Vanderbilts divinity library. And im so excited to be today with hala allen, who is author insurrection. Hawa is attorney and author whose work has appeared in the Chicago Tribune los angeles review of books lathams quarterly and the baffler, amongst other publications, she lives and works in new york city. Now, as a side note, the southern festival of books remains completely free. And we want to keep it that way. So please visit us on the web at ww dot humanity tennessee dawg to donate or you can also donate via the festival of books app. So how is going to read for us and then well a conversation and well open it for an audience. Q a and when the q a starts, please the mic in the corner just get better audio. However, take it away. Thank you very much because so im going to read from third chapter of the book called a house divided, which largely talks about the insurrection act invocation during the civil war and leading up to the civil war, which is interspersed with my personal narrative from which im going to share this excerpt and the subtitle for. This portion is irrepressible conflict. I had much interest in history. The subject in and of itself was not the source of my disinclination. I was educated in a Public School district in Suffolk County island that was well resourced. For that reason, drew residents to purchase homes and qualifying neighborhoods, ensure their children could attend. One of the primary or secondary schools encompassed by the district. Im not ungrateful, but entire experience was an ordeal much of the history i remember studying was presented under the moniker of social studies. A catch all for certain fields of learning, including history and geography that. Unlike, say, math or english didnt neatly fit into any other discipline within the schools curricula as a proverbial only black kid. My class, i just. I dreaded social studies class in part because whenever the teacher would make mention of the word slave or slavery. Several of the kids would turn to glance or outright stare. Me i would sit there at my desk on the receiving end of these looks and awkwardly pretend i wasnt being forced on display or whatever we were discussing at that given moment was clearly causing the white kids to feel uncomfortable and. Their Immediate Response was to project that discomfort onto me. I have the vocabulary at the time for this silent interaction laced with malevolence, but i remember how i felt ashamed. I know what i felt ashamed about. Again as i then left the words to name the source my feelings. However, was being made clear with the uttering of the word or slavery and. The almost accusatory stares in my direction was that my present day being directly associated with enslavement, a badge of inferiority was mine and mine alone to carry whenever. Slavery was discussed in the classrooms. Not only could i count on the stairs, but also the teachers reassurance that. We, meaning all of us, present day beings, learning social studies at that very moment, should not judge those historical by our contemporary morals. I never felt included in that we are the bomb of historical, which seemed intended to soothe the potentially guilt, potentially guilty consciences of the white kids who managed to thereby distance themselves from the karma of any and ancestral enslavers, while pinning the burdens of slavery, the enslaved onto me historical relativism, but choice of their sense of innocence while their in my direction seemed to project some kind of guilt. Beyond the context in which i supposed to be learning history. The subject matter itself presented barriers to my early willingness to engage with it. My grade school with history consisted of names, dates, notable events and geographical that i was compelled to memorize textbooks and recite on test and which then, frankly would promptly evaporate from my mind. The textbook presentation of history as a simplified, sanitized list of chronological factoids, largely devoid of narrative, is, of course, intentional. The project of teaching history is from the project of imprinting with a sense of nationalistic identity and patriotic fidelity. And this, at its core, as paradoxical as it is guided by a single selfcontradictory intention to teach what happened in past without really teaching what happened in the past. It is mission that is ultimately impossible. What i remember learning about the civil, in short, was that it was a american war, fought to end slavery. It was long, bloody brothers against brothers, etc. Despite the barrage of names places and dates i was confronted with in my state compelled study of history, i came away with what amounts to slogans, the kind that infiltrate and remain lodged in ones memory long after the details of the product that was being sold have faded from recollection upon a closer reading while clear that the civil war did effectively slavery. It is also clear this goal did not drive the country to war in the first place. Yet i was taught more or less that northern brothers came to arms against their southern brothers because slavery was wrong. Well, i cant pretend to remember precise details. I was taught. I am certain that the lesson impressed upon me was the moral rectitude of white. Only years that i figure out that just because the civil war formally ended slavery did not mean, that it was fought in order to end slavery, as Frederick Douglass stated, quote, the south was fighting to take slavery out of the union and the north was fighting to keep slavery in the union and, quote, only years later, did i discover that the unions enlistment of soldiers in the war against the confederacy was considered by Union Military a Necessary Evil to the flagging morale and defection. White soldiers. As w. E. B. Dubois writes in black instruction in america, quote, freedom for the slave was the logical of a crazy attempt to wage war in the midst of 4 million black slaves and trying all the while sublimely to ignore the interests of those slaves and the outcome of the fighting. End quote. It was only years later that i found out the emancipation proclamation, in essence, a utilitarian move to induce yet more enslaved people to flee from their masters and join union union ranks. A governmental offer made to consummate civic transaction military service in exchange for freedom. In fact, lincolns to arm soldiers and formally emancipate slaves during the civil war was considered by confederate officials as a move to incite insurrection. Concurrent with historical erasure is the selective imparting effects, omitting whatever is disruptive to the sanitized, nationalistic portrayal of history, while including and highlighting whatever bolsters it. I am particularly stubborn about filtering and selectively ignoring anything that i can tell is being aggressively marketed to me. Although swan songs of freedom fighting founding fathers, i repeatedly came across in a variety of media were time and again deflected by my own selfprotective willful ignorance. I just did not want to know, though i was repeatedly being taught happened when whatever happened, who did what and to whom. What was was why . Why these things happening without this distinct perspective, without any narrative throughline. I was simply unable to care. This socalled history. Any reckoning with the why or, any unavoidable facts like the existence of slaves or slavery, or mollified by historical, and that useful yet illusory notion of progress overshadow a violent past with both the evidence, the promise of a bright future. None of these observations are new. W. E. B. Dubois himself in the last chapter of black reconstruction in america, writes that history is propaganda, lies agreed upon that are characterized by libel, innuendo and silence with respect to which evil must be forgotten, distorted and skimmed over. When dubois wrote black reconstruction, he was not merely recording history, but revising it, and he so in the face of so many pernicious theories or schools of thought, including that of archibald dunning of columbia university, who interpreted the reconstructed reconstruction period as a grand mistake. When northerners interfered with Southern Affairs using federal military as mortal blackmail while inept, the were elevated to political power. They were not equipped to wield. In fact, presented the paper that would become black reconstruction. At a 1909 meeting of the american historical, which dunning himself despite the papers gracious reception at the meeting. It did not influence contemporary scholarship reconstruction as, David Levering lewis noted in the introduction to a 1998 edition of black reconstruct, quote, african scholars were not silent, only unheard or dismissed the White Academy and quote, during the 20th century and beyond, historians have continued to challenge such renderings, connecting the lines between names, dates and names, places and dates, narratives that expose biases and dispel the spell. Persistent. So it is then that in my reading and, relearning of history, time has no and the true definition of history that is any history that is actually with learning is news. It remains the case that all is considered. News isnt inherently new, but only new to the one who has no knowledge of it. The conciliatory notes conciliar notion of progress notwithstanding. Current events often are not new, but merely reincarnated versions of history. Thank you very much. Wow. Well, firstly, i have to say, the whole thing of being in the classroom and you know, its a social studies segment or session where were talking about slavery and all the kids turn around and look at you. I i absolutely relate to that. All of a sudden, im like, i am all of a sudden the ambassador or, you know, for slavery. Like, why all looking at me, im learning about this, you know, just like, you know. So i got my really two that i wanted to talk about a moment early on in the book. When you describe the scene with your white boyfriend at the time. So barack obama has just been its 28 and in what i describe as sort of an afro pessimist fashion you can correct me on that. You sort of say white people going to be afraid now or are white people to be afraid now that a black person is in charge and you are a white boyfriend is very upset by that statement and slams the computer, your computer down. But im speaking the election in general. Do you think that with Barack Obamas white americans were seeking absolution and if so, do you think that perhaps that statement stoked that Barack Obamas election couldnt fix things and maybe that was what your boyfriend was afraid . Well, this is the interesting part of the book, and well, ill just ill just give a little preface. We understand what were talking about. So the book insurrection rebellion, civil rights and the paradoxical state of black citizenship focuses on the insurrection act 1807, which allows the president to dispatch federal troops and or federalize the National Guard of the given in order to suppress domestic unrest. So the book essentially about the various instances in the insurrection act was invoked and sort of toggles back and forth between these instances in history and my own personal narrative and, my own personal reflections. So in the context of that overall, the first chapter where youre picking this material from pretty much sets the scene by just looking at the legal landscape with respect to antebellum, south and we get these sort of categories of the enslaved and the white citizen and. Well, not, not quite yet the white citizens, but rather the the enslaved prior to, you know, the constitutional invention convention. I go a little bit, you know, further back in time in order to sort of set scene there and in that chapter i go back and forth between these various passages that discuss the sort of fear of slave insurrection and my personal experience of the election of barack obama. And without being explicit, it what im really trying to do is really consider whether or not these fears that were contending with in the present day are and are are basically the lingering emanations from what we as a country encounter during that time in terms of the fear of black uprising. Right. So so in that context its interesting that you asked me like what do i think people thinking and im always im not reticent to to say what i think people are thinking because throughout the throughout the book i am essentially speculating about the role that, emotions and, the sort of mode, that sort of sort of feeling based motivations that there might be behind what we see as sort of rational invocations of law. And, you know, the sort of revision of history as a sort of march toward progress that seems somehow, you know, sort of rather than very messy at the time. And something that, you know, is sort of a and isnt im talking colloquially, not necessarily historians, but of a rather than something as that is a sort of manifest of various, you know, difficult emotions. Right. So in thinking about fear, i did speculate as fear as being a a of underlying reason for anger that i experience that slamming down of the laptop in my or in the response to my admittedly remark, you know, which i just made in passing, really think about. But in sort of, you know, carefully picking out certain from my life that i thought could animate the various chapters, the book, i thought that would be a good one because it shows that perhaps as im speculating, right . The you know, despite, you know, this election of the first black president and all that, you know, celebrations in the street and whatnot, were still dealing with the sort of undercurrent of, you know, the the the sort of the unfunny, well, unexplored. Well well under explored and still present of, you know, tensions around this idea of, you know, White Supremacy versus a black supremacy. Right. And then doing to us what we did to them essentially. Right. Because the during the antebellum period, you know, the fear of slave wasnt necessarily about from what i read in any event, about the fear of, you know, black people in the United States and whether enslaved or not seeking, you know formal freedom and equality, but rather, the idea that there could be a flip the hierarchy and then, you know, there would be this sort of black power in charge that will then revenge for essentially what they had suffered. Right. So i so i do speculate about that and i speculate about how these you know, despite fact, they were Walking Around acting as if, you know, thats ancient history and that were living in the present. And none of these issues are really affecting our everyday. We are sort of inheritors of the the consequences of these Legal Definitions inherit as inheritors of this history. And you know were not should be purely, you know, just navigate our lives spontaneously in a grassroots manner where were sort of incorporate these sort of conditions, narratives and responses and into our daily perceptions of things, right. So, you know, i, i definitely would say i while i was speculating that this this the reaction that i encountered was sort of somehow related to this fear that i was looking at, you know, in the context that antebellum time and sort of seeing it pop up, you for a moment. Its like in a in a, you know, in a sort of, you know, way that was i was being sort of reprimanded. But you i ended up i ended that anecdote with asking with asking him, are you scared . Right. So it was a its its really i just gave myself the license to do what i think youre absolutely not supposed do as a historian because im not a historian, which is to of sort of pry into the and minds of people and say what think people were thinking without necessarily having any evidence of doing that. So there is a sort of meditative, speculative sort of inquiry into these sort of underlying motivation ones that do touch things like these sort of fear based emotions. For example, in that first chapter, right. And i think i mean, i think what you do, i think its skillful the way that personal history and history, which person your past, your personal history is history, but the way in which those things intersect, i think is is you do that with aplomb. And i would also say that, you know, historians who do not acknowledge i mean, theyre getting an object heavily but it is just not its not real. I mean you always have sort of a viewpoint and i think better to acknowledge that and write from that place right. And im glad you said that, because in an the legal history, you know, looking at these insurrection act invocations and my personal narrative, i was aware that what i was doing is sort of allowing the reader a peek behind the veil is like, who is writing this . Like, who is this person . Especially since i spent a lot of time critiquing this idea of narrative, right . And the idea that were not just, you know, history is not just about imparting facts, but its doing so in the context of a narrative which is implicit right and i sort of expose myself as, you know, perhaps a unreliable narrator. Its to the reader to determine that. But nonetheless, its like i present this and then i also present some some anecdotes about myself so that the reader can see where im coming from and perhaps do own analysis of whether or not the sort of larger portrait that im painting, you know, aligns with they consider true, considering how i have sort of sort of betrayed my own, you know preoccupations my own maybe weaknesses and reverence, for example. So yeah. And you youre essentially putting yourself forward to say you analyze me here i am, im laying all my cards down on the table. This is im this type of narrator right. And as youre you know, deciding if this is true or worthy of, you know, your trust, ive laid that out the table for you. And im also being explicit about the fact that im putting forth a narrative, also a theory. Right. So what i will say in terms of the insurrection act 1807, again, it allows the president to deploy federal troops or have to deputize the National Guard in order to suppress, you know, instances of domestic unrest. Fairly unusual to from the federal level domestically, because its typically the state governor who has the commander in chief of National Guard. And then they would engage in, you know, deployment of those troops as they saw fit. But when they were either overwhelmed or at the federal level, i think the executive that there were some violations that they were unable or unwilling to remedy in the state, then you can have an a sort of invocation of the insurrection act, whether unilaterally or at the request of the state governor. So what i saw largely was that there was this pattern with respect to the usage of this act, which really surprised me