occupation, it's just made up. it's not so. and of these 12,000, they were mostly in population centers. and what was necessary was troops, not fewer. when troops were used. it worked. okay. but congress wouldn't pay for it anymore. the voters were voting republican out of office. there was sick of the south. grant's wing of the republican party have been severely undercut by a a faction known then not accurately in today's as the liberal republicans. they were not actually they were actually more conservative republicans. i wanted to try to explain that. but at any rate, they were they did their best to subvert grant and the radicals. and to some extent they succeeded. it was very expensive to carry out reconstruction in the south to prosecute. it cost a fortune to prosecute and so on. northerners didn't want to pay

for anymore war fatigue. something we experience historically, again and again. thank you to fergus bordewich and thank you to all of you for being here. thankso we are here with jeffern cowie, author of freedom's dominion, a saga of white resistance to federal american freedom, is typically associated with the fight of the oppressed for a better world. but for centuries, whenever the federal government has intervened on behalf nonwhite people, many americans fought back in the name of freedom, which meant their freedom to dominate others in freedom's dominion. his story in jefferson county traces the complex saga by focusing on one specific american place, barbour county,

alabama, the ancestral home of political firebrand george wallace in a land shaped by settler colonialism and slavery, white people weaponized freedom to seize native american lands champions over there reconstruct asian question the new deal and fight against the civil rights movement. freedom's dominion is. a riveting history of the long running between white people and authority and radically shifts our understanding of what freedom means in america jefferson cowie holds. the james. stallman chair in history at vanderbilt university. he's the author of three additional books and his work as in numerous outlets, including time the new york times foreign, affairs and politico and. breaking news. he just got back from attending the awards ceremony, winning the 2023 pulitzer prize in history for his book, freedom's dominion

a. so we'll start with some questions. and first, we'll talk about in the book. you explore, of course, the idea freedom and that it's a very different angle than most of us think about in freedom. and you hinted at a little bit the title freedom's dominion, but can you explore that unique view of freedom? and then the idea of freedom as being framed as, a resistance to federal power? yes, that's a short question. right. and thanks for everybody for coming. and thanks to the organizers for putting this together. thanks for being here with me. yeah, the idea of freedom i work with tries to sort of peel back this reflexive relationship we have with this idea of freedom. we're always, you know, freedom's great, freedom's good, freedom's the american creed. but my working hypothesis is going into this was this much more complex idea. there's a lot of power relations

with this, a lot of ideological pieces and. and so i begin to read around a lot about freedom and i sort of settled on this the thinking of this guy, orlando patterson, who's this historical at harvard. and he he goes all the way back athenian democracy and says, freedom emerged in a slave society. and the idea of freedom is actually about not being slave. and if you take that one step further, it's not just not being a slave, it's also the capacity to enslave. and now we have a kind of different thing that's moving through the culture. and he traces that. but he says freedom is a a chord that has three notes and one we all the first two we all cherish civil the freedom to act outside of other of authority structures. the second is the freedom to contribute to our own political

communities in various ways. and the third is the freedom to dominate, freedom to oppress. and that's the one that i felt we didn't talk about. and that goes, you know, the early republic is based on democracy. and so there's this long sort of river through western history that delivers us to the american south, where freedom to oppress takes root and as you said, chattel slave and settler colonial world and and you see the freedom to oppress really sort of the most virulent dimension to freedom. and that's it. so we talked about being a really, really big idea, a big concept, but you focus on one specific place, county, alabama. so why did there why are we bringing freedom? how are we seeing it through that one place? why and how different? why is almost random i stumbled across the place i didn't know

anything about it. in fact, it was i used to at cornell university where it's a little colder. it is in nashville and it was 20 below zero. and my kids said, where are we going on spring break? and i said, i don't we're not going anywhere. they said we have to go somewhere and so they quickly organized a trip to the gulf. so you are the gulf coast and we drove through it. and that's how i found it truly by accident. but why isn't it more interesting question in a way, and i can say more about sort of how my spider senses went off when i entered this county county, but what i wanted. a way to think about this question, this problem that was contained in a very particular way, either through a person and a place, an idea movement, something that would force me analytically to contain the idea i didn't want a national story.

i think, i thought it was too easy to write a national story can cherry pick ideas and and quotes and things like that that by putting around it sort of having a, a flask in which my experiment took place, i could really test how freedom worked in one place and later on actually well after started the research on barbara county, i found out that george wallace was from there and george wallace, the segregationist governor of alabama, is somebody i've had a long and tortured relationship with all of my work. so then it became fate. so i want to explore what do you say about tingling spidey sense place? so what was what? because i mean driving through town. what triggered you to go something different here, right? so. so the book is about the county and the county's relationship with federal power, which i don't think i answered that part, but we drove in and, you know, it's a beautiful town, as is a.b. style mansions on either

side and trees parking over a two lane boulevard. it's it's all moonlight magnolias. and then you get to the other side of town is a little bit different story. things are a little more rundown whitewashed. window kind of places and as we're driving through this, oh, this is really interesting. right. and what there's a story here. and want to know the story. and i turned to my wife and. i said, can you google this like what happened here? and she says, she flipped through and quickly said, i don't know anything about it, but they had their first integrated prom in 1990 and i was like, okay this. there's a story here. yeah. and so i was thinking, most people think of white resistance in the south as a conflict in white americans and black americans. but you start the story with white settlers and the indigenous people of the creek nation. what was on with the creek

nation, the land, and what was happening to start story there. and i love question because it works a couple of levels. one, we don't connect the question of slavery to land dispossession because you had to clear the land of other people before you could put in the plantation. so those two elements are linked but not always analytically we need to really be thinking about how those two things work together. so there's that. but ultimately, this is my question. there was orienting. this was. why is is there this long standing fear of federal power? what is the federal government, you know, besides taking your tax. create such fear and hostility and that do we feel the need to proclaim our freedom from federal power? so the other side of the freedom to is what happens when federal government comes in and says,

don't that, don't express your freedom in such a way. it dominates others, which is sort of kind of how liberal philosophy is supposed to work. that's when this version of freedom gets very powerful, very virulent, very overwhelming. and the other of freedom are often mobilized to protect this freedom to dominate. so having the long story of federal power here is central. now, the indian removal part is sort of unbelievable. it's about andrew jackson coming in. so this in the southeast corner of alabama on the chattahoochee river bordering georgia and it's the southern tip of what's called the creek nation in the first part of the 19th century. and what we know of andrew jackson is as the guy who won the south for dispossession for

white people to dispossess land and the trail of tears pushing native americans westward, in this case, andrew jackson went in sent his marshals and his troops in to remove white settlers greek land to like complete opposite of what you might think because he signed a treaty and he felt he needed to back it up for a while. so this place born literally as this town is being burned down by federal government because it is in violation of treaty with the muskogee creek. people very contrary to what might think. so what we see is the very birth of the place fighting for its freedom just take land from the creeks and against the federal government that comes in to

threaten that freedom to take land and and land are almost synonymous. the jacksonian period. so the story that we think of as sort of maybe a modern civil rights story goes all the way back to the birth of this current. and that is kind of a recurring theme of the federal government kind of stepping in. and then the federal government kind of, oh, you, you do you kind of backing and then coming back in and then kind of half kind of coming back in and not really fully finishing job, i guess. and so that of runs me in to the second part of the book. the book is kind of is broke up like four subsections and the second part talks about reconstruct and the idea of freedom was changing after the civil war and that black americans freedom was backed by the federal government, that they rely on the federal government to kind of step in to help protect the rights versus and i love this line, he said black people define their freedom by the proximity,

federal power and white people by their distance from it. and so was that faith justified in the federal government? i mean, kind of has that play out in barbour county? right. so do the earlier part about federal government ebbing and flowing, the federal government sort of the hero of story and it's like the worst hero can possibly have. it's like the lousiest protagonist imaginable. it's a clay footed, weak kneed hero. but that's what i got so, so yeah. and and the sort of the irony it is when the federal government does come in to sort of help the greek people or freedmen during the reconstruction period. it's kind of this half baked effort that almost enrages white people so much that in some it makes the potential energy becomes even of worse than it might have been had it been left alone at times. but when so the barbour county

elite were the fire eaters of the civil war. they were ready to secede. they wanted out. they they love the idea of getting out of the union. in fact, they threatened to get out of the union over the creek removal question there and then everybody's afraid that alabama was going to secede because of the over the creek whether it's going to be federal power or alabama power in the creek nation. but when they left the union they did so and this is literally what placard the poster that everybody signed and circulated the town said is because they did not want to be slaves. that the white people did not want to be enslaved to federal power. right. so that's and and this rhetoric is throughout history and i think with a lot of it just kind

of as background is just words to justify whatever you want to do. but fact i think actually people believed we had to take this seriously. this is freedom is this freedom does and this is what freedom's doing and so they to maintain their freedom their freedom to enslave. and then after word the federal government as it did in the greek period, comes in and defends black people's rights, often a bayonet is the military of the south during radical reconstruction. and that line perfect. thank you for reading this. i mean. because i'm such a stylist it was perfectly well chosen. but that that that's the mechanism is right white people's freedom to functioned

best when furthest from federal power while. both the creek and black people saw more federal intervention because citizenship in both cases meant a more effective political freedom and autonomy. so but when they come in during reconstruction, the federal government comes in during reconstruction. white people do everything it can to dodge this. they have political shenanigans and corruption. they play with ballot stuffed ballot boxes and are just absolute stuff until. november of 1874 and in november of 1874, they give up trying to do this an illegitimate ways and they once these columns, black voters come in from the north and the south to come in on voting day and let keep in mind reconstruction worked. there was a black congressman. the one and only black congressman ever elected from this part of alabama in the

history of alabama was during reconstruction. there were black assemblymen. there were black civil servants in the city and county level. once those voters came in, they waited till they got and they opened fire on them through a orchestrated massacre, what i call it was called a riot officially in the blacker the historical marker outside of town. but it was a coup d'état. and we have to understand it was a coup d'etat. it was a stealing of political legitimately realized political authority from those who had it. and it all. but by shooting roughly 80 people in the streets in this hail of gunfire. eradicated, the presence of black republicans for almost

forever and really until the civil rights era at which point it was the democratic party that was on their side since the political party story is more complicated but it was the republicans were on the side of the freedmen at the time and it kind of makes you think of and another point i'm going to bring up from your book, that freedom viewed by whites as like a zero sum game that meant any increase in black freedom meant a decrease in white freedom and made me think about the phrase like fight freedom as like a literal. they were like and it turned very is that of that i only win if you lose of mindset why it into violent wars that's kind of the of the it's all pretty yeah it's all pretty violent yeah and and i think works on a both a psychological and a material i don't really get into that in the book but you the zero sum

idea your freedom is at the cost of mine it's not we all are free at the same time or have the same rules of freedom at the same time, but the rules that allow me to be free must include your your you not being free or vice versa becomes very powerful. and i think i think while it's rooted in the material circumstances wanting land and the labor power in the plantation economy and it, you know, it is sort of curse of of cotton economy that wins all politics and culture around around the imperative of this of growing cotton. it lives on in a different almost so it has a kind of path dependency where this ideology on to to to shape the psychology of the deep south well beyond kind of direct material

interests at times. and so then that's now we're moving onto the third section of the book in it's after reconstruction federal government now. now people actually kind of went in, stepped in sort of half way, but now kind of call it in repose, a government in repose or meaning. they're like even the president at the time was saying, i'm tired of this. i'm, you know you're kind of on your own. we're we're fought this for long. we're just really tired of reconstruction. the worn out as a party. and so then you said that this also results in new innovations, the freedom to harm. so what kind of new harms are invented. and then how does this kind of violent tendency, i guess in the name of freedom continue on after. right so this third phase so so up until a partially freedom in the book as a kind racialized

anti statism that you're are free to a white person's freedom is dependent upon keeping federal government at bay through a kind of racial understanding of the role of the federal government after reconstruction, which ends really on the local level through this coup. federal government by 1877 is largely pulled, as you say. there are they're kind of out of the help and black business and. what does that mean? now we have the reverse case, right, where it's not federal intervention. but what happens when there is no federal oversight? and this is when we see the most heinous aspects of jim crow, it begins with convict, which is the there's no mines in barbara county. one of the key big planters in barbara county.

it becomes a kingpin in rounding up convicts throughout the state and black throughout the state and sending them into the coal mines in birmingham under some of the most the worst labor you could ever possibly imagine in world history. then comes lynching. i'm pretty sure i'm the only person with a chapter. freedom is an act. lynching is an act of freedom. white freedom of course. then the creation of the jim crow constitution. 1901 disenfranchized official disenfranchize movement through that and the kind of breaking the pretense of populist alliance between black and white farmers and on into the new deal, in which things get a little more complicated. yeah yeah.

that was interesting in the new deal where the south needed their economy was poor, so the federal money coming in so they were like, okay, we're going to take the federal money. but we went still the pushback and don't stay in our know what strings are attached that money and being very vocal about pushing back but we want the money but we want to push back at the same time exactly know so if the government can they the south is very poor it has this kind of it's it's dependance on cotton as a as a commodity is failing it the depression began in the 1920s really in the south by the thirties they're desperate so the new deal's great as long as for the right people but if the federal government has that kind of power, what else could it do right. so that's always in the back, the mind of people's minds about, well, we've been fighting the feds for a really long roosevelt's kind of one of our

guys, but this is when the democratic party is really depended upon the segregation white segregationist south of power. and so roosevelt's always also trying to play both of that. so yeah the proj checked in barbara county as well as much of the deep south is how do we get the money and not have the racial regime overthrown by the federal government and the longer the democratic party's in there the longer that the the the democratic is orienting more towards the civil rights party by the by the forties. that they they begin to resist their relationship in the new deal in the democratic party. and what still the money but becoming increasingly fearful of of might happen with that federal authority and this ends in 1948 when the dixiecrats both in the democratic party and begin to create their own party,

which is eventually the roots of the civil white south going republican, which kind of leads that last section of the book. and we about that's where george wallace comes in and so very interesting character i knew some about him but i learned a lot more in the book but so can you describe george wallace and then how he fits in with this kind of white resistance movement? yeah, george wallace is an incredible figure. yeah, he's he's like the i he's he's he's a for understanding all of american politics in some ways, right. and that's why when i find out found out he was from the county and from carlisle way down in the in the wiregrass of the county that i had read this book in, the deal. so the book opens with. wallace's famous speech in 1963 when he becomes governor of alabama in january and that's

when he says segregation now. so segregation forever. well, he mentioned segregation a total of four times in that speech those three one other you mentioned freedom 24 times and nobody ever really paid attention to that fact it's right there because think most of us think, oh, freedom is just window dressing for whatever you want. but i actually think in wallace love barbour history, he read it. he talked to people, you know, he had politics in his and that he was able he sort of moved from a more kind of new deal populist, progressive position to in the 1950s to after brown versus board hard on race and then after gets beaten by

somebody for the governorship of south very racist he decides that he's going to go hard on as a way to win but what he actually realizes is just race isn't the right tack the right angle on this is running against the federal government because if you're running against the federal government, you got a coalition you got all sorts of people who hate the federal government. and you're going to bring the hardcore racists with you naturally. so wallace has a reputation as as a racist is deserved. but he's actually freedom from federal authorities actually is really main legacy and he's able to kind of pull a lot of different constituents in with that kind of message and he's able to projected forward and that same address. which i sort of used to unpack a lot of aspects of the book, he foresees a national coalition

based on this volume is it says you rap rock ribbed new englander is it new? those are the flaming pioneers spirit of the west and and he's already running for president 1963. right. and by saying you all believe in freedom and you're all southerners. and in wallace's imagination, there's always, you know, battalions of federal bayonets on the hillside. right. ready to descend down upon you and take your freedom. and whether they're real or not, he's running against those guys. and so that continues. and we're back to that exact thing you said about the civil rights period i about the earlier period which was the further our white people were from federal power. the more free they were the closer black people were to federal power, the more freedom they because the contest, the civil rights era of the 1960s

was what would the federal do? the civil rights was never about taking the selma bridge or integrating birmingham. it was about triggering federal to come in and take a stand right. that's the key to the whole federal, the whole civil rights period. and that's why wall had so much resonance, because it was those again, it's the federal government coming in or positioning how when he ran for president, he was taking this and banding a bunch of groups that would never have worked or thought they were in the same camp. but under this anti or against federal you're running for president. you're kind of going to be in the federal government. but yeah, well, yeah, that's the irony. we're living right now, i think, actually. well, i'm thinking like like what's that political that wallace leaves behind or that he that we see still i think you call it like the wallace factor, you know, so. right. yeah.

and i mean, the fascinating thing about wallace is so he ran for president, 64, 68, 72 and even 76, although nobody remembers him running at 76 and you got shot and paralyzed in 72 after winning major democratic primaries, michigan and maryland maryland and so this wallace factor, i think, is really key, which is kind of this combination, i call it the double helix of anti federal sort of from federal power on sort of a more liberty area and economic grounds. and the other side of it is the more is the racial resonance of it and alone. they don't work as well as they do together and put them together. and you have a very powerful ideological position. and so it's not surprising that in 64, wallace sent a delegation

out to francisco to try to convince goldwater that he should be his vice presidential nominee. right. and that would have been the double helix, right? the anti status goldwater and the racialized state status. wallace right and goldwater was a little principle, i think you could argue and is on ideology. so yeah, so and i think factor continues to resonate. it's right up to today, right up to donald trump. yeah. the great yeah. no. oh, there's just the one thing that illustrates this better. anything else is a kind of. factor like something i unearthed. and that was after civil rights excuse me, after voting rights act was passed in 1965, the

christian leadership conference organized is a big student run voter registration drive called scope. and they run they try to register people and and then finally, the fall of martin luther, lieutenant williams is trying to figure out why counties have really high registration numbers and other counties don't is like, well, this county has a really good organizers but they have low this county is really oppressive they have high numbers. they can't figure it out. it's like, why what's going on. and so he keeps running the numbers, running the numbers. and, you know, it's really interesting. see him try to figure this out in the archival record. and finally he goes oh, it's as plain as day the counties had federal registrars had large numbers of voters the counties that had no federal after the voting rights act did not have.

so we're back to that very mechanism you talked about. if the federal government is there, black people are more free and able to vote, able to register. they weren't there in during the same. so leadership where resnik or slc or whoever or the dynamic movement it kind of matter but what really mattered whether it was federal power on the ground that's kind of been the solution so we're going to open it up for questions but in listening, have you go to the microphone over here to ask questions while we're preparing for that, i want to ask you both a really easy softball question again. so what's the hope for the future? you know. my i've thought about this a lot because up until wrote this book, i was a big fan of freedom freedom. my son is very skeptical of

college age son, very skeptical of academics, he said, what are you working on? i said, i'm writing a history of freedom. he said, for or against? i said, against? he said. but so i have kind of to answers to that one. and they're interrelated one. is that the the solution as the power structure of alabama knows very well, is more federal presence. that's why the voting the gerrymandering that you may followed in the last year, they mightily resisted opening up a black district despite federal federal demands to do so. so federal registration, federal oversight of elections federal oversight of gerrymandering not gerrymandered. and so that in fact, citizens

shipp needs to be taken out of local and state level, has be federal in order to work. and at the end, i believe i even if you know, claims to freedom be -- like it this and so there's a funny kind of almost authoritarian dimension to right that i'm saying if you believe in freedom you to accept the coercive dimension of federal power to come in and make it happen. the second thing is a real softball question. the second the second element is i want to move away from the idea of freedom and towards the idea of democracy. freedom is to open to conflict, to mushi and to often used in

these ways that i talk in this book, democracy in contrast, in my view, requires institutions, it requires compromise, it requires dealing with other people. it's not about running away from institute. it's running away from compromise running away from having to sacrifice, which is what democracy demands it's. freedom doesn't. so that's my two part answer to your difficult difficult i mean, to step up to the microphone or question. thank you for speaking today. thank you. i'm wondering with your name being jefferson cowie. if your parents were civically involved or politically and if you think that might have pushed you toward the work you're doing now. yeah, it's it's like a preordained to be an historian when they give you a name like jefferson jefferson the my

father was a thomas jefferson freak. he is no longer with us. but he he loved the idea of the renaissance man that thomas jefferson. i don't think he thought much beyond my mother, who's from greensboro, carolina, like the kid that it was jefferson davis. but i don't think that was the case. but if we take this. jeffersonian idea, maybe is something sort of psychologically at work here, it is a critique of this idea that, you know, like jefferson felt that that every county should essentially rule itself and and have very limited interaction power. and in some ideal universe that's true. but we don't live in that world and. local forms of power are very coercive of and lead to this freedom to.

and so that's why i'm in some ways i'm trying to overthrow sort of jeffersonian, jacksonian idea of of what freedom is, although i have sort of jackson revisionist thing going within the book. yeah. no. do you think. yeah it's going right and. could you comment on the inability of our country to change the constitution? that's a softball, right? yeah, right. yeah. i don't even know where to begin with that. but yeah, it is, it is interesting. so the i, i set out a main sort, you know, problematic the book is the idea of the republic which inherent in the constitution that is that federalism having local state and federal for types of

authority that we're all supposed to work in some harmonious because the republic was too big to work otherwise is. proven to be very difficult and in fact that constitutional structure. contains some of the most important stories in american history that the local resistance to federal power, the state resistance, federal power, federal power coming to do to to to assert its interests. and that the long haul struggle to federalize even the bill of rights has been one of the core elements nationalized. the bill of rights has been one of the central struggles of the american experience. so it's within that container that that all the is happening.

i the bill of rights bill of rights congress shall make no law abridging the. that's not a very good positive liberty. right. so it's not till after the warren court that you have a much more the federal guarantee of those bills bill of rights issues. so i don't have much of an answer for how to change the because we all know what's involved in passing amendments and how difficult been. i was just teaching era to my students recently and all the troubles in the seventies and eighties but. seeing this as a concern to tional structural question you have is spot on. so exploring theme of use freedom to dominate did that resonate a little bit with one of your earlier books, maybe from an economic standpoint with capital moves?

wow, nice digging deep and by the way, some connections. a lived in winston-salem and then lived in maryland, not far from laurel, where wallace was was shot in the parking lot. yeah, it's interesting. my earlier work is mostly about labor and questions of class and working class political power and things like that. and this definitely represents much more of a shift towards questions of race, but that was the overlap that wallace saw, right? like that that economic freedom although he was kind of more, you know, he wanted to build trade schools and he hospitals and, you know, he had this kind of. economic at his core. i think. but it is exactly that sort of freedom for capital to do what it wants and freedom to do what the racial order wants to it it once you put those together and you got the problem of american

freedom. i and the mobility of capital which i talked about 20 years ago or whatever it was in that book, is, is central to that. but what i now understand, and this is sort of what's going on now, is sort of a critique of that book, is that economics is not a pure thing you know, it's not hermetically sealed world. it's infused with all these other cultural dimensions, especially the entire history of race in america. hi, i'm from houston. i live in san antonio. and i think those cities feel lot more affiliation with the federal than our state government. and i was wondering if you could comment kind of on the nexus of power of state state, federal and in the case of those cities local kind of power and who we now are fighting against, which

is more our state government than the federal government. and so spin that out a little bit more for me because you're seeing those as more liberal enclaves within state of texas. yes. so, yeah, our our city governments, our city electors are trying to expand voting. let's for example, they're trying to mail in votes, which our state governments like. no, that's right. well, we're seeing that right here in nashville, too. and some of nashville's politics in relationship to state. yeah. so things have shifted a little bit more since my story, i think, although it ends with the storming of the capitol in which there's sort of neo-confederate thought, you know, vision of federal power. yeah. so it becomes it sort of ends up mapping on to a rural urban question. think i don't really talk about that in the book but i think it was always and especially in the

cities that have a strong. their understanding of federal dollars come their there's often a strong black population especially in a place like houston. in fact if you this is amazing if you're you can google this if you back and look at the map of the of the cotton belt the black belt the cotton and you you can map out like the the number of bales of cotton produced in the antebellum period. you can overlay the obama vote right over, wow so, you know, this this this history, this legacy really really resonates in important ways. but i do think that it's now much more a urban political divide and and and in that even the idea of is cleaving on that as well. are you seeing a kind of resistance to federal power of,

people who feel abandoned in rural areas versus those in urban places who have a kind of different with those questions. yeah. i think neither question is very. hard time for one or two more questions. yeah, come on up. yep. is this what's happening in tennessee? where our legislature, our governor does is setting whether to take federal funds for education? this is going to be a disaster because all of our special ed immigrants food programs all come from the federal government. and i think that our legislature does not want to have any rules about education. and i think they would love to get rid of public education and charter schools in a way that our legislature want and perhaps

a two tier education system, one for whites and one for children of color this is very, very damaging, very concerning. yeah. i mean, the degree which this anti-federalist idea of freedom continues on in like weird ways in which state and local authorities are are resisting, having federal monies coming their way unlike the new deal period. what are you talking about. anyway really. they're like, yeah, let's, let's take the money, avoid the race. that was kind of the thing before, but now it's like no it's become a much more the lines are much more bright, difficult to cross i think on that urban rural question exacerbates it. so i have a theory not worked out in the book that well, but that i'm working on now that. we call the we don't but the

actors after reconsider reduction called their their efforts redemption be redeemed from federal power and that the long march destroy reconstruction to eliminate federal intervention so that we could have that series of events we just talked about lynching and and disenfranchisement and convict leasing and all those horrible things that that was redemption that was redemption of white freedom, was it? i think we're seeing now we often talk about the civil rights era as a second reconstruction. what does that mean? we call time to the second redemption. is this the second white redemption? and if we think about, you know, the older and other things that are pushing back against the

voting rights act, back against these very questions of creation of multi-tiered, maybe not obviously racialized in black white ways, but de facto. we i do think that we are seeing culmination in certain ways of a long term push to sort of redeem this kind of anti status agenda within a racial framework that is does not map exactly on by any stretch of the imagination. but we saw reconstruction was federal intervention a white long period of decades of white resistance that the 1901 constitution civil rights, massive federal voting rights act, civil act, housing act, etc. and a long term, slow,

grinding white redemption