Good evening and welcome the bancroft prize program. Columbia university is honored to cosponsor this annual celebrate with the Columbia Department of history each year. The history. Selects one of its leading historians to chair a panel of three jurors chosen the finest scholars in the field hailing from Top Research University across the country. We are delighted that American History tv elected to expand its partnership with us this year by Recording Program for airing an archiving on its website. We will circulate word when the air date and Online Access are available. Were also thrilled that so many guests are joining us for tonights program which features brief interviews with the book prize winners. Their scholarly works delving the 18th, 19th and 20th centuries. It is a joy to celebrating books tonight. In addition to the important prizes that are awarded the endowment left to Library Libraries by, Frederick Bancroft enables us to continue to acquire both rare archival material and new publications of Scholarly Research conducted by historians around the world. It is a privilege to work alongside very best staff working anywhere in libraries today and to have such strong faculty champions and partners and it is my honor to introduce our emcee for this evening. Dr. Andrew lipman of columbia and barnard history departments and a winner of the bancroft prize in 2016. Please welcome andrew lipman, associate professor of history, Barnard College and chair of the 2023 bancroft prizes jury. Good. On the behalf of the columbia and barnard history departments, delighted to welcome you all tonight to celebrate three remarkable books. Now, as anne mentioned, beginning last year, the library introduced a new format for this ceremony. Instead of having the winners give acceptance features. Were now featuring interviews, the authors, so we can really get into the meat of their books. But before we get to that, ive been asked to offer some short about the juries process and thinking, and i have say our work was only possible thanks to the absolutely stellar faculty and staff at columbia libraries. Under the leadership of ann thornton, they offered wise counsel, managed the complex logistics of delivering and organizing submissions and also planning this beautiful ceremony. Tonight. And on behalf of the jury, id like to thank you all. You made this so much easier for of us. And i was similarly fortunate to work with two distinguished jurors. One unfortunately cannot join us this evening, though she sends her sincere best wishes to the winners. That is out of farah julius silver, professor of history, latin american and Caribbean Studies at new york university. And the other juror is here tonight. Youll be seeing on the stage shortly is Margot Canaday. Professor of history at princeton university. Now our main job as jurors to read. Now i elected for physical copies and for several weeks i felt like the sorcerers apprentice having unwittingly cast a spell that unleashed an endless parade of box after box after box into my office, spilling 200 new hardbacks on every available surface. But when the deliveries finally ceased, we had divided the list into and began to intense months of reading in our final deliberations. We picked this eclectic book, three books that might at first seem to be utterly unalike. They belong to different genres micro history, transnational history, biography one confines us to Lower Manhattan in the early 1790s. Another takes us back and forth across mexican u. S. Border. In the first two decades of the 20th century. The other situates us around a Single Person who spent his entire life in washington, d. C. From 1895 to 1972. And yet, despite their differences, these books shared number of important and admirable qualities. Each scholar dazzled with their method and craft, whether combing through multilingual archives in two countries, using troves of recently unredacted documents, or harnessing digital mapping tools to recreate a long city block by block. All three historians relied on years of shoe leather work, exhausting every avenue of sources to give their interpretation oceans, depth and command. Each also writes in silky and inviting prose unspooling gripping narratives with vivid set pieces and plot twists that have all engaged general readers. But at the same time, each makes signal contributions to their fields that will excite academic audiences as well. And thematically, there are that correct that connect them. I think all three winners can be described. Political histories told at an intimate scale. Their stories all hinge on the workings of the state or overlapping states, and they all center their analysis on a main character in search of justice. One of sawyer, Ricardo Flores mcgown and john hoover in. Their journeys. All three overcome some substantial to achieve varying degrees of Popular Support for their cause, but also find their goals undermined by bitter ironies and, also by painful betrayals and selfpity. Perhaps the greatest all three historians here tonight is their extraordinary sensitive city. The way they make profound points about their subjects with close attention to private details. Its there. When gage points out that the very moment Calvin Coolidge appointed 29 year old edgar hoover as fifth director of the bureau of investigation when he was still living with his mother kissing her goodnight, going sleep alone in his childhood bedroom and feeding his table scraps to his beloved airedale puppy speedy bozo. Its there, too, in hernandezs portrait of the ambitious radical journalist Ricardo Flores mcgahns in 1905, san antonio. As ricardos one good suit fell to tatters from overuse, he got in the habit of backing of rooms during his public appearances. Avoid turning around to that. His seat of his pants was in patches. And its there too. When sweet depicts the far more harrowing details from the hot september day when a 17 year old lorna sawyer having just survived a violent rape night before, wander the streets in a traumatized daze wearing ripped and hastily repaired dress and her bloodstained shift underneath. These historians know that its all there in the details. Edgars precociousness ricardos sense of dignity. Lornas unbearable pain. Its there in the literal fabric. Their subjects lives. And these books are also about things as well as small things. They offer us complex insights into, the mechanisms and structures of power in the form of a single man whose. Ambition was so massive it overshadowed the federal government in the form of real and unrealized revolutions that could not be contained within or in the form of a city elite that was asked for the first time to reckon with the unpunished of its sons. And thats what makes them all instant classics. Both timely and timeless studies they both speak to and transcend their moments. Books that will be read for decades to come. And now to the best part, the discussions with the authors. Im going to read the jury and then invite them and their interviewer the stage. Our first winner is kelly lytle hernandez. Her book, bad mexicans, race empire and in the borderlands is an ambitious and exciting study that reimagines the beginnings of the mexican revolution as a fundamental and indispensable by National Process focused on the rebel Ricardo Flores morgan and men and women that surrounded him. Little hernandez little. Hernandez constructs a riveting story that stretches from mexico city to saint louis, missouri. The displacement of mexicans from their land by u. S. Economic penetration contributed to the rise of migration and then the horrendous treatment of mexican migrants in the us fueled opposition to the u. S. Allied of Porfirio Diaz as antigovernment dissidents across the border to the United States, their politics became increasingly radical, creating a Transnational Movement of writers and readers miners and workers. Migrants and nationals and their ideals would influence the coming regime change in their home country. Just as the revolution, the border, so too did the counterrevolution. As u. S. Federal and local authorities collaborated with the Mexican Government to surveil and neutralize melgen and his fellow revolutionaries. This is a book that down and redraws the boundaries of mexican u. S. History. Interviewing i hernandez tonight in the place of jaw out of ferrer is karl jacoby alan nevins professor of history at columbia university. Please welcome kelly and karl to the stage. So, kelly, i just wanted to start by congratulating you on the remarkable achievement that youve done with this book. Its not the first time, though that youve written about the mcgowan brothers. You actually touched on them in your previous book of inmates. So can you just tell a little bit about who they are and yeah, id be happy. First, thank you everyone for coming out. Its wonderful to see your beautiful faces in person. So the mahoneys just for a group of dissident journalists who were working in mexico city to try to throw out of office a dictator, a man named Porfirio Diaz. And they were suppressed in mexico city. Diaz had them arrested. Raided their offices. Destroyed printing presses. And after many years of this, including a gag against them, they fled mexico and came to United States to rebuild their revolution. And its pretty extraordinary. I mean, theyre journalists. Theyre but they also begin to work with Cotton Pickers and miners, Migrant Workers who are going back and forth across the border to, not just relaunch their newspaper, but to establish a Political Party and even establish an army that raids mexico four times from the United States. So theyre an Incredible Group of who build the social movement. Thats transnational and helped to sow seeds of rebellion and revolution in mexico. And so what made you feel you needed to revisit them in bad mexican . What what more did you feel like you had to say about them . So i am absolutely love with the migrant business. Im from borderlands. Im from san diego, california, and i really wish someone told me about them when i was younger. There had been a revolution that had been created in my own, my own homeland, my own. So thats one of the reasons im writing it for kids of the borderlands, including my own children. Theres also a lot of reasons you remember a certain man who was running for president who called migrants bad press. Well, that stirs an incredibly violent history and narrative. And one of the biggest problems is that many people in United States dont know much mexicanAmerican History. They didnt know. Dangerous. That rhetoric was. And so it was that moment. I was like, i got a book i need to write and has to do with the history of racial violence targeting mexican immigrants, mexicanamericans. But how i tell that story, i got to give it to you in a vehicle that people want to read about. And so the organizers are a cinematic riveting story that i could smuggle into the broad mainstream narrative, these histories of racial violence. And can you tell us a little bit about the challenges involved in researching mag on these tools . And i ask this because theyre a group thats trying to keep their activity secret, then theyre a group thats constantly on the run trying to outfox the police of mexico and the United States. So theyre not leaving an obvious document to trail behind them. Yeah. So this is like an awesome, awesome archive. So the early fbi are actually established. They cut their teeth on trying to hunt down these revolutionaries. And so the fbi is falling around their spies and by the Mexican Government. And one of the things that theyre doing is theyre stealing the letters of these revolutionaries and theyre taking them down to mexico and theyre archiving them. So we have all these stolen, stolen letters written from the front lines of revolution, which are the heart of this archive. The issue is that the revolutionaries knew that they were being followed so they started to write in secret code. So many of these letters are written in secret. So you get to not just do Research Spanish and english, but also in secret code, right . So you get to break the code. So thats one of the challenges. But the blessing is that there have been generations of historians, mostly mexican and mexicanamerican historians who have done the work of finding of these records wherever they were on both sides of the border, even in europe, and making them available even digitizing them. So its a real honor to able to step into this after those decades work and be able to tell the story now and central to the story that youre is the mexican revolution itself. And i was just wondering, do you what were you hoping that american readers of your book will learn about the mexican . Oh, well, its a its a phenomenal revolution. Right. So for me, the best i can. Revolution both anticapitalism and antiracist. And so we want to think about a revolution that happened on the north American Continent thats within our reach and within our grasp, and that its also a revolution that led the migration of more than 1 million mexican migrants to the United States. Those migrants become the of the foundation of the mexicanamerican population. Im sure my husbands own family can date back to the mexican revolution and so forth to understand the demographic transformation of this country over the course of the 20th century. We have to understand the mexican revolution and how it sparked this migration and also what are the incredible political and intellectual legacies that people bring them. So i all history is this dialog between past and present and are there ways in which recent events have caused you to rethink the migrant story and the story that youre telling about mexicans . Thats a hard one, right . So of course, there a current event that helped trigger the writing of this book and think if i had a chance to to take another whack at this book, one of the things i would talk about is the violence that journalists are facing in mexico today. And thats certainly a part the story the journalists were at the heart. What im writing about in this book as, i said experienced arrests and, destruction of property and gag orders. But matter of fact, they were writing under a dictator and he did not assassinate them. Right. But were dozens of mexican journalists being assassinated every year right now. And so thats something i think i would have threaded, i could have thread into the book a little bit better. I would do again. Interesting. And when youve been out, you know, talking about the book what has the response been from readers . What is the most meaningful feedback that youve gotten from from audiences. Well, i think it would go back to were talking earlier about how so few people know mexicanAmerican History and that includes many mexicanamerican elders. And so one of the greatest experiences ive had with this book out on the road is when im giving book at libraries or even coffee shops or in community organizations, is when elders come out. And they often have first question after the talk and, its tears, right . I didnt know why my parents came here. Didnt know why my grandparents came here. I didnt know what they confronted in mexico. I dont know what they confront here in the United States. And i feel a void has been filled for myself and for my family. And so that is very, very when individuals can carry their history on the other of that is when talking to you that talked to a lot of social Movement Actors and members and many people dont sort of the long history and legacy that there are working with. And so when i am talking with young latinx who are really at the front of immigration mass incarceration and the movements both are to end immigration control and mass incarceration, they often dont know the history of them. Organizers, their foremothers and forefathers who really made it possible for them to engage in this antiracism, anticapitalist campaigns. And they feel strong anger. They feel empowered theyve got these incredible shoulders to stand upon. And so thats very meaningful to me as well. And so one final question here, which is sort of maybe an academic question, but let me run it you anyways, which is, you know, think of this book as a work of borderlands that is trying to integrate both mexican history and u. S. Together. And im just wondering, in what way did and writing this book make you rethink standard divide we have between those latin history over here and u. S. History over there . Well, it certainly true for us in mexican history. I dont think i had thought about it as clearly before writing this book that, well, mexico is the laboratory or the workshop us empire. I dont think that i had quite understood that. We cannot write modern u. S. History without having a really fine grained and expansive incorporation of at least mexico as landmass or as a land base, but also as as a population. Mm hmm. And so its the integration of those two stories that i dont think ill ever write u. S. History the same again or without the inclusion of mexico. But thats also im a borderland, right . And so its always been my center of gravity growing up in san diego now living los angeles, is that everything sort of orbits around that relationship between the united and mexico right. I think thats all the time we have for. But that was really fascinating. I urge everyone to read the book. Our second winner tonight is beverly gage her stunn