good morning again and thank you for joining our second session today. my name is what he register. i teach in the history program here. director of the project on slavery race and reconciliation. the institution's endeavored to not only understand a particular history, but the obligations that that history has had for us. it is my pleasure today to introduce our speakers and order of their appearance. first up this morning as professor tracy campbell at the university of kentucky. professor campbell received his ba from the university of kentucky and phd at duke remarkable and has a teaching history. he taught at mars hill and union colleges. kentucky, hebeen a has been recognized not only for his scholarship but especially for his skill as a classroom teacher. kiss the author of numerous articles and five major books, including most recently, his 2013 study of the gateway arch in st. louis, which he tellingly calls a biography. our is directly related to symposium today. the history of election fraud in american political tradition. this is a book that we need to take up today. it is not for the first time or even the second time. peril,"'s year of the meaning of which will become important to us today. voting rights under stress, soldiers, and race in the 1942 election. our second panelist is a author,r prize-winning offer hank klibanoff. at theed as an editor nation's most distinguished newspapers. 2007 book he co-authored journalistllow won the pulitzer prize for history that year. the new york times describes the race the as a richly textured and balanced narrative that reveals the strengths and weaknesses of the news media as well as the personal and contingent factors, the sudden negotiations, missed opportunities and sometimes broke matt gertz -- heroic efforts. this book needs to be read or reread today. emory undergraduates in investigating the history of the jim crow era in georgia by investigating unsolved or unpunished racially motivated crimes -- murders that happened in that state. that reflects the work of his journalistic career and leadership of the cold case project. lasthites only primaries guess and how it played out on the unyielding soil of georgia. these join me in welcoming this morning further insights and campbell.s, professor [applause] woody,pbell: thank you, for the very kind introduction. thank you to the university of the south for inviting me and for such a timely and remarkable gathering and to you, for your kind hospitality. run oning the trains time. we really appreciate it. i am going to talk about a snapshot this morning. i think it is a pretty revealing snapshot of the united states in a particular year and at a particular moment. the premise for my paper is straightforward. if you want to understand some , i think it is best to observe that when the country is under the greatest stress and when survival is on the line. just as individuals or families can undergo stress or trauma, so can countries. those moments exposed a person or a country's inherent strengths and flaws quite like nothing else. things tend to rise to the surface under that kind of pressure. 20th century, that stress was never greater than the year following the attack on pearl harbor. entry into world war ii, which is of course 1942. the way the country debated voting rights that year, at one time it conducted a national election. i think if we look at the context of it, it tells us a good deal about the fragile nature of american democracy and the way in which the 15th amendment was negated. collective narrative about 1942. i think we sometimes read history backward. we know we are going to win the war, so we gloss over some things. if we are going to look at 1942, i think it is helpful to understand it on its own terms. the collective narrative, which thisymbolized by portrait, kind of goes like this. after a little early panic and worry, the nation came together, built a massive production miracle, we cast partisan and sectional differences aside. once the allies turned back the japanese midway and landed in north africa, ultimate victory was in sight. at home and abroad we came together. unity was the common theme. "the greatest generation any society has ever produced." i think if we're going to understand 1942, we also have to see a different reality. this is a series of paintings by thomas dunne in 1942 in reaction to pearl harbor. he called about eight of these peril,gs "america in 1942." this was similar to other themes that were possible. a time when the federal government was selling insurance policies. people as far inland as indiana are buying these policies to make sure they were protected against any kind of foreign attack. at a time in which some in the government worried we might lose the war or areas along the coast or well inland could be subject to many time inacks, at a which president roosevelt called upon the nation to give dictatorial powers, this is a time when they wanted to make sure the work was not used to expand voting rights. that is what i want to focus on. two moments that happens in the fall of 1942 that i think are similarly instructive. one occurred in september. as congress considered an issue that seemed a rather straightforward matter without any of syria political motives, with the up -- i'll tear your political motives. congress allowed soldiers serving away from home to vote via absentee ballot. by this time in september, over 4 million americans were serving in the military, and almost all of him would not be home in their precinct. a time in which democracy at time was at stake, what better by to display character allowing those putting their lives on the line to vote for their leaders? legislators facing reelection were anxious to support the measure that supported veteran groups and families of soldiers. , but a representative of the third district in tennessee -- inserted an here -- amendment that waived the poll tax requirement from soldiers 8 southern states, this undermine american politics. if this could be waived, some worried it could be used as a wedge and outlaw other elections. that was a threat to many white southerners who felt elections were purely local affairs and such intrusions by congress were unconstitutional. representative sam hobbs of alabama called this an attack on their southern way of life and white supremacy. they actually said these things. if there is one thing about the 1940's, they just said it. there is no code. there was no trying to say what they actually met, and you will see what i mean in a few minutes. he said it was an attempt to cater to the soldier vote at the expense of the foundation of our democracy. since reconstruction, poll taxes were among some of the most effective ways, along with violence and literacy tests and the white primaries, of keeping african-americans from voting. here is a particular poll tax receipt from texas. i believe it is $1.75. most in the 1940's were between $1 or $2. the primaryd one in election, you had to make up for it. you can never get by without paying for it. the poll tax gets about 11 million people from voting. by 1940, it was estimated that 3% of african-americans in the south were registered to vote. whitesxes also kept poor from voting. about 66% of adults voted in nontax. taxedvoted in the states. a historian notes in 1940, georgia's edward cox had been elected to a seat by 5187 votes, while in washington state representative won his state with 147,000. on votingeir grip rights, southern democrats were elected time and time again. here is a cartoon about the poll tax. make out some of the figures, they might look familiar, because this was dr. seuss. he was a cartoonist that worked a lot with a periodical called "pm." through their iron grip on voting rights, southern democrats were elected time and time again. their subsequent seniority met chairmanships on crucial committee. in 1942, as we go to war, southerners chaired seven of the 10 most powerful chair committees, including agricultural appropriations, commerce, formulations, and roles. -- rules. one in the house was more post than john rankin. the 11-term representative salt dangerous elements approaching. "part of as was long-range, communistic programming to change our form of government." it would take out of the hands the power of white americans. rankin's argument against the billfold to win over a majority of his house colleagues, who passed the bill on september 9. theutraged rankin called bill nothing more than a scheme to abolish state government. he added the next step will be to abolish congress. i remind you, they actually said this. [laughter] dr. campbell: the senate passed a bill. senators tom connolly of texas and lester hill of alabama said in the process of approving the measure, they ruptured constitutional processing. opponents of the bill understood the political implications of denying soldiers the right to vote and were reluctant to wage a full-skill filibuster. they had to take their medicine at this particular moment. present roosevelt signed into law, which required the war and navy department's to distribute postal cards to members of the armed forces who can then request a ballot from their state. this process really meant it was too late to be operational on election day coming up and 48 days. is not quite over. i will get to it in just a moment. the roosevelt administration in the fall of 1942 has reason to worry. and a previous election in world war i in 1918, republicans won five senate seats and 25 house seats to take control of both houses. throughout 1932, voters were frustrated with a lot of things. the slow pace of the war, gas and food rationing, higher taxes, and congressional inaction on inflation. congress had moved swiftly earlier in the year to give themselves pensions, which produced another widespread outcry and quick reversal weeks later. may not have been on the ballot, it was becoming a referendum of sorts to his handling and the administration's handling of the war. fdr might use as wartime powers to cancel the election altogether. if all that was at stake, life magazine predicted the elections might be among the most fateful in u.s. history. evellup poll taken on the of the 1942 election showed americans favored democrats about 52 to 48. on election night, republicans shocked many observers by picking up 43 house seats, nine senate seat making it the greatest gain by the opposition party in midterm elections since 1918. you can see the majorities in both houses, how they struck particularly in the house where 267-165 spread was changed to margin.are 222-209 with a switch of just seven democrats in the house, republicans could defeat any measure. consequently, the power of the reactionary southern block increased. like john rankin and martin deese were elected to their house needs without any opposition. among the newly elected senators was mississippi's james o eastland, a wealthy plantation owner. was among eight southern democrats in the senate who won their general election without facing any opposition. the results of the 1942 elections were often interpreted in sweeping terms. , the chicago tribune which hated roosevelt, said "the people of this land had turned back the most terrible threat, which confronted them in their national history." time magazine was once. "no one can say the retrospective history exactly when one political movement dies and another is born, but anyone who lookedat the election last week and see that frank when roosevelt's n's new deal was sick." the success would combine the electoral college vote up 321 disasterlled potential or fdr or anyone else who might be thinking of running on the democratic ticket in 1944. interpreting the election in sweeping terms misses another point. the election witnessed the lowest turnout, 33.9% for a congressional race in the 20th century. lower than even the 2014 congressional election. although the soldier voting act of 1942 was passed in september, allowing soldiers to vote, only 28,000 actually could vote. less than 1% of those serving overseas. interpreting what the american people for our felt about 1942 is hard to get at from the election results. regardless of the turnout, the election had immediate consequences. two remaining agencies from the new deal, the wpa and the ccc, were quickly abolished. efforts to expand social security and medical insurance thawarted, .f the political winds were i think this hides underlying impulses. taken byle, in a poll fortune magazine in november, the outlines for what some people hopes were after the war provides a glimpse that i do not think a lot of americans understand. saidf americans polled they thought the government should collect enough taxes after the war to provide medical care for anyone who needed it. three out of four. the government to provide jobs for people if they were willing and able to work in case of a recession. -- 31.9% said that they wanted a law limiting the amount of money people could earn. roosevelt was proposing a $25,000 limit on incomes in 1942. when asked if he thinks some form of socialism would be a good thing or a bad thing, 25% said it would be good, 34% were not quite sure yet. that is one moment. the second moment when voting rights are exposed came after the election. teen the sena convened a house bill sponsored by a california democrat that died in 1941 but had sponsored this bill many months before hand to end all taxes altogether in federal elections. -- poll taxes altogether in federal elections. opposition in southern republicans. but it passed the house. when it came to the senate, it faced a filibuster, this time after the election without soldiers involved. southerners are ready to launch a filibuster. the filibuster was led by many people, including theodore bilbo of mississippi and richard russell of georgia. together with other in southern senators, they brought the senate to a standstill for seven days in november 1942. complete readings of the journal would demanded. this made it clear "if poll tax bill passes, next to be an effort to remove the education qualifications." "we will have no way of preventing negros from voting." richard russell defended reconstruction and the history of race relations in his state, fair-minded man who studies the history of the last 75 years we commend the south and the great work we have done." obviously, the professor thought you would not be a fair-minded man in this respect. another cartoon by dr. seuss about theodore bilbo. impass in the senate reach a dramatic moment on saturday, november 14 when and majority leader called for a quorum and ordered when some southerners left the hall, their arrest. one of those missing and was tennessee'sded was kenneth mckellar, saying being called a filibusterer holds no terror for me, adding he would work to his last breath to iniquitousthis measure." "our so-called leader is leading us straight into the republican party." barkley responded by saying "this bill's passage would -- 200,000 white people." fortunate farmers will think a long time before paying $1.50 when i'm running my views to. put shoes on their bare feet children" this caused mckellar to withdraw his name from a letter he had signed, along with several other senators, urging president roosevelt to nominate berkeley to the supreme court -- berkeley to the supreme art. the southern filibusterers knew their actions may be seen as obstructionist but not from the right constituents. senator george north of nebraska spoke out. fromponse came from and charles e simons of austin, texas. he said, you must not have very much to do except sticking your nose into the home affairs of states with have -- which have proven capable of running their own business as your home state. he urged senator norris to extend energies on things he doethat does not affect him. "we can get along without your help." the sponsors of the poll tax bill hoped the delaying tactics of a small minority of senators just days after american forces had landed in north africa might produce such outreach to intimidate them, but if anyone doubted the strength of the southern blot, they needed to look no further than mississippi, who claimed "we tend to keep control of our state." 23, the senate failed to invoke closure. the poll tax bill was killed. too many because southerners opposed to the bill and too many others were reluctant to limit senate debate. of the naacp was clear. he said america is chasing the bitter fruits of a new succession, a rebellion against constitutional government by a handful of outlaws who have successfully defied the will of the people and a majority of the united states senate. of all quotes, this is my favorite. in reaction to the, theodore as much ated, "i am soldier in the preservation of the american way and americans team of government as the boys who are fighting and dying." filibuster made him is patriotic and eurgerheroic as the boys fighting. black voting rights remains nonexistent in 1942. the military remained segregated. we know about blood supplies that were segregated. although discrimination in hiring practices were supposed to have been eliminated, little had really changed. during the congressional debate, presented of lewis ludlow of indiana said, "what a travesty. negros by the thousands to die and fight for freedom by saying they should have no part of freedom at home." the gop's november triumph in the aftermath of the poll tax filibuster gave its party hope that political winds were changing. the new republican party chair understood the southern block constituted a promotable slice of the roosevelt coalition. with the evidence supplied by the filibuster, they knew these crucial players. race trumped everything. for anyone looking at evidence of the increasing dissatisfaction that the democratic party from one of its own, they need look no further than alabama governor frank dixon, an outspoken critic of the party and the president, a nephew of thomas dixon, author of the klansmen, which birth of a nation was based on. at the core of his righteous anger was the threat to white supremacy that had played out over the preceding months over the poll tax. in defending him, dixon drew his line in the sand and said "the federal government is tampering with the one thing that we cannot permit. will not permit. whatever the price to ourselves." he said "the social structure of the south has been built and can only and you're on the principle of segregation." he said, "it implies separation of the races," and then he talked about the politics of it. problem in alabama is different than the problem in any other segment of the world. this percentage means the balance of power.in many alabama counties , there is four to five to one. " he said, "either wightman control them, or there will be the ruin of the south." for dixon, segregation was dearer than the four freedoms that the president said were at the heart of world war ii. six years later, dixon gave the keynote address at the state's writes convection or the dixiecrats, a black of four than summer democrats who had bolted over civil rights -- southern democrats who had bolted over civil rights. their actions did incur in a vacuum in 1948. had been saidion many times on many occasions i think in conclusion -- i want to do something different. i want to ask a question that i think historians need to ask. it is a two word question. relevance? why is it significant? just oneto provide small example. , norman greenade might have been considered a for what you did on an alabama bus in october of 1942 just as the soldier vote bill was being debated. instead, she was lucky she did not die. she was an army nurse stationed in tuskegee veterans administration hospital. she had volunteered for overseas duty serving the united states military personnel. she wanted to go shopping in montgomery, alabama. when she tried to board a public bus, she was instructed to leave. when she refused, she was arrested. police van in a where for officers be her, broke her nose and roger and then arrested her for disorderly conduct. she was later released when authorities learned she was in the military. there were no charges filed against those who assaulted her, not even an apology. randolphent provoked to write to bankhead of alabama, protesting the brutal assault. he hoped that the senator would use his authority to bring the culprits to justice. georged, who had urged marshall not to bring any african-american soldiers to the south did not respond. he did not respond because he did not have to respond. assaultsignore such and the daily humiliations and injustices endured by alabama's african-american citizens whose nearly one million residents comprised over a third of the state's population without any worry of paying for it on election day. in fact, he won reelection. he was one of those eight southern senators who won without any opposition. his silence, coupled with the inaction against the authorities than the straits wife the tax was so central in maintaining the power and policies of people like bankhead, russell, and why the filibuster led him to compare his actions to the boys dying on guadalcanal. for civilfighting rights in 1942 such as hancock and benjamin mays and charles s asnson, they understood keenly as bilbo have this poll needed for the maintenance. they would other african-american leaders met racialm to discuss issues in the south. amanifesto came out of this, dismissed or forgotten document who discussed -- that discussed how the war had sharpened racial disparities in the united states and the south. the first item on their agenda was the matter of voting. as aregard the ballot safeguard of democracy and called for the abolition of the poll tax and all forms of discriminatory practices, division of the law and intimidation of citizens seeking to exercise their right to franchise." they said " in an hour of an efforteril, is being made to defeat the negroes first and axis powers later." of whating the context was going on in 1942, though civil rights leaders who met in the room understood that voting rights -- 70 years after the ath amendment were foundational demand that did not exist in large parts of the nation. thank you. [applause] >> don't make me follow him. that was great. this you for conference and to all who participated, i think this is fantastic. i am honored to be a part of it. noticedthis place, i that when tracy came down, i was having a big breakfast and he got a cup of coffee and soup. don't you need more fuel? -- do youat me like know me that well that you can ask this? gloria comes down and eat breakfast. he says it's ok gloria, take your time. i am hank klibanoff. project that you're going to see now. that me show you one thing. this is the website of the georgia civil rights cold cases project. it is only undergraduate students -- the law school has recently approached me with big plans. hank: we examined these unsolved punished racially motivated murders. they took place in georgia from world war ii to the late 1960's and through the prism of these cases we examined georgia history, southern history and by ultimate extension, natural history. each of these cases represent something different. we have the james frazer case, in 1958 for killed driving a 1958 chevrolet impala. you know the narrative that can go with that. man --a case of a young a c hall, killed in 1962. example ofs an police overreaction, poor police training and so on. that we another section are developing more on having to do with the medical neglect that often accompanied the brutality cases. professionalh positions who had an opportunity to extend or save the lives of african americans who were the subject of brutality failed to do so and sometimes refuse to do so. clear, this is a project not aimed at who did it. we know who did it in most cases. in most cases, they are all dead. in one, we found one who was still alive but then he died before we got to him. we are examining the why. there are big themes that we do everything we are talking about here and things we have talked about in the past conference and things we will talk about in future conferences. if the students come away thinking that they know more about who did it, i don't think that does them much good. today we will talk about the case of my xanax and --isaiah nixon. -- he was a map killed three hours south of atlanta. 28 yearsfather of 6, georgia voter and a member of the naacp. on the left is a man named lonnie smith. an african-american man living in texas and wanted to vote in the democratic party primary. this is in the early 1940's. he was willing to sue the united states supreme court to win the right to vote in the democratic party primary. particularly for students that won't get the significance of that, the south democratic party devote es. the only republican party members were african americans and a few strange birds we grew up within the south. my kind of birds i might add. southern that a accoladec party would say to an african-american -- you don't need to vote in the democratic primary. we let you vote in the big election. the general election. that is when the final decision is made so you will get your site in the final election. the african-americans were smart enough to say that the general election is irrelevant. all the decisions are made in the primary. so lonnie went to the supreme court and said you are not a private club and for the statees of electing officeholders, you cannot exclude african-american voters. >> they say we are private. >> no you are not when you are collecting state officials. they struck down the texas law april, 1934, this was seemingly the law of land except in georgia which seems to want to resist all of these decisions. mississippi and alabama have resistances. they look at their law, they think it might be vulnerable and they might underline the word really, really a private club to try to established that we are different. -- establish that we are different. a barber goes to the muscogee county courthouse to vote. when he walked in, a detective grabbed him and said what you ?hink you're doing he found himself a lawyer and the white lawyer said to questions -- do you really want to sue the democratic party? do you know what you're doing? he did. he took the case forward and he forcing muscogee county to say to georgia to allow blacks to vote. this causes anonymous consternation in georgia. two stories that come about, some say that -- i am checking this on one. the other is in the congressional record when asked how are we going to stop them from voting and he gives a speech which means how -- the only way to stop them from voting now is the metaphor. when jean talmage -- the three term governor of georgia -- when he is asked by the exalted --lops of the ku klux klan what will we do? now they can vote. piece of on a paper -- pistols. he hands that to the exalted cyclops. that was the atmosphere in the early 1940's. the supreme court decision on that comes down. the supreme court doesn't decide that the fifth circuit of a courageous when federal judge in king's powerld time to vote. u.s.ts upheld by the fifth circuit court of appeals. the supreme court doesn't hear it -- they hand on the decision that they will not hear it in april 1946 just before eigh georgia gubernatorial election. -- having started as a populist who is fundamentally supportive of the new deal, he has fallen off that wagon pretty seriously. he is campaigning solely on a white supremacist platform. --ould like to go to hear let's give you a sound of what sounded like. crowdant to thank this for coming out and stating dge is theat talmage only candidate in this race who is championing a white democratic primary in georgia. that is the truth and the whole truth. some say that it is the law and negros will vote in the primary. wednesday, i say to all those here that someo of the negroes will vote. s will vote. but they want to vote in the primary for the next four years. hank: that was in georgia. eugene talmadge is running, he wins his fourth term. some of you know the story after that, it is entertaining. deepwas suffering from alcoholism. 1946, before two things can happen, he dies. the two things that did not happen, the feds who were swarming the state trying to to chargeh evidence him with voter suppression of black votes are unable to bring enough evidence and indict him before he dies. the other thing he is able to do before he dies is take the oath of office. it throws georgia into this turmoil because they don't have a governor, it is the first time in 1946 that georgia has elected a lieutenant governor. the lieutenant governor says we just went through the whole process of establishing succession in the state. i become the governor now. governor said i'm not giving up the governor's office, not until we figure out what this will be. they are both claiming it. the talmadge forces are very wiley. they knew that he was ill. they got enough people to cast write-in votes for gene's son herman. herman came in a close second. intoegislature runs session and says by our rights, herman talmadge ought to be governor. so three people are running for governor. he takes control of the governor's mansion and the state capital and says i want to thank governor arnold for his fine service to the state and i have called in the state highway patrol and they have returned him to his home where we wish him the best of luck. it does get settled by the state supreme court which says the lieutenant governor is correct. wewill be the governor and will set a special election in 1948. now we will focus on what happened in 1948. as you know, 1948 is a very critical time. you have harry truman running for election in his own right for the first time. he has lost the support of the right because of the dixiecrat's. he seems to be in danger of losing the entire south. because of henry wallace's breakaway, you have the left breaking away from him, he doesn't seem to have a chance. on top of all of this, what did he do? he becomes the first president of the united states to speak to the naacp. he does it on the steps of the lincoln memorial. there is a little sound here. it is my deep conviction that we have reached a turning point in the long history of our to guarantee freedom and equality to all of our citizens. recent events in the united states and abroad have made us realize that it is more important today than ever before to ensure that all americans enjoyed his rights -- enjoyed these rights. when i say all americans, i mean all americans. >> as we know, harry truman does get elected. how does this play out in georgia? they are going to resist. they have been part of the walkout of the democratic convention. let's go back to isaiah nixon. here isstudents do, their textbook, 234 pages of documents that we have gotten through the fbi freedom of information act request. it is a lot of federal memos, a lot of back-and-forth, you develop a narrative and what you find out -- a lot more from here than you did from the news clips at the time -- it wasn't that widely covered -- what happens in 1948 when he is voting in the governor's race. the naacp in montgomery county was only two years old. it was growing there, one record said there was 84 black members of the naacp in a county of 3000 people total. that was after one year, that was pretty helpful for them. i have decided that they will be supporting herman -- hermann talmadge is running against them. thompson.in they decided to gather at the polling place, as they are gathered, a group of black men on that morning, the sher riff elect sees them over. john harris had won them over. and john harris goes back to this gaggle of black men waiting to go to vote. the black men say "john, what did claude say to you?" he said if i know what is good for me, i will vote today. they said what did you say to him? i told him that i came here to vote. that is what i'm going to do. he went ahead and voted. carter, a father of 10 children. all threeiah nixon, of them voted. john harris suffered from a threat. carter was stopped on the side of the road and so brutally caren -- he gets medical and within a very short. of time, he has picked up his entire family and moves them to pennsylvania. then there is isaiah nixon. he was back at his farm later in the day having voted. had --en his wagon, he he had taken his wagon. farmother that owned the that they farmed begged him not to go, she knew what would happen. he said i have to do this. later that day, two white men show up at his farm and said they wanted to talk to him. they had guns. them, he hadknew grown up with them. those of us who grew up in the southern culture could understand this. table.d dinner at his they played with him and now they showed up with guns and asked if he voted. he said i did. who did you vote for? >i voted for that thompson guy. they said that go for a ride. he said i am not going for a ride. it, he knewn't do that meant he would be beaten. when he steps back, jim johnson shoots him three times. isaiah nixon's wife stood on fall,rch and yelled fall!, he falls. drags him up into the farm house, put him to bed and we know all of this from two primary sources. one is his daughter, dorothy. she was six years old at the time and saw it all, we found her. i brought her to every commit emory tostudents -- meet with our students. she is very honest about what she doesn't remember. the other source we have is some newspaper clips at the time. --after hie is beaten up, he gets care and goes to the hospital where isaiah nixon is. he had to go to counties away -- two counties away. he hears the whole story from isaiah nixon about what happened. drives to his car and the atlanta fbi office and talks and talks and tells him everything he knows about what his own experience the day before and what he heard from isaiah nixon. there becomes this terrific document that delineates everything that happened. isaiah nixon, on his second day in the hospital, dies in cla xton. -- notriff is very clear the sheriff elect, the current sheriff that will soon go out of office. doubt thatre was no it was because he voted. isaiah nixon's family is traumatized. who would not be? they get discovered by the pittsburgh courier. those of you who know the history of the black press know that that is not nothing. when you are discovered by the pittsburgh courier -- this is the newspaper that one black forort -- won black support entry into ww2. they played a monumental role in these things. when they adopted a family and build a crusade, it was huge. they find the nixon family and begin writing about them. the family buries isaiah nixon and then they flee. they flee to jacksonville, florida. we did not flee, we were not in a hurry. afraid, there was other way to describe why they had to get out of there. so we bring dorothy next to the nixon to the class and i want my students to go down there and do the research and do what they can. only three of them can go on the particular day. we go to the courthouse and we do a lot of searching. this man named james harris shows up, i prearranged this. he shows us how to get to the cemetery. is buried.h nixon the family has not been able to site for 67ial years. they can't find the headstone. others have gone there before to look for it. family has been coming back for years and can't find it, there is this whole in their heart, no place they can stop to pay tribute and homage and respect to isaiah nixon. harris,ere and meet mr. james harris. the first question is in all these fbi records, there is a man who voted that day named john harris. he says that was my daddy. he tells a fascinating story. it is layered with complications he liked to the sheriff elect. he says we do not take that as a threat, we took it as a warning that something was going down today. it gets a little bit complicated, here the students are in the courthouse looking up records and they're looking at old copies of the montgomery monitor, the weekly newspaper, it avails nothing because they do not cover the story. professor nearly dies on the spot. you can see the letter is not --ly open and i st. lucie fromluciey, get down there." mr. harris shows us how to get to the cemetery. it is 17 miles outside of the county seat and three miles on a dirt road. we are killing time, nobody has found the rave site and 67 years and i said mr. harris, your dad was buried here, right? he said yes. on.ppened to have my iphone as mr. harris is taking me to his daddy's gravesite and you hear all to the side, one of my students says i found it! we keep walking. mr. harris is taking us to his father's gravesite. my studentsr stutter. nixon'sk i found mr. gravesite." she found a gravesite -- a headstone that had been there forever. what the family never noticed was that there was a slab of cement that came off the headstone. been overgrown in grass there was much, it was under some leo trees, it has been discovered and as she stood there, the wind had blown the leaves. s.e could see and i and an she knew he died september 10. pretty soon we are all on our hands and knees. i had a bottle of water in my car and we're edging it and trying to your without. we call his daughte -- clear it out. we call his daughter on facetime. she know how to use it -- knew how to use it. nursinghad gone on to and got her masters in nursing and had been a psychiatric nurse all her life. it was against the odds. that was november 20 of 2015 in january, dorothy was able to come up to the grave. she waited until the season was over so she went to everyone of her daughter's games. for the first time, she saw her father's grave sites and she was six years old. she bent down and touched his name and burst into tears and buried her face in her son's chest as anyone would. then she had some remarks to make. there is sound on this. is a three minute story and then i will -- it is a three minute story and then i will conclude. ♪ -- they never seen this found everything they could .bout my dad [indiscernible] i heard the video that hank sent. it was amazing. they worked hard enough to find his grace, also been visited the -- they visited the site. i saw them all on their knees trying to clear it off. somebody found a bottle of water. thank you all. for the amount of information that you found. i know you still have a lot to share with me. it is phenomenal. the whole thing is surreal. yes it is. first called me, i had a lot of anger. i still have a lot of anger. soer talking to your group, me of that was released. i want to let you know now that alleviated. thank you all for that. i can resolve this and settle it, looking at this, it is unreal. i can't say anymore. all that is coming to my mind is thank you. thank you. thank you. hank: she has now replaced the headstone with this. final thoughts. a video person there, we did not have time. the wall street journal was there, they had a story coming up and i have a daughter who does film editing. i called up in boston and said i am shipping you my iphone, can you help me edit? we posted on the website vimeo. it had her name. she calls me later and says call from a man who says i am the nephew of the man who killed him. who can i call? to says "dad, you got me deep in." he was calling because he knew none of this. he isbroken about it, brokenhearted by what his uncles did and he wanted to apologize. students and, some someone i am working with at the public radio station went down and met with him. he did apologize. i did say that we don't teach who did it. this is about students learning a lot, the two men who killed him pleaded self-defense. they say he pulled a gun on us. he did not. the reliability of the self-defense alibi, the tendency of juries to see black criminality -- why was this still all-white juries? there were a lot of different themes that come into play here, the concentration of rural power and at the time. --icial conflict of interest trial, --who saw the it is pervasive with academic opportunities and pathways. thank you for your attention. [applause] >> we have time for some back,ons, starting in the here. >> i have a methodological question. he said he used as your primary sources -- fbi files and newspaper documents. where do you get the names in the first place? how do you find who to go looking for? >> the fbi documents will contain a lot of names. hank: that is one way. deeper, one of the most amazing things that has happened to academic researchers is the digitization of the records. my students were going through microfilm. that helps. dover carter, i met with his 10 kids who moved to philadelphia. i met with six of them. they are all in their 70's and 80's and recently we went to the family reunion down there. they all give you names. when imet james harris said to dorothy -- my student want to go to the cemetery. she said you have to talk to james harris. james harris is fascinating to us. he gave us a lot of names. i called a guy who was an attorney in athens. where my heart races is with the prospect that some somewhere -- somewhere out reporterere is a court doing whatever she did and i had she idea that even though has long since dead, she had a big closet of all her notes from cases. she turned over the court reporting business to her daughter and then her daughter did it to her daughter and somewhere down in montgomery county is a home that has an attic full of these handwritten transcripts of the case that we will still someday find to get the testimony. i need to knock on about 3000 more homes. >> i want to say that those are two of the most powerful presentations at a conference i've ever seen. i'm really grateful and impressed. >> i'm grateful to the conference for not having me follow. >> those were amazing, i have a question for each of you. tracy, the question for you is about political incentives. that they introduced the poll tax in tennessee and it was berkeley who was against the fromthat -- filibuster tennessee. that is not exactly who you predicted to take us positions -- those positions. is that because they had national aspirations? it doesn't seem like they would be the most obvious people. >> it is hard to talk about motivation, i would say with he wanted fairness. he did not wanted to make it -- wants to make it aboutke it race. you can't paint with a broad brush also the politicians and think they are all theodore bilbo's or richard russell. a whitet make this into or black thing. it is a lot more complicated. >> i want to ask you about the fbi, hank. one of the interesting things -- they wouldr ii not have been any federal investigation. i wanted to know how seriously the fbi took this. >> you will get mixed reviews on this. if you look at the pressure to do more, it seems to come out of washington doj. this is from an assistant attorney general. it is being handled out of the savanna office rather than the atlanta office, that can make a difference. one u.s.ms to be assistant attorney who says we should not get involved in this because we will really mess up the state prosecution. if we big foot, it will backfire. that may have been his cover, he later oedoes something that is hurtful. -- thealso say that storylines about dover carter and isaiah nixon make their way in a memo about conspiracy because the same people who beat up dover carter and a couple of --ers who are all related the memo that those of two uber -- goes up to hoover says that this should be reviewed together to make it more important at the federal level. hoover deletes the word "conspiracy." he says you can go with the murder case but we are not doing this together. to say that ik have great respect for my students, these are undergrads. they plan to be large animal vets. --ill say that the student it has changed her life. she went and did an internship at the carter center. not know how to changa e a life until then. an sat score in the 99th percentile. the senator of tennessee ran for president unsuccessfully. theas a chief sponsor of rights act.ivil he had a very consistent history in this regard. >> maybe he thought it was the right thing to do. we were talking about reconstruction and his amendments, sometimes representative moxie comes down to good faith -- democracy comes down to good faith. when we have to do this ourselves, the right thing may not be what some people would want but sometimes it is good faith. >> a question for professor campbell. do you have any information on the volume of the soldier vote in 1944? professor campbell: i have been working on 1942. it was not great, let's put it that way. it was a little bigger than 42. it is easy to look up. last thing, when the fbi and the doj are sending memos that say now that it is over, we want you t ascertain if it was a bona fide trial. based on the interviews with people including the judge, it turns out the assistant attorney in savannah says it was a bona fide trial. i have known this judge all my life, he is an honorable man, he would not allow a miscarriage of justice. they all withdraw. the feds withdraw completely. a student of mine has found the speeches the judge was giving at that time on behalf of gene and then herman talmadge. we have some work to do. >> i am glad you mentioned>> the pittsburgh area. courier. the question i have is about the response from the white community. when the murder trial was time, i was third approached with a question by the media -- do you think we should let this lie? wou eopen these old nds? what general response have you received from these white communities that live in these counties and have the children that are the children of those who perpetrated these crimes living in the same county with the children who are the victims of the crime? what have you seen to be the response? >> i worked on a project with people like jerry mitchell. beforehand, we came across that more and more in those cases than ours. mind, ithings come to is the most difficult thing for many of these families. from thoseid not com towns -- move from those towns said i saw the men who killed my daddy every day. we had to still live here. the sister of the man who died for driving a nice car was a waitress in the next to the courthouse. and those guys would come in there every day and she would serve coffee to the men who killed her daddy. for african american perspective, this was daily torture. there was a white editor of a newspaper down in franklin county, mississippi who says why are you looking into this? that was a long time ago, we get along with our colored people now. all you will do is stir them up. -- doug jones -- who prosecuted the two .irmingham church murderers some people would ask him about this. " are you telling me that if 40 years from now, the marines are fine with us, the laden living in you say "poorowill guy?" why would your response be any different to any of these other guys? said we are a very contentious nation, we are a nation of 50 sovereigns. we have different laws for everything. whether it is drivers licenses, hunting seasons, we have different laws governing everything, we are contentious. the one thing every state agrees on is that there is no statute of limitations on murder. we are unanimous on that. we are unanimous in our belief that no one who ever commits murder should ever go to sleep tonight without worrying that the next day there could be a and theytheir door could be discovered for a murder that had long since been forgotten. orther you are for it against it, that is the way it is right now. i say that to say to people that we are in agreement in that. it is the examination of these cases that leads to the pa yment of that price. every civil rights case that has been read prosecuted has been because of a journalist. do thisnd of mine who at syracuse law -- it is true. after this initiative was developed in 2007, he was asked if he had a list of these cases. is that i will get you one. he goes to the law center and this list was never intended for big national publication and it is a messy list. they have three kids in the justice department -- they have the threelist who had students killed at south carolina state in orange break in 1968. -- they had it written as it were killed in orangeburg, geor gia. munro, georgian nd two in monro, louisiana. >> thank you for this presentation. i have a missile at -- methodological question as well. i am struck by a question about how difficult it can be to find these sorts of cases. the first thing i thought was you could talk to any black person over the age of 70 to find these cases. i am wondering about the tension between these cases as individual being framed as individual instances of violence. the tension between our propensity to think of individual victims and individual perpetrators. the tension between that and larger institutional, political realities. context ofs in the jim crow and pervasive racial violence. i was wondering how you navigate that dynamic in the project? it is tricky but it is doable. from one perspective, a lot of it has to do with -- i talked this for several years with a professor of african american studies. he has gone to northwestern. i am teaching at back on my own. it is heavily a writing course. we are teaching how to write. if you're right about james brazier and you only write about james brazier and you pick up leon -- african americans who were killed for driving nice cars, you are missing the points. from the other side, from the i don'tthe perpetrator, know what possessed me for the --st part -- the first class this is an exercise, we gave this one group the lyrics to a bob dylan song. it was about a killing, in w hich he is portraying him as a pawn of the white elite. i remember very clearly when william bradford hughley went into mississippi and interviewed to lawyers -- two lawyers. he says that these lawyers could not care less about milo and brian, they have done their job. theyhave done the job wanted them to do. i am not trying to paint it as entirely that but i want them to know that everyone represents something much larger than themselves. we are sorting through the difficulty of understanding why jim and john johnson who grew up with isaiah nixon -- jim referr ed to him as his best friend, pulled a gun out and killed him. they were bad drinkers. maybe they were drunk that day. we are not fully understanding it but we are in pursuit of it. does that come close to answering? i would like to thank our powerful for two very and memorable presentations this morning. i have learned so my, i thank you for that -- i have learned so much, i think you for that. >> you are watching american history tv, 48 hours of programming on american history every weekend on c-span3. follow us on twitter at two spend history for information on our schedule and to keep up with the latest history news. >> next on the presidency, joe wiegand gives life to theodore roosevelt in a portrayal. he recounts the 26th president's life and times, including his unexpected ascension to the white house after william mckinley's assassination. this is just over an hour. >> i am john elliff, president of the lincoln g