Public service brought to you today by your television provider. Host hello, edward ball. Its a delight to meet you try to good to see you. Host i feel like i know you from reading life of a klansman. Its an intimate. Want to thank you for writing it. Im going to dive in. You received an emotional inheritance from your aunt maud. Tell the audience what it was, the physical inheritance and the family lore. Guest when i was a boy in new orleans in the late 1960s i had an named maud. She was an elderly retired schoolteacher and she was the family historian in my mothers family. We were all in new orleans and she was the keeper of the lore of, among others, our 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 our klansmen, my grandfather, constant lecorgne, because he was a redeemer, and the retention returned white people to authority in new orleans after they had been dislodged by the negroes. And if he had not acted in the battle of Liberty Place we would not be here today. Anyway, so when she died her papers went to my mother, and when my mother died, this is now decades later, her files came to me, her Family History files, and this is how i rediscovered the story of our klansmen and wrote about it. Host so you remember your aunt maud. You emulated her well. It sounds like she spoke of and say his name. Guest constant lecorgne. He was a frenchman, a French Carpenter raised and spoke french. Host right. Is it fair to say in your family lore he was a relic . I mean, he was trek you he was for 100 years, as were the claims people, the klansmen for most white southerners as the klan in the first genesis after the civil war will return reconstruction and restore what supremacy when it was challenged by black authority and black politicians and black business and black voting. Host right. Guest so for century he was a hero but then in the civil rights period, the memory of the klan was altered, returned to some sense. When you came to me it was with some ambivalence, our klansmen was no longer a family hero. Host right. But you write early on in your book you had known about your klansmen as a child, and you afraid of his story. Why are you afraid of his story . Guest because the ku klux were the First American terrorists. And to acknowledge that, its not an easy thing to do to say my people include white terrorists. That is a difficult thing to do. Its radioactive and it hurts. So i was afraid of it. Host you use a creole phrase that roughly translates to, wash your dirty laundry within the family, dont put t out, right . You have done this before with your book, slaves in the family. Guest french [speaking french] wash your dirty laundry in the family. Host you kind of betray that could because you have to because youre a a writer. This is what writers do, memoirs. Guest they do it. And theres a the famous remary the poet which is that if a writer is born in a family, her or his family is lost. They are condemned to exposure and shame. Host right. Lets dive into constants story. You paint a picture of him, he tries, hes a carpenter for hire. He tries a lot of things and fails at things. But one thing that he gets very good at is killing in the military, in the civil war. Can you talk about that . Guest yeah. Well, constant lecorgne was 38 when the civil war began. He was an elderly man as far as soldiers go. But he was confederate infantry men for three and half years and fought in many battles in louisiana, and he returned home at the end of the fighting. Like half a million other white confederate veterans, having seen battles and having staged guerrilla attacks and very knowledgeable about tactics. This is something that fuels the rise of the white militias, but many, many of the white militia men that klansmen were, confederate veterans, who knew how to stage a military assault. Host that was such an interesting insight which i had not thought about, about all the white men who participate in the civil war, thats where the learned organized violence. And, in fact, constant experiences his first massacre, does he not, in the civil war . Guest he does. During one of the last fight of upstate louisiana in a place called the red river. He participates, appears to participate, in the massacre of Union Soldiers. Host killing Union Soldiers who surrendered . Guest who have not surrendered, thats correct. Host and this is a brutally honest book, at a really appreciate it. Theres a light in your book after you tell this story of this massacre, and you say the chances are better than half that if i, if me, edward ball, was there as a young white creole, i wouldve shot, too. And i thought, i thought, wow, thats honest. I suppose if i were such a young white creole chances were better than half i wouldnt shoot captive yankees. Could you explain why you think better than half a chance if the were you wouldve shot Union Soldiers . Guest well, had i been raised in that place and time, i believe i would have been swept into the ideological climate of White Supremacy, and of defense of the white south which was the ferocious drive of the confederate soldiers to defend their homeland which they believed had been invaded by others. And i think, in general we flatter ourselves about the past. We tend to think, oh, i would not have been a white supremacists. I mean, i wouldve been part of the resistance, you know. Had i been in germany in 1935 i would have been in a underground resistance against the nazis. We condescend to our predecessors by giving ourselves a kind of morally superior position in relationship to them, added dont think thats all it is. Thats one point. The other point is that is an impossible imaginary projection to say that a 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. Its impossible that we could be ourselves in a previous century. Thats another piece of selfdelusion. Host this is what is so wonderful about a microhistory. You are telling the story of an everyman, right . He was a carpenter. He was a soldier. He was a domestic terrorist, a klansman, and i will say to our audience, be careful what you wish for if you go off searching for your family. You point out that you have 16 great, great grandparents, right . And if you go off looking you might find that there are scoundrels and domestic terrorists and slaveowners, and you have done this with both sides of your family. But you paint a picture of the time that constant lived in, and all the ideas that were swirling around, and use the terms like i hope im saying that right, terms that describe working people, and you describe their recent mains, their hostilities. You know, particularly for constant, constant was not a wealthy person. He didnt do as well as his brothers and he was utterly dependent on slavery, what little bit of wealth he had. Can you talk about that class of people and the source of the resentment, your hostilities towards black people . The source of their hatred. Guest the deep south, this part of the deep south, louisiana, was about 52 africanamerican, the majority of the africanamericans were enslaved of course at the time of 1860 when the civil war was warming itself, and it was a relatively small White Society slaveholders, perhaps 15 of the white population, and that was a rather large workingclass white population. And constant lecorgne was a ship carpenter and he was one of the working men, a manual laborer. However, his parents had been slaveholders to some degree. I think they enslaved eight people. His grandparents enslaved Something Like 30 or 40 people. So he is a person who experienced a class slide in life. He became pauperized and he believed, i think, i never found any diaries or letters of his, he believed that his status had been robbed of him, from him. And like many white southerners of the day, they turned this resentment and frustration into a rage directed against people of color who had recently become emancipated and who had recently entered the public sphere. Host right. So the very first Civil Rights Act in history of this country, the Civil Rights Act of 1866, gets passed over Andrew Johnson veto and his message is getting civil rights to black people is savoring blacks over whites. You immediately get white democrats organizing to promote White Supremacy. And you talk about how whiteness gets shaped. Whiteness is very much shaped in opposition to black rights. Theres a line early in the book where you talk about, im struggling to make the concept of whiteness as concrete as blackness. Its this submerged thing. And you show all the ways in which culturally whiteness is getting defined. Can you talk about that . New orleans was this hotbed of pseudorace science, but this idea of whiteness and after reconstruction it becomes much more potent. Guest well, many of white people, then and now, do not regard themselves as part of a racial group. We as whites often think that people of color are those who inhabit race, and whites are not part of a racial group. But you refer to in the book, im trying to make white racial identity as visible, as conspicuous to us as africanamerican racial identity is conspicuous to us. I have an idea that White Supremacy and white self regard is born, or at least 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 authority. You mentioned that new orleans was a center of scientific racism, and it was. This was an interesting discovery for me. The earliest american scientists 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, that each race is a different species. Some of these guys worked and taught in new orleans and they published in journals there, and others of them worked in philadelphia and new york and elsewhere. But the First American science is race science, and is very peculiar, and this becomes some of the intellectual justification for enslavement. Host you know, enlightenment thinkers it does around the time of the founding as well, right . The stories we tell to justify the way things are is very much part of our history. Lets talk about what constant did after the war is over. Tell the audience what this, its the mechanics guest institutes. Host the Mechanics Institute massacre. Tell the audience about this and constants role you think in it. Guest right. I year after the end of the civil war, black people are petitioning for the rights to vote. In july 1866 unbeatens convened in downtown new orleans of two or 300 africanamericans who are newly in politics, and there are about 300 africanamericans outside of this place called the Mechanics Institute, and the purpose of the rally is to petition for the rights of black men to vote. White politicians are in power at this point in new orleans, and the mayor of the city sends the police force and the Fire Departments to the scene of this rally to break it up. Constant lecorgne 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. Within two hours of the police and the fire brigades arriving at the scene of this meeting, some 200 africanamericans were dead by gunfire and by bludgeoning, and lay scattered in the streets of new orleans. This Mechanics Institute massacre provokes congress to pass the reconstruction act. Host right. Which i did not know about that particular incident. I have been teaching reconstruction and the Civil Rights Act, the law of reconstruction for years but i didnt realize there was this central animating event. It reminds me, john lewis and others getting attacked of the Edmund Pettus bridge, and that providing the impetus for the Voting Rights act, right . Its a similar kind of event, 200 black people maimed and dead and that helps the radical republicans passed reconstruction over Andrew Johnsons veto. And you are right, i do not feel culpable for the Mechanics Institute massacre, or your ancestors role in it. However, as a matter of conscience i feel implicated. I have a feeling of shame. I want you to talk about that because you are really hard i feel like on yourself, your family, on your tribe. You claim you say whites are my tribe. Is this family shame you feel . Guest well, so many of the disastrous subplots of our National History are hidden behind curtains, and this is one of many. Heres the crux of it. It is not an overstatement to say that the rampages of the ku klux and assaults like the Mechanics Institute massacre, in some distant and mediated way have cleared further space for white life throughout the succeeding generations down to our own. It is not a falsehood to state that the night riding and torment that people like constant lecorgne and his gangs perpetrated gives white, ordinary white folks, including myself, a greater sense of authority and security, down to this day. Because they were fighting for our people. They were fighting to extend the authority of power, as white people. Thats the net of it. Host right. Its one more, in a very on this book, one of them were brutally honest passages you write white are my people, my tribe. They were constants people come his tribe, and the way that he belongs to us and to 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. Thats breathtaking, and the opposite of all the shibboleths that children are taught in school, and i want to ask you, what do you think is lost, or gained, by seeing the nation foundings in these mean, violent terms . Guest well, what is lost is much of these self regard that are National Storytellers allow us to believe in america as the city on the hill, america as the land of freedom and opportunity. If you tell the National Story with racial identity 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 with native people being displaced and shoved aside. The import of enslaved africans with a racial act which ultimately 4 million enslaved africanamericans on the plantations of the deep south. The movement of the country across the continent over the appalachian range and into the middle states and finally to the west was a racial act. With native people literally being driven by forced march to leave parts of the country where white farmers wished to take up land. If you tell the story that way, you find its quite a different story, and its not a progress narrative. Its not a narrative of gradual or universal extension of authority and rights to the property to all people. Its not that at all. Its something quite different. We are witnessing a new moment of multiracial liberation and after the death of george floyd and Breonna Taylor and others, its safe to say perhaps one of the largest demonstrations in the support of black lives in the history of thiscountry. Youre getting some resistance to that resistance and it just weaves seen again and again and the book this idea of White Supremacy rising and falling, rises and falls and rises again and subsequent generations are defined by the traumas of the past. And this is part of this reckoning that much of your work seems to be asking us to do. Can you talk about that a little about why you think its important for whites to understand how they may be related to this. You wrote the New York Times piece that i read in 2015 you were writing this idea that the past, and you talked about, you were trying to say im not saying my klansman is the same or a slave patrol is the same as stopping and frisking today but theres a certain entitlement attitude that comes from this. Can you talk about that, the ways future generations are implicated by the traumasof the past . I think that the more we acknowledge that the experiences of our predecessors stamp a foot on our own lives the better off we are about our current circumstances and the experience of enslavement harkens down to the presidency, these things of being an insulator, this sense of being for White Supremacy speaks over the generations down tothe president. You mentioned the protests over the summer. It was an encouraging time but here is a surprising turn of events and marches and aftermath of the tragic death of george floyd, one could see i think many, many white folks participating in protests in a way that suggested they were we are regarding ourselves and our history and our identity in a fresh way and for the time. Its not a historical kind of shift in consciousness , the way the protests almost immediately moved to the takedown of monuments. Very interesting turn of events and i thinkits very encouraging. Having said that, we also see that White Supremacy doesnt lie dormant. Its more sophisticated, it finds new commandos to carry out its desires. And i dont think that were going to fall on a bed of roses in our Racial Climate going forward, but its a very interesting change of tone. Could you tell our audience about our white