About the fragile and chaotic nature of the freedom and enduring dignity of the people who secured it. W join me in welcoming chandra manning. [applause] thank you. Thank you very minute to all of you for coming today. Im a tiny bit surprised to see anybody. With an election just three days ago and an outcome that we know is going to make history going y forward, im i wasnt quite sure if anybody would show up ay but im glad you did. He its a story of refugee see center of American History and skis do ash story about page asking defining citizenship as a day in and dayout basis. Want to talk about how thisf particular book came about, how i came to write it. Ill give you a glimpse into what it says and then id like to end with what i hope this book achieves. Wayne to start by being if any of you have ever been to a. Psychorama, an enormous painting, a sicker already th sicker you walk into thee middle of it and every inch is painted. Y inch in intricate, elaborate detail. Thats a sick larrama. Bl you can only interview total immersion and you are overhemmed and you have to remain lost and disoriented for a good long time before you have any idea what youre looking at. And that is exactly how it felt to write this book. Wasnt prepared for. Its my second book. So i thought i should have figured this book thing out by now and this would be ease easy straightforward. That the first thing i had wrongment but it is a second book so did grow out of my first book mitchell first book is what civil war soldiers thought about slavery. I ended in the spring of 1865 and, at a moment of tremendous promise, where race was concern and rights were concern. It ended as a moment when the United States quickly passed three amendments to the United States constitution. As the 13th amendment, endingut slavery, the 14th expanding citizenship, and the 16th, extending the right to vote for black men. Everyone of them was a revolution, three passed in quick succession. The United States had only passed two amendments ever since the bill of rights up to that point. So it was clearly a rich moment. What i wanted to know us how did we get from that moment to jim crow and the naiari race real rl estate relations. Que i have thing this book. As i wrote this book about citizenship and rights in decade immediately falling emancipation and that followed in 2011 to 2015 by the1 2 over anniversary of the civil war and i received a lot of invitations to give talks, usually about emancipation and citizenship. Those should have been easy talks to give. I should have been able to wake in in more than and guy him. I couldnt. S what i quickly discovered was that emancipation and citizenship were two Different Things and we didnt understand either one very much itch. I beer start understanding the difference between emancipation and citizenship. Where it happen . When did people symptom being slaves and start being something else. A half million went how to the process of exiting slavery in places called contrabands camps thosere refugee camps that followed the union army throughout the civil war. Ro i thought about contraband camps. Nobody else knew too much about them. Nobody e people usually get mental images of things like tents full of smuggled cigars. Ill have nice little scene c setter in the introduction section of my book, is take is flays coop contraband cam. And decide as to that was exactly like entering the cycles rama to be totally overcome by the details of peoples lives inside the refugee camps. I was overwhelmed be the experiences and is not find a narrative arc to make sense of them, to put anybody in a kissing with each other or the congress or the president or the longer story of how slavery ended. D. Pr i was lost and it really, really stuck. Was so i just kept going in circle f finally, a basket of eggs drove me first to utter distraction and then to try an experiment. The basket of eggs was an episode i came across involving women in north carolina. She put a basket of egg and her children into a canoe and she walked that canoe 12 miles up the coast to the union army, and she delivered those agencies to the general Burnside Andel delivered herself and her children to freedom and that story stuck with me. Eggs. Eggs. In a canoe. The most fragile didnt take much to break an egg. You had can can can i kids in t. How would she get them to safety . Lf a m and get the people to safety. I didnt know if she could swim, if her children could swim. Couldnt make sense of this story. And timing stepped in here, too. Right about the time the storyry was wouldnt let go of my brain, my own kids were facing significant challenges challenge were undergoing intensative testing and my oldest son has autism, and that means a lot of things. It means something spinning specific for this story. He has a lot of ways that life is hard but one has to do with how he perceives, how Business Perception works. When most of us come into a new place we receive from the general to the specifics. You walked in here today and at first we were aware of ceiling, floor, walls, we know were in a room and a book store and we are safe. So even though we havent been here before or not letly or often, we know where we are in space and were safe and we are secure and we go about the business of a book store. Maybe the fill in details. Start to notice the book were looking for, but we notice the big picture first. My son perceived in exactly the opposite order. He is no aware that he is doing it than you are but he beginnings with a very specific in works out. She would walk into a place like this and depending where his eye fell first maybe on this end cap first, and he would have to take into account every single book on the incap. The pictures or at the covers would register, notice the titles and work out there were three rows rows and cubbies ande end have the hold incap in mind and go further and further and a little further, but for a very long time, moat most of the time, he was disoriented and doesnt know where he is in space. It feels overwhelming. It feels panicking and makes it super hard. But it also means that he almost always notices things. That the rest of us miss. And when she shares them, he totally changes my world. So finally got the idea, what if i look at these eggses the way my son would. Stop trying to see a big picture they fit in and start with the eggs, what do i notice that i had missed before . What i noticed was that eggses were probably what the woman had that day. I noticed the waves and i noticed the shakiness of the canoe and i noticed she cant see an outcome to this story anymore than i could. That all she could possibly know were details of that day and the enormous riecks she faced and to decide, take one step and then another anyway. She made me see in a way i hundred before, that to exit slavery was to go up against hard power, with absolutely no assurance of success. To look real threats right in the face that have no idea what would happen. And to do it anyway. And that is what it felt like to leave slavery. And so the first part of this book, troubled refuge, tried to tell the story, the story of leaving slavery, exiting the state of being opened owned by another person. I want to emphasize that woman helped me see that everybodys experience of emancipation began in the details of exactly where they were. And so i want to start with just a paragraph or two from theth js first contrabands camp at fort monroe in virginia. As the story goes, Point Comfort at the tip of the peninsula,a, midway down the Atlantic Coast of north america, got its name from weary, grateful travelers who spent month outs sea in the 17th century ship gamp teed to milwaukee any landfall look like a refuge. To judge by first appearances the spot isnt that beautiful. Its girded by the Atlantic Ocean and the Chesapeake Bay and the breeze on the summer day brings cool relief. The oysters added a tux of luxury. Certainly compared with a reeking, diseaseridden ship, old Point Comfort made have seemed look a haven or pair paradise. It has plenty of oysters but no water. The 1860s the u. S. Soldiers set out to drug a well. They doing 900 feet into the ground without fining a drop then gay up. The refuge at fort Monroe Wasser in the helping are for permanent. With fresh water no placening stain life for long the first contra band camp doing place in fort monroe. The camp spreads whether thed union army through the occupied south. Th specific places where emancipation began for half a million formerlies. In contrabands camps, black men, women and churn, sought refuge from slavery. They found it in the basic sense of escaping their owners grasp, but the environment, natural and manmade they encountered there made for troubled refuge. Whether the commonwealth of virginia left the union, fort monroe was the honda the user army and is. 22 that army that free men ran, making themselves the business of one general benjamin butler. The officer in command. The lives of the three men that meets the other and we local act both later in Chapter Three. But the brief outline goes like this. Mallory, baker and, dave had been put to work building forceifications when they learned theyre owner planned to remove the farther south to labor for the Confederate Army and separate themselves fromth their families. The went to fort monroe. The colonel demand their repair, butler refused on the ground that colonel mali used the men to bill fork fission a fortification, and sew rules of war confirmed that to confiscate the three slaves as contraband property. In a stroke, butler used slaveholders own ininsisted and ilustrate holiday arca creto possibilities unavailable in peacetime. Bilities u the phenomenon of the civil war condra contraband camp was born. Whenever the army win, men, up and children braced unimagine ayable risks to get there. Dogs, Union Pickets who might shoot at the very sound of an unexpected foot step. Deeing the marseest masterstd swore he would stone them and sell their children. Still they aided eat union army when and were they were able to ban the long downwhere from slavery to freedom. Part one of the book tells the stories of the journey from freedom literally in stories 0, people who made the journey from camps kneest kneest and you t think of landscape pate i painting to and tells stories of camps in west. You have to think ofoved m kaleidoscope. So they moved around throughout the weis and west, east and withs, day in, day houston, men, women which children, had to bill a path out of live i slavery and something they hoped would be freedom. Love parts one part one, clap temperatures and unto because it does tell their stories. S. Ill tell you unof them. A lot of them and not all happy. One of misfavorites takes place on an eye lend in the island in the Mississippi River near memphis. A won found hers on this island, in a mass of people and done recognize anyone and its conf fussing and then she hears a vote that sounds familiar but she hasnt heard that voice in 15 years. She turns union and its exactly who she thinks it is. Its her sister. She hasnt seen her sister in 15 years. Because her sister was sold 15 years ago. Her sister was sold because the sisters two young boys had been sold away and the sister was grieving and crying so hard, she was thought to be no good north fit for labor. And she was sold. The woman and the sister unitedt and couldnt speak. But there was more good news. Because those boys were in thebu camp, too. Those stories repeated over and over and over again, and so did some other ones that arent quite so wonderful. The story of a woman who followed the army through georgia, through through carolina and me ad my fortunately to freedom and then collapses on the beach and died of exhaustion, alone and by herself. Each story i lice a little vignette on the wall, and so in the fir couple of chapter is dry to take you up to the wall and lead ju see the stories and understand each of them as its own self. Because we stopped there. If we just told the stories wed never move into the middle of the room and figure out what the meaning of to the whole transcending the sum of its parts mooing be. Toerts a two and three do that. They try to come to an understanding what all of these stories add up to together. And what they add up is to a story of how formerly powerless and stateless people built alliances with the union army and the United States gov. T the alliances theyre bill wered un built were uneven, imperfect, and did not achiever. Everything they hopes they would but these alliances helped to win the war, helped to destroy slavery and redefined the relationship between the individual and the National Government in the United States. They redefined what citizenshipp meant, not just for themselves but for all americans. So part two and three of thiss book tell that story. And they hinge on two central insights. The first is that the risk, of reenslavement was very high throughout and even after the war and that was one of the things that mose surprised me. Ft the second insight is that the civil war was a refugee crisis civil war emaps base was a refugee crisis. Now, the first one, reenslavement. Most wars in World History make more slaves. Not fewer. And what i want that to sink in. Were so used to fact that the civil war ended slavery. We forget how likely it was no such thing would have happened, wars usually make more slaves. The one ended the institution of slavery in the United States. It was not inevitable that ill would do so and the story it did so irmuch more complicated than we naught and dont understandre it at all. Until we look at what is going on in these camps between former slaves and the union army. In fact three of this book tells the story. The second central insight, emancipation was a refugeens crisis, helps us see and understand things more clearly. One is conditions. What conditions were like in these refugee camps. What the conditions of exiting slavery were like for many people who exited slavery, and closest thing we have are refugee camps today. Re no anyplace you would want to be and today we have a red cross and a u. N. And there were no such things in the 1860s. So understanding the refugee crisis lends texture to their of what it wag like. Understanding what emancipation as a refugee crisis reminds us we have had refugee crises in u. S. History before. Refugees are a part of the american story. They are central to who we are. And third, i think underunderstanding emancipation as a refugee crisis helps thank you be stateless, to be uniquely vulnerable. People who study world war ii tell me that the refugees who were most vulnerable were the refugees without passports because you do not have the protection of a National Government. And thats exactly where these former slaves found themselves. At the moment they left slavery. The things they wanted out of freedom are the thing theyd always wanted. Awe top my for. The autonomy for the families and communities to care for theo people they cared about. T but slaveholders alwaysed a the power to deny them. In the 1860s they didnt change they ever minds and the slaves were into it told these things but what happened is that form irslaves as access to a power. That source of power was the union army and so these half million former slaves got themselves to that sour of power and they allied with the union army, they dug ditches. The did laundry. They nurse in hospitals, they built fortification, took care of livestock, the million and two things it takes to keep a 19th century arm in the field and in motion. When day did they staked a stronger claim to protection from the union army into the National Government that a slaveholder trying to overthrow the National Government. Before the war it was states and not the National Government at that time adjudicated citizenship and the war change that because of what happened in the camps. Er second of all, no longer limitedly race and that happened because of what went on in civil war contrabands camps and as a result of the civil war, citizenship involved rights protection and that happened partly because i went on in civil war contraband camps. Part two of the book tells the story of former slaves allying with the union army to end way, end slavery and redefineenship w citizenship which sounded like the end but that it here to parts to the book. Nd there are no two because is not the end because, as it turns out, neither ending slavery nor redefining citizenship was a once in for all kind of task. Ed so part three of the book is about early efforts to translate that Wartime Alliance between former slaves and the union army and National Government into a f peacetime alliance. And that translation resulted in the 14th amendment which i ased an imperfect bargain. So lets end today with a couple of thoughts on what is i hope this book will achieve. Id like it to help lay lead to a deeper understanding what it was really like to exit slavery to from being a slave to not bag slave. Id like it to make ity impossible to ignore exactly how great the threat of reenslavement what and how long that risk laughed. Id like lead to and understand hogue former slaves, women askr children, both of whom worked for the union arm request how they helped win the warm and ene slavery and also redefine citizenship for everybody and not just themselves. I would like if his book other other end appreciation for success and failure bound up in all of those things. None of those things, the end ago slavery, winning of the war, redefine of citizenship were triumphant. Seems structural forth forces destroy and and sometimes evil people just plain won. This abolition of slavery was one of the most revolutionary things ever to happen in the United States but but tragic tragic and reverseible. Our job is to protect it. Because it remains fragile, even today. And finally i would like this book to instill a appreciation for the definition of citizenship as an ongoing project. Sometimes citizenship borders conditioned and shames they shrink. Thats true in every era, including our own. And so defining citizenship,p, giving it meaning, in peopl