thank you for this amazing talk. >> iredell of you to come back. you will now see it through the lens. that doctor murphy created. please come back and study the way jefferson stared at that. thank you all. >> if you are enjoying american history tv sign-up for our newsletter. lectures in history, the presidency and more. sign-up for the american history tv newsletter today and be sure to watch every saturday or anytime online at c-span.org/ history.

>> a healthy democracy does not just look like this. it looks like this. americans can see democracy at work. public thrives. and informed straight from the sources on c-span. unfiltered, unbiased, word for word. from the nation's capital to wherever you are. because the opinion that matters the most is your own. this is what democracy looks like. c-span, powered by cable. >> good evening, everyone. i am vice president of democracy initiatives here for the history center. i am sittingng here tonight with three great scholars. we are joined by scott nelson. three of many contributors to this new volume.

a new history of the american south. it just came out a few weeks ago each are professors of history. each have different areas of expertise. we have a lot of ground to cover tonight. i will briefly introduce them and we will jump right in. the editor of this wonderful volume, at the university of north carolina at chapel hill. welcome from north carolina. appreciate you being here. early american history at the university of florida and drove up hereon from gainesville to jn us. we are very grateful for you being here tonight. we have scott nelson who is a georgia athletics association of history at the university of georgia. if yourr member from athens tody , thank you for being here with us today, scott. like i said, this book covers a

lot of ground. it goes back several years and takes us close to the present. it truly is a comprehensive history at the south. with so many contributors, so much ground to cover our thought we would talk with questions to the editor. how did this project initially come out? >> and editor from the university of north carolina came to me two decades ago. [laughter] suggested that it was time to have a new interpretive history of the american south. and i was keen to do it, but life intervened and it took longer, it took longer than i would haveen expected. part of the challenge was we wanted to pull together a team of really great scholars, i hope they won't be offended, we wanted mid to late career

scholars. [laughter] but it took us a while. a little further in our careers now. [laughter] but, in any case, the goal was to get people who would have fresh things to say about the south, try to get the authors to work together collaboratively. so, the book is an ensemble apeffort as opposed to single authors writing chapters. it makes it a little bit more challenging to write a book because you have to start with the early authors. one of the earliest contributors not only in the period, but also an actual writing of it and then we workedd our way to the 20th century. so, weaving that to gather was a conscious goal from the offset. i think that that is what distinguishes it from some of the other works that are either

single author or multivolume single author. >> i wanted to touch on the conflict of the south really quick before we move into talking more conscious specific things. a new history of the american south. it goes back to many many years before the concept of the united states would have existed. in the introduction to the book, you get some guidance about what this bookow is not and what it s not framed around. gione of the things born and raised in the south, we are not looking at the south through this lens of southern distinctiveness because wes thik we are so different or so special. we are often not looking at the south through several different lenses as well. four purposes of this volume, how did you define the south both place and time.

what led you in that direction? >> with regards to time. , admittedly, this is the book that focuses on the history of the region from before european contact,e but largely through te era of an emergence of a euro-american civilization and what we call the south. while we do go back hundreds and hundreds and thousands of years in some instances, the focus will say 1500 to the present, admittedly. in thinking about that, we did not want to start with the assumption that the history of the region was the history of europeans in the region. so, we also did not want to start with the assumption that there was one moment in time and how the south became the identifiable thing that we call the south. so, it may sound complicated,

but the way that we worked was backwards so to speak. we all think of the south appropriately because it's a way be commonly talk about the south as essentially the states that were part of the confederacy. good reasons to do that. so we accept that. we wanted to look at the history of that territory throughout the entire span of time as opposed to starting in saint augustine and tracing european settlement out from that. the reason why that is important is because the south looks very different inha 1500 or 1600 or 1800 for that matter. if you are paying attention to all the people that live in what we now think of as the south as opposed to just essentially euro-americans. it makes it much more, i will call it cosmopolitan south.

>> john, in your essay, in your chapter in the early south, kind of taking it from that foundation about naming what was the south, your work delves into wind, and area we now know as the south started to become populated with people besides the native inhabitants of this region. you talk a lot about how people from three different continents came together in a relatively, not super large area of land for the first time for a lot of them can you talk about the early history of that initial contact and how the relationship between white settlers, native americans , enslaved africans brought over from africa, how those things started out and how they changed over the course of the. you are writing about because there was quite a stark

difference from where you start, your work, this chapter in the book and where you ended. >> yeah. the larger question is how do we define the south. the earlier centuries i was writing about. like myself writing about that. , having this conundrum, how do you write about this region that became the south before it was the south. in the year 1710, like living in the south. but, during that time, say 1600 to say the middle of the 18th century, seeing profound demographic changes where in the year 1600, you know, essentially , the entire population would have been indigenous people by the time the spanish and english and eventually french began settling

, small pockets of colonization in florida and louisiana and virginia in the carolinas had then began bringing in enslaved africans. you see this profound transition where because of disease, warfare, trade and indigenous populations declininghe precipitously, 100% of the population and the year 1600 essentially by 1750, they are down to about 20% of the population. the european and african populations had risen dramatically by that point. most of the south, what we now call the south, was still in native hands. so, west of the appalachian mountains, native territory. indigenous people even though there populations began to decline dramatically. what you didn't see towards the period of the american revolution and into the 19th century was enslaved people

beginning to push further and further south and west and displacing indigenous people even more. so this. of 150-250 years involves tremendous changes in population and culture and economics. >> did that look different, different colonies depending on eawhich european country was settling? i think sometimes in the u.s. we have ah tendency to talk about early american history, we talk about florida for some reason. we tend to talk about the british colonies. did you see any differences between say spanish, french, british, what thatt looks like? >> sure, of course. that is one of the things we try to emphasize. g all of these different projecs going on with the french in louisiana. you have a catholic zone settlement over the gulf coast. louisiana through spanish florida.

and then when you go north and from the carolinas, that is the english. there is religious tension in their. the wars of religion that started in europe leave the atlantic and comp to be america's. with corresponding changes and differences in the way that those societies are structured. a higher degree of a corporation african-americans and indigenous people in the catholic societies than in protestant british colonies, for example. >> one of the other frames of the book laid out in the beginning was that the south is a region that sees a lot of upheaval over many years. this is not necessarily unique to just the south but certainly defining future. the third author that we have with us tonight, scott, you talk about a couple hundred years,

stay with me, your essay focuses on the aftermath of the civil war. talking about the conception of the south. people moving in and forming what we now know is that territory. and, in many ways, after the civil war, you have a situation where 40% of the southern population, give or take, went from being poverty in the eyes of the law to becoming citizens. some of them, the men in that case voting citizens. so, you really have just a massive demographic shift there. who gets to participate in so society. your essay is titled the urban south. i was wondering if you could enlighten us on the title. you start out with a lot of atlanta history.

we thought that may be fun to dig into. >> yes.. you have black and white settlers moving into f the sout, southern homestead, lots of black families getting land. buying land. people growing cotton for the first time that have never grown cotton before. and, the bourbons are the ones, the story about the bourbons in france, they never forget, what's the expression, they never learned and they never forget. [laughter] and, so, the bourbons are the people that come in and try to retake the south and make it a white enclave in which white southerners ruled the roost. there called the bourbons by their critics. populists and others.

they justng want to remember agn and again what the south was before the war. what the south was during the civil war. that obsession with -- and dressing up this old south planters. all of this memorialization where you are trying to re-create some imagined south. ironically, it ise being brought together for the first time uaafter the war. actually not connected by a large by railroads. supported by the southern states individually that prevented them from going to one another. south carolina did not want any traffic going to georgia. it is really when the confederacy comes in that you see a continuous railroad that goes from richmond to atlanta. not a place of any importance until the confederacy brings bridges, atlanta to richmond largely to feed the confederacy.

and then you start to see it south all the way to texas. you start to see this convergence. environmental catastrophe that then follows when you bring these railroads through andl yu start to see yellow fever and all of these other diseases that had previously just been coastal you see pellagra and scurvy and a lot of other diseases that have to do with all of this cheap food that starts coming in by railroad into the south and that cheap food does not have vitamin c. it does not have iron. lots and lots of white and black people are eating food that is not especially good for them. you see this slowness and all of these diseases and all of these other things. i would argue that the south has become something. there really is a kind of south. one that is for people like henry grady in atlanta. about remembering a kind of

south, the magnolias kind of story. henry grady kind of puts together the way of excluding lack people from voting. the supreme court comes up with this way of preventing black people from voting. not exclusively but implicitly. that ise the kind of story of e south. the bourbon south is the arrival .e they still go into the statehouse and they ensure that it willar only be black people. only white people that will be on juries. that is when we see all of the ills that are distinctively part of thehe south. building off of that, taking into some of the mechanics a little bit more, talk a little bit more, you mention the

supreme court specifically. there are some other things that are even more georgia or atlanta specific. when you go into that a little bit. >> most of the content that is grown in the south is, 200 frost free days to grow cotton. the deep south that grows cotton they can only get credit from -- all the banks are destroyed by the war. a common and kick all of the gold out of the vaults. ....an .... tton. and that means that people who are up around here, up in the hills, who would never have grown cotton in thirties or 1840s, are suddenly growing cotton. the only thing that you can get cash and and credit for it. so country stores and all these other things when you think about the cracker, we think about it as an old fashioned thing. but the cracker barrel was the cutting of the south in the 1860s and 1870s. it was the institution that gave you credit for growing cotton, that provided you the food that

you needed provided all these things and so a lot of distinctive things that letst it distinctively, we thik of it distinctively so the rain and atlanta becomes the hub right away for consolidated railroads railroad run by radical republicans initially that joins himself together and most of the cotton then, but at the countenance of going out rather than through georgia so george becomes a colony and that way and its relationship to the u.s. economy. stu: i think it's interesting when you mentioned the magnolias but then you also think about what he was known for which is the new south. so explain how you both go back to the past and something new. >> he gave us each the union

league around 1880 or 81 in which he says we welcome you to the south. the south has new capitol and imagines itself as a woman. before started start see the south as a female character and. that's how the south is thrilling with investment and it's offering lots and lots of women who have lost husbands or fathers during the civil war a very large number of white white man and a man as well but a lot of white men were wiped out by the war itself so there all these unattached women black and white women and these will be the hands at the cotton mills so rather than just growing cotton people see industrialization and urbanization and industrialization and carbonation of the south is not what we see here.

it's not these 20 story buildings. it's taking cotton and turning it into cloth and taking timber in turning it into -- and tobacco turning into and sinking the raw materials one step up and that's what the south is thats when we talk about urbanization places like atlanta we are talking about taking those raw materials and doing one more thing with them. >> absolutely. i want to go back a little bit before the civil war because i want to touch on where you left off in such a large time. max so during this time the way that africans and african-americans andd white people were related to one another i don't want to leave out the native american piece of you talked about how the population is rapidly declining

in the war is a huge factor that is the south expands you include oklahoma where there's a large population so can youou talk abt while this is all going on simultaneously what do we see going on isr? the lead-up to the civil war and native americans because thater becomes very important. >> sa said during the 18th century most of the south even though thehe proponents of the population is steadily becoming or european than african and indigenous population was declining even after the american revolution as well as in the 19th century most of the south was stillll occupied their. what you see from the period essentially when it declines in

178888 until the first two or three decades of the 19th century is that an increasing pressure driven largely by the federal government as well as privateers to acquire land and took the people from their homes so what you see happening gradually especially under andrew jackson is people through their own good need to be removed to make way for white settlers and for expansion of cotton. so the indian removal act probably none is the indian dispossession -- and dispossession act was committed to moving indigenous people so from george from florida and the carolinas and from arkansas

people moved west and relocated to oklahoma so it's good to reason to think is part of the extended south is a big reason why that would be the case. >> one observation you tend to think about violence and dispossession native americans especially west in the tradition of the violence that the u.s. calvary men versus indians in the bloodiest war against american indians was fought. the seminole wars the violent occupation of florida is very much a part of the story of the merchants of what we now call the modern south. >> in this whole book one of the themes that we all talk about

and all the other authors talk about in our work is this idea of expanding kind of concepts of who gets to be considered southern so whose history is going to be included in this book is very very different than the history would have been included in the book years ago. i'd love to hear from all of you about that process and the scholarship as well both within this work and obviously reflection of many other things we have all been working on for quite some time. can you talk about how the definition of southern where you see that going? >> i certainly think the definition has been utterly transformed over the last half-century and it's not just, we call it no pun intended a revolution in the study of the early south. when i was in graduate school

the center of colonial scholarship was still in the middle atlantic. i mean there was wonderful scholarship on the chesapeake bay but that was a merely southern extension so there was a particular focus on early american history that excluded large parts of the south in addition we think back it's not really until the 1970s that it starts to be a large body of scholarship with women, black women indigenous women white women in the american south. prior to 1970 the major scholarly works talked about women and the scholarship on black southerners exploded in depth. we know so much more about than we did just 50 years ago so i think it's's not just the missin

of southerners has changed with but the richness when you talk about all the people who we now call southerners that's been transformed over the last 50 years. >> what we think of this southern so many ofs us understand talking about the religious traditions that comes out at new orleans i talk about, you talk about jazz and we talk about cooking and its relationship to the traditions of food and feeding oneself an understanding that part of the south means a lot of the things we think of better interesting about the south that are viewable about the south come from the african part of the south and that tradition is lost in the way that was spoken of

before. that's where they get their accents from. there was this english tradition is carried on in the chesapeake and now i understand it's an african and european traditions that make up the language you talk about them also music has african-american roots in native american roots and that's is a richer south. it's the south we actually admire and be like much of it. we need to see bringing together both these rich and complicated cultural traditions. state >> highest undergraduate where's the progresso. it's a new orleans company started by sicilian. new orleans has the second-largest sicilian population in the united states. i asked him what's the most famous sandwich you associate with new orleans and they

usually say the muscle at a again sicilian embraced in this incredibly interesting and cosmopolitanan city. >> i would say as well the sense apof cultural graphic diversitys the early. when the south was a place of incredible immigration desk immigrants from u.s. files from germany from switzerland spain as well as dozens and dozens of enslaved people from africa speaking different languages and practicingun different languages and likely speaking and practicing their traditions so to me when you think about

southern distinctiveness and the sense of uniqueness that is the collision of all these cultures during the 18th century was in recent history and all the gumbo that we were talking about. and the ways in which the south used to be taught in the political elites into me what's interesting about this south comes from the places that are separated from the elite southern traditions so channeling that south and telling the story that south is interesting. >> one other thing i think is important for us to remember about the south when i was being introduced to the south i always

heard about the southern cities and i don't deny southern has it deep sense of place but so do vermonters and so do quebecers and lots of people have a sense of place but one of the things is great about southern-ism is a thinkdn of grittiness. southerners have been incredibly influenced by african-americans, by indigenous peoples and incredibly migratory people. for sample in the antebellum era some of the most mobile americans according to the census were seniors who were migrating out in numbers larger than migrating out if england. so those the southerners were thator they be coerced or moving by choice for calculating the mississippi river valley. they are moving all the time and

they are moving into the mississippi delta subsidiary mobile population inin this regn and you tend to think of it as being very sedentary. you think about the southerners who stayed behind and forget about all the southerners migratingou out to texas than migrating out to bakersfield californian migrating to chicago and detroit or pittsburgh. so it's a mobile people adjusting to generational upheaval after generational upheaval. >> we were talking earlier about how scholarship tended to focus onus groups of people throughout history and then now we have access to -- inclusive and to all different sorts of people but i wanted to talk about sources. it can be a little confusing.

how can it be new history so i wondered if each of you i would think it'sto interesting to know how that process has changed over the years of research and where you find some of the stuff you write about? >> henry woodfin brady who everyone is heard about luckily for me as a scholar there is another henry a brady who was a railway carpenter and the seven historical collection bought a site and feed massive collection of the white railroad workers letter's to his sister because they thought he was that kind of grady. [laughter] the only downside of this is that he wrote on paper with a purple cram because that's what he is for measuring wood with create so and his spelling was.

it really was.ra henry a grady moves to the south and he builds itself and build build cities where root bridges with others. rail work carpenter becomes a form in. he says it's so strange and so peculiar and so swampy and so i don't want to be in the south and meanwhile henry w. mcgrady is talking about i how the south is wonderful and this is the new south and it's the future so sometimes the archives will lead you to people, henry a grady a working-class guy he'ss the one closest to row road workers who talks about the kind of the environments they are in and the kinds of track line that they do and so the archive is always ready for a new kind of history.

>> i would say the particularly acute for my period were the people the authors in my team riding about sort of the pre-19th century south particularly indigenous and african-americans who were most of the sources are written by europeans and so the question how can you study those people if they didn't read their own sources so this has been a question that is really given historians a lot of food for thought in the past decade. they have made pretty good strides in recent years and trying to use what little sources do exist to uncover as best they can do thoughts of the inner voices the sense of personality that is revealed of indigenous people and african-americans written by europeanby sources.

it's not easy to do but that's the question and especially with the indigenous history archaeology is a tool that is essential to write about native american history so when you link with other sources you try to make it as layered and textured as possible given the understanding it's not always easy to do. >> i i'll use an example that goes back to when i first came to atlanta. i wrote my dissertation my first book about virginia and georgia and when i did my research you had to read newspapers on microphone so i read 50 years of amanda constitution being the first twoo pages in the 4th page which was the editorial page, for 50 years. those of you who have not worked

to in my profession may not appreciate that. it affected my eyesight actually. i had to wear classes for few years. in the scholarship on lynching has been transformed over the last 30 years and particularly in the last few years. i'll give one example the great southern historian c. woodward devoted his entire scholarship less than four pages and all of the scholarship to the topic of lynching. no one would write a comparable study of the length of his book is so little space to it but as they say one of the reasons why was he was in the newspaper researcher to begin with. but the research that it took me literally a year and a half to do for myy dissertation you can now do in, you could do it in a

millisecond but then you to read all the stories on newspapers.com or at the atlanta constitution.com some of the words to be able to research and to track down the lynching evidence is infinitesimally easier now than it was years ago. and so we know immensely more about not just lynching but also about attempted lynchings which were incredibly hard to track down before so that's the knowledge so to speak was there and that technology has made it possible to get to it. so much more easily than we could have 10 years ago or 30 years ago. a source that i used a story of john henry something i've written a book about but also

all of these track line or songs were sung and collected in the 1880s to the 19 teens in the track liner songs sung by men who lined in reliance track 100,000 of them in the american south in the 1900s. those songs are by people who if they were in 1880 was it illegal for them to read in 1860s so hearing their voices was very hard and so that's why many become blues songs and are a source that we can use and discover tremendous material about. >> we are going to move to questions here just a minute so be thinking about all the great questions i know you will have our panel tonight. i want to take each of you, you teach a think graduate andte undergraduate so you're around a

lot of young people in yours or write books that people who are not historians and not students want to read so thank you. was very well-written and lots to dig into the air. the book obviously started as you noted earlier many a years o but it was a very interesting time. we have always lived in interesting times they'll call it an interesting time. there were a lot of disagreements over history and how it gets to be taught and why it's important or not important to teach and what some of it actually means. i'm wondering how you encounter that in their classrooms as i'm sure you do every day versus when you talk with folks who are currently students and how have these conversations in the public sphere shape in the story

and your scholarship? >> that's a very rich question and it's also moving target because for example in north carolina there is legislation before the state legislature right at this moment that would transform the way k-12 students in the state learn history. i guess what i would say are two things. we have a world in which ap u.s. history influences enormously a what is learned in high school in the united states in american history now and yet on the other hand we now have increasingly of politicizationic of what we learned and what is taught in schools and i actually am fairly optimistic that we, those of us

were committed to the study of history and the teaching of history, i'd i like to say we have the facts on our side and so if we have two engage in debates about the past i think we are in a pretty good position to hold our own. i don't say that pollyanna-ish but with people want us to talk about and teach about the history of free-market capitalism and in the united states, bring it on. start talking about and how it fit into free-market capitalism and let start talking about real roads and what that meant for people who used to be self-sufficient farmers entered the marketplace in order to get access to funding. in my own way i think it will be a warfare to use military metaphor a long arduous struggle

but i think the facts are on our side.el c since i teach in florida and the politicization of the curriculum over the past year or so this is a question we get all the time in the classroom and not give you one example which isus that and i just finished teaching american evolution and those of you whom have read about the 1619 project that came out-years ago one of the contentions was the preservation of was a driving inspiration toward the american revolution itself and what was not new it was long before the 1619 project. it somehow resonate with the public and was very controversial so we talked about that in our class and we weighed the evidence and to what extent

of any was a part of the rationale itself and we looked at the evidence and the evidence is pretty clear. it's not the only rationale but it was a rationale. and so students, i was aware of the controversy and asked what do you think about this. historians looking at arguments and counter arguments in coming to your own conclusions so weo can do that as a society and take the controversial things and what is wrong with thinking about this and what role does the state actually have been dictating what can and can't be taught in the classroom, we have two controversial things with history based on evidence and that's what my students did.

they did conclude was part of the american revolution. >> i'd like to question about teaching and riding. to me teaching is exciting and i teach the big u.s. to train students in the other students who did not get a -- on the exam. and they are not history majors and they will never be history majors and they are dragged kicking and screaming into history and i love that. so i say look you can take a class and get a job and you were going to come at the job is going to be closely related to the course you are taking an agriculture of economics or whatever fashion design. you were going to get into that job and you're going to drink yourself to.

[laughter] or you cannk think about where u fit in the past, in the long test of american history and how you fit and how did other people cope with the world around them and how did they confront problems of their generation and how will you do a? i want to save you from alcoholism. [laughter] i want to save you from that so let's talk about american history. we can understand american history and colonization without drugs. sugared tobacco cocoa. basically this is a drug world and the american south is a world of drugs being shipped to europeans. so i think trying to get their attention in the attention of engineering students who would rather be anywhere else, would rather be stuck in traffic then be an american history class when you get them excited about history and to get them to think and turn their your head and think a little bit differently

about it, and i get feedback for you teach and you get interested me me think oh that's actually good story and i need to write that down and i need to tell story pic to me that's exciting thing about history as a writing discipline as they can roll out a good class and really sharp skeptical questions from students often push me to the ask me what does the financial revolution had to do with the colonization so i to go back and look at it and think about it some more. so to me there's an exciting thing about skeptical students and teaching skeptical students in learning how to tell a story that works and then we are all historians and we can't just tell a story. we have to have the sources that are on our side and i think so

much of life is like that. these are some of the best gems kethat we have kept for our classes that we just decided to president. your story about the great london fires and how it's an important precursor to the coming of in the south and the transition to in the virginia colonies and have a lot to do with 1966. that's fascinating and makes you think twice. the book is filled with observations and nuggets like that that are just fantastic. >> i completely agree and it's never a bad thing to push everyone to show their work. so the questions coming are an opportunity to talk about things that maybe we haven't talked about before.

we'd love to hear from you now so i'm sure they are lots of questions. so please raise your hand very high so i can see you in the microphone will come to you. >> how important for african-americans histories in the research and the outcome of the book with? >> i will start off briefly. particularly in martha jones chapter and kate majors chapter so chapters that deal with all call them the early republic so roughly 1820 to 1860, the slave narrative definitely is important as well is particularly martha jones is interested in how black we will now call them black southerners are seeing themselves as residents of the region and its

american as members of the black diaspora in african diaspora. so their voice is very important and kate nazar pass chapter as an organizing figure. so they are definitely an important voice.ng >> bonnier to britain in 1933 collected during the depression are great not just for the period of. after and if you want to talk about black life in the 1870s and 1880s collecting these materials her description of the intricacies of black life grow out at the slave narrative.

>> what impact to the great migration have on the economy and people trying to move to chicago when they are trying to move away to those urban areas? at the great migration is not in my period it's later. it's very important and it's important to understand what makes a great migration possible which is world war i and warfare makes it impossible for employers in detroit and chicago to get a stream of european workers and so we see people bring black newspapers down to the south and to show them the opportunities that are available

and there's a massive migration that changes the north in important i ways in changes the south and it's equally important that there's a continuous movement back and forth which is a cultural tradition and much of what we think of as the blues coming up at that tradition and we see a lot of violence that comes at the period after an formerly we talked about lynching being in 1877 to 1914. it's in 1919 that these tremendous -- against black people in many parts of the south appeared in fact i have a chapter about red summer so it's fresh in my mind. we see sort of the destruction

of important black cities and black towns where black people are thriving. that is a discussion of the 20th century by the thought of my field but there's a great deal to talk about during red summer particularly. >> and the efforts to stop that there were definitely efforts to stop it for a temple in georgia they were efforts to stop trains leaving savannah and elsewhere. there's the classic way american federalism and american capitalism work. duthey were recruiting agents coming from northern industrial centers recruiting blacks to migrate north so just as they are people trying to keep him in the south, white landowners and white employers there were white employers who moved north moving heaven and earth to get them to come. there were subsidies to migrate

etc. so they are countervailing forces in a way and then of course black people in the south many of them were very eager to get out and so they found their way. >> i'm interested in your comment on the wayn in which white supremacy in the south caused distortions in constitutional law not only in the south.h. and whether you think those distortions persist today in some other form? >> wow so some of these are constitutional and some of them

aren't so one thing that appears to me it when andrew johnson is president he brings in basically allows the southern states to reconstruct themselves with just white voters and they create a bunchh of laws and you you have toth have the papers or somethig like that the 13th amendment is an attempt in military construction is an attempt to revamp that from happening. the states, the congress is the states are territories and they'll have two be parts of the region before they can be brought in as states so i would argue the black movement never went awaym in 1866. it was formerly said that black people can enter into marriages and those things are stricken from the state constitution that y there many other things like

very high fees if -- so a relatively low amount, if you take something anything more than $10 in 1866 in virginia the bar was $30 virginia and there's an attempt to identify things that are associated with black men and women and keep those as misdemeanor's and turn them into felonies. the 14th amendment their attempts to sort of get around the 14thns amendment and their supreme court cases, sorry the supreme court cases the civil rights cases and those basically say as longdo as the state doest say it's designed to exclude black people it's okay. so the 13th amendment still holds and everyone is a citizen

and you can deny citizenship based on race or color. if the state passes a law doesn't say it's doing it that has the effect of doing that it's fine. that's what the supreme court cases do so it allows states and power to take to create white supremacy and basically black people are voting in the 1860s and 1870s after the supreme court found civil rights cases. we see the classes being brought and we see and understanding causes and grandfather clauses. grandfather clause basically says okay you didn't pay your politics but did you grandfather vote so with the exception of loopholes black people will pay the poll tax and so yes the

supreme court does basically look at the 14th amendment. it's a powerful instrument it passed in 1866 but it's not enforced in the south until the 1960s, 100 years later. that's my tape of my specialty is bacterial from the 70s and 80s. >> i think one consequence of that ascot was describing describing it is that citizenship and other groups who don't enjoy the privileges of whiteness is also extremely circumscribed so you can see the struggle of the 20th century and 20th century expansion of the 14th amendment is not just an effort to compensate for the extremely restricted notion of

citizenship that had developed in the south. it also across the country so that would apply to americans in the southwest as well so there was segregation in california public schools on the basis of age and identity as well as identity and that had to be corrected along with white supremacy in american south to >> the fact that you can't be ended jury it's not just white people. juries are only white by the 1890s and that's important for understanding thet interpretatn if you're a white person you are surrounded by white people you collectively defined with legal land illegal in an acceptable d not acceptable based on the law in these cases and that tents to shoot around the idea that order and laww are white so it pulls

people into white supremacist vision and the juries i think half the juries are white and black people are not allowed to have juries of their peers which is important in understanding these.ec lynching becomes of an extralegal justice to this presumption is justice is primarily a white phenomena. >> thank you also much for joining us and thank you again to our panels w. fitzhugh brundage john sensbach "a new history of the american south" i hope you are reading and i hope you'll get a lot of out of it. i know i did. thank you foror being here tonit and we will see you all again very soon i hope. [applause]