Good evening, everybody. Welcome to the Ann Arbor District library. Thank you so much for out tonight. My name is emily and im on the events team here. We want to thank our partners at literati for bringing us another wonderful event with professor williams evening. So just a really introduction so we can get onto the program Kidada Williams is associate professor of history at wayne university. She is the author. They left great marks on me africanamerican testimonies of racial violence from emancipation to world war one. She is the creator of the seizing freedom podcast, and shes here tonight to speak about her new book i saw death coming a history of terror and survival in the war against reconstruction. So we will have a talk tonight. Well have a q a. I will be running the round the room with a mic so we can speak into it because were recording tonight and live streaming. So we want folks at to be able to hear your questions. Literati is in the foyer. They are selling books this evening. You can pick one up at any point. And then professor williams will be signing books over at this table after the presentation. And with that welcome and joining or join me in welcoming professor williams. Thank you. Thank you so much emily that introduction and thank you all for being here. I know im competing a game. Even lion were lined up on the starting blocks of freedom when slavery abolished. Having dreamed of this moment for most of their remembered, they sprinted to fulfill their visions of family, selfdetermination and, prosperity. By 1870, the alabama couple had accomplished a great deal. Abe was 30 years old. Eliza was 35. They got legally married and set up a home in Choctaw County. Abe was working as a blacksmith from his own shop. Eliza left. Her job in Domestic Service and was keeping her own house only occasionally working on the plantation just to raise a little bit of extra money they amassed hoard of hogs a significant investment that indicates they were producing and cured meats and breeding specifically for the market. The three children, william ella and annie, were enrolled in the local school. An older daughter was attending school in demopolis, where eliza up through their combined industry aban eliza had saved 600. The relative of which is more than 200,000 today. And they planned to move to demopolis by property and bought a home of their own secession and the founding of the confederacy. When less than a decade in the past, barely five years separated them from end of the bloody civil war and, their sprint into freedom, they were living their best post emancipation life. And i think thats important to acknowledge because testimonies and other records make they were making the most of freedom and those achievements provide context for why confederates them in what i call war after the civil war, the one white southerners waged on africanamericans freedom. When i was in school, we werent taught about reconstruction or we were taught it. We were taught that it failed. When no one set out right at least employed in polite company, was that black people were freed from slavery. Given every opportunity to succeed for the right and the vote. And they failed to make the most of it again. Thats not what people say, but thats what the failure narrative of reconstruction meant. Now, that never made sense. Me but this is what i learned in school so many i moved on to research other more worthy topics, but something kept drawing me to reconstruction. And the more i trained as a professional historian and the more i researched records of the era, the more recognize what a truly transformative moment this was. There were so many revolutionary abolition. The opening of schools hundreds of independent black churches, a boom in black Land Ownership and entrepreneurship, National Citizenship and protections, Voting Rights for black men and black office. Holding that, the historian eric foner called it the second founding after the american revolution. Even allies who were part of this transformative moment. Some historians have called the second american revolution. They had joined more 4 million other black people who snatched freedom confederates and who tried to live in both a morally just world for their families. After the civil war. By 1870, these black had to pick themselves up from slavery. They had reassemble their to the best of their ability. They worked harder for themselves than they did for the people who held them in bondage. They established their communities, churches, schools and orphanages some acquired land opened their own businesses like a, but others were working, being industrious and saving money with their eyes fixed on the of their own homesteads. And to protect all these and to secure their familys men wanted to vote and to serve in office. Confederates saw strides africanamericans had made a threat to their ongoing mastery and fought to sustain their privileges. The american system. They launched a torrent of attacks. Black people who were reaping the rewards of reconstruction and expansion of freedom and democracy in the spring of 1866, white men and pulaski, tennessee, formed social clubs and which i sometimes don masks and elaborate costume and performed musical entertainment. The white men called themselves the ku klux after the greek circle. Klansmen activities quickly spread across the south and evolved roaming arm through communities in the middle of the night, conducting paramilitary attacks on black and white progressive families, extremists within their apologists often referred to these raids euphemistically as visits masking their brutality behind the veneer of a friendly call. Klansman zwerg soon gave rise to an Extremist Movement that became so widespread that any white man or group of white men who wanted to intimidate or kill their targets might be associated it. Whether they were affiliated, the klan or not. And its more white, southern muscled into this growing shadow army ranks and experimented with acts of terror. They grew more deadly this klan violence is what i call the white war on now it may seem to liken what weve been taught the peace to war, but wars never as neatly as we think they do. Theyre often followed by new conflicts, and after the civil war, the new conflict was white. Southern conservatives fight to undercut black peoples freedom and, the establishment of a more egalitarian. And so there was no peace. As one historian put it, especially not for black people in south and africa and americans like abe and eliza, lion it white extremists, black people with regularity and with shocking impunity. They shot down black male voters. The polls, they stalked black officeholders and offered them bribes to leave office and assassinated them or tried to assassinate. When that didnt work, they kidnaped black men and women gunpoint and disappeared them disposing of their bodies in waterways and woods or just along the roads. They ambushed africanamericans with nighttime raids, which were like domestic home invasions. And during these visits, white men Holding Black families hostage subjected them to humiliation torture and murder. And during this period were countless massacres and mass killing events. African americans resisted this violence to be sure in ways made sense to them in the moment, some hid or fled, others bore arms, defended their homes, injuring or killing their attackers. But white extremist violence was so widespread that black southerners often found themselves outmanned, outgunned thousands of black men. Women and children were killed or injured. And thats why the failure narrative of reconstruction is so problematic. Reconstruction didnt fail. White southerners violently overthrew, and white northerners and westerners let them. I saw death coming. Tells that story. It follows black families on their journeys out of slavery through their experiences of the war white southerners wait on their freedom to their testimony before congress and beyond. It shows how black people understood, articulated the human costs of reconstruction, overthrow, abandonment. And it does that through the stories of families like abe and elizas. On june 6th, 1871, abe spent the day in his blacksmith shop, and eliza finished her homemaking tasks. The children had completed their chores and lessons. What time for play after they were all in bed at home at 11 p. M. When someone knocked the door and asked the babe what home the family never heard any threats and were not thinking about such a thing. Eliza later said thats why abe answered that he was home and he got up from the bed to open door. But something perhaps the sound, the visitors and his awareness of the threat they posed or a feeling his skin tightening and puckering with goosebumps so terrified. Abe he did not move human and minds are wired to sustain themselves, and when under attack focus solely on surviving and injury, when the mind detects threats to life like abe experienced. It triggers these preprogramed excuse me. Preprogramed escape by secreting stress chemicals propel the body into action specifically to survive by running or hiding. But for some people, especially those who those whove experienced a prior trauma, the unthinkable happens. The brains defense circuitry shuts down and they freeze. Thats what we believe happened. Abe, he have felt heavy as though he were in a nightmare from which he would soon awaken. But this wasnt a dream, and that horrified him. Eliza who remain calm, said abe, looked like he was in a perfect square, suggesting he was completely paralyzed by fear. And abe remained in that trancelike state, prompting eliza act, hoping to guide her husband to safety and to protect herself, their children. Abe grant excuse me, eliza grabbed abe trying to steer him out the back door of their home. He was so scared, eliza recalled. He wheeled around the room in that scare, not knowing what to do. Eliza hoped that her husband would regain control of his were soon dashed. The survivors or excuse the invaders burst through the door and threw a rope over his head and him outside and away from their home. Eliza yelled her neighbors or any passers by help. But no one came to silence eliza screams. The attackers drew their guns on her. They told me if i didnt hush hollering, they would blow a hole through me. She said. Eliza knocked away one of the guns with her hand. The men held fire. But eliza said they told her they would finish with me directly directly. The night riders carried abe away from his home and up a hill nearby. Eliza didnt follow, but soon saw the flash and heard the blast of a double barrel. Then one of the men shouted in order for the rest of the gang to fire, and they. After the terrorist killed a eliza, spotted about 75 men returning to her. I knew were going to kill me, she said. Eliza ran inside to gather her children to flee, but son william had disappeared, probably to go get help moving with her two daughters by her side. Eliza snuck back to a field neighboring their home. They stopped at a thicket of woods, monitor the mens activities and take. Eliza could go no farther without knowing williams whereabouts, but staying put rendered her girls and her vulnerable discovery. Eliza and the girls watched from the woods as the white men made a light and began ransacking and searching their home. They tore up everything, she said wearing only their nightclothes. Eliza and the girls move farther into the woods as the night rider shot up her home. Its sounded like there was over 100 shot that once eliza she and the girls remain hidden until sunrise when she could see that the men had left thats when she went to confirm abes killing and then find. Eliza and the children lost abe their cash, all their possessions as that years crop their hogs and most of abes tools their home had been destroyed and the mens knowledge they left an adult witness meant that it probably wasnt safe for family to continue living on the. Eliza reported what happened to a local and a grand jury was convened to investigate spate of attacks and spree killings the area but many the witnesses were too afraid to talk initially eliza afraid its not clear who or what spooked, but suddenly she and the children shot out of Choctaw County in enroute she learned that abes killers were pursuing them. But she and the children managed pick up the pace and they safely made it to demopolis, where she thought they might be safe. Receiving a flood of reports of attacks like the one on abe in a life of family, the us congress convened investigation into the execution of laws and the safety of the lives and the property of the citizens of the united. The committees work became known as the klan because of how prominent violence like the visit featured into the event featured in the investigation. Asian lawmakers traveled to hot spots of southern disorder where they solicit solicited testimonies from office holders. Voters accused perpetrate and their victims families like eliza in abes head greeted emancipation with great expectations. Many of them achieve their dreams of freedom or were on their way to doing when the white men came for them. When congress issued the call for witnesses, they stepped forward hoping to convince federal to take action to, end the violence so their families could live in peace and pursue their and secure their childrens futures. Eliza, now a widow, lost. Displaced from her Home Community and network. She was struggling to take care of herself and her children, which is exactly what the white men war on black peoples freedom intended to destroy Everything Black people built and leave with nothing. Facing the prospect that the world would know what white southerners did to them. That there might not be some form of that free black futures might be forestalled. Survivors like eliza stepped at great risk to and their families and reported what happened to local authorities and if that didnt pan out, they reported it to the Freedmens Bureau and the us army. They shared their stories with governor and other office holders, with the press and even members of congress and the president of the United States. And as they told their stories, they revealed how much they gain with freedom and what they were losing to white violence. Survivors made their way to the hearing sites by foot, train boat and wagon carrying stories of Violent Attacks as extremists made clear their determination to sustain as much of as possible. They had released black people from bondage but we see from who when and why they attacked that they didnt believe that black people had right to their children to choose their sexual partners, to education, to free religious lives, to labor autonomy, to land in capital and to political power, to protect all these rights. Eliza and other survivors decision to testify was informed by their individual and collective sense of, self love, selfrespect and what Toni Morrison called regard. Targeted peoples testimonies provide, a counternarrative to the weve been told about reconstruction. Suppose that failure speaking with one voice, they said white southerners were waging war on reconstruction by attacking the people who are making the most of freedom and naming their attackers, detailing their injuries, saying the names of their slain crying out for justice and doing what they could to keep the record of what happened to them alive. Survivors said black peoples lives, freedoms and mattered. Reporting and testifying about the war on freedom or. Survivors best defense against erasure. These testimonies did help to drive the federal. That eventually drove the klan underground, but not before they seriously undercut freedom and black peoples participation in american. After confederate overthrew reconstruction and boarded the temple of liberty, they crafted i call the big lie of the 19th century that the experience in american democracy had failed they falsely claim that white northerners had unfairly punished southerners for secession by enacting, quote, black rule, black men did vote and they were elected into office, but they never enacted any policies that hurt white people or took away their rights. But none of that mattered to the confederates and their supporters who determined to deprive black people of any opportunity to transcend slavery so they falsely that emancipation equal rights and the franchise were wasted on black people. These claims were part of a larger white supremacist political project to deny black people and equality after slavery with black quote, not knowing their place white southerners claim they simply had no choice but to restore their honor. And the only way they could do that was by forming white terror gangs, overthrowing their oppressors, and installing the racist apartheid of jim crow. They flooded the Public Discourse with so much of this propaganda in kthrough12 education popular culture, politics, professional history and Public Policy that americans ignored the stories that survivors like eliza left on the historical record and for that coming, i used like hers to challenge failure narrative of reconstruction by highlighting the story of africanamerican families who leapt from the frying pan of slavery into the fires. Freedom. What targeted people in the war after the civil war, new and tried to communicate to anyone who would listen was that family is where the cornerstone of black people individual and collective freedom family was glue that bound them together. Voting Office Holding an equal right or a means to excuse me where me through a future in which black families would be secure. That was why confederate struck at the very of black peoples freedom when. They overthrew the revolutionary experiment in multiracial democracy. For many survivors, the task ahead of them after before congress was to remember the future, to hold tightly to their kin and their deferred dreams while striding toward uncertain horizon. I think that under black family stories of into freedom and the price extremists made them pay the war it. Americans learned that the arc of our history doesnt always toward justice. The real story is essential to why more than century and a half later, our struggle continues. Today. Thank you. Very, senator. One more time for some questions. If you have a question, please raise your hand and i will come and bring the mic to you. Thank you. Good to you, dr. Williams. Thanks for. Coming. Of course. My question is based on of the wording you used, the shocking impunity because. Until 1876, theres still federal regular troops present. What they doing . Are they complicit or they just ignoring it because theyre also, you know, white northerners and southerners and have the same white supremac