Mississippi communities counsel. We have anybody from the Advisory Board . Thank you. Also partner who just recently retired from congress from the mississippis third district. Thank you. [applause] our moderator for this session is a visiting professor of english and at the university of mississippi. The former editor of the quarterly review and author of two memoirs. Introduced our distinguished panelists. [applause] thank you all for joining us this afternoon. If i were to retitle this panel, i would call it family memory history and civil rights. Our analyst books all deal with those subjects. I want to quote from one of our panelists books books of history often help us we reach the present by explaining how people solve or failed to solve problems. Thats what all of these books really got is how we solve or fail to solve problems. His personal connection to the books that each of our panelists have they are going to, we will talk about this but first, let me introduce our panelists from the university of kansas is the author of book remembering until right here. His book hattiesburg American City in black and white. Next to him is ted, professor of history at university of mississippi and the dating family problems in the 20th century south. Next to him is rebecca whose books sisterhood, National Council and the black freedom struggle. From the university of southern mississippi. At the end, thinking on freedom, black women and u. S. Finance we are going to start today with professor starkey. Next welcome scott then rebecca followed by ted and ending here. They will do three to five minutes about the books and we will launch into a discussion about this idea of family memory history and civil rights. Thank you. I want to thank you all for your attention to this very important work. July 2 is a big day civil rights history. The birthday of marshall and my grandmother, actually. Its also the day they signed the Civil Rights Act of 1964. On that same day in gettysburg, famous mississippi freedom summer. Its an incredible scene. Five black churches all over have these kids sort pouring into churches, they are excited to join the Civil Rights Movement. One of the people who came, and 82yearold man. Elementary school age kids, one of my favorites is one of the churches, they have to cut on off enrollment. The kids seek their friends into the church after being told they cant come. The incredible moment, my book started off as a journey to tell that story until i sat down, i wrote what i thought was a beautiful introduction describing what i just told you and then i said, okay, what is the energy come from parks where the churches come from the provide backspace when the movement is ready to explode, they have a home for those kids . Answering that question ultimately became that book. It now ends with freedom schools in 1964. What ive done here is try to answer the question about where this Movement Comes from. When did it begin . One of the different factors at play here . One of the things thats unique is that it is history, we read so many books about black or white southerners. The destinies of these communities were very closely entwined. The long interplay between the communities. The book is racially segregated. I gulped back and forth with white chapter, black chapter, white chapter and so on. But i do is try to tell the story of the communities. The white chapters are focused on the people, the local businessman from the founder of the town, people like that. The black chapters were more difficult. Writing southern black history and right history is like writing two different genres. The white people didnt store their papers in archives and talk more recently. I found a family into the leaders met community almost 80 years, i tracked the black communities through the eyes of that family. Theres a moment where i walked them out of their front door and went to the neighbor they lived in. I talked about how jim crow changed a great deal. Mississippi was not between them. The history of those communities, how things changed and where the churches came from that housed the Civil Rights Movement. We are told often times as professors and historians that our stuff is not interesting because we are writing about the wrong topics we need to write more about war and diplomacy and great whiteman and i did something i thought about his storytelling. The reason is because they dont have great character. People here are just interesting, they just are. The story of his family, i take them off the plantation. He followed them all the way to the Great Depression, world war ii and etc. Thank you. [applause] italy about the way that black women saved, invested, loaned and looked at money to achieve their vision of economic security. Individually for themselves and their families and also collectively to support communities of institution building. It looks at what was started in 1903, the first and only thank organized by working women and funded by working women from all over the country. Seems churches, cooks, tobacco summers and teachers, working women and it was led by a black woman. The book looks at the challenges that these women face in advancing their vision of economic justice. I acknowledge that vision is essentially american also very distinctive in that it tries to support and highlight the roles of black women, essential Economic Growth as providers in their families and their communities. I always wanted to write about black womens economic justice, activism because i think its really essential part of a political history and of movement about social change because societies and mutual aids in secret societies, their only possible because they have the money to implement the kinds of programs they want at schools and orphanages and build in the community. I was generally shocked near the end of the book that i actually connected more than a decade that i worked in the mortgage Banking Industry with my intellectual interest in these women and banking so i worked for about 12 years in the development and growth of the mortgage industry. Even as a loan officer i spent most of my time working as a Mortgage Loan processor. I thought i was really helping people, especially black women achieve their vision of the American Dream with these innovative mortgage products. It took me a while to realize i was really making other Loan Officers and Mortgage Bankers and other people leak wealthy. I was creating an american nightmare for many people but black women in particular. Resulting in foreclosures and basically widening the economic gap. So the book is kind of a way for me to make amends for that by kind of highlighting the challenges that black women have faced mark before the bubble popped into their engagement with capitalism in particular but looking at the ways in which they were able to rest from advantages out of this. This book is an ultimate story between their great successes and challenges they face in the failures, to that they have to work against. [applause] thank you for being here today. My name is rebecca. When i first began graduate school, i picked up on my love of social justice activism so i became interested in knowing more about womens role in the Civil Rights Movement. As i was doing more research on the role of women in the movement, i read different works that talk about women as organizers as the backbone of the movement. When i realized was that the organizations that were being looked at work male red. As i did more research, i realized there was no single monograph or book that looked at the largest black Womens Organization in the 1960s and 70s. The National Council of negro women. This was founded in 1935 by the great educator, she is also a strong Civil Rights Activists, a race women devoted to racial uplift but activism and she was also a wellconnected politician. But her idea informing the council was to bring together 29th black Womens Organizations to be a collective voice for black women heard to give black women positions of power to have them be in government spaces and in the boardroom so i realized i wanted to write a book that made a black lead, black women Led Organization front and center. What i recognized in doing the study is that civil rights means something different. When you look at a black woman lead, it not only means desegregation but also getting food, housing, childcare and taking care of the core and people who had been incarcerated in children put in jail and the Civil Rights Movement. I also in addition as i was studying for counsel from a modern organization, they are not trying to completely change the u. S. Government, they are interested in reforming from within. I called them a moderate group. I believe some start to overlook this counsel but the moderation is what enabled a lot of amazing activities on the council. They were able to take money from the government. Between 1975 and 1985, the council cap 1. 7 million from the u. S. Agency for international development. The also had a Foundation Grant of 300,000. They also hired Francis Beale who is a black radical woman who wrote an important piece called double jeopardy may shut up in 1970 and the founder of the black womens Third World Womens Alliance and the council had her on staff for ten years. She did this other activism also. The council also purchased the pigs, for counsel who did that. I want to remind everyone that the National Council is a volunteer organization. Women who are members of the council, paid their hard earned money for claims of Civil Rights Activities. Michael here is to eliminate some of the different Civil Rights Activism activities that the council was doing and show how the council was interested in putting black women in positions of power in American Society which is a very important thing they did and finally, continue to exist as a black womens mud, black women organized organization for over 80 years. As this organization they have honored and spoken the names of great black women including their founder, mary and longtime president , dorothy was present from 1958 1998 and one of the things the council did that i talked about in my book is they were the First Organization to raise a statue to a black leader or a woman leader on the National Capital on washington d. C. Property. 1974, they raised all the money on their own. Not a cent of government money was spent. Linkin park was erected in 1974. Decades before Martin Luther king had a statue. Michael here is to bring some of this work to life but hopefully also to inspire other people, especially members of the council to continue to write about the council. Thank you. [applause] thank you all for being here. Thanks for the book festival for putting academic scholars on the panel. Thats a blast. It started as a series of disconnected essays about different topics in family life in the 20th century and i thought it was going to be fine but its about words in our family life and ideas, worries and concerns, a lot of people talk about it, sing about, write about family life so much into the meanings of what they say and write and sing. The interesting thing that happened was as i was writing fees disconnected essays started to connect. I did not plan back and i in some ways feel more like friends in poetry and i have felt before and expected before. Not that it was any fun to read but nonetheless it is more fun than you give it credit. Thank you. Debating family problems, its not really about debating what it is about oppositions, arguments and disagreements. I mentioned three of us from the 50s to 70s to get a sense of what i was talking about. I write quite a bit about the concept of brotherhood and sometimes that is inspired by the significance of the final line of Martin Luther king jr. Sixteen times in brotherhood in the weather, the brotherhood activists turned into religious language, words of sacrifice and commitment, boundaries, cutting across categories and some people that if you truly believe in brotherhood and sisterhood those are used as a trish, deepest meaning of family. Part of why i founded it, its an interesting concept to use, so many people also criticized it. People like to criticize themselves for using not just brotherhood, they were brotherhood plus justice and part of commitment. Certainly people criticized the male emphasis and dorothy was the first founder in sisters and brothers but theres a lot of criticism from other directions that i mentioned, opponents of the Civil Rights Movement will be raised brotherhood ism. The concept of brotherhood has a theology of the segregation became something that the forces can be discount from wealthy, naive, soft language that they thought covered with a defined as radicalism. They said ultimately, we dont need brotherhood and sisterhood but we need more clear definition of parenthood and fatherhood and more clear assertions of authority and value. Theres something close to a debate about brotherhood ism. The popularity of the phrase became a conservative description. The second debate or disagreement of facing our family life with a range of people who thought about the idea of the socalled crisis of africanAmerican Families, they claimed that there was a crisis throughout American Family life and the government should have a plan for africanAmerican Families and that was solved for other problems and was amazed by the degree of opposition and frustration and response. My book hopes to help a little bit with understanding that frustration and anger in the response by saying a lot of the language about family breakdown and irresponsibility, thats what africanamericans have been hearing them say about africanamericans for some generations. To accept the premise of that report wants to go along with what a lot of the opponents were saying, including segregation. It was a sign of active stability and strength and agility and some said as they observed, they saw crisis and White American families. Cap lurched to my third point, in the 70s we see disagreements and uncertainty about a lot of southern groups whether there is a clear definition of family life and whether that is possible or dishonorable. It came in part as part of legislative debates about divorce reform, we are all happy about something we brought into history. Im happy to have brought divorce reform into mainstream southern history. It passed without a great deal of controversy but after it passed, it was widely condemned by a number of religious conservatives for those who described as part of one of several legal political world cultural and family life and became one of the things that were receiving opposition. I also talked about a number of white southerners would release some of the loudest voices in southern culture in the 1970s because they played guitars. They had to sink into microphones and they say that in the early mid 1970s, they cant stay with the same woman, the same house, i hope you understand that i was born free as a bird and i cant change from a court help me. Thats part of that as well. I didnt have a plan for this book saying that ultimately, you can draw a line from the jail, its just a way of making that point in truth i didnt know what was coming. Thank you for listening. [applause] let me add my thanks to the organizers and sponsors and ralph for pulling this group together. For the last five years, ive been working with the commission from tallahassee county to commemorate this. For the most part, its very practical work. Its making signs and creating smart phone apps. This work had an unexpected consequence, and unsettled three things that i thought i already understood. My book, remembering in itself is not actually about the murd murder. Rather, its about the story of murder in the ways the story has changed over time. Its a book about the ever shifting detail until the final night, the people and places who tell stories to make it served its own needs. Its less about trying harder and more about a story 60 years in the making. It suggests it tells stories passed down through generations, its part has been reshaped by racism and the oldfashioned pursuit of money into the distant fact of 1955. In my remaining two minutes and 20 seconds [laughter] let me give you one quick example. 2011, mississippi in that year, money was the beneficiary, to continence historical sites grant. The grant went not to the site, the only place in town was the civil rights history. Rather, it went to the service station 67 seats south because it was crumbling and stay at the grant application, the gas station had become a default lecture site from which tourist gaze at the grocery and learn civil rights history. The application put civil rights dollars like this its very likely the event had transpired were discussed under the front canopy of service station. With nothing more certain than the possibility that the murder was talked about next door, the department of archives and history 200,000 to civil rights and restoration. Renovations completed in 2014, it makes no reference in several rights history of the original gas pumps have been preinstalled from the living quarters in the back had been well appointed. Its not the end of the charming nostalgic. , it only colorblind the day to day life and what it might have looked like had racism not been through every facet of life. The report that the renovation is beautiful but these were not civil rights dollars and it was funded by the memory of the murder the gas station would still be. Making matters even more complex, they are both owned b