She was an elderly retired schoolteacher and she was the family historian in my mothers family. Who were all in new orleans and she was a keeper of the lore of among others, our klansman. She had some papers and house and she had a way of speaking about her Family History that was like this. The one to remember is our klansman, my grandfather, because he was a redeemer. The redemption returned white people to authority in new orleans after they had been dislodged by the negroes. And if he if you have not actee battle of Liberty Place we would not be here today. Anyway, so when she dyed died r papers went to my mother, and when my mother died, this is now decades later, her files into me, Family History files, and this is how i rediscovered the story of our klansman and wrote about it. Host you remember your aunt maud here you have emulated her well. It sounds like she spoke of and say his name [inaudible] host guest spelled constant. He was a French Carpenter raised and spoke french. Host is a fair to say in your family lore he was heroic . I mean he was guest tragedy was heroic from 100 years, as were the clans people, the klansman for most white southerners at the klan in the first genesis after the civil war returned reconstruction and restored White Supremacy when it was challenged by black authority and black politicians and black business and black voting. Host right. Guest for a century he was a hero within in the civil rights period the memory of the klan was altered, returned to some sense, and when it came to me it was with some ambivalence our klansman was no longer a family here. Host right. But you write early on in your book you have note about your klansman as a child and you were afraid of his story. While we afraid of his story . Guest because the two clocks were the first dash or ku klux klan for the First American terrorists. And to acknowledge that is not an easy thing to do to say my people include white terrorists. Thats a difficult thing to do. Its radioactive and it hurts. So i was afraid of it. Host you use a creole phrase that roughly translates to watch your dirty laundry within the family, dont put it out, right . You have done this before with your book. Guest [inaudible] wash your dirty laundry in the family. Host you betray that code he you can check you because youre a writer what writers do, memoirs. Guest and theres a famous remark by the poet which is at the right is born in the family, her or his family is lost. They are condemned to exposure and shame. Host right. Lets dive in to the story. You paint a picture of him, he tries, hes a carpenter for higher turkey tries a lot of things and fails at things. But one thing that he gets very good at is killing in the military, in the civil war. Can you talk about that . Guest yeah. Well, constant lcorgne was 38 when the civil war baking. He was an elderly man as far as soldiers go. But he was a confederate infantrymen for three and half years and fought in many battles in louisiana, and he returned home at the end of the fighting, like half a million other white confederate veterans having seen battles and having staged guerrilla attacks and very knowledgeable about tactics. This is something that fuels the rise of the white militias, many, many of the white militia men that klansman were confederate veterans, knew how to stage a military assault. Host that was such an interesting insight which ive not thought about, that all the white man who participate in the civil war, thats where they learned organized violence. And, in fact, constant experiences his first massacre, does he not come in the civil war . Guest he does. During one of the last fights of upstate louisiana in in a place called the red river. He participates, appears to participate in a massacre of the Union Soldiers. Host killing Union Soldiers who surrendered, who guest thats correct. Host this is a brutally honest book and a really appreciate it. Theres a line in your book after you tell this story of this massacre, and you say the chances are better than half that if i common me, edward ball, was there as a young white creole i would have shot, also. And i thought, i thought wow, thats honest. I suppose if i were young white creole the chances are better than half i would shoot captive yankees. Can you explain what you think better than half a chance it for you you would have shot Union Soldiers . Guest had i been raised in that place and time, i believe i would even swept into the ideological climate of White Supremacy and of the fence of the white south which was the ferocious drive of the confederate soldiers to defend their homeland, which they believed had been invaded by others. And i think in general, we flatter ourselves about the past. We tend to think, oh, i would not have been a white supremacist. I wouldve been part of the resistance, you know rex had i been in germany in 1935, i wouldve been in the underground resistance against the nazis. We condescend to our predecessors by giving ourselves i kind of morally superior position relationship to them, and i dont feel thats honest. Thats one point. The other point is its an impossible imaginary projection to say that i 21st century liberal person in this country, and by liberal i mean any person raised after 1960, any white person raised after 1960 who has some understanding of the disasters of our National Inheritance around the stories of race. Its impossible that we could be ourselves in the previous century. Thats another piece of selfdelusion. Host this is what is so wonderful about a microhistory. You were telling the story of an everyman, right . He was a carpenter. He was a soldier. He was a domestic terrorist, a klansman, and i will say to her audience, be careful what you wish for it to go off searching for your family. You point out that you have 16 rate greatgrandparents, right . If you go off looking you might find that there are scoundrels and domestic terrorists and slaveowners, and youve done this with both sides of your family. But you paint a picture of the time that constant lived in, and all of the ideas that were swirling around, the use terms like terms that describe working people, and to describe the resentment, their hostilities. You know, particularly for constant, constant was not a wealthy person. He didnt do as well as his brothers and he was always to been on slavery, while the wealthy had. Can you talk about that class of people and the source of the resentment, your hostilities towards black people . The source of their hatred. Guest the deep south, this part of the deep south, louisiana, was about 52 africanamerican, the majority of the africanamericans were enslaved of course at the time of 1860 when the civil war was forming itself, and it was a relatively small White Society slaveholders, perhaps 15 of the white population, and that was a rather large workingclass white population. And constant lecorgne was a ship carpenter and he was one of the working man, a manual laborer. However, his parents had been slaveholders to some degree. I think they enslaved eight people. His grandparents enslaved Something Like 30 or 40 people. So he is a person who experienced a class slide in life. He became popularized and he believed, i think, i i never found any diaries or letters of his, he believed that his status had been robbed of him, 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 had recently become emancipated and would recently entered the public sphere. Host right. So the very first Civil Rights Act in history of this country, the Civil Rights Act of 1866, gets passed over Andrew Johnson and his message is getting civil rights to black people is savoring blacks over whites. You immediately get white democrats organizing to promote White Supremacy. And you talk about how whiteness gets shaped. Whiteness is very much shaped in opposition to black rights. Theres a line early in the book where you talk about, im struggling to make the concept of whiteness as concrete as blackness. Its this submerged thing. And you show all the ways in which culturally whiteness is getting defined. Can you talk about that . New orleans was this hotbed of pseudorace science, but this idea of whiteness and after reconstruction it becomes much more potent. Guest well, many of white people, then and now, do not regard themselves as part of a racial group. We as whites often think that people of color are those who inhabit race, and whites are not part of a racial group. But you refer to in the book, im trying to make white racial identity as visible, as conspicuous to us as africanamerican racial identity is conspicuous to us. I have an idea that White Supremacy and white self regard is born, or at least greatly amplified after the civil war by events surrounding the acquisition of Voting Rights by black people, and by the First Century of black people into positions of authority. You mentioned that new orleans was a center of scientific racism, and it was. This was an interesting discovery for me. The earliest american scientists are people in the deep south, and also elsewhere in the north, who are trying to describe how race is built into the body. These are bone diggers and people are interested in the fantasy that there is a separate origin of each race, that each race is a different species. Some of these guys worked and taught in new orleans and they published in journals they are, and others of them worked in philadelphia and new york and elsewhere. But the First American science is race science here is very peculiar, and this becomes some of the intellectual justification for enslavement. Host you know, enlightenment thinkers it does around the time of the founding as well, right . The stories we tell to justify the way things are is very much part of our history. Lets talk about what constant did after the war is over. Tell the audience the mechanics guest institutes. Host the Mechanics Institute massacre. Tell the audience about this and constants role you think in it. Guest right. I get back to the of the civil war, black people are petitioning for the rights to vote. In july and 66 the meeting is convened in downtown new orleans of two or 300 africanamericans who are newly in politics and there are about 300 africanamericans upside to this place called the Mechanics Institute and the purpose of the rally is to petition for the right of like men to vote. White politicians are in power at this point in new orleans, and the mayor of the city since the police force and the Fire Departments to the scene of this rally to break it up. Constant lecorgne is a member of a volunteer fire brigade, as are many confederate veterans, and he apparently came to the scene. There is no fingerprint evidence that he was there, but the circumstantial evidence is quite persuasive. Within two hours of the police and the fire brigades arriving at the scene of this meeting, some 200 africanamericans were dead by gunfire and my bludgeoning, and lay scattered in the streets of new orleans. This Mechanics Institute massacre provokes congress to pass the reconstruction act. Host right. Which i did not know about that particular incident. I have been teaching reconstruction and the Civil Rights Act, the law of reconstruction for years but i didnt realize there was this central animating it in. It reminds me, john lewis and others getting attacked of the Edmund Pettus bridge, and that providing the impetus for the Voting Rights act, right . Its a similar kind of event, 200 black people dead and that helps the radical republicans passed reconstruction over Andrew Johnsons veto. And you are right, i do not feel culpable for the Mechanics Institute massacre, or your ancestors role in it. However, as a matter of conscience i feel implicated. I have a feeling of shame. I want you to talk about that because you are really hard i feel like on yourself, your family, on your tribe. You claim can you say whites are my tribe. Is this family shame you feel . Guest well, so many of the disastrous subplots of our National History are hidden behind curtains, and this is one of many. Heres the crux of it. It is not an overstatement to say that the rampages of the ku klux and assaults like the Mechanics Institute massacre, in some distant and mediated way have cleared further space for white life throughout the succeeding generations down to our own. It is not a falsehood to state that the night writing and torment that people like constant lecorgne and his gangs perpetrated gives white, ordinary white folks, including myself, a greater sense of authority and security, down to this day. Because they were fighting for our people. They were fighting to extend the authority of power, as white people. Thats the net of it. Host right. Its one more, in a very unspoken one more brutally honest passage you write whites are my people, my tribe. They were constants people come his tribe, and the way that he belongs to us and to hundreds of millions. I know the honest way to regard race violence is this. American history is full of it. It is pandemic. The United States was founded upon racial violence. It is within the core of our national identity. Thats breathtaking, and the opposite all the shibboleths that children are taught in school, and i want to ask you, what do you think is lost, or gained, by seeing the nation soundings in these mean, violent terms . Guest well, what is lost is much of these self regard that are National Storytellers allow us to believe in america as the city on the hill, america as a land of freedom and opportunity. If you tell the National Story with racial identity as the engine, and i think its possible to do that without distorting it, you find that the settlement of the east coast of america was a racial act with native people being displaced and shoved aside. The import of enslaved africans with a racial act which ultimately 4 million enslaved africanamericans on the plantations of the deep south. The movement of the country across the continent over the appalachian range and into the middle states and finally to the west was a racial act. With native people literally being driven by forced march to leave parts of the country where white farmers wished to take up land. If you tell the story that way, you find its quite a different story, and its not a progress narrative. Its not a narrative of gradual or universal extension of authority and writes the property to all people. Its not that at all. Its something quite different. Host do you think you are tribe your tribe is open to hearing the way you are presenting it . Guest well host its your turn. You said white people are my tribe. Guest yes. It is a novel claim to make. I mean, africanamericans often complain, you know, i cant speak for all black people, you know. And africanamericans are often asked by whites to represent their tribe, to White Society. So im not tribal representative. Host okay, okay. All right. Guest however, im telling a story. Host we have a new moment now of multiracial globalization, right . After the death of george floyd and breonna taylor, others. We have, i think its fair to say, its been claimed, perhaps one of the largest demonstrations in the support of black lives in the history of this country, and you giving some resistance to that resistance. You return to this thing again in your again and again in the book of White Supremacy rising and falling, White Supremacy rises and falls and rises again and subsequent generations are defined by the traumas inflicted in the past. This is part of, this reckoning that much of your work seems to be asking us to do here can you talk about that a little bit, about why you think its important for whites to understand how they may, you have alluded to this, and you do this brilliantly in a New York Times piece i read what you wrote in 2015 are you invoke a poet claudia rankin, this idea that the past is in you, and you talked about, well, i will let you say it. You were trying to say that im not saying like my klansman is the same, or the slave patrol is the same as stopping and frisking today, but theres a certain entitlement attitude that comes from this history. Can you talk about that, the ways future generations are implicated at the traumas of the past and we carry these things with us . Guest i think that the more we acknowledged that the experiences of our predecessors stamp their foot on our own lives, the better off we are, the more honest we are about our current circumstances. The experience of enslavement does hearken down to the present. The experience of being an insulator, the experience of being a fighter for White Supremacy enslaver speaks to the generations to the present. You mentioned the protests of the summer. Its an encouraging time i think this year is a surprising turn of events. In the marches and the aftermath of the tragic death of george floyd, one could see, i think, many, many white folks participating in protests in a way that suggested they or we are regarding ourselves and our history and our identity in a fresh way for the first time. Host right. Guest its a historical kind of shift in consciousness, the way the protests almost immediately moved to the takedown of monuments. Host right. Guest it was a very interesting turn of events. I think its very encouraging. Now, having said that, we also see that White Supremacy doesnt lie dormant. It advances. It grows more sophisticated. It finds new commandos to carry 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 a very interesting change of tone. Host please tell our audience about though white, did you call a massacre or the white battle . It was one of the larger, it was part of the effort to end reconstruction. Guest sure. Yes, its a complicated story. In 1874, the civil war has been done for nine years, and the white militias, which are generally described as ku klux by the newspapers. Thats what they are called, are agitating, night riding, and one of the white militias attracts thousands of members and it is called the white league. In 1874, september, the white league organizes a battle, and assault, a coup attempt involving 3000 members including my ancestor, that overthrows the white reconstruction government in the streets of new orleans. About 30 people die, half of them black, half of them white. And the success of the white league in toppling the reconstruction government for only a few days is so exhilarating to the white resistance that it becomes legend and lore in the city of new orleans, and through the deep south for generations, ultimately a monument is built and the events, the battle is commemorated in annual ceremonies in new orleans for many decades. Host and in your personal family lore according to your aunt maud, constant guest he has his head split open in this fight. Its a turning point in reconstruction. It causes the federal government in washington to lose its nerve and to lose its desire to continue the efforts to integrate institutions of power, and ultimately within a year the federal government agrees to discontinue and remove the federal troops. Host so its the beginning of the end of reconstruction, and your klansman is indicated in it, right . And ive got to tell you, one of the things you like to do in this book and in your previous book is interview presentday africanamericans who are descendents of people who were operating at the time, and you do that, i want to tell you, i am a descendent of reconstruction legislator in alabama, right . So my greatgrandfather in the 1870s was a mixed race son of a former slave of a slave owner and a woman of color. Hes serving in the Alabama Legislature for making 701874. Im talking to you. Your great, great grandfather was one of the ones who was shooting, right . So here we are talking, right . And i have to tell you, this is the power of an intimate microhistory. You know, i just, i want to share that and one of the things you do so well is, tell me about your obsession or compulsion to go and speak to what i call descendents, average american descendents, both slaves and radical republicans as you did in this book. In this book you went to speak to descendents of slaves, descendents of a certain type of person of color, successful accomplished africanamericans who were in the fight for reconstruction. Tell me about that and anything you want to share about that. I have the idea and im sorry, its painful to you. I have the idea of revisiting the scenes of historical trauma with person testimony, if you like, has a positive effect in so far as we can pass through some of the hard stuff of our national life, in a personal way. It has a positive effect. There are reasons why stories of violence domination are little known. They are repressed and forgotten intentionally in most cases. And its not properly commemorated. So, the there are two families that i write about in life of a klansman, africanamerican families who were members of the creole elite, the creole of color elite, 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 that i write about, the Mechanics Institute massacre and i identified a family whose ancestors were nearly killed at this massacre and asked with their permission if i could tell some of their Family History and for them, too, its not uncommon that a family who experiences the traumatic of night riding or lynching, or abuse, generations later, have this memory intact. And this was the case with one of the families that i went to visit and they, i think, with some sense of discovery and renewed appreciation wished to share the story of their familys experience. So, i think that and a microlevel with individuals and individual families, it does provide some kind of medicinal effect. I appreciate you doing that. Youve been on this project, this is our sixth, particularly, your first and your latest book of showing how intertwined africanamerican experiences with white experience. Theyre not theyre not, you know, black history is american history, right . Theyre so intertwined and intertwined particularly in the south, right . Black and white people are on the ground, even during 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 the africanamerican story is central to the american story . You know, there seems to be a hunger, you know, for i think so. I would like to think that things have shifted. I think that large numbers of ordinary folks are interested and able to tell, and able to tell the stories of africanamerican families and of africanamericans life and i think that theres definitely a much wider appetite now, but the key is what you mentioned, which is the interlocked nature of white and black society and memories and we have been in each others dreams, weve been in each others beds. Weve been in each others lives for centuries. Right. And its one hand cannot move without the other hand responding. Right. Thats something that is an ideal frame of consciousness to achieve, to understand that the nature, the interlocked nature of our destiny and thats something thats were inching toward. Right. I want to ask you a question thats sort of an animated as a fellow writer, and i also wrote a family memoir that went back four generations. I can appreciate some of your struggle to tell this story where the paper trail ends, particularly, youre writing about a klansman, and klans men were intentionally clandestine and they werent going to leave a trail and you give yourself permission to fill gaps with your imagination, your speculation about, you know, what he or his wife said or felt, you know, you see yourself and i see him doing this, i dont see him doing that. I wonder about that device as a writer and how you feel about that and how trade historians feel about that. I dont actually provide dialog for people whom i dont have evidence of their dialog, but by imagined projection, i think when you tell the reader that you are reconstituting or constructing a scene, youre okay. And there is enormous circumstanceal evidence for the lives and behaviors and movements of all kind of otherwise anonymous white people and black people. The reality is that 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 histo histo historyography, youre excluding majority of individuals. A microhistory such as one that ive written, tries to tell the story of ordinary folks who had access to little education, who lived inconspicuous lives and who left no papers and diaries and what have you. Thats the experience of the majority of americans. White and black, and asian and what have you. So, using imaginatively constructed and projection, i dont give i am peer imperial of my narration, take some liberties with narrative events and i announce them when i do them. You first tried to tackle this as a novel. Correct. And tell me about that and why did you give up on that and decide to do it this way . Right. Well, when i reencountered this in the papers that i inherited from my aunt maude. I thought this story is so searing that it would be like holding a coal in your hand, a coal, to write it as nonfiction. I should write a novel about this man consta. And i tried and it was not superb so i set it aside. And finally i decided, this story is see searing, i have to write it as nonfiction and so i did. Well, i dont want to misbehave just in case our viewers just in case someone is not aware of that. Could you explain the compromise and how reconstruction formally ended . In 1876, the president ial election pitted the republican r Rutherford Hayes against the democrat and came down to two states in louisiana and by this time reconstruction was losing its steam and the democrats gave the election, if you like, to the republicans, which were the, initially the antislavery party which were initially the party of reconstituting a society that makes room for africanamerican power and authority and Economic Life. In exchange, the tilden camp allow made the deal that if hayes, the republican was allowed to take the white house, his government had to immediately withdraw the union forces that still occupy parts of the deep south. And thats bring a formal end to attempts to rebuild a new society. And so, hayes took the white house. The troops are withdrawn and reconstruction collapses in al 1877. All right, so the rise of africanamericans dependent on the willingness of the federal government to stay with guns and basically get exhausted, right . Appears that way. Do you feel like it it was inevitable in society in which white status was so tied to sub board nating sub bort no, i dont think it was inevitable. I think it was a pivot point in history where things could have gone better, could have gone the other way, and weve lived with the consequences ever since. White supremacy was after the hayestilden compromise and White Supremacy was fortified in the deep south and it was made extremely brutal in its forms of enforcement. And 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. And then kind of fortified White Supremacy, i believe, has been exported to the rest of the United States as africanamericans begin to leave the south. And some of the methods that were perfected by the white south are then taken up by whites around the United States in their own communities as africanamericans are coming into the northern and western states. So, yeah, its an extremely important turning point and it could have gone another way. Well, this gets to your point about each the next generation having to live with the consequences of what the ancestors did, you know, and you are making clear in your comments here in your books how a violent backed White Supremacy was the central organizing principle, not just of the south, but of the United States and whites this those eras, that was accepted. All whites participated in a racial order in which whites were on top and they were follow on institutions from slavery, jim crow, and you alluded to the idea that today an h. B. O. Special where mccord was brought forward today, he would look around and see some things he recognizes, right, the difference being there are much more white allies for racial equality now. He might. I think that White Supremacy is a spectrum of consciousness. It is not just white violence against people of color, but it is an attitude of mind that crosses the whole political spectrum. Many white people will tell anyone who asks that their families were not entitled. Their families do not experience the benefits of whiteness. Their families have struggled and have come up from modest beginnings to find a precarious foot hold in Economic Life and that in many ways, theyre telling the truth. An immigrant family who comes through ellis island in the turn of the century in 1900 to 1910, enters as a quite low level on the platform of american society, but when they arrive at ellis island, they set their foot on the upper tier of a twotier Caste Society that has been shaped by slavery and jim crow, and they are able to rise into Property Ownership and economic prosperi prosperity using tools that are denied africanamericans. Now, thats also a part of Family History that many people are unable to acknowledge. This may seem a bit like a diversion, but its in the book and its been in the news of late. The phenomenon of blackface, someone recently asked me, a white person, what is offensive about blackface and i wasnt able to articulate well, but your book actually comments on it a lot. Can you tell us about the origins of blackface and this phenomenon particularly tied to mardi gras, but just this phenomenon of whites putting on blackface and why thats offensive. Its an interesting dimension of our sort of psychological history in the early in the 1840s, i think. This enormously popular art called minstrelsy arrives, it consists of white people putting on makeup to appear black and performing music that they have taken from or parodied from black sources, plantation blues and jigs. And blackface, minstrelsy, as its called, becomes a popular form of culture for americans for a century. There are hundreds of people going to minstrel shows in the 1800s and 1900s through world war ii. Its the most popular form of musical art for a century. And what it relies on is this fascination of whites of white people for blackness. This desire to sort of take the what appears to them to be the essence of blackness and put it on themselves and mock it and its a if you look at any film or radio archives sourced from the early 1900s youll find loads of this stuff. Right. And its offensive because it involves this thing that people call today appropriation. And its offensive because it its it involves a kind of desire to domest domesticate black identity in the white mind to take control of it and hold it in the mind as a kind of toy. And thats whats offensive about it. Well, thank you for that. We only have a couple minutes and i want to end with the hopefulness of the moment were in. You know, as i said before, we have the largest demonstrations in the history of this country with a lot of white people saying black lives matter. I wonder if you think theres Something Different about this moment, whether were headed toward perhaps a third reconstruction that might be more enduring than these rituals of a few steps forward and then a retrenchment, a reassertion of White Supremacy. Do you think theres anything different about this moment . I think its too early to s say were entering a third reconstruction. However, im optimistic that were entering a new phase of consciousness about ourselves. Black folks and white folks together. The elections in november will be, i think, a very loud time of whether this sign of whether this renewed understanding of our racial identities is going to evolve and complicate and become a positive force or not. And so, im hopeful, however. I am, too. So whats next for you . Have you exhausted your Family History . Have you thought about it can you say . I dont know. Different things and at least, this is what i tell my agent, working on a couple of different things. And well have to see what develops. But, listen, thank you so much for having this conversation. Its been a very nice one. Thank you, ive enjoyed it immensely. All right. Be well. You, too. Week nights this month were featuring book tv programs as a preview of whats available every weekend on cspan2. Tonight we focus on covert operations. First, former fbi special agent talks about the early years of the u. S. War on terror. Then Chris Whipple talks to former cia directors to provide an inside look at the intelligence organizations operation and later the great secrets, looking at sinking of allied ships in italy. That starts 8 p. M. Eastern, enjoy book tv this week and every weekend on cspan2. Youre watching book tv on cspan2, every weekend with the latest nonfiction books and authors. Cspan2 created by americas Television Companies as a Public Service and brought to you today by your television provider. History on biography is sponsored by wells fargo