He became one of the most reknowned performers in the country in the late 19th century. His stage name was blind tom. He was born blind. And was what we probably now would call autistic. But he was a musical genius. He could hear a piece played on the piano one time, and then play it note for note. He composed some of his own music. That was mainly based on natural sounds like birds or thunderstorms. One of his famous pieces recreation of a civil war battle on the piano. The sad part about blind toms story, the family that owned him as a slave kept control of him all of his life. When the 13th amendment freed the slaves that family went to court and had tom declared mentally incompetent. So for the rest of his life, to the end of the 1900s. 1800s they toured him in europe and around the United States and they keep the proceeds from it. The other slave has a little bit happier story. His name was horace king and was the slave of a man who was in construction and was a Bridge Builder and he taught who are risking those skills. They really were more like partners than master and slave. In 1846 his master gave him his freedom. So horace king become as Bridge Builder across the south in the years before the civil war and after the. He built warehouses. He built mills. He was reknowned for the quality of his work that he did. And thats very unusual for an africanamerican person in the prewar or postwar south. Once the Civil Rights Movement comes along the jim crow system is challenged. One of the most important people in our history was dr. Thomas brewer. He has a doctor was not quite as much under the control of whites as someone who actually worked for a white person. And so he was able to be a little more independent. Constantly was challenging jim crow, asking for parks paved roads, sanitation in black neighborhoods. One of his fights in the 1950 weighs was to try to integrate the public golf course. After brown very education came out the Public Schools became a big focus. He agitated for desegregation for Public Schools and became a lightning rod for white resentment. He began to get death threats. Began to carry a pistol. In 1956 he was killed killed. The grand jury ruled that a white store owner who was renting a store that dr. Brewer owned. Dr. Brewer was his landlord, that the store owner killed dr. Brewer in selfdefense. However, there were at least two Columbus Police officers in the store at the time and there were more outside of the store. The black community believed and Still Believes that dr. Brewer was killed in a police assassination. Theres, you know, and then, the man that killed him a year later is found dead. And the grand jury ruled that suicide under very suspicious circumstances. So, it had a really Chilling Effect on civil rights in columbus. Black professionals moved out of the city because they feared for their lives. There was no, there was kind of a vacuum of leadership in the black community. In the 1960s civil rights organizer came here and he said, i couldnt get anybody to do anything. They were, they were scared. Martin luther king wanted to come and speak in columbus and he couldnt find a curve that would host him because people were afraid. The masons provide a place for him to speak. As a historian i look at the past through the lens of peoples stories. And all of us are historical actors. We all have a part in our history. So, you have to understand where you are and how the community that you live in got to be as it is. We can believe the old myths but i think if we take a harder look at where we came from, we end up loving our city more. Youre watching booktv on cspan2. This weekend were visiting columbus georgia with the help of our local cable partner mediacom. We visit with author john ellisor. He explores a 18 30s land conflict between georgia and alabama. Sometimes referred to as the creek war of 1836. Or so the socalled creek war of 1836. Because these Commanding Officers proclaimed its end in a matter of few weeks. We looked at it as a Simple Police action not very significant in the whole story of creek removal. I had heard the term second creek war before but i dont think that was a widely accepted term. But, since i thought that i had discovered this conflict was a real war, what was more longlasting was much more significant than others had thought, i really you know accentuated this name, the second creek war. Were right here in the center of the old creek nations. At one point they claimed most lands of good part of georgia alabama and part of north florida. With the creation of the Young American republic, we start to push on these native americans and others as we start west, building as a nation. State of georgia is particularly anxious to get the large creek body of natives and the cherokees out of georgia. So they become quite virulent in pushing for indian removal. This will kind of take place gradually over a period of years as we sign treaties with the creeks. Take chunks of land moving them west toward the chattahoochee river here. Finally in the late 18 20s theyre confined into about nine counties of alabama. That was called new alabama the old creek nation. Finally in 1832, there was a treatly called by some as the washington treaty. I like to refer to it as the cassida treaty of 1832. It was agreed by the creeks, all right, we will allow you to survey our lands in alabama the last lands remaining to us. And then, you will, the United States government, issue lands in severalty. Individual families will get their own lands. It was considerable acreage that would go to each family. Like a full half section of land the rest you can open to settlement. Now these indians thought, i believe, their leaders believed this was would be a way to stay in alabama stay on the last, sort of remnant of their ancient home lan and avoid removal to the west. What they could do is take their land allotments around their own towns, preserve their tribal integrity and period of five years or so they could get legal title to these lands that would be protected by the state of alabama. But i think Andrew Jackson lewis cast, the secretary of war at that time and others thought this treaty is simply a marketbased removal treaty. What well do, well open the rest of those creek lands to settlement. They will be in the midst of white settlers and everything else. It will be a simple matter for us to press them off the land. They will not be able to compete. They will sell out and move west eventually. So there was that conflict about what this treaty was supposed to be as part of the outbreak of the war, part of the cause of the war. Right here across the river in these bottom lands of the chattahoochee, very first tile cotton lands that was pushing that last drive to get the southern indians out is the coming of king cotton. Tremendous fraud. Grog shops were opened. People were cheated. Impersonation. Where one indian was taken to one of the sales lands commissioners. Claims to be another indian. Paid off 10s sells somebodys man, there are murders it is a terrible land fraud. Its a great stain on the american republic. These people are starving to death. So a group of warriors here in the lower creek towns as they were called, again right across the river they will rebel in that spring and summer of 1836 and start this event that i call the second creek war. The warriors will start, basically, attacking plantations, travelers, in those county lower creek counties in 1836. Theyre just driving settlers out. At that is what they intend to do. They do a pretty good job of it. A couple thousand people will fly in to columbus. Some will keep going to their old homes in georgia. Theyre just going to clear out the lands around their old tribal towns of the they thought removal was imminent. They thought they would be forced to remove. That is one reason it inspired the rebellion. Although i did read an account from one of their leaders who said, we were simply starving. We needed food. We needed to survive. But there are plan b, the alternative plan, if they couldnt hold the lands with to go to florida. Many of them did. And that part of the war has been almost wholly ignored until, i decided to bring it out in this book. There really werent grate battles attached to the initial conflict that broke out in may of 1836. 10,000 troops came. 5000 were stationed here in columbus. 5000 over in, tuskegee, alabama. The forces were split between these two generals. They were to supposed to, to converge on the rebel creek towns here, close to the chat keep chattahoochee river close to our door and the operation didnt really take very long. They thought it was over with. The indians either surrendered. Some went into hiding. They escaped across georgia to join the seminoles. The seminole war is raging at the same time. This is appears to be more of a momentous strug fell. The military wants to get on with that. General jessup devoted his attention to creek removal. Removal in large part of the upper creeks who were peaceful during this conflict. And so, they had larger issues to attend to. They were not big battles immediately. This war is a war largely because it devolved into a guerrilla conflict that will take parts in the wilds take place in the wilds of georgia florida, alabama for years to come. But it is just people had other things to do. They got on to other concerns. And so, that willed der theyness warfare wilderness warfare will bleed into the second seminole war in florida was passed over and has been for 150 years. It war itself out. There was a war of attrition. Finally i think these the end of the second creek war had a lot to do with it. When the seminoles retreated to the everglades, when the American Government reached an accommodation with them, all right, you stay there. We get the rest of florida. Well all stop fighting. This was about 1842, 1843. Although there is an outbreak called the third seminole war in the 1850s. That is really, the violence doesnt end until then. It is the 1850s. As i said before, theyre still having conflicts with creek refugees fugitives in northwest florida in the 1850s. There are some people still getting killed. Not a largescale but there are these titfortat murders going on. So i wouldnt say this thing really ends until the 1850s. Some of these creek indians will stay in the south, but they have to kind of give up a tribal identity to do it. And mix themselves with larger black or White Communities to sort of, you know, blend in. To southern society. Incidentally, we think of Andrew Jackson, you know, as being a spokesperson for the south. As really being a driving force behind removal. Southern plantation owner and all that. But compared to some of these georgians and other States Rights Party folks in the south in removal era he emerges almost as a liberal in Indian Affairs because he is concerned about the land frauds. He wants some of those things prosecuted. And everything else. These businessmen at the local level, particularly georgians many of them in columbus, because columbus is a real center of acquiring these lands and pushing the indians out. He has real political opponents over this. This was a real formative era in our economy. For example, cotton will be our leading export. It will have economic benefits for northerners southerners everything else. We get to that in part through the indian removal. I think we need to know all of these aspects of our history to fully understand sometimes our own not thoughts in the present day, we simply have to know the dark side along with the bright side of american history, so we can know ourselves so we know where we can go from here. You cant do it on a ad hoc basis. History is our track record. While in columbus, georgia we met with military historian Dan Crosswell to discuss the career of colonel Richard Hallock who served in the vietnam war. We sit in the special collection archives of the Columbus State University library i. You see the archives of the hallock papers. As a favor to mrs. Hallock, the donor, i volunteered attorney decks the papers. I said, hallock would be a great topic of a book. Hallocks story is interesting. From a personal side it is actually kind of a story laced with a great deal of path those. He is gray ghost and white knight because he is true believer. And, so he is fighting the battles against increasingly corporate advertised bureaucratic army where you get ahead by being a weather vain officer, whatever way the wind is blowing you point in that direction in order to get along. Youve got to go by the mandate. Called careerism. You got all the tickets to punch in order to move up the ladder and that fundamentally means people think about their careers before they think about the good of the service. And that is what were talking about. It is a disease that takes root in the United States army before and during korea. It has grown worse since. He never makes general. There is question, why doesnt he make general . Basically because of, of his career serving as really a window on the American Army from the time he enters in world war ii through the korea wars through the cold war. He has a ringside seat because he is general clays special Intelligence Officer in berlin. During the airlift. And then, he is the primary agent of getting the m16 adopted even though the army tried to sabotage it at every level. But the fight over the m 16 did end his career. Because american boys were dying because these weapons were jamming. They were jamming because the army messed with the rifling of the guns and the load. Which guarantied it was going to jam. Army knew that. They sabotaged the tests hallock ran. In 1960s. This was early on in the computer age. They sign on with stanford and run a fully computerized test. What they did they tested the m14, the armys favorite which they wanted to retain. This this sabotaged version of the m14 becomes the in16, very difficult to get the army to agree with this, another force armed with kalashnikov. And, whats interesting is that the despite the attempt to sabotage the weapon, the m16 scored marginally better than the kalashnikov and much better than the m14. Despite that despite knowing the problems the army still put it in production and sent it to Southeast Asia. Of course, gis and marines were dying because their weapons were fouling. The army, insists that marksmanship wins on the battlefield. Well, most combat takes place at less than 50 yards. Frequently less than 15 yards. You dont need heavy caliber to be accurate at 1500 yards. What you need is rate of fire, smaller caliber, lighter weapons. Especially when youre, you are engaged in operations like in Southeast Asia. So the stoner weapon, went through a series of army modifications that fundamentally changed the dynamics of the weapon. And again rifling was different and the the load was different. And that guaranteed it would underperform. And if it wasnt, wasnt cleaned properly in the field that was very difficult, then it was even more prone to jam. They were the early problems. And the army knew it. And this led to a major congressional investigation, and the, the investigating body essentially charged the army with criminal negligence. Nobody went to jail over this but, that meant that hallocks career in the army was over. In that kind of situation the idea is, you just close ranks and deny defer. No one takes the hit. But it got to the point that he got so disillusioned as a result of the fallout from these tests and, he wasnt, you want ad brigade command in vietnam. He thought it was his due which would come with a star but he had serious reservations about american policy there. Those things combined he decided he would walk and put his papers in. When leaves the army he take as job in the bureau of the budget. And that was a nice, a nice, nonmilitary job. He liked it. But, because his expertise and because he worked for the systems analysis people, the whiz kids, the holdover of the kennedy, mcnamara, into the johnson period, he was asked to serve on a number of special committees, blue ribbon panels including investigating the m16. Then he is cherrypicked by rand. He is employed by rand at the same time he is a consultant. And, at rand he did two things basically. He was primarily responsible for restructuring rand. It would come under a lot of flak owing to deepening problems in Southeast Asia but he also was given the independence to conduct his own kind of studies. After he while he decides well, i can do this by myself. So he creates his own consultancy film in california. What hallock wants to do, he is very interested in third World Military assistance programs. So during the cold war there was, the military assistance groups and in places like Southeast Asia and also in iran. The problem was that the, see the iranian force would be given obsolescent or obsolete stuff out of inventory as new American Equipment came online. The shah has oil revenue. Opec, the price of oil spikes. Gross domestic product in iran increases by 450 . Theyre awash with money. The nixon doctrine state has the United States is now prepared to provide allies, re, third world country allies, the present and future generation of american military, naval and air hardware, providing they can pay for it. There was only one country who can pay for it and thats iran. So things begin to go off the tracks. First weve got a corrupt regime. The corrupt regime begins also to, well that corruption grins to infect american suppliers. Be they arms suppliers be they Construction Engineering companies, be they Telecommunications Companies computer companies. Everybody is beating a door to iran and that means if you want entree to meet the people that makes those decisions that means the shah and those immediately around the shah that you have to grease of slides. So it was