delight to meet you. i feel like i know you from reading life of a klansman. it is so into meant. - - intimate so thank you for writing it. you received and emotional inheritance from your and mod and tell the audience what it was the physical inheritance and the family lowers. >> as a boy in new orleans i had an aunt named mod who was a retired schoolteacher and the family historian. and she was the keeper of our klansman and she had some papers and files and had a way of speaking about her family history so the want to remember is our grandfather because he was a redeemer and the redemption returned by people to authority in new orleans after they were distler - - dislodged and if he had not acted in the battle we would not be here today. anyway when she died her papers went to my mother and now when my mother died decades later the files came to me and this is how i rediscovered the story and wrote about it. >>cspan: see remember your aunt. it sounds like like a french carpenter raised and spoke french. >> is it fair to say he was heroic in your family lore? >> he was for 100 years as were the clans people. the clan and the first genesis and when it was challenged by black politicians and voting but in the civil rights. it was altered returning to some sense and when it came to me it was some ambivalence that he was no longer a family he rose. >> you write early on you knew about the klansman as a child and you were afraid of his story. why? >> because they were the first american terrace. and to acknowledge that is not an easy thing to do to say that my people include white terrorists. and that is a difficult thing to do. it is radioactive and it hurts so i was afraid of him. >> you used a creole phrase that translates to wash your dirty laundry within the family you did this before with your books slaves and the family. >> that you portray that code because you are a writer and that's it they do. >> and the famous remark is the lighter is born and then they are lost and exposed to exposure and shame. >> let's dive into constants story. he is a carpenter that gets very good at killing in the civil war in the military. >> yes. constant was 38 and was an elderly man as far as soldiers go was a confederate infantry man for three and half years and he returned home at the end of fighting like half a million other confederate veterans who was very knowledgeable about tactics because they were confederate veterans staging of military assault. >> that is an interesting insight all the white man participating in the civil wa war, that is where they learned organized violence and constant experiences the first massacre in the civil war. >> he does. one of the last bites of upstate louisiana, he appears to participate in the massacre of union soldiers. >> killing soldiers who surrendered. this story is brutally honest and you say chances are better than half that if i was there is a white creole i would have shot. that is honest. i suppose the chances are better than half i would shoot so explain why you thank you would have shot union soldiers? >> had i been raised in that part of time i would of been in that climate of white supremacy and in defense of the white south with a ferocious drive of the confederate soldiers that they are homeland which they believe were invaded by others. and in general we flatter ourselves about the past and we think i wouldn't have been a white supremacist i would be part of the resistance. if i was in germany 1935 i would go against the nazis. we condescend to our predecessors by giving ourselves a morally superior position and i don't feel that is honest. the other point is it is an impossible imaginary projection 21st century liberal person in this country or any person raised after 1960 with an understanding of the disasters of the national inheritance around the stories of race, it's impossible to be yourself that another century it is self-delusion. >> this is wonderful of the micro- history. he was a carpenter, a soldier and domestic terrorist and a klansman. be careful what you wish for searching for your family. you have 16 great-great-grandparents. but you paint a picture of the time constant lived in and use the terms that describe working people and their resentment and hostilities because constant was not wealthy and dependent on slavery for his wealth. talk about that class of people and the source of their resentment and hostility toward black people. >> the this part of the deep south of louisiana was the majority of the african-americans were enslaved and there was a relatively small society may be 15 percent of the white population that was a rather large working-class and constant was a ship carpenter and one of the working man and said manual labor and then to be slaveholders of some degree they enslaved eight people. his grandparents enslaved 30 or 40. so he experienced the class slide. and he believed, i think, i never found any diaries, he believed his status was robbed from him. and like many white southerners of the day, they turned this resentment and frustration into a rage directed against people of color who recently were emancipated. >> and you talk about the civil rights act of 1866 past over johnson's veto giving civil rights to black people favors the blacks over whites immediately get those organizing for white supremacy. talk about whiteness is shaped in opposition and that you are struggling to make that concept of whiteness as concrete as blackness and you show the ways culturally whiteness is defined. new orleans was a hotbed of pseudo- race science but the idea of whiteness and after reconstruction it is much more potent. >> many people then and now do not regard themselves as part of a racial group. so people of color are those that inhabit race. but you referred to in the book to make racial identity as visible and conspicuous to us as african-american racial identity is conspicuous. so white supremacy and self regard is greatly amplified after the civil war by events surrounding the acquisition of voting rights by black people in the first entry in positions of authority. as a center of scientific racism the earliest of those in the deep south try to describe how race is built into the body. they are bone diggers and interested in the fantasy that each race is a different species. they published in journals and then philadelphia and new york and elsewhere. but it is race science and becomes the justification. >> the enlightenment thinkers did this to justify our history. will talk about the constant did after the war was over. tell the audience about this and his role. >> one year after the end of the civil war black people are petitioning for the right to vote. and july 1866 a meeting is convened downtown new orleans. two or 300 african-americans newly in politics and 300 outside of the mechanics institute. the purpose is to petition for black men to vote. the politicians in power at this point in new orleans and the mayor of the city sends the police force and the fire departments to the scene of the rally to make it up. constant is a member of the volunteer fire brigade as are many confederate veterans and apparently he came to the scene there is no fingerprint evidence that circumstantial is quite persuasive and within two hours of them arriving , 200 african-americans were dead by gunfire and bludgeoning in a scattered the streets of new orleans this mechanic institute massacre provokes congress to pass the reconstruction act. >> which i did not know about that particular incident and after teaching reconstruction and the civil rights act for years but didn't realize there was a central animating event. so john lewis and others attacked on the edmund pettis bridge and that was the impetus for the voting rights act was a similar event so that helps the radical republic asked reconstruction over the johnson's veto. i do not feel culpable for that massacre whoever i feel implicated so talk about that. i feel your really hard on yourself and your family and your tribe. you say whites are my tribe. is that family shame? so many of the disastrous subplots of our national history are hidden behind the curtains and this is one of many. it is not an overstatement - - an overstatement to say the rampage from the massacre have cleared further space down to her own it is not a falsehood to state the torment of people constant and his gains perpetrated gives ordinary white folks a greater sense of security and ease down to this day. because they were fighting for people and to extend the authority of our people. >> and very honest book you write whites are my people, of their my tribe, constant people and his tribe and i know the honest way to regard race and violence is full of it united states was founded upon and racial violence it is within the core of our national identity. that is breathtaking with the opposite of what children are taught in school. what do you think is lost or gained in the's violent terms? what is lost is much of the self regard the national storytellers allow us to bathe in as the city on the hill and freedom and opportunity. if you tell the national story as the engine and it's possible to do that without distorting it, he signed the settlement of the east coast of america was a racial act of people to be displaced and shoved aside with the import of enslaved africans ultimately 4 million enslaved african americans on the plantations of the deep south. over the appellation range into the middle states was a racial act people literally driven by forced march to leave parts of the country where white farmers wish to take up land. that way he signed it's a different story and it's not a narrative of gradual or universal extension of authority and poverty to all people. it's quite different. >> do you think your tribe is open to hearing it as you presented? >> it is a novel claim to make. african-americans often complain i cannot speak for all black people they are often asked by whites to represent their tribe. i am not a tribal representative. but i am telling a story. >> after the death of george floyd and breanna taylor that you got some resistance to the resistance white supremacy rises and falls again and defined by those traumas inflicted by the past. it is part of a reckoning that much of your work seems to ask us to do. talk about that and why you think it's important for whites to understand, and you do this brilliantly in "the new york times" piece for you invoked the poet i will let you save it you were trying to say that my klansman is not the same or the slave patrol is not the same but there is a certain entitlement attitude. can you talk about that why they are implicated from the traumas of the past? >> the more we acknowledge the experiences of our predecessors the better off we are and honest we are about current circumstances. and the experience of enslavement harkin down and to be a fighter for white supremacy speaks down to the present the mentioning the protest of the summer it's an encouraging time with a surprising turn of events and one could see and in a way that suggested regarding ourselves and history for the first time as a shift in consciousness the way it almost immediately moves to the takedown of monuments. it's a very interesting turn of events. now having said that, we see white supremacy doesn't lie dormant. it grows more sophisticated . . . . and one of the white militis attracts thousands of members is. involving 3,000 of its members are including the ancestor. 30 people died, half of them black and half of them white and the success of the widely. for the city of new orleans and through the town for generations ultimately the battle commemorated annually for many decades. >> host: according to your aunt maude. >> guest: a turning point in the reconstruction and it causes the federal government in washington to lose its nerve and its desire to continue the efforts of to integrate institutions of power and ultimately within a year the federal government agrees to discontinue and remove the federal troops. >> host: so the beginning of the end of reconstruction and your clansmen as you implicated it i've got to tell you one of the things you like to do in this book and previous book is interview present-day african-americans who are descendents of people who are operating at the time and you do that in i want to talk u wantedm the descendent of a reconstruction legislator in alabama so my great, great grandfather in the teen 70s was a mixed race son of a slave owner and a woman of color serving in the alabama legislature from 1870, 1874. i'm talking to you, your great great grandfather is one of the ones who was shooting. so here we are talking. and i have to tell you this is the power of an intimate micro- history. i've read about this all my life but nothing brings it to life more than seeing on the ground the shooting, the maiming, the killing of everything. one of the things you do so well, tell me about your obsession or compulsion to go and speak two african-american descendents of slaves and radical republicans. in your first book he went to speak and in this book to speak to descendents of a certain type of person of color. very successful, accomplished african-americans who were in the fight for reconstruction. tell me about that and anything you want to share about that. >> host: >> guest: i had the idea and i'm sorry it's painful to you, the idea of revisiting the themes of historical trauma personal testimony if you like has a positive effect insofar as we can pass through some of the hard stuff of our national life in a personal way. it has a positive effect. there is reasons why stories of violence are little among. they are repressed and forgotten intentionally in most cases and it's not properly commemorated. there are two families i write about in life if the clansmen who were members of the elite which was a large minority in new orleans, these were business people and educated people of all stripes in the reconstruction era and they were on the scene's of one of the events i write about some of the mechanics institute massacre and i identified a family whose ancestors were nearly killed and i asked with their permission if i could tell some of their family history, and for them, too. it's not uncommon that a family that experiences, of night writing or lynchings were obvious generations later half of this memory intact and this was the case with one of the families i went to visit a and i think with some sense of discovery and renewed appreciation wished to share the story of their families experience so i think at a micro level with individuals and individual families, it does provide some kind of medicinal effect. >> host: you've been on this project, particularly the first and latest book showing how intertwined african american experience is. black history is american history. they are so intertwined particularly in the south. black-and-white people on the ground even in the most virulently awful times were intimately involved with one another. do you feel like things have shifted since you wrote your first book in terms of people beginning to embrace this idea that thbut the african-americany is central to the american story there seems to be a hunger. >> guest: i like to think that things have shifted into that folks are a bit of a stories of african-american families and african-american life. the key that you mentioned that is the interlocked nature of white and black society and memory and experience one hand cannot move without the other hand that's something that is an ideal frame of consciousness to achieve to understand the interlocked nature of the destiny. >> host: i want to ask a question that's sort of animated as a fellow writer. i also wrote a family memoir that went back for generations. i appreciate your struggle to tell the story where the paper trail ends particularly writing about the clansmen if they were intentionally clandestine survey were not going to leave a paper trail so you give yourself permission to fill gaps with your imagination. i see him this or don't see him doing that. i wonder about that and how you think trained historians feel about that. >> i don't actually provide a dialog for people who i don't have evidence of their dialogue but by imaginative projection i think when you tell the reader that you are reconstituting or constructing the scene, you are okay. fofurther lives and behaviors ad movements of all kinds of otherwise anonymous white people and black people the reality is only about one in a thousand people of any class leaves a piece of paper behind that historians can later consult and so built into the archive method of historiography is a kind of radical exclusion if you depend only on paper you are excluding an overwhelming majority of individuals. micro- history such as the one i've written tries to tell the story of ordinary folks who have access to education who lived inconspicuous lives and left no papers in the diaries and what have you. that's the experience of the majority of america. i don't give the interior narration of my characters, but i do as you imply take some liberties with narrative events and i announce it when i'm doing them. >> host: you first try to tackle this as a novel. tony about that and why did you give up on that and decide to do it this way? >> guest: right. well, when i read encountere ite papers i inherited from my aunt maude, i thought this story is so searing that it would be like holding coal in your hand to write it as nonfiction. i should write a novel about this man, and i tried to end it wasn't superb, so i set it aside and finally i decided it is so searing i have to write it as nonfiction insulated. >> host: [inaudible] just in case our viewers, in case someone isn't aware of th that, could you explain the compromise and how reconstruction formally ended? >> guest: in 1876 the presidential election visits the republican rutherford hayes against the democrats in the kingdom to the electoral votes if to say ditkof two say ditka h carolina and louisiana. by this time, reconstruction was losing its steam and democrats gave the election if you like to the republicans which initially were the anti-slavery party which were initially the party of reconstituting a society that makes room for african-american power and authority in economic life. in exchange, the camps allowed, made the deal that if the republican was allowed to take the white house, his government had to immediately withdraw the union forces that still occupied parts of the deep south and us bring a formal end to attempts to rebuild a new society so he took the white house and the troops were withdrawn and free construction collapses in the early 1877. >> host: so it depended o depene willingness of the federal government to stay with guns and basically get exhausted. do you feel like it was inevitable and the society in which the status was tied to the coordinating reconstruction following was to be inevitable no matter what? >> guest: no, i don't think it was inevitable. i think that was one of these things in history where things could have gone better, could have gone the other way. and we've lived with consequences ever since. white supremacy was after they compromise in the end of reconstruction. white supremacy was fortified in the deep south, and it was made extremely brutal and it's forms of enforcement and all kinds of measures. voting rights were withdrawn from african-american men and all of this, but people were driven out of power. this kind of fortified white supremacy i believe is then exported to the rest of the united states as african-americans began to leave the south and some of the methods that were perfected were then taken up by ground of the united states in their own communities as african-americans are coming into the northern and western states, so it is an extremely important turning point and it could have gone another way. >> host: this gets back to the point of the next generation having to live with the consequences of what the ancestors did. you are making clear in your comments here in the cacao the white supremacy was the central organizing principle not just of the south, that of the united states and in that era it was accepted. all rights participated in a racial order in which whites were on top and following institutions from slavery, and you eluded to the idea that today if we had an hbo special where they were brought forward today, he would look around and might see something scheme recognizes that it was a different thing that there is more allies for racial equality now. >> guest: tonight, yes. i think that it is a spectrum of consciousness. it isn't just against people of color, but it's an attitude of mind that crosses the whole political spectrum. many people will tell anyone who asks that their families were not entitled and do not experience the benefits of whiteness. their families have struggled and have come up from modest beginnings to find a precarious foothold in the economic life of. any family that comes to ellis island and the turn-of-the-century of the 19 hundreds, 1910, that is quite a low level on the platform of american society conduct when they arrived at ellis island, they set their foot on the berkshire of the society that has been shaped by slavery and jim crow and they are able to rise into property ownership and economic prosperity using tools that are denied the phenomenon of blackface someone recently asked the come and it was a white person, i wasn't able to articulate well but your book actually comments on it a lot. can you tell us about the phenomenon of white spitting on blackface and why? >> guest: it's an interesting dimension of our sort of psychological history in the early 1840s i think, this enormously popular art called minstrelsy arrived and consists of white people putting on makeup to appear black and performing music that they've taken from gore. eat from to get to -- parody from black sources, plantation blues. and blackface, minstrelsy, becomes the most popular form of culture for white americans for a century. hundreds of millions of people going to minstrel shows throughout the 19 hundreds up until world war ii. it's the most popular form of public musical art for a centu century. what it relies on is a fascination of white people for blackness, this desire to take what appears to them to be the essence of blackness and put it on themselves and mock it. if you look at any film or radio archive sources from the early 1900, you will find loads of this stuff. it's offensive because it involves this thing people call appropriations. and it's offensive because it involves a kind of desire to domesticate black identity in the white mind to take control of it and hold it in the mind as a kind of toy. >> host: thank you for that. we only have a couple of minutes and i would like to end with the hopefulness of the moment we are in. like i said before, we had the largest demonstrations in the history of this country with a lot of white people saying black lives matter. i wonder if you think there's something different about this moment whether we are headed towards perhaps a third of reconstruction that might be more enduring than these rituals of a few steps forward and then they reassertion of white supremacy. do you think there's anything different about this moment? >> guest: i think it is too early to say in answer to neither of reconstruction. however, i am optimistic that we are entering a new phase of consciousness about ourselves, black folks and white folks together. the election in november will be i think a very loud time of whether this kind of renewed understanding of our racial identity is going to evolve and complicate and become a positive force or not. so i am hopeful however. >> host: im so. what's next for you, can you say [inaudible] we will have to see what develops. thank you so much for having this conversation. it's been a very nice one. >> host: thank you. i've enjoyed it immensely. >> guest: be well. >> this program is available as a podcast. all "after words" programs can be viewed on our website at tv.org. is book selections by notable figures such as professional basketball players. the book is entitled fearless intends to quote the voices of authors the world too often neglects. jeffrey died earlier this month at the age of 75. the author of several books on language and a regular contributor to the national public radio program fresh air. last week the association of american publishers, the authors guild and american booksellers association wrote a joint letter to the chairman of the house committee critical of amazon. in the letter they said amazon no longer compete on a level playing field when it comes to the distribution but rather owns and manipulates the playing field leveraging practices from across the platform that appearr to be well outside of fair and transparent competition. also npd bookscan reports print book sales were up just over 14%. for the week ending on august 15. adult nonfiction sales saw another week of positive sales up 16%, led by sean hannity's latest book" live free or die." bookstores are celebrating independent bookstore date this weekend. the event coordinated by the american booksellers association anticipates 600 stores participating this year. the annual promotion traditionally takes place in april of that was rescheduled due to the corona virus pandemic. booktv will continue to bring new programs and publishing news. you can also watch all of our archived programs any time at booktv.org. ..