad for for for for the rest of us and it's my colleague walter ben michaels, and i've been saying for years now. the problem with this notion of social justice as closing disparities is that because we're in a society that gets more and more unequal across the board almost on a daily basis. winning disparities would would mean or that ideal? would mean that's a society could be considered just if 1% of the population control 95% of the resources. so long as 12% at 1% was black. 14% was hispanic. it was half women etc. and that's a notion of social justice that says. legitimate to defend like in a philosophy class as any other. but i'll say it's not the one that i'm committed to so and i don't really care about rich people getting rich of whatever color they happen to be who's that study was offended one of the federal reserve local federal reserve banks that said that if wage rates had been equalized right in blacks and whites in 1970 the wealth gap wouldn't exist or no. that's right, and it wouldn't expect right so exactly equalizing wages right was much more much more important. for the vast majority of poor people including black people right? here is another one. i guess if we have time one last question here because it does raise this question about what's interpretive in terms of race versus other answers that suggested. this is the question since suggested that one reason for the health disparities between in the elderly black population compared to the white ones at the same age might be due to the chronic stress brought on by years of oppression under jim crow in the medical literature. this is sometimes been called weathering. do you have any thoughts right? yeah. yeah, i mean a friend of mine actually has has done a lot of work. on the weathering hypothesis a sociologist named named arlene geronimus um, that's probably to that right? yeah, i don't know i mean as a rule you can get rid of most of the difference by controlling for the income and access to resources, right but the same thing about katrina like when everything was what when the bodies were actually counted right turns out that that that blacks and whites died in the storm and were displaced by by the storm in numbers that roughly equivalent to their in in overall population. and what? what determined? who was who got stuck? on the overpasses and in superdome who got stuck like in it and astrodome in houston or like another? shelters right in baton rouge or or like outside the state who you know lived their exile in in less. um strained or or stress conditions who was able to come back when? um, the better predictor was always access resources prior to prior to katrina making up what i'm landfall and and that was true for black blacks and whites. right? so yeah, there's something to the weathering i mean. hypothesis, i think there's also a tendency of people like to. to see the 25-cent bet on the table and raise it $150, but about that kind of thing a little bit about a little bit like what happened to the statistics on racial disparity and covid hey, oh lord on the more they disappeared. right right. that's right. that's exactly right. and by the way, i mean people are yelling at me and me and merlin for having pointed that that you know that at the beginning but but what's also really disturbing about it is how many people? are so infatuated with disparities discourse that especially you know, they didn't think about the dangers of what when the sworded history of racial medicine and racial biology that playing fast and loose with biological discussions of a race difference can actually give up you you get in comfort to and and in fact, we've seen it now. yeah, there's a it it. you see it sometimes in what i think are very dangerous arguments for the epigenetic transmission of traum of the trauma of slavery right over the course of generation. it's getting awfully close if not reaching a kind of genetic. biological determinism that i think anyone concerned about race racial equality should be resisting not invoking. absolutely. yes. absolutely. correct. yeah. yeah, so i think that's probably it. thanks adolf. oh, thanks jim. thanks c visiting our website cspan.org/history. but we're so thrilled to be back open and to be able to have world-class authors and all around great human beings like craig back on our campus and i think most of us know that craig is one of the definitive biographers on ronald reagan. in fact the london telegraph hailed him as the best of the reagan biographers. but he has proven through books like mary ball washington