this is a powerful exploration of the past and present arc of america's white supremacy from the country's inception and revolution every year to its 19th century flash point of civil war, to the civil rights movement of the 1960s and today's black lives matter, i'm just going to turn it over at this point to donald to read a little and talk to us about his his new book. thank you very much for being here, donald and everyone everyone. thank, thank you. thank you all for coming this evening. i really appreciate it. the past matters, especially now that wisconsin born frederick jackson turner, who happened to spend many unhappy years teaching at harvard, observed in 1891 that, quote today is so much a product of yesterday that yesterday can be understood as as it is explained by today, for the present is simply the developing past. the past, the under developed present, far too many americans. as the famed author and critic james baldwin explained in his famous book, the fire next time remain trapped. his words trapped in that past quote, which they do not understand until it and until they understand it, they cannot be released from it. but i think we probably have misunderstood or underestimate made it what it can be, what the what it takes to release them from that past because as baldwin emphasized his book quote the danger in the minds of most white americans is the loss of their identity. and this is the primary underlying issue confronting us today. this profound base layer, a tectonic plate that exists beneath us, which is cracking. shifting and being destroyed. it is terrifying. lying to some americans. clearly not all. it is terrifying because it is attacking their known universe an attack which baldwin said is on, quote, one sense of one's own reality. this what we're facing today. it's not new. it has happened before. fact, it's been far more violent than it is today right. the time of the first world war. up until that, into the 1920s, america went through a similar ordeal, only far more violently. for instance, the summer of 19, 1960. africa, american communities across the country from florida to chicago were attacked thousands killed. let me read to here briefly. immigration, which explores in the late 1880s, 1890s, the beginning of the 20th century, when my grandparents to the united states. this renders this level of of immigration which is happening across the west the western world. these days basically because of climate change. and it is sparking similar reactions in italy, sweden, of all places. and elsewhere. it's a similar phenomenon. spark marked by people perceived a different race, especially in italy. okay, it rendered this immigration and what's going on today. rendered american as it had been perceived, besieged and threatened in the eyes of whites. by whites, we mean people of european background. a drifting away from the anglo saxon saxon foundations they had celebrated since the onset of european colonization. rather than the flapper age of dapper dan and the shimmer, a shimmering coco chanel, the 1920s were in fact the age of rage. americans seethed with a dread fear that american english garden that emerson had imagined in his book the english traits was being uprooted and replaced by none native species from alien lands. no longer did americans see themselves as nourished water by a crystal in lake placid. now they saw themselves as inundated in the east by andrea attic. a salt joined to a dark guinea golf course. tidal wave and in the west by yellow sea tsunami. never before till that point in the 1920s had americans felt so crushing a need to make america great and white again again. in 1916, the at the time famous eugenicist lothrop lothrop stoddard opposed the first world war because he saw it as a white racial civil war. and the result he warned, only if the war came to a halt, he wrote in whites, could they hope to quote, repel any subsequent colored attack. this is the frame of mind that we're dealing with in the 1920s and for most of history now. this this identity, which is formed, which we call race is races we have to keep in mind our creations, social construct. there's no genetic basis for these things. they were made up in the late 18th and 19th century and they were made up to place people of european descent on the top and people of african descent on the bottom. that was the specific purpose for these to create ordered racial hierarchy which serve the interest of people of european. and this book that i've finished and released from slavery today i've been told is not as some of the reviewers are saying it's not a book about a bunch of bad books. this is a study of american character. american idol entity. how it was when it was formed. how it was formed. and most importantly how it was transferred from general station to generation. from the 1700s, right through to the present day. now, i want to emphasize this point because it will come up. it has come up. i didn't start out to write this book. now, i may be old, but i'm not an old marxist, which i got accused of being last. it's got nothing to do with marxism. in fact, i was writing a different book. i had spent the better part of year doing research. the mass historical society. the boston atheneum and the and library and the harvard campus. the houghton library collects holds all the manuscript that were donated to the university. the books there were those are all in the other libraries. this one focuses just on manuscript, mostly manuscript collections. and i had spent the better part the summer going through 55 boxes. the letters of john jay chapman. now, john jay chapman was for his day a very famous intellectual author, cultural critic critic, from about 18 and reformer, 1890s. until i went to the through the end of the 1930s. he you had he was a commanding figure everyone knew him everyone recognize his importance and i was focusing him although i was i had hoped to see a bunch of other as well. i never got to them. he was the grandson of a famous boston abolitionist rhea west chapman. he knew her. he grew up with her and when at about 1911, he published a very well-informed and very articulate, very positive biography or study, i think is probably better term study of william lloyd garrison, probably the most famous white abolitionist. of the pre-civil war era. now, this went against all the historiography, all the textbooks all the understandings that american had, americans had, or almost all had of the anti slavery movement. now, what i was doing i wanted to look at the legacy of the abolitionists and their impact on, the creation of of the modern civil rights movement, because it was real. there was a connection and i was documenting it. i had a lot it a lot more to go. but after going and i, i bring up chapman. i want to come back to him later because he is representative of the issue that i'm looking at in this book. but in the most unexpected of ways. so i'll come back to him. after going 55 boxes of his, i said, i just, you know i need a break. this is this has been really tough. i had i had probably another 100 or so boxes of manuscripts to go through for the family of william lloyd garrison and others. and i thought, i've been at this. i need a break. so i thought i would go over to the school of education just on the other side of campus and go to the rosalie gutmann library, look at their collection of textbooks, which i assumed they had. i didn't know what they had, what i know. so i went over there and the librarians were fabulous. they introduced me to the their their special collections, which was in the basement of the of the library. and i had free access. anyone who who got in and got could go in and you could grab books and nothing was hidden from you. they're all on these huge large electronic stacks that, you know, move so they could compact shelving, so they could get as many in a small space possible. and the wonderful librarians introduced me to collection of textbooks, 3000. and it was really important for me to be standing in front of that collection, because if you were just looking at your computer in a in a, in a catalog, you would how would you three? how would you even know their were 3000? how would you know what to look for? and i would have stumbled, come up with a few and probably been done with it and went back to my book instead. i was dumbfounded by this collection of 3000 books. i mean, row upon rope stretching. from 1800 to 19 1980s. i was just, what do i do now? so i got the bright idea of, well, i'll just start because they're all chronologically arranged. not topically, chronologically. and they included history books, social studies, textbooks, some government, few other topics, but mostly u.s. history. and so i started around, well, actually 1832, and i chose 32 because that was a year after garrison emergence in 1830, 30 well, 31 when the liberator first started being published, i pulled out the. 1832 textbook and it was written by noah webster, a dictionary frame. and now i didn't know what to expect. i knew the history historiography of the anti-slavery movement. i know they were reviled. i knew the they had their reputation among historians changed over time. i read all the books. that was my specialty. when i was in graduate school. so i knew what the historiography had said, but i never thought about what textbooks and how they with it, which is why i wanted to look a few. so i started as. i said i started with noah webster's and i was astounded. well, as it turns out, there was never any mention of the abolitionist movement in any of these books before the civil war. i think there were, if i recall, specific abolitionist george thompson, english abolitionist, and he was the example of how britain was interfering in the united states, trying to take over the american government to, in their plot and their plot to destroy slavery. okay. and john brown, the textbooks dismissed as insane. there was no discussion of any abolitionist movement. the textbooks all formed a model european colony explorer, european colonization, the american revolution constitution forming. and then successive presidential administration until. the day of the publication of the book. that's it. that's the way they perceived history. history didn't exist outside of the political system. so, you know, you learned about henry clay, john calhoun, webster. that's it. that was the linear development. so the anti-slavery movement, which of course, they all knew about, could not know about it. they it wasn't included. well, this the more of these books i read, the more i was being overwhelmed by this sense of of whiteness being the priority as slavery was was mentioned. and for instance, almost all the books mentioned 1619 until later about the 1850s when for some reason they changed it. the 2 to 1620 introduction of slavery in virginia. they got the date wrong later. yeah, got it right at first. someone came up with the i think they confused it with plymouth. yeah. and decided that it must have been 1620 anyway. hmm. excuse me. i was being just overwhelmed with this literal flood of emphasis on europeans and whiteness is. now, i'm not making this up. in fact, one textbook from. 1930 and the very first page in capital letters said, quote, the history of the white man, unquote. now, you have to be a real dullard not to figure out what the hell is going with these books. that is the priori d that i saw. i was being overwhelmed by this and i thought, well, i can't continue writing what my my other book this is this is astonishing. i just i just never expected to see this. i never expected to see the development of american white identity or american identity as white. and seeing it depict it in books designed for youth. so i went through ultimately all 3000 and my book used about 220 in the notes. i don't as i said the beginning, this is not a book about bad books. i use these books for to mine the attitudes that i found in them. they're not i don't summarize books as stuff, just want to look at them in terms of what they said about african-americans. and most of them didn't say very much especially at the beginning before the civil war. very little. and then afterwards. so i gave up my project and i devoted myself to this and the more i looked. the more this idea of whiteness hardened in my own thinking about they were presenting. and. after i had finished through all these textbooks and i'll come back to some of their attitudes in a few minutes, i could have stopped. but having surveyed this vast array of textbooks, i down and said, well, wait a minute, yeah, i can write a book about textbooks, but we need an explanation. where did this come from? how did it develop? why did it develop? and so the first two chapters are an exploration of where whiteness, how the idea of whiteness dominates colonial thinking. and right through to the 19th century and this is absolutely critical. some of you may have heard of samuel. he was he's famous today for being the judge at the salem witchcraft trials. may i remind of that? well, he also wrote the anti-slavery. anti-slavery pamphlet in american history, and he's representative of what i found. he is so representative of the attitudes that sees the minds of most of the era of early americans and then was transferred throughout our history. now he's especially poignant and especially representative because a he's a northerner and one of the main themes in this book is northern response ability for creation of the idea of white supremacy. americans love to the south for slavery and for segregation. now, i'm not here to defend the south by any means. they, of course, were the slave ocracy. and of course, they did insist on the most brutal forms of segregation. but whites supremacy grew up with slavery. slavery was in existence in. all the colonies wasn't ended in new york until. 1827. 1827. okay. it was in all the colonies. and white outlasted the institution of slavery. the ideal largely of white supremacy. the institution of slavery. and shaped informed every aspect of american culture. whether you look at religion, medicine, science and certainly the law. northerners dominated northern and described white supremacy and its necessity. and one of the greatest exponent of white supremacy in the 19th century was a man named john h. that he so far north he was from canada and and to new york city and created an empire in manhattan. for one purpose and one purpose only. to propagate the idea of white supremacy. white. value, and black in the of value in blacks and african-americans. he dedicated his career to that. he published two newspapers, at least four important books, countless countless pamphlets and, was cited across the ocean. his words were read by abraham. he was cited in congress and in state legislatures. he published advertised mints for his horrific works and. they are horrific, fascinating, but still horrific in most of the nation's newspapers. in one year, one year. he put advertisements for his work in 145 different newspaper papers. he was everywhere. well, he carried on the tradition, which was first explained by samuel sewell. as i he was an abolitionist, wrote the first pamphlet against the of slavery was a northerner -- slavery as un-christian, condemned the slave trade as more as the most immoral thing possible, and we should and the colonies should abolish it. of course, massachusetts was the first colony to approve, to legally approve the institution of slavery. okay. yet he recognized that his fellow colonists could not tolerate free african-americans. it reminded it. it brought to them the possibility of equality. and they could not accept it. this is in 1717, 100, not 1860, not 1960. 1700. in fact fact, sewell went on, explain that african that his fellow european colonists could not stand african-americans because they served, because they were alien. they were completely unlike anything that they knew. they were like he said, extra. they sent blood. blood that exists outside their regular veins and capillaries of body. that's where they existed. they would always be alien always be separate. they could never be integrated in colonial life. he argued in his diary, this pennetta hated him so deeply. he wrote in his diary that he wondered if he would keep sacred whiteness quote after the. unquote. these ideas embodied in american culture and john h. vann every, master, fully explained why it was so appealing and, in fact, so necessary. now many people in the north disapproved of slavery. didn't want really do anything about it. there answer to it was the american colonization society. remove all of them. send them back to africa. that was considered abolitionism. horace mann, the great architect of american public education, was a ist. but then every explained, oh, no, the african presence in what was then now the united states was essential. we have democracy because of the presence of african americans, he argued. toni morrison made the same argument. the presence of african-americans diminished the difference is that people of european descent notice among themselves and forged this alliance which allowed the morrissey to flourish and for them to eliminate the class structure that they knew from europe without africa. the african american presence, he argued, there could be no democracy as. we know it. it essential in 1944. the. famous study of black life in america. the american dilemma. gunnar myrdal wrote this and in it deepened his in his two volume book. there is a story, i believe. he had a big team of people doing interviews across the united states and the second volume is and a fascinating exploration of african-american culture. cities sticks about property ownership, an institute black institutions, etc., etc.. but in the first volume, he he explained the detail this so-called dilemma of of americans, people dedicated democracy right for all. but at the same time not willing to accept african-america on an equal basis the great american dilemma. how can we be a free, democratic society and not be totally and democratic. well, he was exploring white attitudes in the 1940s, and he interviewed eight year old girl. that's a bit odd. and the little girl told him or his one of his researchers that she was desperately unhappy that that the sole black family in town who lived next door moved away. what your, you're a white girl and you're unhappy that a black family next door moved away? yes, she said. now, who are we better than. a tells you how deep this idea of white identity is for in the minds of americans, even in a little eight year old girl. give me another example. i mentioned well, i mentioned mann and horace mann like his benjamin believed that the institution of slavery was bad because it gave work a bad name. only black did work. thus white people became lazy. men, not only served a great advocate of public education, teacher training, but he also served in congress as. and he made a point one day of arguing against the presence of african-americans and the desire to expel expulsion, remove them. and he said that they be removed because they as i said, they gave work a bad name. and he said. sorry. it was really emotional. i read this. he described the influence that that slaves had. and it was such a poisonous influence that they had, especially what he called, quote, the black --, unquote, who worked in kitchens. i was just devastated when i read that. it's in his own collection of his speeches. but that's the way he now. it's true that in the 19th century, that word did mean someone who worked in the kitchen, but it also had the same that we had today on that. well, anyway. john jay chapman returned it to him for a for a moment. and important because he like sewell in 1700, reaffirms the degree, the depth of of the true depth of this notion of white supremacy in the popular mind and own mind. as i said before, the senate of an abolitionist wrote this glowing biography of william white's garrison. but in the 1920s, because of his own education, you could read he was a great advocate of a darwinism. he saw anglos, saxon ism as governing principle in life and had to be a governing in america. he feared desperately feared that the catholic church would take over where harvard all public education in and destroy true christianity, protestantism and behind the catholic church were --. he had read his henry ford, someone so dedicated hated to the freedom of african-americans, and he criticized ize the harvard for segregating freshmen, black freshmen from the other freshmen at the school in the dormitories. someone who went that far. yet he was still devoted to anglo-saxon ism and and white supremacy when it came to catholicism and people of jewish descent. this is how deep and abiding this commitment to white supremacy was. and and this gets translated into the textbook subsequent textbooks. now, not all of them, after the civil war from. 1870 until the 1880s. there was a dramatic reaction to what had been taught about life and culture previously. of course, radical reconstruction had not fully died. they were rewriting the history of the united states. based on the principles some radical, the end of slavery and equality. in fact, one of the most successful textbook. any of the 1880s was charles coffin, who had the north's most famous war reporter during the civil war. he wrote textbook for kids boston public library had 45 copies of his textbooks. all of them were out constantly being read by students. but this version of the past that became popular in the wake of the civil war did not. the book that i had mentioned earlier, the 1931 became the standard. here. i freemont pete worth. he wrote book in 1937. again, another northerner northern presses. the north dominated publishing boston, new york, chicago. there was almost no publishing outside of that. they just dominated the sales. there was no publishing house in this well, almost no publishing house in the south before the civil war. and few afterwards. it wasn't until the 1920s when a lost cause ideal eji became such a popular notion in the south and the presses were formed like the daughters of the confederacy, to promote these ideas. well, anyway, fremont peay worth wrote a book about. u.s. history and he did include african-americans. yes, he did. slavery. he wrote, was a, quote, necessary evil, essential. after the invention of the cotton gin and could not be ended because of of endangering, quote, the safety of the white race. since the textbook. well, he juxtaposed palatial estates of the master ers with the slaves rude cabins. he assured students that they lived comfortably. his words, they lived comfortably and ate well. similar quote, similar to an army hall slave. horsemen received fine clothing and to impress guests while field hands required only rude clothing and quote pecan pecan in his or a little more than a long shirt or nothing at all. they sometimes objectionable treatment. but the navy in the marine also whipped sailors, other people wrote, yes, there was whipping, but it was the same kind of whipping a parent would give a child. they said this slavery, however, had a bright side. he wrote, slaves enjoyed good medical care. perhaps as many as 20% could read. that's a lie. they really endured harsh punishment. another one and all received a decent burial in gods acre of the plantation. in short worth imagined a slavery as a petri article system in which master and slave felt themselves. members of one family. they had a great time. i don't know if you can see this picture and this really. threw me when i found it. this was published in 1937, continually in use through the 1950s and most poisonous of all, it was taught at the segregated black schools in the south. these horrifying images. i gave a lecture at harvard. about two weeks ago. one of the black teachers in the audience came up to me afterwards because this was up on the screen behind me and he said, yeah, i've got a textbook that has a picture just like that in it. and i have to teach it. and if i don't, they'll fire me. one of the most famous textbook authors in all of american history, david saville musi daughter. yeah, well, he dominated textbook publishing. his first first version of his book out in 1911. and it was still being used when i was in high school. a version of it. musi, of course, always refer in textbooks, always referred to indians as, quote, savages, who had only reached the stage of, quote, lower barbarism, much like he wrote the mississippi -- of today. he was individual who opposed slavery, condemned slavery, praised the abolitionists. but when it came to reconstruct action, this was the greatest evil ever foisted on american culture, because it gave inferior people political power. this is the history that was taught in almost every single textbook in the 1940s, fifties and sixties. john d hicks was another famous and very successful textbook author. the university of california, berkeley, not carolina. he taught students in his textbooks that anything beyond vocational training for african-americans was a waste time. he mock their, quote, pathetic eagerness for education. he mocked their pathetic eagerness for education, asserting that they showed no great proficiency beyond the elementary stages. american educators throughout 1920s, thirties, forties and, fifties said the same thing over and over and over again. this problem is not as severe as it was then, as it's now. it's absolutely true. textbooks most textbooks, not all of them have been purged, certainly have been purge of the worst of this kind of of propaganda, as it were. but it remains. charles blow, the well known new york times journalist, remembers growing up having to read some of this stuff, and he remembers how much he was taught to hate himself because he was black. in my own town two years ago, there a protest organized by students and the acp. they were protesting education at the school and the punishments meted to people of color. one female student said quote in the local paper going to high school, quote, made me hate myself and made me hate being black. this is the legacy that continues. i'll give you one more example. the museum of fine arts in boston. a fabulous museum, 2019, a large group of african american seventh graders was taken to the museum for a tour. they were brought up, taken aside by the staff, and they were told this was in paper, the boston globe. they were told they could have no food, no water and no watermelon. it. if think this problem is over, you're. thank you for coming. got any questions. yes, sir. several questions. my first one. yeah. when you talk whiteness. yeah, i to ask you, where do you put irish in? welch. yeah. and have a long other list. oh, you start with that first. because every time polish, italians. yeah, yeah, sure. i just want to know if you could clarify, just like all hitler white clearly clarified. who was german? who wasn't german? so could you clarify when you say american whiteness? right. good question. whiteness is a malleable term, which changes depending on time, location and politics. at some point it included o john h. vann every included -- in its definition of whiteness. yet when we go to the end, the century, when there's immigration, -- are no longer white. you know, in the 1830s and forties when we had massive well, comparatively speaking, large scale irish immigration. they were not white in fact, the english described the irish as quote, a separate race, unquote. now you stand an irishman and an englishman. tell you --, tell me who, who's who? they look the. but they're not in their imagination. so depending on time place, political need, whiteness changes, but it is for the most part, people of european background. and it is based on an appearance. it isn't science. there's no such thing as race. this is term developed an idea an a concept developed in the night in the late 18th and 19th century to create a hierarchy that placed people of european descent on the top in and people of african descent on the. and justified the horrific discrimination that african-americans not just in the south but in the north. so it changes and the the consistent thing is the european background. but they also had great asians, for instance, my ancestors were not fully accepted. no, no. i grew up hearing all kinds of dumb polak jokes. my italian ancestor was were heavily discriminated against. but over time gender were increasing. lee accepted that. so another question. yes, sir. you heard correctly that benjamin franklin and horace mann were concerned blacks worked too hard at work too hard. had to work too hard. and then. no, no, no, no, no, no. they gave work a bad reputation. so it made whites lazy. that was their opposition to slavery even though benjamin franklin was a slave owner. well, my comment is the stereotype i grew up with is that blacks were look at blacks were lazy. right. i think was a stereotype. most of us are growing up. yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. that's why i'm raising your absolute. yeah. but at the same time, there a sense the argument for defending slavery was that they were essential to do the white man's work because the white man couldn't do it. there is this contradiction in both slave ideology and supremacy ideology. the white man couldn't do it because it was beneath them. it was too hard. the particularly in the south, the heat. they couldn't work and the textbooks said this all the time. they couldn't. they couldn't work the heat. but that the african person was designed by god and nature to do that. yet at the same time, they're lazy. mm hmm. during reconstruction, period. oh, my. i can't tell you how many political tracts and then textbooks took up this theme of lazy, incompetent, ignorant blacks. yet for some reason, they had to do all the work. so there. that's my point. yeah, exactly. doesn't. but they believe it anyway and argued it vociferously north and south. some of the greatest advocate of this ideology was were northerners northerners. yeah. did you ever. yeah. so what we're talking about is the history. of this country really from the very beginning. very beginning. a very country. yup. yet all these thoughts were being presented. i would think mostly in churches in order to fall for the popular. i was teaching them. this was an inferior race. are people who are not them were inferior. so the question i have. we're now seeing it happen in certain areas. they're letting people talk about slave. right? right. saying oh yeah. you know the 1619 book is you can't even think of think about it. right. so how do we change this so this doesn't continue for the next 300 years, this country. yeah, i, i i know that's a difficult question. no, no, no. but i think that's what everybody's for now. answers we know the problem. right. but how do we get. well, i don't think we know the way everybody knows. i don't think we know the problem. that's why i got this book. okay. this is necessary underpinning. understand why we are in state now. okay. like i said at the beginning, frederick jackson turner. i mean, the past is prolog to this future that we are now dealing with. it explains the idea of american identity, why we believe many americans not all by any means believe this. okay. what do we do, professor gates? professor henry louis gates, jr asked me that very question when i spoke at at the at the center a couple of weeks ago. i don't have a detailed plan. i think, first of all, we are in a long struggle. we have been in a long struggle. and this struggle will continue. person only i believe that we must dispense with this higher of race that we've developed. the very idea of race. if to my mind, if maintain the structure, people are going to believe it's. if we if we get rid of the structure, i think we a beginning to move forward. will i see the end this. no however i can say that i never expected barack obama to be president the united states. that at the time it appeared to be to a lot of people. remember jesse jackson and crying in chicago in the television. it was it was unbelievable that something an african-american could be president of the united states. i grew up was white was white is lucille ball yet we look at television. well, what passes for television today? there are african-american. there giant. i mean, there are all kinds of of of peoples that never were on tv. we have people like louis gates junior, who was an international star. telling the history of africa and the african diaspora across the world. yeah. so can change happen. yes. we are seeing change. we have seen change. i believe it can continue, but we must be committed and. we are going to see reactions. we're seeing across europe now, in italy, in sweden, in britain, sweden, of all places. i mean. the climate crisis is going to start moving more people's in places they had never been before. the italian new prime prime minister of italy is committed to a navy creating a naval to suppress african migration. we're going to see more of this in the world. i think your point about we should not be looking at race when we look at a person and say you're this, you're this or this. i went in for my covid shot yesterday, the big y and on the forum i had to fill out. it said, what is your ethnicity? i had to fill in that i was what i what am i? and i think that that's the kind of thing that this kind of thought about race alive because it's there where everyone everywhere you go. it's there wherever you go. absolutely. we have created a culture and a society that emphasizes that and it creates in certain people of european descent creates intense fear and, anxiety in the most intense of fear and anxiety we've seen because they know the demographics are against them. right. then, 35, 35 for any 40 years, certainly about 40 years. people of european descent will be at one more minority. that's never happened in this country before. and unless we are prepared for that. and prepare ourselves for that. i don't know what will. it. yeah, i don't know. i don't want to speculate. thank you. yeah. yes. you brought up the briefcase, junior? yep. and famous went all over the world. but also, don't forget that he spent the short amount of time in jail because his neighbor called the police on him. he asserted, and nothing ever happened to that neighbor. which brings me to january. since and i also want to bring up that at the end of the civil war. grant sent home lots of confederate soldiers back home in shame, and then they slaughtered lots of african-americans and course nothing happened to them. so i'm going to bring up january 6th. yep. and how this extreme amount of right. politics or white supremacy. yup. is still on the rise and yet people are not held accountable. right onto it. well. so some of those january six people have been arrested a lot of them have been arrested, not the congressman. not the congressman. yeah. amen. they're protecting their own death. the problem? yeah, i guess. protect that. and who doesn't get protected. yeah, right. people in power? yeah. if you're african-american, you arrested, if you're white, you get off. yeah. it's always been that way. you know, i. i think what we're doing here is a beginning to help change that world world. how much time? like i said, i have no idea. yes. i just want to say that. there has been so much scholar ship since the seventies and eighties. oh, absolutely. and we know what slavery about now. we know what was about the 1619 project was one of our best sellers here last year. yeah, but but until until 2019, the of texas which dominates textbook sales in the united describes slaves as imported workers. right so my point is the scholarship is there now. yeah. and it needs to get into our schools and, i think. i know we have some teachers here. people who want to be teachers. we need to just get these tech these new textbooks into our schools. right. and, you know, whether they're public schools or universities, i mean the universities, i think in general are a lot a lot better. right. and once hear that, i mean, you know, i graduated from high school in 69 and i knew hardly anything about african american. yeah, but that's still true. but in the seventies and eighties, you there was a lot of lot of things going. i mean, it helped that i had james baldwin as a professor at umass. it was amazing. wow but, you know, it's there. we just got to get it into the school. well, you're right. i mean, it there and there has been a profound change in, the scholarship since the mid 1960s. and it has only grown. and it is i the foundation is there there's no question about your exactly right but as the southern poverty law center discuss covered, they interviewed a couple thousand teachers and they found out they won't teach it. and today, if you live in new hampshire florida, michigan washington, you might lose your job if you teach it. we're going backwards. yeah and as i pointed out earlier, there are textbooks which still have derogatory images of african-americans and then that people are using. and on top of that, you've the web and anything is possible with web, both good and and we have millions of students that are home schooled. we have and they are they can use anything including john h. van evers work to when they're home schooled. yes, that's what i was thinking. was that think part of the institutional kids that are there and the barriers that if you're looking at and i'd have to say that those who polls advancing our entire narrative and understanding and discourse on white supremacy are looking school districts right making sure that they run for school committee. yeah that the libraries all the library yeah publication the media who buys out which media at the high in my town. throw their library in. exactly okay. right. the censorship now is, you know, across the country. and like i said, we can have the best. but if teachers won't teach that or are afraid to teach it, what is it? it's also the case and this has been the case since was in college, the training of teachers can be very spectacular, ular or completely dismal or absent. i can't tell you how many social studies and history teachers where gym teachers no training whatsoever. and now because it's gotten so bad teachers are fleeing and they're hiring people not only who haven't had a history. they haven't even gone to college. that's right. to teach and we're going backwards and we're headed backwards fast. yes. i was just going to make the comment just journalist. i think journalists to have a background in history because it appears that things are repeating itself. and if you have that base or that foundation exact history should be a requirement. it should be the true history. and give that woman medal. yeah, absolutely. if you don't understand where came from, how can you possibly where you're going to go? yes. so i think one of the issues with teachers is they grew up with those textbooks. so we need to have them unlearn what they learned in school in order to be able to teach what we think they to be teaching. and that's a huge lift. i agree with you more. and i ran into this when. i gave lectures over years. i would ask students what history, what african-american history, what history of slavery they were taught. they weren't weren't they weren't. they won't do it. and now in some places you do it. you could lose your job. yeah, i think even in places where you would lose your job like in massachusetts, right. teachers are still afraid to talk about or don't know how to talk about it. now. i'm glad you brought this up because. there's another trend. and you ready to sit down and. no, i'm not kidding whether we're talking about vermont and new york, florida, washington, across the country, teachers and this is particularly case in elementary and grammar school. if they have a class, maybe has one or two african-americans in, it the rest are all we're all white right. okay. they force the two students to stand in front of the class and they auction them off as slave and they're warned that if they run away, they will be beaten. what. one parent in vermont called it, and i love this term curricular. this is a this has been occurring in new florida all across the country slave auctions in class. what is this to be teaching? you can't teach history. you have to have a performance to, humiliate two, three african-american children. this what? teaching, training program does is this. if we find out we have them arrested. yes, sir. in terms of what you were just talking about, what would a professor in a school of education taught his students to do this kind of role playing? yeah. that coming from a place evil, evil or it coming from a place of wanting to enlighten. and i'm totally in your side. it is curricular violence. i to be an elementary school teacher i know what mean. well, i think it's i had to guess i'd say it's fundamentally a lack of training and ignorance. i don't think it's intended. i think they're probably in their own minds thinking. they're doing everyone a great service by bringing slavery, the reality of slavery to the classroom. i don't know what they think, but i think it's essentially the a lack of of training, complete lack of training training. oh, yeah. on on that same point. could you could you maybe compare that to the blue eyes brown? eyes, uh, uh, uh, classroom that i'm blanking on her name now, but in the, in the fifties, this the teacher that was separated her class and two people had blue eyes and people had brown eyes to do a similar. i mean it's a little bit apples and but i also think like there you know within the same realm of well yeah i mean it's again it's it's it's teacher training if if that's all they know that's they'll do and and until teachers have the background in history as you pointed out until they're aware this stuff is going to continue i don't see an end to it. yeah it was another. yes. all hi. somebody who teaches so, so in the field. talk about teacher preparation, not like what we do for dogs, right so big, big distinction. i've done teacher preparation at a state university. i do teacher preparation at a liberal arts college locally. and i put 20 years in the trenches as a public school teacher and administrator and i just want to say that, you know, i wouldn't have stayed in this field since 1977 if i hadn't felt joy, hope and i don't think i've ever been more discouraged than i have in the last couple of years. as i hear students grapple with the decision, whether they whether or not they should go teaching, these are bright tell students who we'd all our right arm and half of our left of for them to go into the field. these are students of color these are white students across the board. but the politics of the moment has been so suffocating that we're losing good across the board. yes we just talked about. yes, absolutely. yeah. because it's you know, it's so intimidating. i had a student last week who handed me an article from fox news about a neighbor in connecticut, a very nearby town, a first year teacher who had done an activity with, his social studies students, i think in ninth grade and he was basically called to task by the school committee and the superintendent because it walked a little too close to the idea of, looking at how white identity and oppression was impacting, public education, kids in schools, you know, i find myself hard pressed some days to say, you can do this you can do this hard work, but it's hard work that's getting harder. all the time. and i want to know what as communities we can do to uplift the young who are hopeful about coming into the profession when. they face the kinds of pushback and and oppression that they're currently facing. well, right now, it's discouraging, you know, and we thank you for your service over the years. but people like you are going to be driven out. oh, i'm hanging around i'm old school to give up a good right you know i don't know i know i know of instance of people working very hard to correct this problem the mass historical has a program to teach african-american history and other subject matter to to teachers to prepare prepare them the gilder center in new yale in new haven is doing massive amounts of work, helping to prepare teachers who are already in the profession to better them to teach this subject. but i'll tell you, if the states are going to force your removal from your job for doing this, it's we're we're defeating ourselves. yes. as scholars, as educators have to get away from this african-american history, because once the one thing enslaved africa and came to america or to the it's american history. yeah. oh, absolutely. oh, our history. and we need to claim it as. yeah, absolutely. you know, i've already started my next project, a collection of on forgotten african okay. and of the points for me doing this is just this that african-american history is not separate it is american history. in fact, if you imagine the history of this country without, the african american element, we've lost the soul of, the country, everything that's been interest, almost everything interesting. and fascinating and important would be removed or never created to begin. it is not an add on it is not in addition to it is american history. i don't think that's appreciated culturally. yeah. yes, ma'am you mentioned you started off about how your research was looking at the memoirs of. oh yeah john jay chapman. yeah. did you tell us i thought you're going to go back to that. oh yeah. that i like and i, i have done these lectures now often. can't remember when i said things when i did, but i think i went through his views on on race. okay. even though he had written this terrific biography or study, rather, of of of garrison, even though grandmother was a famous abolitionist, he he had because of his training harvard. he into the darwinian view of science and culture and ethnicity. okay. and came out i think i said -- the catholic church and --. yeah. for being behind the corruption of true christianity. protestantism too. and and he. at one point i'm glad you brought this up that i failed to make it didn't make he published these statements with the ku klux. did you learn because of your reading. yes, right. and as it turns out, that work some of that work that i did in that first project, i included in here, because i was sitting my desk saying, wait a minute, when 1920s, you know, wow. fit right in there. yeah. so again, this is not a book about a bunch of bad. this is a study of american character, american identity to and its persistence. yeah i no question if the questions are are complete complete thank you for coming thank so, last class, right? we picked up where we off with reconstruction. everybody remember that? we started talking about i it's after 1865. so we start with the end of the civil war. what did i tell you all about the civil war? does anybody? well, did i describe what was going on? was it it was like the bloodiest war on u.s.