Brought to the tasks. They are truly visionaries. It is unfortunately dont have the opportunity of having this conference in the new museum space. But when you look over at the National Museum of African American history and recognize that a few short years ago, there was nothing there, and what lonnie has accomplished is mindboggling. The idea that lonnie and jim have had about making this engagementand an with the past as a central aspect of opening the museum to the American Public is really quite terrific. I must say i feel uneasy standing up here at this moment. This is the last session of a long conference day. And as stimulating as the conference has been thus far, from my own experience, i know what happens at this point [laughter] everyone is sort of flagging. Youre thinking about fresh air. You are thinking about a drink. And are probably exhausted at having all sorts of people appear chattering away. The good news is i think you will find the presentations in this session very interesting and provocative, and that it will seem well worth the extra time you have been asked to devote. This is an especially interesting moment to reflect on the question of African Americans and their relationship to capitalism. It is not incidental that capitalism has been an important part of our discussions from the first sessions at this conference. It will necessarily hover over all of our doings. On the one hand, the past duty years have seen few years have seen growing a literature on capitalism in the United States. This, after several decades of relative inattention. On the other hand, capitalism itself has been subjected to a searching political criticism, the likes of which we have not witnessed since the 1960s or perhaps since the 1930s. What to make of this . There can be little doubt american capitalism in its has fed offl arcs of the bodies of African Americans in a variety of wellknown and often devastating ways. Later hyper exploited the of enslaved and free men, women, and children, driving the countrys Economic Growth at crucial historical moments. It has disrupted black families and communities through forced relocation, seasonal employment, and underemployment, and a variety of legal devices. American capitalism has confined black workers to regional and local labor markets where they long received the lowest of wages and suffered the greatest of vulnerabilities. It has benefited from the use of black convict labor in some of the most dynamic, modernizing sectors of the economy, especially the postcivil war southern economy. American capitalism has contributed to the construction of the edifice we know as jim crow. It has created a large black underclass whose prospects for escape are extremely limited. And it has helped turn criminality and mass incarceration into sources of profit as well as social control. Now the papers and presentations this afternoon certainly make this perspective abundantly clear. But they also suggest the howlex and dynamic complex and dynamic the black relationship with capitalism has been. Indeed, they remind us capitalisms developmental arcs have themselves been shaped by black struggles for freedom that would be meaningful, for opportunities that could be rewarding culturally as well as economically, for empowerment at their places of work, and for political access that might influence public policy. The papers also remind us that African Americans both seized occasions to turn the instruments and logics of capitalism to their own advantage and charted out alternatives to those logics and instruments either to contest or evade capitalisms full embrace. , itcan American History seems to me, offers a distinct and compelling Vantage Point from which to understand how american capitalism emerged, how it came into crisis eventually, how it was transformed in a corporate direction, how it was required in moments of crisis to move along some social democratic paths, and how its relationship to the state at all levels was almost perpetually rearranged. Let me offer a few examples. African American History as no other shows that american capitalism is only part of a global system of social and economic relations. There is no such thing as american capitalism without the global context and set of interconnections that make possible the accumulation of labor and other vital resources. Is inn American History economic and other terms by definition transnational history. And it demands that we think in very expensive ways expansive ways in whatever work we do. African American History almost gives an eye into how the market operates. Mythologies that depict the market as a trance Historical Institution in which all parties seem to behave according to sets of transnational rules. The African American transition out of slavery is him omatic in diplomatic in with various products of struggle among actors who want very different things. Former slaves wanted land and independence. For slave owners wanted submission and near absolute control, something is close to slavery as possible. Neither wished to barkett in market terms bargain in market terms. Neither got what they wanted. In some sense of a labor market, when it did emerge, was the outcome of intense and often violent battles. African American History demonstrates as well that nature,sm, by its very generates formidable opposition and even if the opposition does createsy succeed, it new fields of force and requires new diversion. African americans failed to win land reform in the civil war era. But they struggled in many ways to loosen the grips of the labor market, to acquire land, to reconstitute their families and communities, and to disentangle themselves from the tentacles of capitalist instruments and exploiters. And created their own towns immigration societies. Eventually, they built national and International Political movements organized around the goal of defeating european imperial powers in africa, the caribbean, and elsewhere around the globe, and of advancing the cause of social justice everywhere. At the same time, African American history shows that capitalism, like any social system, makes for hierarchies and contradictions within the population it feeds upon. We are all well aware of the important forms of social differentiation that developed among African Americans, beginning with their enslavement that continue to structure their communities, at times in politically consequential if not convulsive ways. That we tend to pay less attention to the actors and institutions that defy the representation of those committees. Those who make their peace with the capitalist order and seek to benefit from it, who themselves exploit members of their communities and who effectively build underground economies of goods and services, many of them that are simultaneously valuable to African Americans and often essential to the running of the larger capitalist order. Finally, African American history deepens our understanding of the intersections of race and class and of the discourses of protest that the development of capitalism has produced and reproduce. African americans have composed of the American Working class as both slaves and free people for longer than any other social or ethnic group in the country. In American Working class and American Labor history cannot be understood apart from either African Americans or the racial s to shins racialization which their struggles have given rise. Their critiques of slavery and the slave trade, their aspirations for a different sort of freedom than either their owners or the federal state intended. Their demands for selfgovernance and for power as workers, and their ideas of how social justice might be inactive through enacted through the mechanisms of the state have been central to how the problems of capitalism have been framed and how major reforms have been pursued. Programs thathave give you detailed biographies of our many participants, i will only briefly introduce the presenters in the order they will be presenting. The first will be adrienne petty, who holds a phd from Columbia University and is currently on the faculty at the city college of new york. She is a historian of the south and of rural people in the United States and is the author most recently of standing their ground Small Farmers in South Carolina since the civil war. And she will be talking to us about African Americans and the enduring quest for land. She will be followed by shane white, who is at the end of the table, who holds a phd from the university of sydney where he is also on the faculty. He has written widely on the history of African Americans in the United States and is the author most recently of prince of darkness the untold starting of Jeremiah Hamilton, wall streets first black leaner. Millionaire. He will be speaking about the masonic Grocery Association and other stories of black business. By ericbe followed arnesen, who holds a phd from Yale University and is on the faculty of George Washington university. He has written important books on African American and southern labor history and is currently completing a biography of a Philip Randolph and will be talking about pursuing economic emancipation, black workers, and the labor question in the 20th century. And finally, William Julius wilson is a distinguished sociologist and social critic who is currently University Professor at harvard and at the kennedy school. Author of many important studies on African American life, race, and class in modern america. s most recent book is more than just race being black and poor in the innercity. And he will be talking about innercity blackmails the left black black males engagement with urban capitalism. Let me add that there are two bloggers. One from Cornell University and Elizabeth Clark lewis from howard university. I thank them very much for offering to do this. I should add, and it is sort of for me to do this because i dont understand blogging or tweeting, but the fact of the matter is for those of you who you will get posts immediately, you will not unless and theye tweeting have nothing to do with this organization. The bloggers will be posting comments about the session, and they should be up within the next couple of days. And they can be accessed at that point. I thank you and welcome, adrienne petty. [applause] adrienne petty good afternoon. I want to thank James Grossman and lonnie bunch, steven hahn, everybody. I am so honored and humbled to be here today, especially with my amazing copanel. This is a homecoming for me in many ways because i am from the washington area. 15 years ago, i was a fellow the nationaluseum, museum of American History, where i worked with pete daniels. 30 years ago, i remember visiting the field to factory exhibit. That was curated i believe by spencer crew. When the professor was talking earlier about these different trajectories we think of when we think about African Market history from slavery to freedom African American history from slavery to freedom, from wherever to wherever, feel to factory is another one. I think we are going in field to factory order in our presentations. It was an exhibit that traced the history of the great migration from the current the less southern countryside to northern cities. While i remember finding the exhibit incredibly moving, what jumped out to me was the lack of focus on people like my grandparents who were farm owners. The exhibit was not alone in overlooking these farmers. Most scholars have dismissed black farmers when they do talk asut them as an anomaly and the Success Story of a privileged few. The late Armistead Robinson called for more study of landowning farmers. People did not immediately answer his call. Now of course, i would be remiss if i did not mention carter woodson, Debbie Beatty boy debbie b du bois, and many other early scholars that did not receive the credit due to them who wrote about black farmers and owners excessively. But more recent scholars have not. Over the last 15 years, this has changed. There is much more attention to black landowners. I think it is as a result of the 1999 settlement of the pig lawsuit. Us glickman the new Research Reveals way Land Ownership was much more widespread than we have acknowledged and much more important to the black freedom struggle then we have ever imagined. It reveals most black farm owners were struggling for land to resist, engage, and confront the advance of american capitalism. So they were embracing property relations of capitalism in order to escape the social relations of capitalism. For the former slaves, Land Ownership was essential. Many people have referred to this. They gained control of land to be integral to their lives as emancipated people and to their childrens future. The government swiftly betrayed the free peoples aspirations for land, but also gave white farmers opportunities to become landowners through various homestead acts and other instruments. Despite federal betrayal and violent resistance, African Americans quest for land did not end. A significant number of afghan americans managed to buy land by pouncing on slim opportunities. One example of this was in North Carolina ready migration of turpentine production to georgia during the late 19th century cleared the way for some sharecroppers, both black and white, to buy land for the first time. And that is part of the story i tell in my book standing their ground. We are also beginning to appreciate how central black women were to land acquisition. Women and children often ran the farm while men held jobs in other places, on other farms, in other lines of work. In addition to playing a managerial role, many black women took the lead in purchasing farms. They were the ones scouting out auction sales. They were often illiterate ones who were reading the ads and finding out what was going on they were often the illiterate ones who were reading the ads and finding out what was going on. Womens house of production and sales of surplus Farm Products also played a crucial role in making Land Ownership possible. There is a woman who one of the students in my project interviewed who kept a garden. She was featured in a newspaper article for keeping a garden for over 40 years of her adult life. But she credited her grandmother with showing her that way of subsistence garden we of living everybody is talking about now that black women, white women, in the rural south they have been living like that for years. You also have to think about the countless other black women in the south who never did attain land, but nevertheless also drew on these strategies of keeping gardens in order to make a living and have a decent life. The savings women created by keeping gardens, taking in laundry, sewing their own close, all of those contributed to the Remarkable Growth in the number of farm owners. In 1865, the number of black farm owners in the Southern States was negligible. In 1920, there were 220,000 farms in the country owned by 1 4 of thericans or farms operated by black people. Failede census numbers to capture the extent of Land Ownership because the census only counted farms considered commercially viable. Black farm owners ranged from those who were living like havingolks sharecroppers of their own, having people they paid to run the farms, to people who owned less than an acre of land. So it was a broad swath of people, but most of them owned much less than 30 or 40 acres. For these farmers, owning land represented the promise, if not always the substance, a sanctuary from economic dependence and violence during the jim crow era. It also was often part of a mix of several types of labor they relied on to make a living. Very few African American farm owners were economically secure enough to rely on farming alone to support their families. Livingtched together a from a variety of sources. Construction,oad selling Farm Products, and even often having their children work on the farms of other landowners. Often, other black people. That is something we dont hear enough you about. This high point of Land Ownership in 1920 is where historians usually abandon the story of African American<