THEY were just fans at a football match. Spectators at a game, a banal everyday occurrence. They were there to support their team, Rangers, but they never came home. Instead on Stairway 13 at Ibrox Park, they met with crushing death and injury. Even 50 years later the sheer unfairness of it makes you weep – no one should die for being a football spectator, no one should die in such a manner. Remember the 66. For the sake of our common humanity, remember the 66. I told last week of how the disaster unfolded, and now I will deal with the aftermath. It was the sight of the bodies laid out in lines on the turf of Ibrox Park that broke hearts all over Scotland and beyond. Only some grainy newspaper pictures survive to tell the tale, as there was no filming of what happened – a mercy, given what unfolded that cold, foggy evening in Glasgow.
call tom's cabin published in 1822. mr. reynolds exports the political and social factors that influenced the novel and its role in the discussion of race in america prior to and following the civil war. it's about an hour and 20 minutes. >> welcome to the harriet beecher stowe museum. i'm director of the center and we're just delighted that you are here to introduce david reynolds new book and hear about harriet beecher stowe and uncle's tom kevin in her 200th birthday year. this is exciting. the harriet beecher stowe center uses the story to inspire social justice and positive change. we are not just about the past and the issues, the american issues of the 19th century, but we want to take those issues and look at them in the present and try to inspire people to be good citizens today and participate in solving today's problem so we can continue to work towards fulfilling the promise of america. that is the mission. harriet beecher stowe of course best known for on call tom's cabin, and amazingly interesting and complex book and important book in american history. the book is going to be officially released on june 14th, 2011 which is actually harriet beecher stowe's 200th birthday. but tonight as we are in mid may you can buy at the center tonight you're own copies of david's book and you'll be able to get the books on this course and the price tonight is a special price just for tonight so when you go to your bookstore on june 14th, you should just get the book tonight -- laughter current we had the opportunity to start to get to know david reynolds. we were trying to figure this out 18 months or a couple years ago because a book like this has al long lead time and an author works hard on the background and research before the right thing starts, so we began to have conversations with him and as he was also talking with historians about harriet beecher stowe so we are delighted to night to meet him in person this is exciting. there is a human being behind that voice on the telephone. david reynolds received his b.a. from amherst college and ph.d. from the university california berkeley. he taught english and american studies at northwestern university and barnard college, new york university and rutgers in 1989 he moved to the city university of new york and is now a distinguished professor of english and american studies at the ph.d. program in english at the graduate center. he's in a widely published of reckoned books have been recognized with awards including the bancroft prize and the ambassador book award. he was also a finalist for the national book critics circle award and the editor for six books and is the author of tweaking the giant american in the age of jackson, john brown, al-awja nist the man who killed slavery sparked the civil war and seated civil-rights. john brown also connecticut as stowe so you see overlaps year. author of walt whitman, a cultural biography, e-book with a straightforward title, walt whitman. he's the author of believe the american renaissance the imagination and the age of emmerson and nels will and i found that that word subversives came up quite a bit in his analysis of ongoing tom's cabin and its impact and to david is the author of fifa fiction the religious literature in america. when you see the books we begin to understand how much -- how often he may have run into stowe in his other work. the latest book we're talking about tonight is "mightier than the sword" come on call tom's cabin and the battle for america which is as i mentioned will be released june 14th, stowe's 200th birthday. also released by oxford university press will be in the modern version of the splendid addition of an uncle tom's cabin, an absolutely gorgeous document you have to wait until then to get so please strangled the link david reynolds to the harriet beecher stowe center. david? [applause] >> thanks very much, catherine. what i'm going to do was just comment for a 15 or 20 minutes introducing my book and then catherine and i are going to have a friendly dialogue and hopefully open at four q&a from the audience. it's great to be here at the historic stowe senator, where harriet beecher stowe spent the last two decades of her life right nearby mark twain. such an incredibly rich environment here and i've done research here and i truly appreciate everything that the stowe center has done and this is such a great year to come to the center in hartford, the 200th anniversary of the birth of. beecher stowe whose antislavery novel uncle tom's cabin created an uproar that lincoln had reportedly called her little leedy beneath the great war. it's possibly apocryphal that statement. i happen to think it's true from the research i've done, but a lot of people are seeing similar things about that mall full of verve and a lincoln and it's the ideal moment and the 154 moment of the old brick of the civil war so it's the time to reconsider stowe and her role in uniting the civil war in demint history right up to the modern times. although local tom's cabin is seceded in most people's mind with of the civil war some historians said it had minimal influence on politics behind the war but this ignores the tremendous power of the public opinion in america. which is regarded as strong a groove and the government and the idea that lincoln echoed when he declared our government rests on public opinion. whoever can change public opinion can change the government. lincoln was recognizing what some historians today have forgotten. culture and politics are often treated nowadays as separate demands. over here we can read book after book on clinton and his team of rifles, politics behind the civil war for civil war battles, generals, civil war soldiers, and then over here we read books on literary works, are common music, theater, culture and then some have a few chapters on the politics and a few chapters over here on a culture, but we have to realize culture and politics interpenetrate and too many historians overlook that. to many on both sides of the divide, the cultural historians and political historians neglect that. when we look at history realize how the culture and politics are not separate. the interpenetrate and often it's the cultural well outsiders, the out fliers to lead the way and then the politics follow. sometimes the cultural out fliers are forces for destruction. the recent example is al qaeda a tiny cultural group that has guided much of western politics for the last decade. right now the jury is still out about the ultimate political the outcome of another strong cultural force, the social networking behind the arab spurring. but sometimes cultural and lawyers can have identifiably good results. one thing's for example, martin luther king or others like them to fly directly to political change that can be called positive comment on the positive side few cultural phenomenon have swayed public opinion as powerfully as tunnell full-time scout and central to make america a more egalitarian nation. harriet beecher stowe coliseum unlikely for mentor of political change, a diminutive she was a housewife, she had the illnesses worsened by her hypochondria and married to a brilliant but in practical husband, but driven by her passionate hatred of slavery she wrote an old tom's cabin which it appeared in 1852 broken sales records for fiction and became an international sensation. it was much less a book and a state official of consciousness in which they didn't set or read or appraised boustany walked and talked and laughed and cried. my new book, "mightier than the sword" uncle tom's cabinet battle of america which will be published on the birthday, advanced copies for sale, came from an idea i had to write on the biography of the book. i previously written biographies of the cultural out fliers like john brown, walt whitman and books about multiple and whole foreign and so forth, but now i want to told the story about uncle tom's kavanagh and how it can to get her in time to bring her. my book shows how of the novel's unprecedented popularity can be explained by the fact that it a sort images from virtually every realm of the culture of. religion, reform temperance trucks and antislavery running, sensational adventure fiction, among others, and brought all of these elements together in the memorable characters and to compelling plot lines. the number one about the escape of the fugitive slaves with their son harry, and the southern one tracing the painful separation of the enslaved uncle tom from his family when he was sold into the deep south. uncle learned a lot of popular culture when she was a magazine writer in the 1840's, and in her novel, she channeled all of these images and of of war that she picked up as an apprentice rider and channeled them into a deeply human narrative that still moves us today. and it's a - with a crystal clear message, slavery was evil, and so were the political and economic institutions that supported that. ladies shaped the debate over slavery in ways that hadn't been recognized. it's dramatic portrait of the horror of slavery intensified the public sentiment on the rise of lincoln and the republicans. because it made abolitionism which previously had been an unpopular move meant, actually splintered the movement divided among many different forms of antislavery most of them on the popular. it made it suddenly attractive to millions of people who formerly had been in indifferent to slavery or cared will about. and at the same time, the unlawful caused a surge of proslavery sentiment in the south. after all why did they have to defend slavery, 12 american presidents had owned slaves including jefferson, washington and many others. most of the supreme court, why defend slavery? was part of the system. but, suddenly uncle tom's cabin comes along and you have this surge of proslavery documents, and it creates this ideology in the south that slavery is a divine, wonderful, good institution that brings ignorant barbarians from africa and exposes them to the blessings of western civilization. so, uncle tom's cabin dramatically increased the tensions that led to the civil war. by the eve of the war one sutphen perfidy declared on call tom's cabin has given birth to a horror against slavery in the northern mind which all the politicians could never have created and has done more than all else to the north and south against each other. in my book it traces the details of that and also how the mall will continue to stir up controversy even through reconstruction and will be on to the 20th century. its influence was amplified by popular plays and a host of merchandise including puzzles and games and that. what it is a plea or novel, uncle tom's cabin was important as an agent of emancipation. he gave impetus abroad to the revolutions in russia, china, brazil and cuba. in america of unlawful remained particularly inspiring to african-americans. the ex sleeve progress of the excuse me, frederick douglass for example maintained that no one had done more for the progress of black people in america than harriet beecher stowe. but how could a uncle tom's cabin become a catalyst of civil rights? after all, that is not how most people to d.c. the novel whose title character has become a byword for a spineless sellout, someone who betrays his own race we tend to think of the novel as an old fashioned sentimental share that features the deaths of an obsequious enslaved black man and his blond angelika child trend, little eva, but this view of the model is egregiously inaccurate does a gross injustice to uncle tom's cabin. uncle, in the novel is a muscular dignified man in his 40's whose notable precisely because he does not betray his risks. one reason he passes the chance to skate from his kentucky plantation is that he doesn't want to put his fellow sleeves in danger and later on he indoors a brutal whiping which leads to his death. because he refuses to tell his master where the two enslaved black women are hiding. as for a little eva she accepted her coming death and says she will quietly give up her life if the above the to the emancipation of the millions of americans in an sleaved black people. to get tom and eva formed an interracial bond that offers lessons even today about tolerance and decency. unfortunately these were lost in some of the stage versions from uncle tom's cabin. uncle tom's malveaux leal to the most popular and longest running a play in american history. the first uncle tom play appeared in 1852. and countless others followed. by the 1890's there were hundreds of acting troupe that fanned out across north america, putting on the cabin that every town and city many companies toured internationally as far away as india, australia, china, and as a member from the king and all i. the play was seen by more people than had read the book with the book itself remained extremely popular and in 1905, "the new york times" said the most popular books in america are the bible and uncle tom's cabin, and kept up a steady presence. the play was seen regularly until the 1950's and sporadically after that there was recently a wonderful staging by alex morrow last fall at the metropolitan house in the village to read in many of the earlier plays uncle tom was presented as a stoop to a obedient old fool and that's partly where the uncle tom stereotype came from. eva's death in those plays was a scene in which the actress was hauled heavenward by rope or piano wire against a backdrop of angels in the clouds. one might think such battles and spectacle what defang uncle tom's revolutionary themes and turn uncle tom into a laughable piece of harmless entertainment but actually this didn't happen. after all, the play is about race relations and wickedness of slavery so fema reindell gup many southerners before the war and then after during the long period of jim-crow the purpose of the legalized segregation that lasts from the 1880s right to the early 1950's. many white supremacists during that era found uncle tom's cabin relief threatening. eda injured a small. most notably the popular southern author thomas dickson salles a uncle tom play and he wept he was so infuriated by what he saw as its endorsement of black power. he wrote bitterly of harriet beecher stowe a little yankee woman wrote a book a single act of her will will cause the war, kill men, desolate and ruinous out and change the history of the whole world. he responded to stowe by writing many best sellers and which he appropriated the character names and reversed them to create a processor and anti-black statement. one of the novels he wrote, best seller called the klansmen became the source of dw griffith's the birth of a nation , which was masterfully made in the sense that it was completely redefined what hollywood was about because it created a whole vocabulary and grammar of the movies but at the same time, it was cinematically a poor and and caused the resurrection of the ku klux klan who were the heroes of the movie and a stamped the dna of race relations for generations during the jim-crow era to its depiction of blacks has lost all beasts who preyed on white women even as these reactionaries were denature a wide audience during the jim crow era, uncle tom's cabin itself and its spinoffs helped keep alive speak of's real message. there were - in devotee excellent films based on stowe's novel which was also disseminated and many other ways in popular culture. stowe was fervently defended by african leaders like langston hughes, devotee leedy de blease who wrote of stowe to the free of overburdened yankee woman we americans black and white bow gratitude for the freedom and the unions that exists today in the united states of america. those who acted in the true spirit of stowe's firm principal nonviolent uncle tom people like martin luther king, rosa parks and many who participated in the peaceful citizens and the marches proved to be the most successful in the end in bringing about positive change fat in author that has great an impact as harriet beecher stowe seems unlikely if not impossible especially the time women had no political voice of course they couldn't vote and she didn't speak. you weren't really allowed to speak. at the time when man had no voice and the nation which this scottish writers and the four corners of the globe who reads an american book or goes to an american play, and 1820 he soon learned who could be read most of all, harriet beecher stowe. stowe herself had an explanation of her impact. she said god wrote uncle tom's cabin. [laughter] foley's hopes to have eight devine friend to read after the mosul had become a bestseller and her brother, edward, warned her not to become the about its popularity, she told her friend, edward, he need not be troubled, he doesn't know i didn't write that book. [laughter] and her friend exclaimed? you didn't write uncle tom? stowe replied no, i only put down what i saw. it all came before he envisions one after another and i put them down into words. her claims about the divine office should uncle tom's cabin satisfied her own pious your earnings but raised questions about the actual background and repercussions of her landmark novel. the issues at the heart of uncle tom's cabin in the race and religion, sort of a very religious book, gender, of law, morality, democracy are just as vital today as they were in harriet beecher stowe the issues were anybody who enjoys a terrific story that tugs at the heart strings. it's funny i've been teaching an awful hard for years but even a jaded old me when i was reading it for my class last time i started crying and said now wait a minute i'm a teacher i'm not supposed to cry. [laughter] any way anybody who wants to be emotionally moved should read or where you read uncle tom's cabin. there's many wonderful additions including by john headrick came out with the first edition and it's great to have shown here by the way. the edition that catherine mentioned was called the splendid addition because it has 117 illustrations who had done seven illustrations in the initial 1852 in addition and what is needed about this is that they are not connected representations'. the later editions of uncle tom's cabin that you not particularly during the jim crow era really are stereotypical in their presentations of many of the characters and i will guarantee you what is great about the splendid edition we would hope to have it here today to the printer rest of the last moment so they will be here very soon -- what's great is that it really captured the essence. it was true in the first edition and splendid addition in which it's even more true because he really captured the essence of the story. .. [applause] >> thank you, david. great to hear you talk about this new book and to get a sense of your perspective on it all, but -- and you said at the beginning of your talk that you started out to write a biography of a book -- >> yeah. >> are you satisfied? do you feel you accomplished what you set out to do? >> yeah, i really feel that way because what happened is that because i've written biographies before of walt whitman and john brown, i kind of knew the techniques of writing biography, and it really starts with people. books are produced by people, and i think that what was very important for me to do was to read harriet beecher stowe's letters to really get myself there, and to me it's all about people, it's all about the person behind the book, and what she was doing, and what she was writing, what she was experiencing, and how everything kind of filtered through her and through her family. she was from a very important family. it could cause the most important family in 19th century america, producing the most poop paw lar preacher in america, isabella beecher, katharine beecher, education reformer, so it was important to locate that in the human context. above all, uncle tom's cabin to this day remains a human book in the profoundest sense, and it really raises issues of interpersonal relationships. it's a book about relationships between people, between white people, between white people and black people, and it's just such a totally emotional book, and she, herself, produced it from a very human standpoint so to me the biography is the book that's very much a part of the biography of harriet beecher stowe. >> you have to tell us which part made you cry? [laughter] >> well, i hate to admit it. this is very, very corny, extremely corny, but the death of little eva. it kind of worked on me this time. what's funny is that it's like an or chi value 19th century scene, the death of this child; right? you can name a number of similar deaths. i think the reason it struck me is that this time it didn't seem sentimental and for that very -- i mean, i was saying, well, this is a really sentimental scene and yet her attitude as she approaches death is she's confident of going to the afterlife, but made it clear she would die if millions of enslaved people could be free, she would willing die, and she'd love that. to me, that was extremely moving, and i don't know why it just struck me, and i'm not going to say i'm going to cry the next time -- [laughter] i read the book, nor had i necessarily cried in previous times because i taught the book since i think 1981. [laughter] and there was absolutely no reason why i should cry that time because it was during the summer time and sitting at a beach and the weekend we had gone out on a gorgeous day, but sud ply, i was crying. wow, that's amazing. i shed another tear over the death of uncle tom which, you know, again, i'm not quite sure why, but i think part of the reason is that i was writing my book, and part of the inspiration for the book was the death of her beloved young charlie who died of cholera in 1849, and the way she describes this in her letters is just incredibly moving, and i had just been writing about that and connecting it to uncle tom, and i think it was really part of the process of writing the book and reading the novel at the same time. to me, that's what really got my gut, and i think when you read that scene and connect it up to uncle tom's cabin and you think about the death of a child, a beloved child who is so young, and for some reason for her, even though she had number of other children, he was a very, very special child to her, and she said in it that the -- i understood what an enslaved woman can feel when her child is torn away from her. that is what often happened -- that often happened, and the emotionality i think looking back is what really cause my response. >> she's good at that emotion stuff. >> yeah, yeah, she is. >> very good. >> she is. not many people -- and what's good is that this is not i'm not offending hallmark cards because i get them all the time, but you know what i mean, it's not clicheed emotion in my view. it's really not. if you read the novel, it's real emotion, it really is, and it's not acting so that was my response. >> so how did she take a book with such powerful emotion which has been called sentimental as if that were a bad thing, that feelings are a bad thing, how is a novel with such emotion and sentiment change american attitudes? that's a big leap. >> well, i think that it's not a leap because there was so many great novels written during that era, the scarlett letter, moby dick, walt whitman, but they delight me on a different kind of level. they also move me very, very much i think because they make me think intellectually and philosophically and so forth. people need -- the populis needs emotion, to display it. there's advertising companies that came along in the 1830s -- 1930s that said we have to appropriate the methods of uncle tom's cob bin to sell our products. why? because we have to sway the emotions. you can even see in tv how as try, maybe they don't always succeed for you or for me, but they try to sway the emotion in some way. whatever emotion it may be. it may be sentimental or it may be exciting emotion or something like that, and she has every kind of emotion in there. she was really the first novelist to bring together both, more sentimental, religious emotions with the action adventure, the thrills, and she was the first novelist to successfully bring those two things together, which is why her novel was so popular for so long and still resinates today. >> what do you think is different in your book from all of the other reames and reames of literature about stowe and uncle tom's cabin? >> well, i think what i do in my book -- when i do my research, i appreciate reviewers who said, well, i find your book on walt whitman, something brand new, and yet there's hups of books -- hundreds of books on whitman. so far people are saying the same thing on this book. the way i do research is read everything. i read all of her letters. i read everything about her, all the secondary works, and i think more than that, i went back to the early newspapers that she wrote for before leading up to uncle tom's cabin. she wrote so many works before that in these popular newspapers, and i went back there, and i actually took the time to read them, and i said, my goodness, gracious, these are the building blocks of uncle tom's cabin so that when the future slave law of 1850, the pro-slavery law was passed, and she becomes totally enragedded, the way she thought all these images had been in her mind because she had been writing about them. they kind of came together, and on really the first scholar to go back and kind of piece together all those different strands that lead into uncle tom's cabin, and then i'm also the first to show the immediate impact and how it filters into political speeches and political debates and pro-slavery and anti-slavery debates and really exacerbates those attentions in a very, very specific way that lead to the civil war, and another thing that i do that hasn't been done before is that i examine the very complicated and interesting afterlife of uncle tom's cabin. how did uncle tom become a bad guy over time? i kind of explore that. my guide is a sense of a guy who is a weak-kneed person who is not at all in the novel, and i show how popular culture transformed him, but how did he also stay alive as an energizing force for progressive reforms over time? i mentioned langston hughes and roots was in a way uncle tom's cabin of modern times. he preshaded uncle tom's cabin in a way many african-americans of the 1960s and 70s did not, and he uses a lot of same devices in roots which itself creates change in popular culture in racial attitude so -- >> one of the things that struck me as i mentioned in the introduction of your work about this book was how you demonstrate in a number of ways those -- what you termed subversive techniques and how also then that permeates throughout the culture and afterlife of uncle tom in a subversive way. can you talk about that for the audience a little? >> well, when we read the novel today, perhaps we don't feel its subversiveness as much as if we lived back in the 1850s, but when it was first published, it created incredible outrage in the south because the political cartoon that was reproduced in my book, a picture of hell, and what that hell is is the america that will be created by uncle tom's cabin. from the southern point of view, and it shows a black person lording over everybody in the middle it shows uncle tom's cabin with a book entitled "i love black people" and it showed a picture of a fire with the devil throeing uncle tom's cabin into the fire burning it up. she was really considered a hellish person in the south, very dangerous, very subversive. i mentioned thomas dickinson who tame along and several other people, during jim crow sort of saying this is the worst book ever written, most dangerous book ever written, a horrible mistake, a horrible, horrible terrible mistake that changed history so much for the worse. why? because it destroyed the old south, and it elevated black people to a position that they shouldn't be in society. during reconstruction, there was that period when african-americans assumed political offices in certain southern states during radical reconstruction, and so these people in the early 20th century looked back on that horrible period from their point of view, and they attributed it to uncle tom's cabin, and that's why dickinson writes his racist best sellers, and that's why dw griffeth whose father was from the south and a confederate, that's why he does birth of a nation which portraying black people very repellantly as beasts attacking white people, and you need the kkk, the cull ma nation -- culmination of the kkk rushing to the rescue saving the white people in a cabin surrounded by black people who are invading it, and it becomes the most pope pew harriet beecher fill -- poll -- popular film and then it earned a tremendous amount of money, and it really, really influences a lot of people. that's why it was considered subversive. >> and you talk about subversive in the sense of techniques saying she stimulates reader's approval of law breaking -- i kind of like that one, and you talk about how stowe uses the scenes in uncle tom's cabin in the book and later in movies pushing against the accepted attitudes of the day. you talk about tom and eva, of course, but you also talk about sam and andy, two enslaved men chasing after eliza as she is trying to cross the ice, and then the topsy character, of course, you talk about those the way we read those is not how mid 19th century people would have read them. >> even to this very day there's characters that people misinterpret as being laughable minstrels. it was created by northern white people, many of themselves racist who -- would -- wore black on their faces and pretended to be afternoons, but they were clowns. it was a racist phenomena, but very, very popular. harriet beecher stowe incorporates that into the book showing them as minstrels and being topsy. these are not clowns, but real people engaged in subversive behavior. sam and andy are -- they team up with a woman, mrs. shelby, to try to frustrate slave captures who are trying to capture fugitive slaves so they use minstrel techniques, but they use it towards a subversive end to try to break the law. the law was the future slave law that demanded future slaves have to be recaptured, so sam and andy look like minstrel clowns, but they are not. they used those techniques to subvert the law of the land which was the fugitive slave law of 1850, and topsy, again, she kind of -- she tumbled around and she is kind of funny, and we laugh at her and all of that, and yet when we think about what she says, she says where were you born? she says, i was never born. who are your parents? i never had parents, and then when she's with aunt, she says, oh, her whippings are like moo skeet toe -- mosquito bites compared to the real whippings i used to get. when we think about that, we realize how horrible that is. like many enslaved blacks, she doesn't know who she came from or who her parents are. she's been whipped, whipped to the extent where she doesn't even feel it anymore, and so stowe used these minstrel techniques to communicate a very, very serious message. >> as i was going through your book, i started making a list of all the things that came up as the impact of uncle tom's cabin, and i now have three pages of impact -- [laughter] >> only three? [laughter] >> sure, that's just as i was noting as i went through, so, you know, things like the first american novel translated to chinese, that they needed the modern technology of the day for it to become the biggest best seller of the 19th century, the transportation of distribution and machinery systems, but issued a new era of cheap literature. the plays, of course, once they landed in britain and liverpool in 1893, there were ten versions in london on the day she landed. imagine that. so i think it's a fascinating summary, and i don't mean to simplify the summary of that book in so many ways. >> yeah. well, i can't really think of another novel and i love so many novels and teach so many novels and love them all, but i can't think of another that had the impact of uncle tom's cabin. you know, where does one begin? it's now translated into over 70 languages, and every year even now new additions and -- new editions and new languages keep coming out. it's an up credible international phenomena. again, where do you begin? in russia, there's 57 editions published there. first, it was banned in russia because it was considered a subversive novel, but then in 1857 it was lennon's favorite novel and it laid behind the russian revolution, it was one of the influences of the russian revolution. anyway, as i was saying, the play went everywhere. in america, there's so many different versions of the play. in america, the play was played in chicago in jewish, and instead of the bible, the -- it was an adaptable play. there was even a roman catholic version of the play even though harriet beecher stowe was a protestant. at first it was banned in italy because it's a protestant novel. [laughter] but then they did a little bit of tingerring, and then there was one approved by the pope that had a lot about the immac -- immaculate conception. [laughter] it's such a novel, and in paris you can go to uncle tom's candy and five restaurant items in paris named after uncle tom's characters. if you read the book, you'll get a little bit of a taste of the impact. >> there's a subway station in berlin called uncle tom's cabin. what do your students think about this book since you've taught it since 1981? >> you know, it's very, very funny, but i don't know with the other professors in the audience and anyone, but i think partly it is because of feminist scholars, women scholars, but in the last 30 years, there really has been an increasing interest and republic for -- respect for the novel. there really has been, and we no longer have to read the so-called dead white males. we can still read them, appreciate them, and love them, but we can also read harriet beecher stowe and read slave narratives and we can appreciate them, and so my students, and maybe it's hardly under my own guidance -- in general, really, really love the novel, and i increasingly really love the novel. i will admit when i first read it, and i'm trying to think when i first read it, i think it's back in college, i'm not going to say when it was, but anyway, it was awhile ago. i found it a little bit old-fashioned, but i think that's the way it was taught back then. it was taught in a certain derogatory way. i really feel -- and one's professors kind of guides one's reaction to it, but nowadays, my students really enjoy the novel. they love it. like many 19th century novels, it's a little bit on the long side, so you have to give it a few days or sometimes weeks, but i will swear if you read it, and not just read it once, maybe read it once and put aside your first reaction and come back to it again and hopefully read my book because i think the reason i cried is because i was writing my book at the same time, and i think that if you understand the full picture, it'll help even make it more moving for you. >> well, now we'd like to give you an opportunity to ask a few questions. i have the microphone you'll be using, and we're using a mic, of course, because c-span is taping tonight for later broadcast. i want to let you all know that we're going to be rereleasing uncle tom's cabin as it came out originally, and that starts on june 5th, 160 years after the actual day, so check our website for that information, and you can participate on june 14th and 15th with a 24-hour reading the uncle tom's cabin with us. check that out, 3 a.m. is taken, but 3:# -- 3:10 is not. [laughter] now, who would like to ask a question or make a comment? charles? >> david, the caricature or the use of uncle tom as a phrase for someone who was not like the character in the book. what was the force that kind of brought that about and kind of when did that happen since the publication of the book? >> the negative usage of uncle tom arose principally during the jim crow era, and it was largely because some of the stage representations and many of them, he was a feeble old man on a cane who hobbled on stage and said, yes, master, and that sort of thing, and the whipping of uncle tom during that era unfortunately in some productions became a really violent act, and this was a time when hups and sometimes thousands of people would show up to see an african-american person lynched in the south, and so there was a kind of vicarious pleasure in seeing uncle tom whipped to death even though he was portrayed as old and frail, and also there arose the so-called new negro movement, an angrier kind of militant writing with richard wright who wrote uncle tom's children in the 1930s, and there was a kind of backlash against the miss conception because it really was a misconception of uncle tom. there was a backlash against that on a part of these sort of naturalistic writers with an angrier view, darker view, a more militant view of the way african-americans should we bell against culture, and they rejected the more not violent view that had always been associated with uncle tom, and then james baldwin comes along in 1949 and real misrepresents the novel calling uncle tom's cabin a very bad novel, everybody's protest novel he calls it. he completely redefines it, takes out the subversive nature, and turns it into a sentimental thing that denies humanity. to me, it's the opposite. it doesn't deny humanity, but affirms humanity, and langston hughes was very, very angry at james baldwin because of that essay. .. >> i wonder if you can give a brief time line to have more of a context when she wrote the book and other things happen like the dread scott decision win causing havoc and so forth? >> in 1850 the fugitive slave law, which is when they came to the north, and you don't capture them and help to turn them to the south, you could go to jail. pay $1,000 fine which was a lot of money and she got really mad about that the sister-in-law said you know, how to write why don't you write a novel? she said i will and she did. but then what happens is there is a series of other laws after that the kansas nebraska act the dread scott decision which says african-americans could never be citizens of the united states. they have no rights whatsoever. she didn't just become angry but became a very, very bitter when she writes her novels another that appears later, it is much more better and about a slave rubble who had led a slave rebellion. but still expresses the growing bitterness about what was happening. becoming more deeply entrenched to try to prevent that but unfortunately it made slavery more entrenched because it made the south more defensive even as return the north toward anti-slavery. she became more and better and was sending petitions to politicians and very good friends of antislavery politicians and mentioned in political speeches but it was a growing division so when john brown comes along even though she was the symbol of nonviolence she called john brown the greatest american that has ever lived it was like to former pacifist henry david thoreau wrote his essay and then civil disobedience all the great then any at the founding fathers to say there is no man who was arid denmark and john brown but she knew about his violence but by that time she knew the sad truth that only violence would end of slavery and took the death of more than 620,000 americans to end slavery. that is the deeply entrenched slavery had become an america sadly she came to realize that that the local, approach as attractive and effective as it came later for rosa parks she could not predict that but at that moment moment, unfortunately violence was needed to get rid of slavery over the uncle tom mentality. a little while before you had said the three cabin was primarily a firming humanity and tata then you mentioned the novel dread which was a more violent aspect and you could say over the long run it was affirming humanity that one out even if it took the violence to create the immediate change but for me to read uncle tom kaman the affirmative parts the humanization of the slaves of the uncle tom and crossing the river, eli's up. that compound in the injustice with the affirmative parts of their personality that created power. i get your point* about realizing it may take violence when you could step back over 100 years you realize the stronger power of the affirmative affirmation of humanity. >> i am an eternal optimist and happen to be a passive this myself what is unusual about 53 cabin there isn't too many novels that are both powerful and dramatic and sensational like when uncle tom is whipped but yet to they are affirmative. there are so many characters even a few of the slaveholders are fundamentally good people ironically enough that is what is great about the novel she does not demonize all the slaveholders and probably and herbert trail does try to look for the good saying i am the cockeyed optimist who happens to believe in human goodness maybe i read it too much ralph waldo emerson are something but i was raised as a christian scientist. [laughter] and maybe that is it. i like to see the good in people and to me that is another appealing thing. there are very few characters like simon who is a perverse character there are some better definitely bad guys but what i love about the novel you could read it to feel uplifted like i don't like four movies or bloody movies i like the uplifting movies i like uncle tom cabin because it is uplifting will ultimately like rosa parks and martin luther king does wind. they do win in the end so i guess i stand on the side of the blind side at optimists standing on the side of hope and goodness and being victorious what can i say? there isn't too much by the time she wrote dread she was more bitter had difficulty with that moral goodness and i love to dread and it is a great novel and it is wonderful but the does inspire me with a sense of both the way uncle tom cabin does. thank you for bringing that up. >> i don't know how far your biography goes if you encounter the stage play i eight you're on call and guess it has been about 15 years that is the critique of uncle tom cab and i thought very provocative should have been targeted at this stage plays other than the novel was my ultimate idea that they listed all of the stage productions i wondered if you encountered that? >> i think that comes out first late 1980's, 1990's which is great i could say all kinds of things about that but these answers over time it is a very forceful critique of a stereotype and i believe coming under that subversive character very interesting way. i think the evolution of the characters becomes like rebellious speaking part of the girl who would rebel against some many characters in the novel is transformed overtime things that bounce off of "uncle's tom cabin" that is one of the more interesting responses to "uncle's tom cabin" but responding along that the store cent -- distortions along the way which is very understandable. >> of play by robert alexander 19951 of the most interesting things for me is how it continues to be a touchdown for modern life i got a notice the other day for "uncle's tom cabin" and zombies. [laughter] i have been waiting for this. it will re-read as a play so we will see what happens there always another opportunity. >> in the 20th century walt disney cartoons are based on it and advertising from the advertisements you will see all of that. >> going back to the cartoon, and which one of the alliance was we love black people, what was the date or was that the language of that time? >> yes. that was the political cartoon from the mid 1850's it was a southern political cartoon and really wanted to show the hold that "uncle's tom cabin" would create if people took it seriously i love black people. that is the new title of the novel. that was the view of the south. >> that was the language that they use? >> yes. i think it is i love blacks. >> first i would like to say that they give is the unreasonable expectation of life to revisit the question from earlier about the usage of the praise it uncle tom in a negative way i still think it happens today where we er sensitive than we do rush to judgment and i would say it reminds me for example, when there was a straitjacket one year and i wanted one. [laughter] but the controversy was people felt it was an insult i felt differently i feel more expansive but they stopped producing them because of that and i felt another example is malcolm x many people not doing researcher studying his law still think he was radical and crazy and hated all white people but he changed that so similarly the facts of being uncle tom i heard that in college it was negative and not based on the book but all of a sudden everybody believe that also bringing harry beecher stowe toward the president -- present i have to say to who i hope you didn't feel that you had to have violence or death to change slavery because i think human beings when public opinion changes people are capable of doing that at some point* we should not have to expect there has to be death and violence 10 days five months and we should not expect that and the truth is slavery has not ended. it has gone underground with human trafficking to be put into that box and would hope it here today she would be working on these other issues what goes on under the current and talking in public and voting and signing contracts. thank you. >> we talked about "uncle's tom cabin" and a her book dread, but what other writings did she have a and what were the themes and the issues she had in those ridings? >> she did not return to the slavery issue. except to distribute petitions to help the republican party because it was dizzying to see their response to "uncle's tom cabin" yibin receive that year of the enslaved black person the year was cut off from a southerner and it was such a violent reaction against it she did her best but after that she writes 30 novels some of them are very good and great but mostly about said new england history some of those were children stories most of them shy away, she wrote a book about and some controversial issues and tried in her own way to help the black people when she moved to florida for the winter she held with her husband, one that was closely integrated with one room for white children and one for blacks and remained a hero but she takes steps but shies away from that kind of thing and tries to focus on history and does a marvelous job. >> her first novel? >> she had written magazine pieces before that. >> i went to say he for coming and recognize that we are joined by a down hedrick and thank you for being here tonight and other friends and colleagues and historians. thank you for being here. be sure to spend a few minutes to get your copy of david reynolds new book mightier than the sword and three read "uncle's tom cabin" or read it for the first time to find out why it is a book is still resonates in the united states of america today. thank you very much. [applause] >> cynthia stewart was the mother in ohio and a small town the mother of one child name to norah and live with her partner in a farmhouse outside of town and cynthia was a fashion a photographer and had become a passionate the target for after her daughter was born and decided to document her daughter's life in great detail and she relished doing that taking pictures of for all the time. by the time she was eight years old she had taken 35,000 photographs. these are not digital but rolls of film developed at discount drug mart processing lab they were all numbered and filed an archived in cardboard boxes in her dining room someday she wanted to put together a book. she would have a lot to choose from but on july july 61999 sent the is scooped up 11 goals to take into the discount drug march to have them developed and a few days later 10 came back but one did not. she assumed it was lost and began to call the lab to see if they could track down. she knew some of the photographs had pictures of her daughter in the bathtub but did not think a per she had taken pictures of her naked since she was born and they have all been developed at the discount lab. on august 11, the police knocked on her door and said they had heard pictures of the station and she was relieved. but they said there is serious questions you need to come down to the station she was completely willing to go and thought there was nothing to hide and invited the police into her house and pointed out the photographs they did not ask to see them but just say we want to see them. when she consulted david he insisted they get a lawyer first so they informed the police that is what they would do and then they left the next day they met with the lawyer who was a specialist in family law. she explained amy said i think what is likely to happen in this case is the police are concerned enough they may pass them on to the prosecutor if the prosecutor is concerned enough he will pass them to children services and if they are concerned they will send a social worker to your house and find out the intent of the photographs and what are they about and the intent. she had sent the air write-up the affidavit that she explained the photographs they were notarized and submitted to the police. six weeks of buy the police never return to the house there was never a search warrant they never ask any other questions the county prosecutor did not ask and children's services never showed up. everybody assumed the incident was over and everything was taken care of. september 28, to sheriff deputies came to the door to arrest sent the a. and to occur to county jail and they have applauded $20,000 lien on the house she was arrested on two felony charges for the first was ohio law that said you cannot take a photograph of a naked child. that would make most of us felons. [laughter] fortunately though law had been constrained by the ohio and u.s. supreme court to cases where there was allude exhibition city alone would no longer be the standard by which they would be standard there had to be a graphic focus on the genitals the second law prohibits the photograph and in a sexual performance. the photographs that sent the had taken that day were taken after she and norah were at a photo exhibit at a local art gallery and there was one photograph will men rising mysteriously at of the tub and she asked if they can replicate that at home. so they fill the bathtub with bubble plath she had risen a mysteriously from the water. but once the water ran out she continued to take photographs and took a series of four that she was rinsing off with the showers prayer her head, her neck, the third photograph the water was streaming toward the general area that was obscured by the water the showers prayer was not touching her it was sold after and the whole body than the last photograph with her bottom. those last two photographs that the prosecutor alleged was the child performing a sexual act. that was the second felony charge. when it hit the newspapers not only in our little town but the region her mug shot where the allegations you can imagine the town was shocked. they were beloved a well-known family and admired since he