Schoolteacher and she was the family historian and my mothers family who were all in new orleans and she was the keeper of the lower among others are klansmen and she had some papers and files and she had a way of speaking about our Family History that was like this, the one to remember is are klansmen, my grandfather, he was a redeemer and the redemption returned white people to authority in new orleans after they had been Just Launched and if he had not acted in the battle of liberty we would not be here today, anyway, when she died her papers went to my mother and when my mother died, this is decades later, her files came to me, her files and this is how i rediscover the story of our klansmen and wrote about it. You remember your aunt maude, it sounds like she spoke of, say his name. Its spelled constance, he was a French Carpenter raised and spoke french. Is it fair to say in your family he was heroic. He was heroic for 100 years, as were the clans people, the klansmen for most, the clan in first genesis after the civil war, we returned reconstruction and restored White Supremacy by black authority and black politicians and black business and barcoding, First Century he was a hero but in the civil rights. The memory of the clan was altered, returned to some sense and when it came to me it was with some ambivalence, our clan was no longer a family hero. You write early on in your book, youve known about your klansmen as a child and you were afraid of his story, why were you afraid of his story. Because the ku klux klan were the First American terrorist into acknowledge that my people include quite terrorist and that is a difficult thing to do it is radioactive so i was afraid of it. And you use the phrase that roughly translates to wash her dirty laundry within the family, dont put it out. Wash your dirty laundry the family. You betray that code because you have to because your writer, this is what writers do. Theres a famous remark by the poet which is that if a rider is born in a family, her or his family is lost, there condemned to exposure and shame. Lets dive into a story, you paint a picture of him, he is a carpenter for higher, he tries a lot of things and feels that things, the one thing that he gets very good at is killing in the military in the civil war, can you talk about that . He was 38 when the civil war began, he was an elderly man as far as soldiers go, but he was a confederate infantryman for three and a half years and fought in many battles and the wheezy anna and he returned home like half a million other whites and veterans having seen battles and staged guerrilla attacks and very knowledgeable about tactics and this was something that fuels the rise of the white militias, many, many of them white militiamen in the klansmen who knew how to stage the military assault. That was such an interesting insight which i hadnt thought about, all the white men who participated in the civil war, thats where they learned organized violence he does during one of the last in the louisiana and he plays golf at the red river he appears to participate in the massacre of Union Soldiers. Killeen Union Soldiers who surrender. That is correct. This is a really honest book and i really appreciate, there is a line in your book after you tell the story of the massacre and you say the chances are better if me edward were there as a white creole, i wouldve shot two. And i thought well that is honest. I suppose a young white creole the chances are better than half, can you explain why you would make a better than half chance if it were you you wouldve shot Union Soldiers. Had i been raised in that place and time, i believe in wouldve been swept into the ideological claimant of White Supremacy and defensive with the ferocious drive of the confederate soldiers to defend their homeland which they believe had been invaded by others and in general we flatter ourselves about the past we tend to think i would not of been a white supremacist, i wouldve been part of the resistance, had i been in germany in 1935 i wouldve been in the underground resistance against the nonseas, we condescend to our predecessors by giving ourselves a morally superior position relationship to them and i dont feel that that is honest, that is one point, the other point, its an impossible imaginary projection to say the 21st century liberal person in this country and by liberal i mean any person raised after 1960, any white person raised after 1960 who has some understanding of the disasters of our National Inheritance around the stories of race, it is impossible that we could be ourselves in a previous century, thats another piece of selfdelusion. This is what is so wonderful about a micro history, you are telling the story of every man, he was a carpenter, he was a soldier, he was a domestic terrorist, klansmen and ill say to my audience, be careful what you wish for, you point out that you have 16 greatgreatgrandparents, and if you go off looking you might find there are scandals in domestic terrorist and youve done this with both sides of your family. You paint a picture of a time that castellon lived in and all the ideas and you use the term. [speaking in foreign language] that describe working people and you describe their resentment, their hostility, particularly he was not a wealthy person he did not do as well as his brothers and he was dependent on slavery what little wealth he had, can you talk a little bit about the class of people in the sources of their resentment, your hostility toward black people, the force of their hatred. This part of the deep south in louisiana was about 52 africanamerican, the majority of africanamericans were enslaved at the time of the 1860 when the civil war was warming itself and there was a relatively small White Society of slaveholders perhaps 15 of the white population and there was a rather large workingclass population and he was a ship carpenter and he was one of the workingmen of manual labor, however, his parents had been slaveholders of some degree, i think they enslaved a people, his grandparents that enslaved 30 or 40 people, he is a person who experienced a class line, he became proper raised and he believed, i think, i never found any diaries or letters of his, he believed his status had been robbed and like many southerners of the day, they turned their resentment and frustration and the rage directed against people of color who had recently become emancipated and recently entered the public fear. You talk about, the very first Civil Rights Act in the history of this country, the civil rights out of 1860 gets passed over Andrew Johnson and his message is giving civil rights to black people, is favoring blacks over whites and you immediately get white democrats organizing White Supremacy and whiteness is very much shaped in opposition to black rights, there is a line early in the book where you talk about i am struggling to make the concept of whiteness as concrete as blackness, it its a submerged thing and you show all the way to which culturally whiteness is getting defined, there was a hotbed of pseudo race science but the idea of whiteness and after reconstruction it becomes much more potent. Many white people, then and now do not regard themselves as part of a racial route, we as whites often think that people of color are those who inhabit race and whites are not part of a racial group, what you refer to in the book, im trying to make a point with racial identity as visible and conspicuous to us as africanamerican racial identity is conspicuous to us, i have the idea that White Supremacy and white self regard is born or greatly amplified after the civil war by events surrounding the acquisition of Voting Rights by black people and by the first entry of black people into positions of society. You mentioned that new orleans was the center of scientific racism and it was, this is an interesting discovery for me, the earliest american scientist are people in the deep south and also elsewhere in the north who are trying to describe how race is built into the body, these are bone diggers and people who are interested in the fantasy that there is a separate origin of each race, each race is a different species and some of these guys worked in talk to new orleans and they published in journals they are and others worked in philadelphia new york and elsewhere but the First American science is race science, its very purpose interpret failure, this become some of the intellectual justification for enslavement. Teachers did this around the time of the founding as well, the stories we tell to justify the way things are very much a part of our history. Lets talk about what he did after the war is over, tell the audience the mechanics. The mechanics, institutes must secure, tell the audience about this and his role. A year after the end of the civil war black people are petitioning for the rights to vote and in july 1866 a meeting is convened in downtown new orleans, two or 300 africanamericans who are newly into politics and is about 300 africanamericans outside this place called the Mechanics Institute and the purpose of the rally is to petition for the right of black man to vote, politicians are in power at this point in new orleans and the mayor of the city sends the police force and the Fire Department to the scene of this rally to break it up, he is a member of a volunteer fire brigade as are many confederate veterans and he apparently came to the scene, there is no fingerprint evidence that he was there but the circumstantial evidence is quite persuasive and within two hours of the police and the pirate brigades arriving at the scene there are 200 africanamericans are done and it provokes congress to pass the reconstruction act is. Which i did not know about that particular incident, ive been teaching reconstruction in the Civil Rights Act and the law of reconstruction for years but did not realize there was a central animating event, it reminds me john lewis and others getting attacked on the bridge and that is providing the impotent or the Voting Rights act, its a similar kind of event, 200 black people may in dead and that helps the republicans pass the construction over to Andrew Johnsons veto, you are right, i do not feel comparable for the institute nonsecure or your ancestors role, however, i feel implicated every feeling of righteousness and shame. Im glad you talk about that, you are really hard on yourself, your family, your tribe, you say whites are my tribe, is his family shame that you feel . So many of the disastrous subplots of our National History are hidden behind curtains and this is one of many, here is a exhibit, it is not an overstatement to say that the rampages of the clue entering ku klux klan in the massacre in some distant and mediated way have cleared further space for white life throughout the succeeding generation down to our own, it is not a falsehood to state that the night writing and torment that people like him and his gangs perpetrated, and ordinary white folks including myself with a greater sense of authority and security, because they were fighting for our people, they were fighting to extend the authority of power as white people, that is the net. And a very honest book and are brutally honest path you right whites are my people, my tribe, they were his people in his tribe in ways that he belongs to us and hundreds of millions, i know the honest way to regard race violence is this, American History is full of it, it is pandemic, the United States was founded upon racial violence, it is within the core of our National Identity and that is breathtaking in the opposite of what children are taught in school and i want to ask you what do you think is lost or gained by seeing the nations founding in the violent terms. What is lost, much of the self regard that our National Storytellers allow us with america on the city of the hill in america is the land of freedom, if you tell the National Story as the engine and i think its possible to do that without distorting it, you find that the settlement of the east coast of america was a racial act made of people being displaced and shoved aside the import was a racial act with ultimately 4 million enslaved African Americans on the plantation of the deep south, the movement of the country are crossed the continent over the appalachian into the middle states was a racial act, made of people literally being driven by forced march to leave parts of the country where white farmers wish to pick up land, if you tell the story that way you find it quite a different story and is not a progress narrative, its not a narrative of gradual or universal extension of authority and right to property to all people is something quite different. You think your tribe open a hearing at the way youre presenting it. He said white people are my tribe. Right, yes, it is a novel claim, africanamericans often claim, i cant speak for all black people, africanamericans are often asked by whites to represent their tribe, to White Society. , i am not a tribal representative, however, im telling the story. We have a new moment of rotate under multiracial moment after the death of george floyd and Breonna Taylor and others, i think it is fair to say, it is been claimed perhaps one of the largest in the support of black lives in the history of this country and you getting some resistance to that resistance and you return again and again, in your book the idea of White Supremacy rising, falling, White Supremacy rising and falling and rising again in subsequent generations lived with that are defined by the traumas inflicted in the past, this is part of a reckoning that much of your work seems to be asking us to do can you talk a little bit about why you think its important for whites to understand how they may, you alluded to this you did this really brilliant really in a New York Times piece that you wrote 2015 where you invoked coal audio rank and, this idea that the past is in you. Ill let you say but you are trying to say im not saying my klansman is the same or the slave patrols are the same as stop and frisk today but there is a certain entitlement attitude that comes from this history, can you talk about that the way the future generations are implicated by the traumas of the past and carry these things with us. I think the more that we acknowledge the experiences of our predecessors stand their foot on our own lives, the better off we are the more honest we are about our current circumstances and the experience of enslavement does hearken down to the president , the experience of being a fighter for White Supremacy speaks over the generation down to the present. , you mentioned the protest of the summer, its an encouraging time, this year is surprising turn of events in the marches in the aftermath of the tragic death of george floyd, one could see, i think many white folks participating in protest in a way that suggested they are regarding themselves in their history and their identities for the first time its a historical kind of shift in consciousness, the way that the protest almost immediately move to the takedown of monuments, it is very interesting kind of a turn of events, its very encouraging, having said that we also see that White Supremacy does not lie dormant, and advances, it grows more sophisticated, and find new commanders to carry out these desires and i dont think were going to fall into a bed of roses in our Racial Climate going forward, its a very interesting change of tone. We saw our audience about a massacre or the whiteley battl battles, it was part of the effort to and reconstruction. Its a complicated, and 1874 the civil war has been done for nine years in the white militias which are generally described by the newspapers, that is what theyre called, their night writing in one of them night militias attracts thousands of members and in 1874 in september the white league organizes a battle, an assault involving 3000 of its members including my ancestor that overthrows the white reconstruction in the streets of new orleans, about 30 people die, half of them black, half of them white in the success of the white league in the reconstruction government for only a few days is so exhilarating to the white resistance that it becomes legend in the city of new orleans into the deep south were generations, ultimately a monument was built in the battle is commemorated in annual seller monies for many decades. In your personal family according to your aunt. He has his head split open. Its a turning point in the reconstruction, it causes the federal government in washington to lose its nerve and lose its desire to continue the efforts to integrate institutions of power and ultimately when in a year the federal government agrees to discontinue and remove the federal troops. Its the beginning of the end of reconstruction and it is implicated in a got a tell you one of the things that youd like to do in this book in your previous book is interview presentday africanamericans who are descendents of people who were operating at the time and i want to tell you i am the defendant of a reconstruction legislator and alabama, my greatgrandfather in the 1870s was a mixed race of a former slave owner and a woman of color who was serving in the Alabama Legislature from 1874, im talking to you, your greatgrandfather was one of the ones he was shooting, here we are talking and i have to tell you this is the power of an intimate micro history, i have read about this all my life but nothing brings it to life more than the naming, the killing, the raping and im reading it and its like fresh paint for me, i see my grandfather, he gets elected on a day i dont know how he survives but he got elected on a day when people were shooting about people who went to the polls, i want to share that and one of the things that you do so well, tell me about your obsession or your compulsion to go and speak to africanamerican descendents, both as slaves and radical republicans, you did this in your first book, in this book you went to speak to descendents of a certain type of person of color, very successful accomplished africanamericans who were in the favor reconstruction and tell me about that and anything that you want to share. I have the idea, i have the idea that revisiting the seams of historical trauma which personal testimony if you like has a positive effect and so far we can pass through some of the hard stuff of our National Life in a personal way has a positive effect, there are reasons why story of violence domination are littleknown they are repressed and forgotten intentionally in most cases and not properly commemorated, there are two families that i write about in life is a klansman africanamerican families who were members of the elite, the creole color elite which is a large minority of africanamericans in new orleans these were Business People and educated people of all stripes in the reconstruction era, they were on the scenes of one of the events that i write about the Mechanics Institute massacre and i identified a family whose ancestors were nearly killed at this massacre in past if i could tell some of their Family History and for them to, its not uncommon that a family who experiences the trauma of night writing or lynching or abuse, generations later they have this memory intact and this was the case with one of the families that i went to visit, i think with some sense of discovery and renewed appreciation which to share the story of their families experience, and a microlevel with individual families, it does provide some affect. I appreciate you doing that, you been on the project, this is your sixth, particular your first in your latest book of showing how intertwined africanamerican experiences with white, black history is American History, they are so intertwined and intertwined particular in the south, black and white people on the ground even during the most awful times were intimately involved with another one another do you feel like things have shifted since you wrote your first book in terms of people beginning to embrace this idea that the africanamerican story central to the american story, there seems to be a hunger. I think so, i would like to think things have shifted, i think large numbers of ordinary folks are interested in and able to tell the stories of africanamerican families and of africanamerican life and there is a much wider appetite now but what you mentioned is the interlocked nature of white and black society in memory and experience, we have been in each others dreams, we have been in each others beds, each others lives for centuries, one hand cannot move without the other hand. That is something that it is an ideal and a frame of consciousness to achieve in the interlocked nature. I want ask you a question that is animated as a fellow writer i also wrote a family memoir that went back for generations i appreciate your struggle of where the paper trail in, particular your writing about a klansman and they were clan done sent so they were going to leave a paper trail and you give yourself permission to fill gaps with your imagination, your speculation what he and his wife said or felt, i see him doing this, i dont see him doing that, i wonder about that device as a writer and how you think trained historians feel about that. I dont provide dialogue for people that i dont have evidence of the dialogue but imagine a projection, i think we need tell the reader your reconstituting or constructing the scene, you are okay and there is circumstantial evidence for the lives and behaviors and movements of all kinds anonymous white people and black people, the reality only about one and a thousand people of any class leaves a piece of paper behind that historians can later consult so built into the archive method of historiography is a radical exclusion, if you depend only on paper you are excluding an overwhelming majority of individuals, micro history which is one that ive written tries to tell the story of ordinary folks who had access to little education who lived inconspicuous lives and who left no papers and diaries and what have you, that is experience of the majority of americans, whites and vaccinations and what have you, using your construction and projection, i do not give in. Narration of my characters, but i do as you imply take some liberties with narrative events and i announce it when im doing them. You try to tackle this first as a novel. Correct. Tell me about then why did you give up on that and decide to do it this way. When i reencountered the papers that i inherited from her yeher, the story is so searing that it would be like holding coal in your hand to write as nonfiction, i should write a novel about this man, and i tried and it was knots approved so i set it aside and finally i decided this story is so searing i have to write as nonfiction so i did. I dont want to miss behave, just in case someone is not aware of that, could you explain the compromise and how reconstruction formally ended. In 1876 the president ial election fitted hades against the democrats and it came down to the electoral votes of two states in the south, South Carolina and louisiana and by this time reconstruction was losing its team and democrats gave the election if you like to the republicans which were initially the antislavery party which were initially the party of reconstituting a society that makes ruling for africanamerican power and authority, and in exchange the camp made the deal if hades the republican was allowed to take the white house, his government had to immediately withdraw the union forces that still occupy parts of the deep south and bring a formal and attempts to rebuild a new society and so hayes took the white house, the troops were withdrawn in the construction recollapses in the early 1877. The rise of africanamericans depended on the willingness of the federal government to stay with guns and they basically get exhausted. It appears that way. To feel like it was inevitable, and the society in which white was so tied to subordinating black people in that reconstruction following was just going to be inevitable no matter what. Neu dont think it was inevitable, i think it was a pivot point in history where things could have gone better and couldve gone the other way and we have lived with the consequences of her sense, White Supremacy was after the compromise in the end of white construction, White Supremacy was fortified in the deep south and it was made extremely brutal in the forms of enforcement and with all kinds of measures which was leasing and Voting Rights were withdrawn from africanamerican men, all business run by black people was driven out of power in this fortified White Supremacy, i believe is then exported to the rest of the United States as africanamericans begin to leave the south and some of the methods that were perfected by the white south are then taken up around the United States in their own communities as africanamericans are coming into the northern and western states, its an extremely important turning point in the couldve gone in another way. This gets to your point about the next generation having to live with the consequences of what the ancestors did and you are making clear in your commentary in your book how a violent backed White Supremacy was a central organizing principle, not just from the south but of the United States and whites in those areas, that was accepted, they all participated in a racial order in which whites were on top and followed institutions from slavery, jim crow and you alluded to the idea that today if we had an hbo special where he was brought forward today he would look around and might see some things he recognizes but there was a difference being a lot more allies for racial equality. He might. I think White Supremacy is a spectrum of consciousness, its not just white violence against people of color but its an attitude of mind that crosses the whole political spectrum, many white people will tell anyone who asks that their families were not entitled, their families do not experience the benefit of whiteness, their families have struggled and have come up from modest beginnings to find a precarious foothold in Economic Life and in many ways they are telling the truth and intricate family who comes to ellis island in the turnofthecentury in the 1900s, 1910 in the lowlevel on the platform of American Society but when they arrived at ellis island they set their foot on upper tier of a twotier cast society that has been shaped by slavery and jim crow and they are able to rise into Property Ownership and economic per spirit he using tools that are denied africanamericans, that is also a part of Family History that many people are unable to acknowledge. This may seem a bit like a diversion but its in the book and its been in the news of late the phenomenon of black faith someone recently asked me it was a white person what is the sense of allblack faith in a was able to articulate well but your book comment on it a lot, can you talk about the origins about black faith in particular tied to mardi gras but the predominance of white putting on black faith and why. Its an interesting dimension of our psychological history in the 1840s, there is a popular art that arrives in putting on makeup to appear black and performing music that they have taken from or parent aid from black sources, plantation blues and jigs and black faith as its called becomes the most popular form of culture for white americans for a century, it is hundreds of millions of people going to shows throughout the 1800s and 1900 right until world war ii it is the most popular form of public musical for a century and what it relies on is a fascination of white people for blackness, the desire of what appears to be the essence of blackness and put it on themselves and market, if you look at any film or radio archive source from the early 1900s you will find loads of this stuff and its offensive because it involves this thing that people call a procreation and its offensive because it involves a kind of desire to domesticate black identity in the white mind to take control and hold it in the minds, that is what that is. Ticket for that we only have a couple of minutes and i want to end with the hopefulness of the moment we are in, as i said before we had the largest demonstration in the history of this country with a lot of white people saying black lives matter and i wonder if you think theres Something Different about this moment, whether were headed towards a third construction that might be more enduring than the rituals of a few steps forward and then a retrenchment or reassertion of White Supremacy, do you see anything different about this moment . I think it is too early to say, we are entering a third reconstruction, however, i am optimistic that we are entering a new phase of consciousness about ourselves, black folks and white folks together, the election in november will be a very loud sign of whether this kind of renewed understanding or racial identities will leave alden complicate and become a positive force were not, i am hopeful. I am too. Whats next for you, have you exhausted your Family History. This is what i tell my agent im working on a couple of Different Things and we will have to see what develops, thank you so much for having this conversation its been a very nice one. Thank you are enjoyed it immensely. Be well. You to. Weeknights this month we are featuring book tv programs of whats available every weekend on cspan2. Thursday night we focus on covid operations, first former fbi special agent talks about the early years of the u. S. War on terror. And then chris talks to former cia directors to provide an inside look at the Intelligence Organization operation. Later the book the great secret which looks at the sinking of 17 allied ships in italy in december 1943, that starts at 8 00 p. M. Eastern, enjoy book tv this weekend on cspan2. You are watching the tv on cspan2, every weekend with the
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