60s. This event was part of the association of the study for africanAmerican Life and conference, and they provided the video. So glad to be here, and so very excited to chop it up a little bit about brother winfords excellent book. Let me jump into my comments. It chronicles the life of the civil rights period. This is a trench at work in this work he replaces wheeler in the center of a compelling civil rights narrative there by casting a new light on the role this banker played in the middle of the century. I can speak to the way his book is making history, and also the Civil Rights Movement, the black peoples struggle in North Carolina in particular. So from wheelers bank in d durham, he was a insider and power player that understood the calculous of social change dictated approaches to the pursuit of freedom. This is going to be one of the questions i certainly want to knock around with dr. Winford in terms of the dynamic enter play that we see with wheeler and the ways in which he is trying to move and operate and navigate in the middle of the 20th century. So in this book we are introduced to a figure that embodies the potential for and limits of social change. So this is a much needed contribution to the huh store august raw fee of the black freedom struggle in North Carolina and the larger region. Again, we have lots and lots of pockets of scholarship, and we are still i think we are still very much in the process of connecting the tissue when it comes to the civil rights period, when it comes to the role of activist and it comes to the role of bankers and businessmen, the ways in which they bleed and merge and demerge in particular moments. Because of the length of his arena in politics, his name can be found regarding civil rights in North Carolina. To be sure one cannot accurately tell the story of the movement in the tar hill state without mentioning wheeler and his accomplishments. However these frequent mentions have been no substitution for his movement both in the state and nation. His book fills a significant gap in the historical literature. And the book illuminates the larger mainstream economic structures and the evolution of black freedom in the nation and in North Carolina in particular. This book does the crucial work of crafting an Important Role of farmers played in the region during the movement. So you know, brandon displays a very solid command of the sources at his disposal. I really needed the wheeler papers available when i was still working on my back greater freedom in wilson, North Carolina. Were not open so i am green with envy that brandon was able to access these papers and he does a great job with using the wheeler papers and that really comes out, and that really shines through in his book. So the presentation of the material i think is really thoughtful and thorough and meticulous, and he spent a good deal of time with wheeler, and i think he has produced a work that will be essential reading for anybody doing research and writing in the region for sometime to come. His insights on the perils and prospect of racial change from an institutional perch like wheeler possessed will point the way of creating more studies like this one that understood the here and fore. His writing style is accessible and wheelers stories is rendereded in a humane and critical fashion. I could go on and on about the book, and i really appreciate that contribution and this book. I think its really important for me to point out wheeler was a graduate of moore hill college. I am looking forward to talking it up with you and our guests. You talk about the nature of activism, right, and you refer to black business activism. I am curious about how people are thinking through and what activism can and should look like, so i am curious about how you are thinking now that the book has been out for a while, how your thinking has matured and evolved when it comes to how you are thinking about activism and the types of activism that wheeler tried to that wheeler tried to engage in. I think about the late great ray gavins who was one of my professors and mentors, one of the tkaepbz of North Carolina civil rights history, a titan in the field. The title of his book the perils and prospects of southern black leadership, and that phrase, the perils and prospects, thats a phrase that knocks around in my mind a lot when i read your work, right, just in terms of, you know, again, the perils and the benefits and the high risks and high rewards associated with wheelers style, with wheelers brand of leadership and also wheelers theory of change, right . I am curious about what you see in wheelers time as the perils and prospects of his style of leadership, and what inroads was he able to make with the struggle of freedom, and how have the times changes from our Vantage Point here in 2020. Another question we can knock around is a central notion of wheelers, and for a large contingent of folks in the move, right, and one was racism was bad for business, right . The south could not move forward as an autonomous as an autonomous unit without addressing the ways the impact of racism on all matter of institutions, so its a central notion. The eradication of racism, it will move us forward. Racism is bad for business. So it begs the question, right . What if its great for business, right . What if racism is making us really, really profitable . What is racism is not, in fact, bad for business . How do we contend with the profitability in his moment . We see this with the urban renewal controversy. How do we contend with the realities in his moment, right, and how do we contend with the realities in this moment, in terms of thinking about your work and putting your work in dialogue with taylors work on the housing industry, and so thinking about thinking about the relationship we have, the relationship activists have to the nature of White Supremacy and the different sorts of analyses we can produce when we think differently about that dynamic. Finally what does progress look like . Right . You talk a lot in the book about progress. Again, this is a very this is very dynamic, right, so what does it looks like . Is it simple . We move from progress being a simple representation i should not say simple, representation is a complicated thing, right, to we move from that to instances of trying to make make and sustain fundamental structural changes, right . So the nature of progress, how can and should it be idealized in an efforts to secure greater freedom. I can go on and on but i will not. So yeah, thats what i got. Again, a great book and looking forward to chopping it up with all of you about it. Its my great pleasure to be participating on this roundtable for professor winford. I have to say this, and it will make me look like more of an old head but i remember back in the, quote, unquote, day, meeting brandon for a conference more than ten years ago and knowing at that point that i met him that we would be at this point in the not too distant future. I always had a lot of respbgt for him and it makes us feel more secure that the future of the historical profession in the black experience is in good hands. Brother mckinneys comments were so profound and insightful and intra specktive, i am not a history of africanamericans in North Carolina, so my comments are broader, but that got me thinking about a whole host of stuff and making me want to go back and read the book again myself. The book uses wheelers multifaceted life for exploring the possibilities of what black leadership entailed in the jim crow south, namely in North Carolina and more specifically in durham. The scholarship contributes to several overlapping historical sub fields as professor mckinney pointed out, including black American History, and africanamerican biography, and the history of the black south and the history of the long Civil Rights Movement. I thoroughly enjoy reading wheelers book, what i would classify as being a biography of a man that wore different hats. He was the president of a black bank and politician and power broker and a contributor to the crafting of the civil rights act, and a businessman, a lawyer, a civil rights activist, and like professor mckinney i could go on and on. He was, in essence, a universal reformer who was involved in seamingless and countless movements and struggles and monumental events and local and National Organizations for close to five decades. His rise to fame is remarkable, and i am a bit embarrassed that i was unaware of his contributions before reading winfords book. He maintains that, quote, if we are fully to understand how central economics was to the Civil Rights Movement we must consider black business, end quote. Moreover, wheeler and his civil rights agenda provides an instructive case study for this. Winford is old school in his approach to interpreting and framing history, and i am a fan of this approach that. He explains in a straightforward narrative style how wheeler set and did things in the past, and at the same time he introduces a few concepts to help describe his protag northwest. Winfords study explores wheelers upbringing, family and history and early years. In order to demonstrate how he was soecialized. Further consceptualizing. Winford highlights wheelers role in the struggles for black educational equality and desegregation in North Carolina from the era of world war ii through the dawning of the Civil Rights Movement. He situates wheelers movement to the antidiscrimination lawsuits during the period. His discussion of blue versus durham is interesting. While learning about his legal efforts and is interesting. I thought about the tactics employed by Charles Hamilton houston prior to brown v. Board of education, something that is unpacked in the biography on the man who killed jim crow. Examples of student activism. He demonstrates that during the peak years of the monitor Civil Rights Movement, wheeler who support supported student activists adopted a unique approach. The manner in which he describes his disposition and approach reminded me of booker t. Washingtons shrewd strategies. Winford suggest that is wheeler, especially in his role as a member of the president s committee on equal opportunity was able to use his political influence and savvy to challenge employment discrimination, to fight for africanamerican Voting Rights, and in the final chapter, winford explores wheelers work in the Redevelopment Commission and the North Carolina fund. Wheeler helped the black community by supporting lowincome housing that many africanamericans relied upon while challenging whiteowned banks to democratize their practices. He acknowledges that wheelers support of projects had its shortcomings. His brand did not benefit the masses of africanamericans. Winford touches upon wheelers legacy. Winfords work is much more than simply an account of an underacknowledged and influence of black leaders life work and accomplishments. While he tells us everything we need to know about wheelers time on earth, he places wheeler within historical context. He points how this leader evolved and how he interacted with his contemporaries, junior activists and local and national policymakers. Equally important while doing so, winford addresses the five cs of historical thinking, demonstrates the ability to think creatively and talk about why his subjects acted in the manners they did. The final word on wheeler, most likely, has not been written. As one seasoned biographer has remarked, the notion of a definitive biography is fictitious. Future historians and scholars who seek to explore wheelers life and work will be compelled to use winfords book as a starting point. Hes the leading authority on this historical figure and i believe that winford has set a high bar. Thank you so much. Not much i can add, but more is a pearltives. The cover of winfords biography captures a dignified John Hervey Wheeler. He peers intensely off to the side, perhaps at some unseen collaborator but just as likely at an unwitting opponent. Wheeler spent much of his profession mall life as an executive with the africanamericanowned mechanics and farmers bank in North Carolina where he started as a bank teller and worked his way up to Bank President by the early 1950s. He engaged in back room racial diplomacy as well as waged frontline battles for economic and civil rights. In his book dr. Winford uncovers wheelers role in the civil rights struggle from the 1950s to the 1970s. In similar ways to a generation of social and cultural historians influenced indeed their thinking emancipated by the movements for black freedom in the mid20th century and these historians transferred method and scholarship, dr. Winford makes an important salvo that takes a harder look into the Civil Rights Movement. These reconsiderations are occurring in response to the unmistakable push from the sources to pay closer attention to how activists put their money where their mouths were and to the pull to untangle the roots of economic inequalities in our present times. The achievements of the Civil Rights Movement in terms of removing legal barriers to access an education, voting and to public spaces stand in stark contrast to the persistent wealth gaps and economic insecurity and lack of wellbeing that continue to plague africanamerican communities. So in addition to reassessing the movements success on questions of Economic Justice, scholars are rethinking the roles of africanamerican Business Leaders, traditional narratives judge the Business Elite as inherently conservative and resistant to social change. They argue its capitulated to white power struggles and defended racial segregation because of their dependence on africanamerican consumers. Dr. Winford complicates this assessment, revealing the complex engagements with the u. S. Political economy among elite africanamerican Business Leaders and elite institutions like africanamerican banks. His work explodes the simplistic binaries of accommodation, protest, of civil rights and black power. Dr. Winford, offers as my other colleagues have said, a meticulously detailed book laced are insights into the treacherous racial class and economic terrain africanamericans navigated in the long civil rights struggle. The biography reveals the multiple ways africanamerican elites argued for the Critical Role of Economic Justice in the fight for greater inclusion and not just u. S. Society, but also into the economy. So both dr. Winford and i have spent more than a decade working on remarkable black Business Leaders, passionate, committed social activists and complicated human beings. So for me, its magalina walker and he, of course, wheeler. And we understand the necessity of not becoming enamored of our subjects, but neither of us can deny the extraordinariness of the people who have ignited our imaginations and animated our scholarship. And i cannot miss this opportunity in my last couple of minutes to share with the round table and with those watching something about the extraordinariness of my scholar brother brandon. Brandon is a professional. Anyone knows him. In late 2014 when i was looking for contributes on a special issue for the journal of africanAmerican History, a colleague told me about brandon. But she really reminded me about brandon. Because we had crossed paths a couple of times, particularly through my mentor, dr. Juliette walker, and brandon made it a point always to stay in touch, to meet up for coffee at conferences and over the years we have shared our work. He comes up with fabulous ideas of, you know for workshops, sends me incredible pictures and sources and we dream about our future collaborations. In closing, im reminded of one spirited exchange we had a little while back about a popular book that will remain nameless. But i remember telling brandon that what was missing from this work was a recognition of, you know, a respect for the creative ways that black people worked around White Supremacy. And all the forces that told them, no, you cannot, you will not succeed. And i wrote text that you needed to love black people. If you were going to talk about how they dreamed of possibility and freedom. And i can say unequivocally that brandons love of black people so wide, so long, so high, and so deep. We are not ready for what he has in store for us and how he will transform and push forward the field of business black Business History in the new millennial. And so i do want since we have a little bit of time, i do want to give dr. Winford a chance to address the comments from the other panel lists. Dr. Mckinneys questions about the nature of black business activism, what does progress look like, what if racism is good for business, and to address any other issues that he might want to. Very quickly. Good afternoon, thank you all for attending today. First let me thank you dr. Harris for proposing the panel and putting it together and ive been really sort of impressed with these monthlong virtual conference. I really learned so much over the past few weeks. Glad to be a part of the inaugural round table and let me also sort of just thank my fellow Round Table Panel list, dr. Scott and mckinney. I cant put into words how thankful i have been for their encouragement and support through the years and always sharing their wisdom and some really good advice and nuggets and i have long admired their work but also the last point that shennette made, their example is what stands out to me. Scholarship stands out wit