Of the headings is monticello an American Family which went on to win the Pulitzer Prize and the National Book award and she was here for her biography of Andrew Johnson and later she shared the stage with the coauthors work most blessed of the patriarchs Thomas Jefferson and the empire of the imagination. And that gordon reed is the University Professor at harvard and the genius grant and Frederick Douglass prize. In her new book the texas born historian it examines her and passed visavis her Lone Star State roots in juneteenth. In the shimmering review in the new york times, jennifer praised the book for the authors ability to combine clarity with the subtlety and showing historical understanding is a process, not an endpoint. Tonight Annette Gordon reed will be in conversation with awardwinning broadcaster, journalist and longtime friend of the author event series tracy. Its great to have you with us tonight. The screen is yours. Its an honor to be with you tonight with Annette Gordon reed. This book has gotten rave reviews if you have not yet picked it up, make sure you pick it up and you can get it through the bookshop, but we are delighted to have this time together and we would encourage you to just have some questions because weve added time at the end of the evening as well. With that said, welcome back to the free library of philadelphia. I wish i could be there in person but here we are. The book is called on juneteenth, and its a collection of essays and of course texas figures prominently all throughout the book. You are a native texan as you mentioned and you open the book opened thebook by talking abouts exceptionalism that everything is larger than life and everybody has a certain pride in being from texas but you also say it has a gender and a race that texas is a white man. What do you mean by that . When people think about texas, they think about a cowboy, west texas and cowboys and cattle and herds and so forth and its not about the part of texas that was a Slave Society where you had a plantation slavery and this notion of the sort of rough and ready individuals would be a white man because women dont have that kind of freedom and black people are not seen as both texas andf freedom. The white male embodies the image of texas so its trying to figure out what does that mean for those that are not white guys who and that is what i report in the book. On the east texas side of things we think of the west but you make the point its the east where Stephen Austin came and brought many settlers and wanted to make sure that slavery was accepted. If you could unpack that history and the problems that can occur with selective memory and origin stories. Considered to be the father of texas as you said brought settlers and was given the right to make a settlement in texas and they were people who would come from other parts of the south, georgia and alabama coming west and they brought enslaved people with them and thought that would be the basis of their things would be shipped out so there is this legacy of slavery mainly in terms of louisiana or alabama and georgia but not toxics. Even the real typical is part of the western tradition they dont think of it as the south but it was confederacy so it was part of south. It speaks origin stories and the stories we tell ourselves about where we came from and how we started and a strong tendency inandout to have a selective memory about those things. We all do that. We cut out the part thats painful and we become nostalgic when youre in it, it may not have been and we tend to do it as a nation and heroic aspects, remember the alamo but not thinking about what was implicated in what drove the conflict in many ways and we want to see ourselves in those terms but its not always a wise thing never a wise thing because you have to have a realistic picture of the past if you want to understand why we are in a particular position today because all of those influences that up to where we are now so i say the book, humans need mythology and memories but we do have to be hard with ourselves about the situations. Its one of the many ways in which texas is a microcosm of america. I say all of this in American History close, there is the issue in the slavery, western expansion, conflict with Indigenous People displacement of Indigenous People. The conflict and relationships between hispanic culture, jim crow after the end of slavery, all of those things and borders and other countries so the International Aspect is there in that particular place so theres no other state that combines all that it contributes to the craziness because so much is going on there and has been from the beaker very beginning. Its a juneteenth, its a collection of essays written by a native texan about texas and the u. S. History and resemblance to an reflection of the larger u. S. And the events of june 19, 1865, juneteenth occupies a small portion of the book almost as if juneteenth is the hub from which it all extends you could set it not that much about juneteenth or you could read it and say its all about juneteenth all through the book so why did you choose juneteenth as the peg in which to hang the book . Its a day that commemorates end of slavery in toxics and there is so much packed into the notion, the effects of slavery on the state and country as a whole, the notion of relations, slavery helps maintain and support and give justification for White Supremacy and talking about this particular day on juneteenth and chapters i talk about what actually happened that day and what the response was but juneteenth also means the symbolism of it, the substance of this moment when slavery ended, the fact that it existed is telling and what it meant for the community and the people around them starts opportunity for me to talk about my familys story the history of texas through thinking about how we come to where juneteenth was necessary and what happened after that, the aftermaths of slavery and race and politics and all that tied up in this particular day so the way from a door to open discussions about history, texas the United States but also my family, something i dont typically talk about, talk about other peoples families so i did something a little different with this and dipped my toe into memoir and melded with history. I smiled when i read you felt some kind of way when juneteenth became, it captured the National Imagination in more recent years and there was a time in which you felt the degree of resentment, tell us about that. When i was away in college and began to realize there were other people and places claiming juneteenth, i had a possessive view. Thats not the way to go, ive got totally over that now but i thought this was something that made texas unique and when you grow up in texas theres a lot of emphasis on we are unique, we are different so this is something that belonged to us, particularly black because 79, in 1980 when i was still in college then, it became a state holiday but before that it was mainly black people that i knew of in my town, it could have been other places but it was mainly black people who celebrated but sometime in the 70s it becomes a state holiday, black and white people and hispanic people of different cultures, i was very possessive about that. [laughter] im over it now. Sharing with the rest of the country. How does your family celebrate juneteenth . Well, i run up to july 4 so something similar. Barbecuing, firecrackers, red soda water, red meeting we call it soda water, pop. Before everything became coke. Barbecue for some reason was part of the menu although my family didnt partake but that was another tradition and i am told strawberry pie which we didnt do but the notion, i had read this and i dont know ideas about how traditions come to their can come from real prices or not but the red was about the blood was shed during slavery, a symbolic connection to that so fourth of july and black people. [laughter] firecrackers, i was thinking the other day i was below ten, i cant imagine that my kids do firecrackers but it was a different time. The festive thing, it was summer so we are not in school but sometimes people took the day off and theres a lot of running around and playing in it was a festive time and then waiting for july 4 which we celebrated as well. Generation, he said if it was your moms side, 1820s and your dad at least 1860 you had ancestors who were enslaved so im curious how your older relatives talked about juneteenth and work the stories passed down through the family . My greatgrandmother was alive until i was about 11 years old and its one thing i could just kick myself for not talking to her. Older people tell you these stories and you say yeah, yeah. I would give anything to be able to ask her more about this writeup the story and i spoke with the new yorker, when your i mentioned to my greatgrandmother, it did seem to me as if people were taking juneteenth seriously, acting as if it didnt make a difference and she said it made a difference to us, its important to us and from then on, from the depths of her feeling, i knew she really meant it. Her mother had been enslaved as a little girl and grieved by her father along with her mother, she knew somebody who was enslaved and her mother had three cousins, all of them died in the third one had not been freed until after the civil war so slavery was like generations to them, one removed from you and i knew somebody who knew people who were enslaved so this meant something we knew, it didnt mean everything was okay. My product was sarcastic and said slaves have a history but he meant really was there was a long way to go in terms of civil rights and citizenship for black people but for me, it was thinking about the joy they must have felt knowing legalized slavery was over. They knew it wouldnt be perfect immediately but not to have children or family separated other than in ways people lose relatives to death and things but not through inheritance from the loss of property. So i think thats why it means something to me, its not saying everything was okay, its the recognition of what must have been there, there joy. And of course very difficult times followed. Juneteenth, the 13th amendment which officially ended slavery and then reconstruction and spent reconstruction ultimately gives way to jim crow and of course black people to use the phrase, catching hell all over again in america and it was true in texas as it was anywhere in the country. You did not have to go much further than your own hometown to find chilling examples of ways in which black people were treated during jim crow times right there in texas and i was particularly struck by the story of bobwhite. Tell us a little bit about his story. Its interesting, bobwhite, i first learned about bobwhite as a little girl because my grandfather knew bobwhite. He would tell about the story about this man who was accused of raping a white woman and was tried and ended up being killed by the husband but the story involves man who had gone away and lived in houston for a time, came back and was accused of raping a white woman and was put on trial, before he was put on trial, Texas Rangers were periodically and are of the jail cell and give him time to retreat and beat him they did this until he confessed to the rate and he was sentenced to death back when you could do that for raping people. Sent him to the electric chair. His lawyers fought and appealed and the case was sent back a couple of times and it went to the Supreme Court which i did not know until i was working on this memoir. At the law school, here is a case i heard about since our little girl, i didnt know it went to the Supreme Court but the court sent it down saying time somebody to treat, with think them until they confess was violated the 14th a moment and they sent it back down for retrial and while he was on trial, the husband of the alleged victim came into the courthouse and shot him in the back of the head in front of the jury and all spectators, the judge, everybody the prosecutor, hes tried like five days later or something, they deliberate for two minutes and acquit him so here is a person who murdered somebody in front of all these witnesses and the crowd heres when i announced the verdict and it kind of broke people in the community and as i was writing about this, i was thinking about the fact that their hopes must have been raised because he kept getting trials, the Texas Court System was looking at this and think theres something wrong here they make it all the way to the Supreme Court and to have it and like that with a guy dead and his murder walking free. His story is i talk about in the book, the story my grandfather told me was that they were having an affair and he bragged about it, a crazy thing to do in the 1930s, a black man at a white woman but he bragged about it at the husband found out. This is the story, one of the things i say, in this world of black and white, there different stories, and official version of the story and been the unofficial person, historians have to look at it and decide i tried to really answer this question which i was just talking about it, you have to decide what seems more truthful than not but the idea that a white woman could have welcomed the advances of a blackman that would have been the end of her social life, maybe her life so you can understand why her husband or other people what happened pressured to say it was rate as opposed to Something Else and that was the story told in the black community so there is that incident, members of my family, even before this, there was an incident where a man was burned at the stake alive on the Courthouse Square and it was advertised that it would happen, people showed up and it was like a picnic and it was hard to imagine that people did this but people brought their kids so the town had a reputation for being very tough racially. The clan was there as well so yeah, thats why my father what he was saying is this is still a pretty rough place. They had white texans had grown accustomed to the social life under slavery and soon after juneteenth, after reconstruction, juneteenth as a matter of fact when people were celebrating, there were instances when people who were celebrating him at the patient they were celebrating so if you can think about a very tense time, a time of hope at the same time incrimination and a lot of hostility volatile, a very volatile place. I cant help but to think as i hear you recount these stories that while we are certainly not in jim crow anymore, a quick glance at the newspaper or evening news will show you to what your father said, slaves have not been freed, we are still seeing police brutality, so many vestiges of this today. I want to be clear, thats what i was saying before about the fear of having your children pulled from you, with think and those kinds of things but the legacies of slavery, its very difficult, impossible to think of getting rid of all that in a manner of a few seconds and certainly general gordon rangers, essentially one slavery is over he says black and white will now exist, occupy equal station, im paraphrasing but he used the word equality and that really set people off. Its one think to say slaves are freed and you do what you wish but to say now theyre going to be equal was a red flag to people who were used to a racial hurry are key. People talk about about slavery but slavery was racially based in the country so it told people how blacks and whites should relate to one another and even when you get rid of the Legal Institution of slavery, it doesnt wipe that out. It doesnt wipe away the social understanding and people cap trying to get us back to as near slavery as it could be, control and other kinds of ways than the lock that existed before before general rangers order and final ratification of the 13th amendment. Fastforward to later in the 20s when you, at the tender age of six, integrate socalled white school in your town it was time texas was trying hard to hold onto aggregation in schools, white and brown versus board of education, tell us about that experience. Im think about bridges over my shoulder here, thinking about what was that experience like as a 6yearold . It was intent. Very intense. I knew something was doing, something considered to be momentous. This was the 60s and a lot of us, those around us, it was a feeling in the air that black people were on the move into doing things and i was doing something, my family was doing something. They had the freedom of choice plan under which white parents were supposed to send their kids to white school and white parents black parents send their kids to box four. My mother was a english teacher and she taught at a box or. She and my father decided he figured the court would strike down freedom of choice which they did three years later, since i was starting, i had gone to kindergarten the flexible, i would start first grade at the white school it put me on a path that was interesting, to say the least but very intense. My teachers were wonderful. My first grade teacher and second grade, they were rates. It occurred to me for the first time, all i could think about that maybe it was because my mother was a teacher, i wonder if there was not sort of a professional courtesy, professional affinity which made them out of their way to be as supportive as they could. I learned later on there were threats against my family but it was lowkey, i was never emotional product medical and. Hooted as if nothing had happened but of course something was happening. There were certain reactions of white people but also black people had mixed reactions yes. It was k12 and it was a community thing. The teachers lived in the community, they were sometimes relatives of the kids, they were part of a unified place and there was some thinking what would my mother and father say if they sent me to the white school . Two of my brothers remained in the black school so they want making a comment about those schools, there is a problem with the school, they thought they were doing something and they kind of backed off from this in later years but everything points to them hoping idealistic thinking this thinking this was part of the new world and that