Transcripts For CSPAN3 Lectures In History 20140914

Postcivil war reconstruction, im including also the civil war itself and all that took place during the war up through the end of radical reconstruction. The second reconstruction will be simply enough, the Civil Rights Movement of the 50s and 60s. I wont carry my remarks any farther than that, i think. Now, in talking about the two reconstructions, im going to have to use some broad generalizations of a type im not entirely comfortable with, for example ill talk occasionally about the white south or the north or Something Like that and that covers up all kinds of complexities that, unfortunately, i dont have time to get into today. Now, im going to start off by giving you a brief summary narrative of the first reconstruction and then of the second reconstruction. Each of these is about six sentences long. And im going to read slowly because i want you to follow and listen for similarities and differences. The first reconstruction. For generations enslaved and free blacks met oppression with resistance, with creative adaptation, sometimes mixed with resignation or even despair. Eventually the north for a variety of reasons which you know and which we may recapitulate shortly the north for a variety of reasons challenged the social and racial order of the south. Thats the civil war. The white south, indeed, fought back in a total war that lasted for four years. Southern blacks joined the fight on the side of the union and they helped ensure that the war became a struggle that would definitively end slavery. The confederacy was decisively ended in the war and radical reconstruction but whites in the south, as you know, eventually regained the right to do pretty much anything they wanted when it came to Race Relations in the south. And that had been accomplished by the end of the 19thcentury. Thats the first reconstruction. A brief narrative description of the second reconstruction. For generations, southern blacks met oppression with resistance, creative adaptation, sometimes mixed with a measure of resignation and even despair. Sound familiar . Eventually, now this is where it becomes a little different. Eventually, southern blacks challenged the southern racial order. Again, the white south fought back. But this time by means far short of total war. Some northern whites and blacks and even a few white southerners joined this fight but it was mainly a fight of southern africanamericans. Again, the conservative white south lost the contest. They lost less decisively this time. There wasnt wholesale destruction and utter defeat as in 1865. The white south lost less decisively this time but more definitively and more lastingly and were going to talk about that. So, in both cases youve got a backdrop of black people struggling for decades against oppression and then you got a challenge to the racial order in the south. The first time it come from the north initially with southern blacks joining in. The second time its southern blacks themselves that changed the order. In both cases the conservative white south loses. In the first instance the conservative white shout rebounds and erases many of the fruits of the first reconstruction. The Second Time Around more of the gains have proved permanent ill argue as we go on. All right. Now in more detail what can we say is true in both cases, in both reconstructions . First of all, as ive said two or three times now in both instances a coalition of southern blacks and northerners proved decisive. In attacking and listen to this, in attacking what many regarded as a southern problem. The southern problem in the 1860s is slavery. And the southern problem in the 1950s and 60s is segregation and racial oppression. I say in each instance theres a coalition that formed. The earlier coalition is that the coalition that includes the union army, the Republican Party and free and enslaved blacks. The later coalition includes southern blacks and certain elements of the north, namely those few who actually came down south to participate in the very interesting parallel. The second reconstruction was emphasis of equality of education and desegregation of education. First reconstruction, of course, was a time when tissue was achieving any education at all. Blacks having been deprived of it. In both instances blacks wanted the right to vote on the same basis as whites. In both reconstructions the black church played a crucial role. Now, you can argue and some people do argue about the exact extent of Church Leadership in the Civil Rights Movement in the 50s and 60s. The cliche has it it was a church centered movement. But dont forget when we saw the montgomery bus boycott it wasnt pastors, it was rosa parks and then the ministers came in very quickly on their heels and their participation was very much welcomed, their participation proved crucial. This movement gives the world the leadership of Martin Luther king and im taking nothing away from thelerr clerical leadershi. Lets remember who started the sit ins. Who did . Students. College students in North Carolina and eventually in dozens of other cities. The freedom rides were conducted by whom . By congress of racial equality which started them and then students, veterans of the sit in movement who carried the freedom rides to completion. No Church Involvement there. Again, im not trying to depricate the church, im asserting it played a central role but i dont want to attribute them a monopoly of leadership, the church. In both reconstructions, the enthusiasm of white northerners started to wane, to decline when the price of black advancement rose. In the 1870s, we talked about the way in which just the need to police the white south became a price that was greater than many white northerners were willing to pay and thats one of the reasons the first reconstruction ended. In more recent times, you find that when the innercity riots of the 60s take place, the School Bussing issue rises in the 70s, when whites realize theres a National Problem here and a national fribs fade enthusiasm for whites or at least the whites in the north starts to decline. This time the federal withdrawal has been far less complete than it was in the 1870s. And today the south is different in ways some of which well talk about in a few moments and many of which we dont have time to get in, to but i would say one of the most important ways in which the south is different is that blacks can vote now. Well talk about why that is. In both reconstructions, racist violence played a crucial role. I dont need to tell you that in the 1870s, violence by the ku klux klan and other white terrorists was crucial in rolling back the gains of the first reconstruction. And we saw in the films that in the Civil Rights Movement, especially by the 1960s, again, you get very extreme severe white racist violence against blacks and their white allies. Lets point out that the violence was less extensive in the 60s as horrible as it was it was not all out war and in fact it was counter productive to those who wanted to keep things racially as they had always been. It was the violence against civil rights demonstrators that furthers their cause. Theres a reason, as you know, why the southern christian Leadership Conference after the steal mate in albany, georgia decided to go to birmingham. They went there because they were pretty sure the reverend shuttlesworth told them they would get a confrontation there that would dramaticize to the world what was at stake and thats what happened. So fewer whites in the 60s who were taking up arms. 1860s it was millions in the confederate army. Fewer in the 1960s by far to less effect. In both reconstructions northern blacks played an active role but southern blacks played the decisive role why is that . Give me one good reason why southern blacks are crucial both times . [ inaudible ] they are invested in the outcome but even more simple. [ inaudible ] okay. So the blacks in the south knew the way things worked on the ground. They knew what they were up against. [ inaudible ] yes, because the south is where black people lived. In the 1860s, almost all africanamericans lived in the south. Probably 95 of the population of blacks lived in the south and even in the 1960s a majority of blacks still lived in the south. Slight majority. But, of course, its going to be the southern blacks who play a decisive role because thats where the struggle is being carried out and thats where they live. Many of them. Okay. In both reconstructions and this is more of a sideline but a fairly interesting in both reconstructions you see that the diversity within the black community emerges in, if anything, a more vivid way and people outside the black community become aware of that. We talk about how in south carolina, for example, in the first reconstruction there were differences between the urban mixed race free before the civil war population of africanamericans and those newly freed blacks in the plantation districts. The latter wanting radical land reform and the former not being particularly interested in that. So theres just one kind of diversity within the Africanamerican Community that emerged in the first reconstruction. In the second, we see it all the time. We see the tensions between the southern christian Leadership Conference on the one hand and snick on the other, which becomes more acute over time. We see differences between the northern black community and the Southern Black Community in the 1960s. You heard john lewis who led the selma to montgomery march talking about the emergence of malcolm x as a National Figure and how black folk like john lewis who had grown up in the south in the Christian Church really didnt know what to make of malcolm x. Sign both of these instances you really see what was always out there, which is that the black community in this country is a diverse one. In both reconstructions the crucial demands were for equality and access and i talked about the fact that i liked the word access better than the word inclusion because to me inclusion has a little bit of a ring of wanting to get into the other fellows game, whereas access somehow feels more neutral to me. Its about the idea that if theres a society that has institutions that has a government thats supposed to be for the people that everybody ought to have the same access to this. In both reconstructions, and i have to be a little bit careful here the first reconstruction, if we talk about that portion of it which is the civil war, the first part of reconstruction, you get a real measure of black political power. Up through the end of radical reconstruction, blacks have political power that they never had before. And then, again, in the second reconstruction, one of the fruits of the movement is, was intended to be and was, indeed, that blacks in the south won the right to vote on the basis of equality, a measure of political power. Now, we need to add we need to hasten to add in both cases the power that blacks attained was in a political system that was still dominated by whites at least on the National Level and on the state level. On the local level, little different. There are many localities which were dominated by blacks in the first radical reconstruction and there are many localities in the United States now especially in the deep south where you have black majority, black Office Holding and so forth. The bad news is these places tend to be impoverished places, place wheres you may have the political power but the monetary resources to make a difference are not abundant. In both instances, the first and second reconstruction, blacks ended up tied almost exclusively to a single Political Party. First time around it was the Republican Party, the Second Time Around it was the Democratic Party. And there are those who argue that this is disadvantageous. I had a colleague, a black colleague at yale who once said as many have that black america would be better off today if there were more black republicans because then the two parties would compete for the black vote by speaking to black interests. He said we would be better off if there were more black republicans. The problem is that most of us dont want to be republicans, including me, he said. [ laughter ] im quoting him. There you have it. After both reconstructions, severe economic inequities remained. Most of the black population after the first reconstruction remained poor, rural, agricultural laborers. Today the picture is better, but its still a case that onethird of the africanamerican population is mired in deep poverty. There was more of an attempt to address that in the 1960s but we havent made a lot of headway. Now, i made the argument at the beginning that the gains of the second reconstruction have proved more lasting this time. I mean, after all, if we say were talking about the 50s and 60s, if we say 1965 the high watermark of the Civil Rights Movement how many years have passed is in then, about 50 years. After 50 years theres been no rolling back, for example, of the right of blacks to vote. In many ways blacks have more power and influence today than they ever had and the black middle class is bigger than its ever been. So if were going to have a retreat from reconstruction like we did the first time around its taking an awful long time to happen in any decisive way. Why is that . Its hard to answer definitively, but prejudice against blacks was less ingrained at the beginning of the second reconstruction than it was in the beginning of the first. Now thats an answer, but it also raises another question. Why . Why was white prejudice, as bad as it may have been, less intent in the 50s, 1950s and 60s than 100 years ago. The only quick answer i can give is that all the trends and the sciences and social sciences in the 20th century, certainly the mid20th century were towards the repudiation of racism. That sounds like an axiom to you but we mentioned in the latter 19thcentury people who chamd to be scientists and social scientists were saying that there are inherent racial differences, there are superior and inferior races inhear rently. That was something that a respectable person could say in a room like this and not be laughed out of the place. By 1950, you would be very hard put to put an academic person who would make that argument, very hard put, indeed. Another thing that had happened, which you mentioned already by the 1950s is that a lot of blacks had moved to place where they could vote. The great migration to the northern cities. And the fact that blacks could vote up there meant that in parts of the north white politicians had to listen to black people and that proved helpful when it came time to vote on civil rights legislation in the 1960s. Another reason the gains have lasted this time better than last time, i would argue, is a because president Lyndon Johnson was so politically skillful in this realm. In the realm of Foreign Policy he didnt have a clue, unfortunately, in many respects. But domestically he had the vision to come up with a system that would come as close as humanly possible to being selfperpetuating. What he understood was that the vote wasdfnk y to be key. We talked about this. That if you want toun change t south, if you want to change the country, you got to ensure that black people have the right to vote. The only way to do that is by federalizing Voter Registration and he did that. He also figured out that if black people have the right to vote its going to become politically more difficult to take their rights away. The right to vote is a selfperpetuating right to a certain extent. Because you have the right to vote, politicians are going to be more hesitant to take it away from you. Doesnt mean they will never try it just means your right to vote an impediment to being denied the right to vote. If you see that. That sounds silly when you hear it spoken but its true. I have more to say about that in a minute. Another thing that was different in the second reconstruction is the world context. First of all there was really a world context. Cold war was going on in which the United States and the soviet union were competing for influence in the world. The United Nations had been created. As i mentioned to you before, i think, the General Assembly of the United Nations is a body in which every country is represented. And with the break up of the european empires after world war ii you end up with dozens of countries represented in the u. N. That are places where people of color live. So it became less and less tenable for a president of the United States to try to get anything accomplished on the world stage or the United Nations and have to explain why black people cant eat in a restaurant in a d. C. Suburb. The emergence of visual media. There was media in the first reconstruction, newspapers. But you may agree having looked at the films we saw in this class, that theres nothing like seeing film of a building burning down or somebody being beaten up or police dogs jumping on women and children or people being knocked down by fire hoses, the fact that the visual media existed in the 1950s and 60s augmented these other force im talking about. And finally, lets not let not forget the factor of black education. Black americans in 1865, knew what they wanted and needed. They were just as smart then as they were in 1965 but they had been systematically deprived in most parts of the country of an education. By the 1950s, you got almost a century of black education thats taken place and education equips people to do things, all sorts of thing, including trying to change society. Youll remember that we talked about this great irony of segregation. Whites in the south had this brilliant idea that what they needed to do was to segregate blacks in every aspect of life. Separate them off. Push them off into the corner. One of the results of separation and neglect was a measure of black autonomy. If you have a black school with a black principal and black faculty even if resources arent what they should be and white people arent paying attention to whats going on there because they dont really care, you that have ability in that school to teach all kinds of things that ultimately are going to become useful in the fight for equality. In a way that you wouldnt if white people were running everything. So theres a way in which the segregators dug their own grave. Remember the montgomery bus boycotts. Alabama state college. Joann Gibson Robinson was a professor there. She ran off those flyers calling for the boycott on the Alabama State campus. The sit in movement was conducted by College Students emanating from black colleges from across the south. The segregators had created the infrastructure if you want, that black folk would use to attack segregation. Is now, im talking about the lasting gains of the second reconstruction. Let me issue a few caveats. The first place now i have to preface this by saying i dont mean any of this in a partisan way. Ill be talking about republicans and democrats and ill be talking about different political figures. Im not trying to cast aspersionses on anybody. Can you like who you want. Im just talking about facts. Johnson, president johnson, when he commanded his Justice Department to draw up the Voting Rights act or actually when the Civil Rights Act of 64 was being drafted he said we pass this, we democrats lose the white south for my lifetime and yours. And didnt happen quite as quickly as he said but it pretty much has happened because the deep south is now pretty solidly republican. The deep south. But this part of the south, for example, virginia, not so much. Virginia voted for obama twice, for example. Texas, which is sort of southern and sort of not built there are those who say within 15 to 20 years texas will be a solidly Democratic State because of immigration from mexico. I dont know whether thats right or wrong but in the short term we have a predominantly republican south just like johnson said. You may think thats good or bad but thats a fact. We still have as i mentioned the deep poverty of onethird of the black population and not a small percentage of the white population and other populations as well but theres an intractable problem of poverty that we havent figured out a solution for. We have continued de facto segregation. There are ways in which this society a still a segregated society. Name one. One realm thats still largely segregated. Housing and neighborhoods. [ inaudible ] religious life in this country still largely segregated. Whether you think this is a good or bad thing is an interesting question because most africanamericans go to predominantly africanamerican churches and i suspect arent particularly interested in integrating because they dont see anything on the other side thats better than what theyve already got. But yes religious life is quite segregated. Neighborhoods. Schools. Yeah. Schools. Now, schools, legally are desegregated and there are many parts of the country where theres a lot of integration. My own children went to schools that were thoroughly integrated, but there are many entire School Systems such as the one that my wife grew up in where it was de facto almost completely segregated because no minority folk lived there in that jurisdiction. That brings me to the realm of locality, local governments. The way this country is set up is that a lot of the daytoday running of life takes place on the local level and schools are great examples. Schools are run on the local level. So if you live in a jurisdiction where everybody is basically the same race, youre not going to get integration. Virginia is an extreme example of that because the socalled cities arent even part of the counties. You got cities in this state that only have a few thousand people in them but they are separate. Okay. Some of them have combined School Systems with the county, some of them dont. Sign the city of richmond, for example, the city of richmond has a School System that is impoverished, whereas the suburban counties has systems that more or less flush with money, and according to the Supreme Court theres no way to remedy that. In many ways were still in a segregated society but in many ways not. When i was your age, this college had only just started to allow nonwhite students to enroll and here we are in a more integrated environment. So, again, im arguing that the change, changes of the second reconstruction have been more permanent. I dont want to sound like im wildly blindly optimistic and i dont see the problems that are still out there. One more caveat, if i may. And that is were not sure where the Supreme Court was going. I was literally walking out of my office to come over here when my son showed me on his phone the headline that the United States Supreme Court now ive not had time to read the opinion or even the entire article in the New York Times but apparently the Supreme Court has upheld the right of voters in the state of michigan to eliminate affirmative action in admissions to state colleges and universities in the state of michigan. I may be misreading this and it was a 62 opinion which i dont understand how that even happened. So, i mention this at a considerable risk of botching up the details. But what i do know is that the Supreme Court under chief Justice Roberts has ruled against certain facets of affirmative action, theyve ruled unconstitutional the central part of the Voting Rights act of 1965. Now, thats remediable and congress can remedy that, but im not sure whether they are going to or not. Now this creates a problem for me because at this point, in this course, which ive been teaching for almost 20 years now, i always used to say what i said to you earlier which is the gains of the second reconstruction, many of them, especially in the political realm are selfper ppetuatself. What i didnt take into account and the proof of that, by the way the Voting Rights act has come up for renewal four or five times since 1965 and it pass by huge margins. Republicans, democrats, northerner and southerner, most everybody voted to renew the vote rights act again and again exactly for the reason i explained. What i didnt take into account is that a Supreme Court one fine day would decide that that act is largely unconstitutional and i dont know where were going on that. I do not anticipate that were going to have a roll back in black rights and black welfare that will be anything like what happened in the 1870s, 80s and 90s. This is inconceivable to me but i dont know where were going with the Supreme Court. And i dont mean this as a partisan remark. Yes, do i. Yes, do i. Y yes, i do. I think they are gains and we need to hold on to them. I regret some of the tendencies i see happening. Okay. Silver linings. Nothing like i just said nothing like the roll back of the 19thcentury is in the card, i think. Heres the part where i may sound partisan and i dont mean to be. Reagan and the bushes can win elections but so can obama. In other words, its an open Playing Field and sometimes one side wins and sometimes the other, its not one side rolling over the other. Whites today will vote for black candidates. And obama is only one proof of that. More and more across the United States you see candidates of color being elected by predominantly white constituencies and i have to think that this is a step in the right direction. Race doesnt automatically trump other issues on a regular basis the way it used to in american life. For Many Americans there are a number of issues that are more important in their hierarchy of ovals than anything of issues of white and black. There are important parallels between the two reconstruction, important differences and the most important of all is that the second reconstruction has largely stuck. Ill just close the formal part of this by saying that its not true that history repeats itself. But it is true that we can understand not only where we came from but where we are now better by studying history, looking for parallels and looking for differences and thats what ive tried to do here. So im going to stop now and im going to ask whether there are comments or questions and ill remind you that youre asked to raise your hand and give grace a minute to pop over to where you are and ill call on you. This is your opportunity for instant fame. [ laughter ] tanner. Im looking to ask you about a decision that just broke this morning but it does seem the court ruled that a state that citizens in a state could by [ua the their own volition remove rights. Do you think that will happen in certain sections of the country or do you think that they will generally be a clinging on to affirmative action policies. I think it will happen elsewhere too. The state of california already went through a thing like this where affirmative action was basically eliminated i understand from the university of admissions. I dont want to get into chapter and verse but i think basically a lot of people dislike affirmative action. If you put it to an up or down vote i think other constituencies will vote it down. I think there was some one on the back row no . Lets go to jake and then jeremy. Jake. Weve often talked about at least in the latter parts of our semester obviously the differences between the democrat and republican and where the transitions are made and, obviously, the black community is kind of consolidating themselves to mainly being aligned with the Democratic Party. So, ill ask you two things. Answer what can you. Do you consider in the best interest of the black communities to diversify their political interest in terms of the parties they favor and how you think that actually can come about. The question was would the black community be better off spreading their vote having their vote up for grabs by more than one party and do i think that will happen . How could it happen . Well, the first thing that would have to happen the Republican Party will have to find out what kind of party its going to be because until we know that theres no way to answer the other question. Right now the Republican Party consists of actually more than two factions, but lets over simplify and say theres a faction that people call the tea party but thats probably too narrow a term that is very purist conservative and almost radically conservative and then theres a part of the Republican Party thats sort of a more centrist and more interested in the traditional form of politics which is compromising and getting the best deal that you can get. And as far as i can tell, these two factions have gotten to the point where they basically hate each other. Unlike anything ive really seen since the Democratic Party in the 60s. And i dont know how thats going to play out and how it plays out will have a lot to do with what options blacks might have politically, whether they might, some of them might have a potential home in the Republican Party. The other thing i would say is when people latch on to a Political Party they do it in part because of the programs of that party, the philosophy of that party, if you want to say it. But they do so also for cultural reasons. This is an old idea. Historians have shown in 19thcentury how people voted based on factors such as religious, religion and ethnicity and so forth. Today there are cultural factors at work as my black colleague at yale said a lot of black folk look at the Republican Party and it just doesnt look like them. It just doesnt feel doesnt feel culturally right. J. C. Watts who was the only black republican congressman from oklahoma he served for three or four terms, i heard him on the radio the other day and he said let me see if i can get this right. He said there are a lot of republican physician positions of blacks can sign on to. Economy, government and he named this, that ander to. But he said listen to this he said white people for thanksgiving like to eat pumpkin pie. Black people tend to eat sweet potato pie. And he said he j. C. Watt said my problem is im a republican but my party keeps wanting to feed me pumpkin pie. Now im not entirely sure what he meant by that, but i think hes talking in part about sort of ambience factors and cultural factors and hyper assertiveness on the part of the white leadership in the party. Its a Comfort Level i think hes talking about. Something has to happen for blacks to feel more comfortable. Im going to say culturally comfortable with republicans before they are going to vote republicans. The same question is out there for the Latino Community as far as i can see. Ten years ago there was a real possibility or some republicans thought so that republicans could get a good chunk of the latino vote but theres a big part of the Republican Party thats really, really key in restricting immigration from latin america. And not only keen on doing that but they make their keenness known in language and body language and whatever else that the Latino Community finds very off putting and much to the dismay of those republicans who would like to see immigration reform, the Republican Party appears to have lost most of the latino vote for the next again regulate just by the vibes they give off if i can use a technical term. So, i am not holding my breath until theres an influx of blacks into the Republican Party even though there are some republicans and sincerely care about the issues that blacks are interested in. One of them was congressman jack kemp who ran for vice president. Hes no longer alive now. By the time he had left politics he was increasingly isolated voice. I dont really see that folk will perceive themselves having a lot of choice between the two parties any time soon. Yes. Two short questions. Following up on the Michigan State legislature passing the law to ban affirmative action, is there any particular reason aside from state legislatures decision to do that, why they did that and the second question as you noted most black americans today do define themselves and vote with the Democratic Party. This follows up with a statement that i had from a previous history professor who noted in the 2010 midterms when you discount the incumbent black americans are reelected to congress, all the new members who were black were republicans and alan west in florida was a prime example. Said fair statement to say allblack americans are predominantly democrat more are running for congress and the senate, the only black member who is a republican the first black member of the senate in the 20th century was also a republican. So i really dont i dont know what to make of that. The senate is a whole different ball game from the house. The house, you know, represents populated states, members of the house of representatives are elected by the localities, you might say. By the way, one thing thats happened there, one form of, you might say affirmative action thats out there is drawing of congressional districts in a way to concentrate the black vote in a way that produces more black Congress People and thats worked. We got 40 some blacks in congress now. Partly because of the way districts are drawn. Many republicans love that because it concentrates most of the black vote in relatively few districts. It creates more conservative republican districts every place else. You got this odd combination of many black folk and many conservative republicans who want to draw congressional districts in way that concentrates the black vote. Your first question, the one thing im going say its not clear to me and tanner you may know this or somebody else may. I had the impression the elimination of affirmative action in the state of michigan was done by referendum. So its a people of the people not merely state legislature. Thats going to happen elsewhere, i promise, unless i totally misread this opinion. Sam. Yes. You mentioned one of the major factors johnson wanted to push through like the Civil Rights Act and Voting Rights act, americas position on the world stage with regard to Race Relations especially with the u. N. So president s before johnson like basically position or platform when leaders from predominantly black africanamerican nations or nation with any populations the majority of colored populations, you know, visited the country and how did they address it at all or ignore the elephant in the room. They ignored the elephant in the world. The impression of World Opinion came into play with the kennedy administration. Johnson didnt need to be moved as far as john f. Kennedy did. Not that john. F. Kennedy had anything against black folk he had no engagement with black issues. So for him the way the United States looked on the world stage loomed larger because he was president , after all, when the berlin crisis happened and the u2 crisis happened u2 was eisenhower. Cuban missile crisis happened. Kennedy was very preoccupied with Foreign Policy for the three years he was in office and for him this was a big fact jobs World Opinion. Johnson didnt need so much to be pushed by World Opinion because johnson for a variety of reasons really wanted to be the president who did for black americans what he saw Franklin Roosevelt having done for poor americans. Johnson had his own reasons to push civil rights, not merely to make the United States look better on the world stage. Other sam. I have a question, you talked a little bit about how democrats dont necessarily have to compete for the black vote but do you think that obama is perceived as championing black interests by africanamericans today and kind of a hero in the way that civil rights leaders were or is that not really the case . I think obama is basically loved by black folk but your question raises an interesting topic because you talk about is the president representative of black interests and that raises the question of what black interests even are. When we talk about black interests and i do this too, we assume that allblack folk want the same thing and have the same orientation. Im not sure that i can give you a list of what ten black interests that would be definitive. If you take the Affordable Health care act, obamacare, thats going to benefit a lot of people, in my opinion, or lets say its designed to benefit a lot of people who dont have a lot of money and black folk disproportionately dont have a lot of money. Is that a black santa anita not in an economic way but benefits black i think what a lot of black folk want are things that are not really racially defined. I mean, black people want what a lot of white people want, which is a good school for their kids to go to. Public transit. Some would want that. Im just trying to think of issues that on the face have nothing to do with race. And to me, thats what obama obama is trying through obamacare, for example, to make the society more fair. Now, you can argue whether hes got the right approach or not. You can vote for obama. You can vote for mccain. Im not talking about that. Im saying that obama is trying by his life, to make society more fair. Is that a black interest, per se, no, not per se, but its a thing most black people want. I think to be black american, it seems quite happy that obama is in the white house. I think its i mean, it wasnt long ago that michelle and the two kids in the white house were just mind blown. You go back two generations, they wouldnt even be there as guests, so yeah, i think obama is still quite popular among the black americans. Yeah . My question is going to shift the focus a little. I understand that harrison played a prominent role in hindering black rights following rours movement. What role has terrorism played in stymieing black progress since say 1970 . Terrorism directed against black folks . Yeah, i dont think its really a factor. I was thinking about that this morning, though, as i prepared to come to campus. Some would say, well, what about Trayvon Martin . For example . You know, stuff still happens. But to me, as terrible as that was, and i dont know whether you mean this kind of thing or not, but Trayvon Martin, thats not terrorism. I mean, the guy who killed him, i dont know what his Racial Attitudes are, and you know, im not even going to speculate, but to me, as awful and unidentijuss it was, its not the same as a clansman killing somebody if they want to vote. Theyre two terrible things but theyre differently motivated. I dont really see terrorism of the kind that we saw in the 1870s and 1960s as a factor today. Now, sure, im being responsive to this, but thats what youre going to get. Yeah, david. Do you see sort of a parallel between the lives at the end of the 19th century and some of the lives today that operate through coded terms in terms of when some states wanted to restrict voting, they went to literacy tests. And today, its stop and frisk, and things that affect people of color, particularly black men, that seem to operate under a not racial context, but they affect the racial groups. In the late 19th century, the language wasnt as coded as we might think. The actual laws couldnt refer to race because they would have been in contravention of the 15th amendment, which said you cant deny the vote on basis of race, color, or previous condition. You couldnt pass a law or a constitution in mississippi that said negroes cant vote. Couldnt do that, so you came up with a sensibly nonracial scheme that could be used to the same effect. But if you look at the way those laws were discussed back then, the debates and the legislature such as they were, newspaper coverage of them, people were talking quite openly. They said gentlemen, our time go here to remove negroes through politics. Now, today, the thing about coded language is its coded. So if you dont know whether somebody is talking in code or whether theyre just talking that way, there are all kinds of evidence. There was an article in the New York Times two woeeks ago abou efforts by, im not speaking partisanly now, but efforts by republicans in certain states to restrict the rights to alter access to the ballot, and the types of measures they were talking about were things like curbing or eliminating early voting. Theres been a trend to allow people to vote, not only on election day, but you could register ahead of time and vote. More and more states are doing this. Now there are efforts in several states to cut back on that. Now, i personally oppose cutting back on it. I personally think people should have more access to the ballot, not less, but im the first to admit its not the same thing as what was done earlier in our history. And there are those who would make the argument that if we have three opportunities for you to vote early, thats enough. You dont have to have seven. And a person like that might be totally sincere. It might not be a code word. It is a case that these efforts to restrict registration and to require that you present i. D. At the voting place and the like are almost always sponsored by republicans, and i think its at least fairly possible that the thought there is the more in which you do, the fewer people are going to vote who dont want to vote for you. I think people want to curb the voting, people who want to vote for them. I think thats whats happening. And yeah, its part of the codi coding. I just have a question about segregation and revitalization projects. It seems like that keeps on being the direction, cities are going into, especially coming from richmond where you have a black mayor and theres a bunch of revitalization projects that dont really seem to help the existing, i guess you could say members, of the certainly communities, and why do you think that keeps on happening and why is it perpetuated . Is it just the way its marketed as revitalization or does it have to do with a sort of lack of, i guess, communication between white and black communities . Im not going to get into the details of the richmond example, but i have it in mind because you and i are both from there and familiar with it. I was talking before about the difficulty of defining what black interests are. What i really men to say is not all black people think alike. You know, big revelation. There are black folk who seriously believe that its going to be better economically for the whole community and for the black community if you do a certain kind of revitalization of some, as they call it, a neighborhood downtown. Build a baseball stadium and subsidize the Washington Redskins to come and have their Training Camp in this case richmond. A person of good will and good intelligence can genuinely believe that those things are going to benefit the community economically to the point that all will benefit. All will benefit. Whereas the other point of view would be, hey, youre going to tear down my house and not give me another place to live. And thats a debate within the black community now. Thats before you even get white people into it. So im not quite sure im answering your question, but its just that in the 60s, people talked about black power. Well, when you have power, you have to decide how to use it. Once you have it, theres going to be a debate within the community that holds the power what youre going to do with it. And what this black neighborhood wants here may not be what this one wants over here, may not be what the mayor wants over here. Thats the trouble with defining black interests. It was simple in the 60s. Black interests were, get your foot off my neck. Give me access, give me my give me my constitutional right to vote. That was a nobrainer. Its complicated now. Sam. Back in the line of the importance of racial violence. What do you think would be the Civil Rights Movement would have turned out differently if whites in the south during the 60s and 70s did not resort to such brutal violence and resists civil rights in a much more passive manner . I used to give an exam question that was exactly that, in this course, and im not going to make you all do an essay at the end of the semester, but it was exactly that. What if Law Enforcement and the white public in the south had been more savvy in the 60s and not gone beating on people . Would the movement have come out different . And the answer i have in mind of that is this. That in the end, segregation and racial oppression depended on the threat of and the occasional use of violence. And just because you go to albany, georgia, and chief Laurie Pritchett doesnt go beating on people, and we saw that in the film, doesnt mean that you dont have a movement anymore, because what you do is you go to a place where the white power structure isnt as deliberative as all of that, where theyre going to go beating on people, and thats exactly what the movement did. They picked birmingham because birmingham had a history of violence against black people. Dozens of homes and buildings have been burned up over the years. Bill kiner was in charge of Public Safety there, a little bit complicated what the political situation was, but he was the longterm head of Public Safety there. He said you go to birmingham, youre going to get a confrontation. What im saying, you might not look at the freedom ride. It started where . Washington, d. C. The first big city they got to was guess what . Richmond. Nobody got beat up. Nothing much happened. They wanted to charlottesville and North Carolina. Eventually, they got to anniston, alabama. And you saw what happened there. So your counterfactual is a very provocative and interesting one, but it is really counterfactual, because in the end, in the end, the sg egregationists were goin to pick up the club, in the end. Nadia . I just wanted to bring the conversation around to education. When i was in Elementary School and middle school, all i learned about africanamericans was that they were slaved and then boom, one day, rosa parks didnt want to stand up and give her seat up. I was just wondering, do you think that do you think our Education System has really given us the education that would help people to understand where a lot of the issues in the black Community Come from . For example, the president said, president obama said to condemn black anger without understanding its origin is to further widen the chasm between the races. Do you think that giving American Students a proper education would help to bring the American People closer together . Of course, im a great advocate of education. I think we ought to have good education, but i think theres a tendency in this country to believe that a proper education would have you to find that, is going to cure a lot of problems. Theres a tendency to expect the schools to fix whats wrong with the country. I think thats far overblown. I do not think we do a good job of education in this country, by and large. I think we do a still worse job in the teaching of history. I will say that you all and two thirds of you are from the state of virginia, as am i. I could make the statement even if that werent the case, what you get in school is better than what i got. Because what i got was sort of what had been out there since 1880. With just a few of the rough edges sanded off. You dont get that. At least you know who rosa parks was. Now, they may not teach you much beyond rosa parks and Martin Luther king and malcolm x and then they move on to the next unit, but at least you got that. Now, the president said when he was running for office that youre quoting from the speech of 2008, i think, that we saw in class. He said that what read me that quote again. To condemn black anger without understanding his origin is to further widen the chasm between the races. To condemn black anger without understanding his origins is to widen further the chasm between the races. I completely agree with that. I dont see it happening anytime soon, because most people dont want to hear about anger. They dont want to study about anger. And they dont want to study about stuff thats painful. One reason im in here doing this is because i think we have to do that and there are people who like to come and listen to me talk here, but you try to take that out into the general public, or to the schools, i think the country has come a long way, but i think our appetite for hearing unpalatable truths is still very much attenuated, lets say. Going down the avenue in richmond, you notice the several statues dedicated to civil war generals like jackson and lee. I did notice that. Growing up there. Do you think there will be a time where the structures are concepts dedicated to the confederate themes disappear or will they be acknowledge as pieces of history . I think the statutes will be there for a while. Were talking about robert e. Lee, Stonewall Jackson, and those guys. There was an interesting controversy about back in the 90s some time, james river used to flood all the time. They built a fo÷st wall to,a the lowlying parts of the cities from being inundated. And the city or somebody put up the display of pictures of richmonds history. On the floodwall, and one of the pictures was a portrait of general robert e. Lee, and there was a black leader who complained about this very vociferously and said you have to take that down. Were not glorifying robert e. Lee. Without getting into the merits of his complaint, you should have heard a lot of white people howl about that. They said, why are you going to take down that picture of robert e. Lee . This is terrible, this is racial chauvini chauvinism. And i wrote a piece. I said, wait a minute. I said, i dont care about the picture of lee on the floodwall one way or the next, but youve got a predominantly black city council in this city since 1977 or whatever, 20 years now, and in all that time, not only havent they taken down the statues of confederate heroes on monument avenue, but they rebuilt you know where the lee bridge is, robert e. Lee bridge . They tore down the old bridge and built a nice new one and they named it again the robert e. Lee bridge. I said how much conciliation do you want from the black community. They just built you a new bridge and named it after general lee. I dont think the the confederate legacy is in danger here. Now, there were two small bridges across the valley that were named after confederates. Little ones that nobody even knows about. They call the first street, in popular promise, the 1st street and 5th street bridges are what people call them, but they were in fact the Stonewall Jackson and j. D. Spirit bridge. They did rename them after res plenty else named after Stonewall Jackson and robert e. Lee. People complain, they say, i would just as soon not have that. I think general lee will be there when they carry my coffin past there on the way to the cemetery. I think hell still be there. Because i dont think i dont think those who have power are vindictive, i think theyre very tolerant, nice people. And by the way, the city council the predominantly black city with a predominantly white city council. Thats another argument for what i said before. People are voting less and less along racial lines. Including black people. Theyll vote for a white person they think is good very, very readily. [ inaudible question ] i dont know the detail, but i was in the boy scouts in virginia and we were in the robert e. Lee council. I still have that uniform. It says robert e. Lee. They dont call it that anymore, right . They took it off. They took it off, okay. Well, you know, its interesting the way were still debating these sort of cultural issues after 120 years. Were still talking about commemorating the civil war. All right, we just had a 150th anniversary. Were having it, but still, rr not even passed. One last question. Somebody was talking about the blacks of today, and i guess this is probably an obvious question, but would you say that blackness during the Civil Rights Movement was much more collective . I guess it was. I guess now people try to its become something that is definitely much more broken down into cultures, you know. I dont mean to make a pun, but the issues were more black and white then. There was a black community who had a common set of issues. I mean, a common set of issues. You could be a College President in the south, or you could be a janitor. And you faced some of the same problems because you were black. Even black a different new york, but a different set of problems. Its all relative. Im just saying the issues were they seemed more straightforward then. Maybe they were, but they seemed so. I think most of you are watching American History tv on cspan. British and American Naval forces clashed for two and a half hours in cumberland they near plattsburgh, new york. The battle was the culmination of six days of conflict. Have we traveled to plattsburgh where david g. Fitzenz, author of the final invasion plattsburgh, the war of 1812s most decisive battle, takes us to key locations. Joseph baron, ship sorrento, september 11, 18 14, battle of plattsburgh in cumberland they bay. This is a battle that is lost to American History. Its first 100 anniversary, it was known by everyone. It was a huge celebration. People knew how important it was. In the meantime, things have changed. The poland became the national became theoem national anthem. What took place there was very important, but it was a diversion. The real battle was up here. If the british can take plattsburgh, there are no troops between here and washington, d. C. The cavalry is not coming. With plattsburgh on, they can sweep down the lake, go on to lake george, go on to the hudson and then split the United States in half. Plattsburgh and you can redraw the northern border of the United States, wherever the british troop lines are at the time while negotiations are going on, that is going to be the new northern border. They didnt plan to take the United States again. What they planned was they wanted a new northern border with United States, not the 45th parallel. They want to the northern border of massachusetts to be the border of the northern United States. If you take that line and run it across the country, you end up in buffalo. That means the United States would have lost maine, vermont, new hampshire, and all of northern new york. The british wouldve had control of the southern shore of the great lakes, and that is what they were after. Plattsburgh put a stop to that. The british army is not in the United States. The british army is back in canada. When the treaty is signed on Christmas Eve 1814, the status quo is what we see today. On june 18, 1812, the United States declared war for the first time when president madison signed in early past congressional act declaring war on great britain. The next step for the nation was figuring out how to pay for the war. President ofohen, the museum of american finance. He explores how the treasury secretary fund the war of 1812. This event is a little under 45 minutes