Transcripts For CSPAN2 After Words Edward Ball Life Of A Kla

Reading your book. Its so intimate. I want to thank you for writing it. I am going to dive in. You received an emotional inheritance from your aunt. Tell our audience what it was, the physical inheritance and the family. When i was a boy in new orleans in the late 1960s, marx was a horn wasnt elderly retired schoolteacher and was an historian. We were all in new orleans and she was the keeper among others, of our klansmen. She had papers and files in had a way of speaking about our family, another one to remember is our klansmen, my grandfather he was a redeemer. The redemption returned like people after theyve been dislodged. If he had not there, who would not be here today. Anyway, when she died, her papers went to my mother and when my other died, decades later, her files came to me. This is how i rediscovered the story of our klansmen. You remember your aunt, youve emulated her well. Sounds like she spoke of, say the name constant was a french carpenter. Is there to say, he was heroic . He was heroic for 100 years as were the clans people, the klansmen for most southerners. Client in the first genesis after the civil war overturned reconstruction and restored White Supremacy when it was challenged by black authority and black businessman, black 30. For a century, he was a hero but then in the civil rights. , the memory of the plan was altered, returned to some sense and when it came to me, it was with some ambivalence, our klansmen was no longer a hero. You write early on in your book, youve known about your klansmen all your life as a child and you were afraid of the story. Why were you afraid of the story . The clue . The ku klux klan were the First American terrorists. To acknowledge that is not an easy thing to do. To say my people include white terrorists. That is a difficult thing to do. It is radioactive and it hurts. So i was afraid of it. You say this roughly translates to wash your dirty laundry within the family, dont put it out. Youve done this before with your book. [inaudible] wash your dirty laundry in the family. You portray that because you have to because you are a writer. This is what writers do. Memoirs. Yes, theres a famous remark by this poet, if a writer is born in a family, her or his family is lost. They are condemned to exposure and shame. Right. Tell me this story, you paint a picture, he is a carpenter for hire and tries a lot of things but one thing, he gets very good at killing in the military in the civil war. You talk about that. Will he was 38 when the civil war began. It is an elderly man as far as soldiers go but he was a confederate injured infantryman three and a half years and fought any battles in louisiana and returned home like halfmillion other white confederates. Having seen battles and staged guerrilla attacks very knowledgeable about tactics and this was something that fuels the rise of malicious, many white militiamen that klansmen were. The new how to stage a military assault. That was an interesting insight that i hadnt thought about, all of these white men who participated in the civil war, had is where they learned organized violence and in fact, he experienced his first massacre in the civil war . He does. During one of the last fights of upstate louisiana and the red river, he participates, appears to participate in a massacre of Union Soldiers. Killing Union Soldiers who surrendered. Right. This is a brutally honest book. I appreciate it. Theres a line in your book after you tell the story of the massacre and you say the chances are better than half that if i, me, edward, was there as a white creole, i would have shot, too. I thought wow, that is honest. I suppose the chances are better than half that i would shoot the yankees. Can you explain why . Better than half chance that you would have shot them, too . Had i been raised in that place in time, i believe i would have been swept into the ideological climate of White Supremacy and defense of the south which was a ferocious drive of confederate soldiers defend the homeland, which they believed had been invaded by others and generally, we flatter ourselves, we tend to think, i would not have been a white supremacist. It would have been part of the resistance. Had i been in germany in 1935, i would have been in the underground. We condescend to our predecessors by giving ourselves a kind of morally superior relationship to them and dont think that is honest. That is one part. The other part, its an impossible imagining projections to say a 21st century liberal person in this country and by liberal, i mean any person raised after 1960, and he pretty after has somebody, so understanding of the disasters of our National Inheritance around the stories of race, its impossible that we could be ourselves in a previous century. This is what is so wonderful about micro history. Youre telling the story of every man. He was a carpenter, a soldier, domestic terrorist, klansmen and ill say to our audience, be careful what you wish for as you go off searching for your family. You said you have 16 greatgreatgrandparents and if you go off looking, you might find their scoundrels domestic slave owners. You paint this picture of the time they lived in and all of the ideas swirling around and you use terms i hope i am saying these records. Terms that describe working people. You described their resentment, hostility. Particularly, he was not a wealthy person. He didnt do as well as his brothers and was dependent on slavery with the little wealth he had. He talked about the class of people and source of their resentment, hostility toward black people. The deep south in louisiana was 52 africanamerican. The majority of africanamericans were enslaved. This is when the civil war was coming. Relatively small amount of slaveholders. 15 of the white population and it was a rather large class like population. He was a carpenter and one of the working men of manual labor. However, he had been slaveholders to some degree. I think they enslaved eight people. His grand paper his grandparents enslaved 30 or 40. So this person who experienced this slide. He became popularized believed, i think i never found any diaries or letters of his, he believed status has been robbed and like many white southerners of the day, turned this resentment and frustration into a rage directed against people of color. Who had recently become emancipated and recently entered public fear. Right. The very first Civil Rights Act in the history of this country, of 1866, pass over Andrew Johnson in the messages giving civil rights to black people and favoring black over white and you immediately get white democrat organizing to promote White Supremacy. You talk about how whiteness its shaped, 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 white as concrete as blackness. You show all the ways in which whiteness is being defined. Can you talk about that . s idea of whiteness and after reconstruction, it becomes much more potent. Well, many white people, then and now, did not regard themselves as part of the racial group. We, as white, often think people of color are those who inhabit race and whites are not part of a racial group. What you refer to in the group, i am trying to make racial identity as visible, as conspicuous to us as africanamerican racial identity. As 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 Century of black people into positions of society. You mentioned new orleans was a center of scientific racism and it was. This is an interesting discovery for me. The earliest american scientists are people in the deep south and also in the north who are trying to describe how race is built into the body. The story we tell the way things are is very much a part of our history. Lets talk about after the war is over. Tell the audience the mechanics, the Mechanics Institute massacre. Tell the audience about this and the role in it. Right. A year after the end of the civil war black people are petitioning for the right to vote and in july of 1866 a meeting is convened in downtown new orleans. Two or 300 africanamericans who were newly in politics and there are about 300 africanamericans outside of this place called the med Mechanics Institute and the purpose of the rallies took petition for the right of lack meant to vote. Politicians are in power at this point in new orleans and the mayor of the city sends a police force and the Fire Department to the scene of this rally to break it up. He is a member of the 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 her sway says. Within two hours of the police and the fire brigades arriving at the scene of this meeting 200,000 africanamericans were dead by gunfire and by bludgeoning and scattered in the streets of new orleans. This Mechanics Institute massacre provokes congress to pass the reconstruction. Right, which i did not know about that particular incident. I had been teaching reconstruction and the Civil Rights Act and the law of reconstruction for years but didnt realize there was this central animating event and it reminds me john lewis and others getting attacked on the Edmund Pettus bridge and thats providing the impetus for the Voting Rights act a similar kind of event. 200 lack people maimed and dead and that helps the radical republicans cast reconstruction over Andrew Johnsons veto and i did not feel coble bowl for the Mechanics Institute massacre or the roll in it however i feel vindicated. Why dont you talk about that decodes you are yourself, your family, on your child you claim that whites are my tribe. Is it family shame you feel . Well, so many of the disastrous sub flocks of our National History is hidden behind a curtain and this is one of many and heres the crux of it. It is not an overstatement to say that the rampages of the ku klux klan and the Mechanics Institute massacre in some distant unmediated 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 my corn and his gangs perpetrated gibbs ordinary white folks including myself a greater sense of our insecurity to this day because they were fighting for our people. They were fighting to extend the authority of power to the people as white people. Thats the net of it. Right and one of the more very imus books with brutally honest passages you write whites are my people, my tribe. There were his tribe in ways that he belongs to us and to hundreds of millions. I know the honest way to regard race and violence and this American History is full of it. It is pandemic in the United States was founded upon racial violence. It is within the core of our National Identity and you know thats breathtaking and the opposite of all the things children are taught in school and i want to ask you what you think is lost or gained by seeing the nations found things in these mean and violent terms . Well what is lost is much of the selfregard that our National Storytellers allow us to phase and america as a city on a hill, america as the land of freedom and opportunity. If you tell the National Story with racial identity as the engine and that means 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 of enslaved africans or the racial act with ultimately 4 million enslaved africanamericans on plantations of the deep south, the movement of the country across the continent over the appalachian range and into the middle space and finally to the west was a racial act made of people literally being driven by forced march to leave parts of the country where white farmers who wish to take up land. If you tell the story that way its quite a different story and its not a progress narrative. Its not a narrative of gradual or universal extension of authority and rights of property to all people. Its not bad at all. Its something quite different. Do you think your tribe is open to hearing it the way you are presenting at . You said my people are my tribe. Yes, it is a novel claim to make. Africanamericans often claim i cant speak for all black people you know and africanamericans are often asked by quite to represent their tribe to White Society so im not a tribal representatives. Okay, okay, all right. However im telling the story. We have any moment now of multiracial globalization after the death of George Floyd Breonna Taylor and others i think its fair to say perhaps one of the largest demonstrations in the support of black lives in the history of this country and you getting some resistance to that resistance and he returned to this theme again and again in your book the idea of White Supremacy rises and falls and rises again in subsequent generations live with that in our defiant of the trauma within their past. And its part of this reckoning that much of your work seems to be asking us to do. Can you talk about that a little bit about why you think its important for whites to understand how they may and youve alluded to this than you did this brilliantly in a New York Times piece that i read that you wrote in 2015 with claudia rankin, this idea that the past is in you and you talk about, while i will just say you were trying to say im not saying my clansman is the same or the patrol is the same as stopping and frisking today but theres a certain entitlement attitude that comes from this history. Can you talk about that in the way that future generations are located by the traumas of the past . I think morally to acknowledge the experiences of our predecessors stand barefoot on our own lives the better off we are in the more honest we are about our circumstances. The experience of enslavement does harkin down to the present in the experience of being an enslaver and experience of being a fighter for White Supremacy speaks over the generations down to the present. Now you mentioned the protests over the summer. Its an encouraging time. This year is a surprising turn of events and with the marches in the 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 or we are regarding ourselves in our history and our identity in a fresh way for the first time. Its a historical kind of shift in consciousness, the way the protests almost immediately moved to the takedown of monuments. Right. A very interesting turn of events. I think its very encouraging. Having said that we also see that White Supremacy doesnt lie dormant. Itd dance this, he grows more sophisticated. It finds new commandos to carry out its desires and i dont think we are going to fall into a bed of roses and our Racial Climate Going Forward but it is a very interesting change of tone. Talk to the audience about this would be called a massacre or the battle . It was one of it was part of the efforts and reconstruction. Sure. Its a complicated story. In 1874 in and the civil war had been done for nine years and the white militias which are generally described as the ku klux klan is what they are called, are agitating and night writing night riding and one of the white militias attracts thousands of members and is called the white league. In 1874 and september the white league organizes a battle and assault a coup attempt involving 3000 of its members including my ancestor that overthrows the white reconstruction efforts in the streets of new orleans. About 30 people died half of them black, half of them white and the success of the white league in toppling the reconstruction government for only a few days is so exhilarating to the white resistance that it becomes legend and lore in the city of new orleans entered the deep south for generations ultimately a monument is built and the battle is commemorated in annual ceremony in new orleans for many decades. In your personal family lore. He has a foot open in this fight and its a turning point in reconstruction. It causes the federal government in washington to lose its nerve and to lose its desire to continue these efforts to integrate institutions of power and ultimately within a year the federal government agrees to discontinue and remove the federal troops. Its the beginning of the end of reconstruction and a clansman is implicated in it and ive got to tell you one of the things you like to do in this book in your previous book is interview presentday africanamericans who are descendents of people who are operating at the time and i want to tell you i am a descendent of her reconstruction legislator in alabama so my greatgrandfather in the 1870s was a mixedrace son of a former owner and a woman of color. He started in the Alabama Legislature from 1870 to 1884 and your great great grandfather was one of the ones who was shooting so here we are talk in. I have to tell you this is the power of an microhistory that ive read about this all my life but nothing brings it to life more than being on the ground, the shooting, the maiming, the killing and im reading it and its like fresh paint for me. I can 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 at why people went to the polls and what brings it alive i want to share that and one