This audience really merits it. I thought maybe one day if i write this book and people notice it maybe one day the mayor of charleston will be holding it in front of an audience, a packed house. This is what happened one week after the book was released. Its truly beyond my wildest dreams. The book tells the story of reconstruction and im going to read some passages from it some of which you will see from the Police Department some that deal with the mayor and the current mayor here. The point is we are all heirs to something. We have no say. We are born where we are and we have no say in what we inherit and all we have control of his will he do with it. We can recount some of the triumphs and some of the greatest tragedies but i think moving on from the tragedy of 2015 you created this group. You decided intentionally to create the space word difficult issues in the community could be discussed. It would have been easy and very human to say the murder was not from charleston, you have to worry about it. Im sure people in virginia and North Carolina said thats a tragedy but that South Carolina. Im sure people in new england in the Pacific Northwest dont have these tragedies but thats a south. Shirking responsibilities the easiest thing to do. Making an intentional effort to learn from mistakes is a brave thing and im honored and humbled to be part of this. Reverend kelly generously offered a prayer on my behalf. The first reconciliation workshop that im leading and on cspan so here we go. Im going to explain or a series of images how i came to write the book. Im going to introduce some of the characters, and characters being a nonfiction writer real people who appear in the book and im going to try to explain the thesis of my book which is reconstruction achieves its greatest accomplishment in new orleans in charleston for a reason. These had blurry color lines coming out of the early years and blurry carl r. Lines going to the civil war blurry in the sense that there were many people who were openly mixed races but also misses that there were Many International immigrants. Both cities have large influxes of agents. New orleans famously had southern europeans from france and spain. The city had a very large Jewish Population and it had a continuing color on the city streets that made it very difficult to categorize people in a white quote unquote colors. Following my audiovisual presentation i think you understand we will go to the workshop. In the workshop i pull no punches. I decided to send you the questions that i myself am struggling with. The hardest question is not the easiest question when i sent them to reverend kelly i said you know maybe this is not the direction we should go in and they both said no, this is the direction we should go in. This group is ready for that. This group has been working on these issues for years and if any group can handle these questions it is this group. I just want to turn so i can see my own slides. As you can see one description of my book is a technical history of the first of our Rights Movement and its collapse into black and white. Now let me explain how i came to write the book. Im the son of a mixed marriage. My mother is from brooklyn and my fathers from birmingham. [laughter] i grew up with the new orleans accent. A move to new orleans in 2011. Somewhat randomly i have a lot of family in birmingham and atlanta. I have a small family that stan chin cheslie tangy inches leeward related to me in new orleans. I moved there once and i had a residency position at the university of nevada las vegas and i decided i was never going to live anywhere in winter again i moved to new orleans in 2011 decided need to educate itself about the history of the city. I had seen eyes on the prize growing up as a kid on pbs. Dissidents in nashville to the little rock segregation Tuscaloosa University of alabama i didnt spend much time in new orleans but i knew about school this segregation was a major fault line in the city at the time soil and to j store a Search Engine for social science and history in the put in new orleans in School Desegregation but i came up with over 199 of which were about the 1960s and one of which was about the 1870s. I was intrigued. I had no idea that new Orleans Schools were disfigured desegregated and thats the one i clicked and i came up with this paper published in the american Historical Review in 1962 by a man who is an associate professor at the university of cincinnati named louis r. Harlan. The article is called the segregation in new orleans Public Schools during reconstruction ended this publication specifically are publishers of the meghans transcolors it begins with the line it is a fact not generally known even to a story is new orleans Public Schools during reconstruction. Not underwent substantial segregation until after 1954. Intrigued i read on. I thought what else dont i know and i came across this article from the state publication. Needs no introduction is grew. The article is written by an africanamerican alumnus of the university of South Carolina during its Integration Period during reconstruction. Again my father is an alum of the university of alabama but i thought i knew the history of university desegregation in the United States. I did not. What else dont i know . I dont know the police force in charleston and new orleans were desegregated in this period. Didnt know that the streetcar systems in both cities were desegregated and i decided i should really read a book about the subject. Thats a pretty big gap in my knowledge and it turned out there was no book. If you want to read this book you are going to have to write protect this project on an didnt realize i had bitten off more than i could chew by when to university of new orleans. The district was disaggregated during reconstruction so i can read the record from us period and i came across this ledger book. This cell phone snapshot would like to read it to you. The new Orleans School district from the year 1862 to 1863 correspondence from 1865 to 1870 and then 1877 to 1878. The period i want to read about was from 1870 to 1877 exactly the period that was missing and literal in the book which is the root in single hand by secretaries at the time with the incoming and outgoing correspondence of the school board, their Meeting Minutes etc. It goes from page 399 in 1870 and you flip it to page 400 and its 1877. I thought oh god what have i gotten myself into . Similarly i went to Columbia University of South Carolina and i came across this. This is the book of the student debating society and for this integrated period it had been pictograph of the tombstone and the word may grow on every page partially obscuring the records of the debate. Luckily you cannot fully disappear and i met an event in america, at least not yet the events were very controversial at the time. They were covered widely in a wide variety of newspapers. Both charleston new orleans in colombia and other cities have a media rich environment word different communities have their own newspapers by language, race class, political outlook and i was able to read about each event from different perspectives in an effort to reconstruct the events from the newspaper account. The National Maybe media was upset with this. They got the story on what had taken place. Harper has the story of the desegregation of the new orleans Public Schools. The nation covered this in the africanamerican abolitionist press is covering it to the new national era covering this. The liberator the abolitionist era covered these events and we also have the Court Records which are very well preserved to both the appellate decisions where judges explain into what decision they are making and wide and more adjusting the Court Transcripts the answers the witnesses ask them particularly in a series of civil rights cases from 1870s coming out of new orleans the civil rights activist keeps on most playing a game but with a purpose. They ironically need of a segregationist about what exactly is raise . What is a white man in what is a man brags how do you know what race i am . How do i know what race i am . My grandparents were gone before i was born and the grandpa who told the family stories was really unreliable. My moms from cuba. People there are tan and brown. They are not white and black and they asked her what she was. She said im cuban, i dont know what am i . Over and over i kept coming back to new orleans in charleston is the focus of my story. Now a selection from the book. The four american independence charleston was more closely linked to caribbean is another angloamerican outpost. Between 1670 in 1730 immigrants from barbados not england and many of them were transplanted soap and the island future carolinians have an art notions of race number, and the rest of colonial america. Latin american system was still a racist one. The lighter one was the better. Green eyes trump brown eyes and live is easy with tan skin the brown skin but in the new world there was precious little. He paid with people from all continents living jumbled together for generations virtually everyone was mixed in the only question was whether the particular proportion of ones mixture were. In charleston with its caribbean outlook mixing with more openly to knowledge than elsewhere. When a 1736 editorial in the South Carolina gazette said a mixedrace relationship should not the flaunted quote certain young white men should frequent the open lots of the city. Took less than a week to published. Why needed trouble you . The blackwhite binary with was matched to american realities where lines droop warier with each generation but in charleston it was particularly an anathema. After the nation was founded the caribbean carolinas waited in 179015 years into american alignment with most receded congregation in charleston where mixedrace relatives that were shipped in the same ref announced it was prohibiting mixedrace people from being varied in the church gravure. In response to the churches decree that they were good enough to worship and even marry in a church but not good enough to be buried there mixedrace relatives in charleston leading white families organize themselves into separate sub congregation for Brown Fellowship Society. By october 1790 for the Brown Fellowship Society to raise enough money to purchase a plot of land uses a Burial Ground solving the immediate crisis that sparked its founding and it threw open the new cemetery to the entire community of charleston taking on broad responsibility over time. The society found a school a credit Union OrganizerLife Insurance fund. For all the institutions they created the Brown Fellowship Society created a community itself that the site society made communal identity elevating it into a category at least with the city limits of charleston or by doing so the originators hoped to carve out a space for their community and the social and political minefield that was free and mixedrace in america with black and white order. This is an image of new orleans streetcar called the star car. Under the system of segregation in new orleans at the time of the civil war africanamerican passengers were only permitted to board cars. In charleston the system if anything was even worse. Africanamerican passengers after the civil war in charleston were expected to pay the fare in the streetcar and exit the car on the outside and not permitted to ride on the inside of any car. That was until one woman and sadly we have no photographs, took a stand. On april 17, 1867 the complaint materialized at the local Freedmens Bureaus office filed by mary p. Bowers and africanamerican who have been forced off of the streetcar. In an impeccably written statement powers recounted their rage preacher previously written the streetcar system without incident she explained. This time when she boarded the conductor objected. Being quote very and well and much fatigue from a long walk she nonetheless took his seat. Bowers found itself next to doctor one of most respectable positions with no actions to her present through the conductor refused to drive the car with her and it. As tensions rose the said she was to respectable the woman to create a disturbance in the streetcar. She for the fact that my being a respectable person is my position to being able to ride. Barrett decided to give now but she vowed she would see the conductor in court. As i am dictating the gentleman from their business in the children from their male time i will leave the car but for no other receipts she told them but if theres anyway i will make you pay for it. Little is known of barretts biography by from our session should read in a few many times before that incident and the descriptions of her in a white car is respectable it was likely she was free before the civil war intermixed ancestry but her categorization and arab binary system is unclear. Quote respectfully applying for redress strongly suggest shes illiterate and uneducated. Her count stands in stark contrast to most Freedmens Bureau complaints. In a time when Educational Opportunities for women were limited and patriarchal Family Structure is the norm. Biracial women. Antebellum census form vastly overrepresented the jobs requiring literacy and special training. Including positions of School Principals nurses and midwives. The system in new orleans and duration of committed relationships and is less formalized analog in charleston resulted in three woman of color living as heads of household where heads of household were rare. After mary bauer said the complaint to the Freedmens Bureau the streetcars of charleston are desegregated. They would not be resegregated officially for another 45 years. By the time they are resegregated 1912 terror fuel men and old women in town they can even remember the streetcars had ever been segregated before. In new orleans at this very time literary of the same weeks in the spring of 1867 there are demands from africanamerican passengers to desegregate the streetcars. Its a large rally on congo square and if you know new orleans you know this is the historically africanamerican gathering space just outside of the French Quarter and facing protest the Streetcar Company president has to resolve the crisis. The leader of the st. Charles avenue streetcar the most famous of all the lines is this man retired confederate general beauregard. He has no on locally i believe that the man who ordered the first shot fired on fort sumter. He was born on a plantation on a slave plantation 15 miles from new orleans and after the war he moves back home to go into business. One of the first things that happens to him when he comes back to new orleans after the war he gets called the n word on the streets of new orleans. A man accuses him of being the n word ive always known. Ive always known you people and he did not respond. He walks home to his mother. The beauregard family is insistent that they are of pure european dissent mixed with french and italian and yet of the streetcar presidency is the one that is the most eager to meet hactivists in desegregate. He gives the quote that becomes the title of the book. He says when you are riding the streetcars of new orleans you are riding with gamblers and others and the accident of color. The fact as youll see he is one of my characters played a role of becoming an unlikely but very important civil rights activist in this period. In charleston that please force was integrated in 1868 with the opponent richard halloway shown here a member of one of the citys leading families. He joins the ranks them by 1870 over 40 of the Charleston Police were men of color. When script is correspondent visited charleston native 73 informed his readers that quote the prison please force the city is equally divided into blackandwhite and one may know black and white policeman terms of amity. Six years earlier white officers were simply riding the city streetcars. This man i think is a local renowned frances luis cardozo. He is a mixture, hes part africanamerican part sephardic jewish and part native american. I think his identity he almost sounds like a millennials. He is born around 1830 and his identity crosses these lines that we generally think of as mutually exclusive. You can be white or black preview can be christian or jewish. You can be the grandson of immigrants are an indigenous person. You can be the grandson of immigrants or people brought to the country in the belly of a plane ship. He is all of these things simultaneously and hes very adamant because his live is integrated education is the chair of the Education Committee at the 1868 so Carolina Constitutional Commission to make sure there is a plank plakon desegregation the constitution. When he gets himself elected for secretary of state and secretary of treasury moves to columbia with a click of activist largely from trust and he makes desegregating the university of South Carolina major goal of his one of the ways he does it as he recruits the faculty for the university and the great hiring crew is this man who richard t. Greene in the first nonwhite regelin of harvard. Greener is of mixed africanamerican heritage. The spanish family moved from spain to puerto