Transcripts For CSPAN2 After Words Edward Ball Life Of A Klansman 20240712

Hello edward paul its nice to meet you. I feel a guy i know you for reading life of the clansmen it is so intimate i want to thank you for writing it. So i will dive in. You received and emotional inheritance from your aunt mod. Tell us what it was. As an elderly retired schoolteacher. Has some papers and files and speaking about Family History that was like this. With the clansmen. Because he is a redeemer and the redemption from new orleans after dislodged by the negroes. And otherwise would not be here today. So anyway when she died her papers went to my mother and when my mother died now decades later and how i rediscovered her family and wrote about it. You emulated her well. Its constance. Word to say he was heroic and her work for 100 years as will the clans people for most weight southerners. For the genesis after the civil war women challenge by black business and politicians within the civil rights. The memory and then was no longer family hero. Because they were the First American terrorist and to acknowledge that is not an easy thing to do and its radioactive. So i was afraid of it. Washer do the laundry in the family. You have to because you are a writer as a memoir so if the writer is born in a family and with exposure and shame. And to paint a picture of him and to do a lot of sales but the one thing he gets very good at is killing. And the military and in the civil war. Can you talk about that quick. Where the civil war began an elderly man as far as publishers go but he was a confederate infantry men demand for three and half years and five many battles and louisiana and returned home at the end of the fighting like half a million other veterans who have seen battles staging guerrilla attacks and to be knowledgeable about those tactics and this is something that does the rise many like them militia men that were confederate veterans who knew how to stage of military assault. That is an interesting insight that all the white men who participated in the civil war, thats where they learned organized violence and in fact does he not in the civil war . It was one of those last bites in the place called the red river and appears to participate in a massacre of Union Soldiers. Killing Union Soldiers who surrendered. There is a line in the book after you told the story and you say chances are better than half that if edward paul was there so can you explain why . Had i been raised in a different time i believe i would have been swept into the ideological climate of White Supremacy and the white self which was a ferocious drive of confederate soldiers to set were not been white supremacist. Had been in germany in 193500 and the underground resistance against the nazis to the predecessors by putting ourselves in a morally superior position and i dont feel that is honest and the other point is it is and impossible imaginary projection to say 21st century liberal person in this country and by liberal i mean and any person raised after 1960 who has some understanding and it is impossible we could be ourselves in a previous century. That is whats wonderful about a micro history he was in every man a carpenter, a soldie soldier, a domestic terrorist, a klansman and be careful what you wish for if you go out searching for your family. Was 16 greatgreatgrandparents. You may find there are scoundrels and he paint the picture of the time but he was not a wealthy person and did not do as well as his brothers are dependent on slavery with a little while for he had. For the force of the hatred spent the first part of the deep south was africanamerican half were enslaved in 1860 when the civil war there was a relatively small White Society as slaveholders there is a rather large workingclass white population and constance was a carpenter and however and slaveholder to some degree and his grandparents enslaved 30 or 40 people. So he is a person who experienced a class life. And then never found any diaries or letters of his but he believed that his status was robbed and like many white southerners of the day, and they turn the resentment and frustration into a rage directed against people of color. And to become emancipated and the Civil Rights Act of 1866 and those that favor the blacks over whites and immediately get white democrats organizing and you talk about those to be shaped and opposition and then to talk about im struggling to make the concept as concrete as blackness show all the ways new orleans with the hotbed and the idea of whiteness and reconstruction is much more potent. White people then and now did not regard themselves as part of a racial group. And that whites are not part of racial group. To keep wage racial identity as conspicuous as africanamerican and racial identity is conspicuous i have an idea is greatly amplified after the civil war by those events surrounding the acquisition the Voting Rights by black people and then you mention the center of scientific racism and it was. This is an interesting discovery for me. But the early americans scientist are people in the deep south and to describe how waste is built into the body. These are bone diggers. And interested and the fantasy each race is a different species. When they published in the journals there others worked in philadelphia and new york and elsewhere the First American science and it is very peculiar with that justification for enslavement. You might and speakers did this and the stories that we tell, lets talk about what constance did after the war is over. So tell the audience the mechanics. So one year after the end of the civil war by people are petitioning for the right to vote and in july 1866 meeting is convened in downtown new orleans to 300 africanamericans who are newly in politics 300 africanamericans outside of the Mechanics Institute in the purpose of the rally is to petition for the black man to vote. And the police force and the Fire Departments to the scene of the rally constance is the member volunteer fire brigade and he apparently came to the scene. There was no evidence he was there but it was quite persuasive and so within two hours than 200 africanamericans were dead by a budgeting and lay scattered in the streets in new orleans. This massacre to pass the reconstruction act. So that particular incident and with that reconstruction was a central animating event. And that helps the radical republican and then i have a feeling so talk about that. You are hard on yourself and your family you say that whites are my tribe. So many disastrous subplots of the National History are behind the curtains and this is one of many. And here is the crux of it. It is not an overstatement to say the rampages the fault like the massacre in some distant mediated way has cleared further space throughout the succeeding generations. Brutally honest pau write why can my people, my tribe, he would call people his tribe in ways he belongs to us and hundreds of millions. I know the honest way to regard reese and violence is full of it. Its pandemic. The United States was founded upon racial violence. It is within the core of our national identity. Thats breathtaking and the opposite of what children are taught in school and i want to ask you what you think is lost or gained in these terms. What is lost is much of the self regard that our National Storytellers allow us as america on a sitting hill, as the land of freedom and opportunity. If you tell the story with racial identity as the engine, and i think it is possible to do that without distorting it, you find that the settlements of the east coast of america was a racial act with people being displaced and shoved aside. Ultimately 4 million enslaved African Americans on the plantations of the deep south. The movement of the country across the continent over into the middle states and finally to the west was a racial act people literally being driven by force to leave parts of the Country Farmers wished to take up land. If you tell the story in that way you find it is quite a different story and it isnt a progress narrative of gradual or universal extension of authority and rights of property to all people. Its not that at all. Its something quite different. Do you think your tribe is open to hearing it the way you are presenting it . It is a novel claim to make. Africanamericans are often asked to represent their tribe we have a moment of multiracial mobilization. I think it is fair to say its been claimed perhaps one of the largest demonstrations and the support of black lives in the history of this country youve given some resistance to that and returned the theme rising, falling. This is part of this reckoning much of your work seems to be asking us to do. Can you talk about that a little bit about why you think its important to understand. You do this rather brilliantly at a time i read in 2015 where you invoked the poet Claudia Rankin in this idea that the past is in you and you talk about i will let you say it, but you were trying to say it isnt the same as stopping and frisking today that there is a certain entitlement attitude that comes from this history. Can you talk about that, the way the future generations are implicated and the way we carry these things with us . I think the more we acknowledge the experiences of our predecessors stamp their foot on our own lives the better off we are about the current circumstances and the experience of enslavement does hearken down to the president. The experience of being a fighter for White Supremacy speaks over the generations down to the present. It is an encouraging time i think this year is a surprising turn of events. The marches and aftermath of the tragic death of george floyd one could see many white folks participating in protests in a way that suggested we are regarding ourselves and our history and our identity in a fresh way for the first time. A historical kind of shift in consciousness the way they almost immediately moved to the takedown of monuments. A very interesting kind of turn of events. Having said that we also see White Supremacy does not lie dormant. It advances and grows more sophisticated the. It finds morey out its desires and i dont think we are going to fall into a bed of roses in our Racial Climate Going Forward but it is an interesting change of tone. Told the audience about this would you call it a massacre or battle it was part of the effort to and reconstruction. It is a complicated story. In 1874 the civil war had been done for nine years and the white militia generally described as co ku klux educatig their night writing and one of the white militia attracts thousands of members and is called the white league and in 1874 of september they organize a battle, an assault involving 3,000 of its members including my ancestor that overthrows the white reconstruction about 30 people die, half of them black, half of them white and the success in toppling the government for only a few days is so exhilarating to the resistance that it becomes legend and lure in the city of new orleans and through the deep south for generations. Ultimately a monument is built and the battle is commemorated with annual ceremonies for decades. According to your its a turning point in the reconstruction. It causes the federal government in washington to lose its nerve and its desire to continue the effort to integrate institutions of power and ultimately within a year federal government agreed to discontinue and remove the federal troops. Since the beginning of the end of reconstruction and your klansman is implicated and ive got to tell you one of the things you like to do in this book and previous book is interview present day africanamericans who are descendents of people who were operating at the time. I am the descendent of a reconstruction legislator in alabama so my greatgrandfather in the 1870s was a mixed race son of a slave owner and woman of color serving in the Alabama Legislature from 1870, 1874. Im talking to you, your greatgreatgrandfather is one of the ones who was shooting and here we are talking. I have to tell you this is the power of an intimate micro history. Ive read about this all my life but nothing brings it to life more than seeing on the ground the shooting, the naming, the killing im reading it and its like fresh pain for me. I can see my grandfather. He gets elected on a day when people were shooting at black people who went to the polls. One of the things you do so well, tell me about your obsession or compulsion to go speak to africanamerican descendents both of slaves and radical republicans. In your first book you went to speak to descendents of slaves and in this book of a certain type of person of color, very successful, accomplished africanamericans in the fight for reconstruction. Tell me about that and anything you want to share about that. A. I had the idea and im sorry its painful to you. I had the idea that revisiting the scenes of historical trauma with personal testimony if you like has a positive effect in so far as we can pass through some of the hard stuff in a personal way it has a positive effect. There are reasons why stories of violence and domination are littleknown. They are repressed and forgotten intentionally in most cases and it isnt properly commemorated so there are two families i write about in life of a klansman, africanamerican families who were members of the creole delete which was a large minority of africanamericans in new orleans, these were Business People and educated people of all stripes in the reconstruction era and they were on the scenes of one of the events i write about. And i identified a family whose ancestors were nearly killed at this massacre and i asked with permission if i could tell some of their Family History for them, tomac. It isnt uncommon a family that experiences the trauma of night writing more lynching or abuse generations later have this memory intact. This was the case with one of the families i went to visit. They i think with some sense of discovery and renewed appreciation wished to share the story of their families experience. And a micro level with individuals and individual families it does provide some kind of medicinal effect. This is your sixth book but particularly your first and latest book showing how intertwined. Black history is american history. They are so intertwined particularly in the south black and white people are on the ground even during the most virulently awful times were involved with one another. Do you feel like things have shifted in terms of people beginning to embrace this idea that the africanamerican story is central to the american story. There seems to be a hunger. I would like to think that things have shifted and large numbers of ordinary folks are interested in and able to tell the stories of africanamerican families and of africanamerican life. Theres definitelthere is definr appetite now. The interlocked nature of white and black society and memory and experience we have been in each others dreams, in each others lives for centuries. One hand cannot move without the other hand responding. That is something that is in ideal frame of consciousness to understand the nature of our destiny and something we are inching towards. I want to ask you a question as a fellow writer and i also wrote a family memoir that went back for generations i can appreciate some of your struggles to tell the story where the paper trail and particularly writing about a klansman they were not going to leave a paper trail and you give yourself permission to fill the gaps with your imagination. I see him doing this or not doing that. I wondered about that device as a writer and how you think trained historians feel. I do not provide dialogue for people who whom i dont have evidence of their dialogue but i imagine when you tell the reader you are constructing a scene you are okay and there is enormous circumstantial evidence for the lives and behaviors and movements of all kinds of otherwise anonymous white people and black people. The reality is only about one in a thousand in any class leaves a piece of paper behind that historians can later consult so built into the archive method is a kind of radical exclusion if you depend only on the paper you are excluding an overwhelming majority of individuals. A micro history tries to tell the story of ordinary folks who have access to little education and lived i inconspicuous lives and left no papers and diaries and what have you. Thats the experience of a majority of americans white and black and asian and what have you so in the imaginative reconstruction projection i dont give interior narration but i do take some liberties with narrative events and i announce it when im doing them. You first try to tackle this as a novel. I thought this story is so searing that it would be like holding coal in your hand. I should write a novel about this man and i tried and it wasnt, it was not superb, so i set it aside and i decided it is so searing i have to write it as nonfiction just in case the viewers, just in case someone is not aware could you explain the compromise and how the reconstruction formally ended . Briefly in 1876 the president ial election, Rutherford Hayes and it came down to the electoral votes of two states, South Carolina and louisiana. By this time reconstruction was losing its steam and democrats gave the election if you like to the republicans which were initially the antislavery party and initially the party of reconstituting the society that makes room for africanamerican power and authority. In exchange, they 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 part of the deep south and bring a formal end to the attempt to rebuild a new society and so he took the white house, the troops were withdrawn and the reconstruction collapses. So it depended on the willingness of the federal government to stay and basically get exhausted. It appears that way. Do you feel like it was inevitable in the society in which the wide status was so tied and reconstruction falling was going to be inevitable no matter what . No i dont think it was inevitable. I think it was a pivot points in history where things could have gone better, they could have gone the other way and we have lived with the consequences of our sins. White supremacy was after the compromise and end of reconstruction. White supremacy was fortified in the deep south and it was made extremely brutal in terms of enforcement with all kinds of measures such as convict leasing and Voting Rights were withdrawn from africanamerican men and all business run by black people was driven out of power. This kind of fortified White Supremacy i believe has been exported to the rest of the United States as africanamericans leave the south and some of the methods perfected bprotected by the whie then taken up around the United States in their own communities as africanamericans are coming into the northern and western states so its an extremely important turning point. So, the point at each nextgeneration having to live with the consequences of what the ancestors did, you know, and you are making clear how the violent backed White Supremacy was the principal not just of the south, but of the United States. That was accepted like participated in a racial order in which whites were on top and follow ofollowon institutions m slavery, jim crow, and you eluded to the idea that today we had an hbo special where they were brought forward to today, he might look around and see some things he recognizes. But the difference being that there are a lot more white allies for racial equality now. He might, yes. I think that White Supremacy is a spectrum of consciousness. It isnt just quiet violence of people of color but its an attitude of mind that crosses the whole political spectrum. Many people will tell anyone who asks that their families were not entitled or do not experience the benefits of whiteness. Their families have struggled and have com, from modest begins to find a precarious foothold in Economic Life and in many ways they are telling the truth. An immigrant family who comes to ellis island in the turnofthecentury enters at a quite low level but when they arrived at ellis island, they said their foot on an upper tier of a society that has been shaped by slavery and jim crow and if the they are able to riso Property Ownership and economic prosperity. Word is offensive . And i wasnt able to articulate well your book comments on it a lot. There with this phenomenon not only a mardi gras but. It is an interesting dimension of our psychological history in the 18 forties with this popular art arises of putting on makeup to appear black and performing music that they have taken from or parity from plantation blues and blackface minstrelsy is the most popular form of culture for white americans for century. Hundreds of millions of people going to minstrel shows throughout the 18 hundreds and 19 hundreds right up until world war ii. The most 41 popular form of public musical art for a century. Of white people for blackness and the desire with the essence of blackness to put it on themselves for any phone or radio archives and the desire to domesticate and to hear in the minds. We only have a couple minutes with the hopefulness of the moment we are in. The largest demonstration with people saying black lives matter with a few steps forward and then a retrenchment is anything different about this moment . However i am optimistic and we are entering a new phase of consciousness with black folks and white folks together. And with the renewed understanding of racial identity would evolve and complicates a positive force or not. But i am hopeful. Im to. This is what i tell my agent and we will have to see what develops so thank you so much for having this conversation. I have enjoyed it immensely