>> when you are connected, you are not alone. cox, along with these television companies support c- span2 as a public service . american history tv saturdays on c-span2 exported the people and events that tell the american story . s7:00 p.m. eastern, we continue with a series free to choose coproduced noble prize winning economists freeman in 1980. this episode is out who protects the worker. at 8:00 texas woman's university history professor cecily zander talks about the federal government effort to explore a controlled the american west in the early 1800s to the civil war. at michael and 30 eastern on the presidency, former polish president gives a speech

marking 113 anniversary of ronald reagan's birth. his legacy and his support of poland and the solidarity movement. also at 10:30, a campaign speech by democratic presidents can't hilary clinton a rally of california state university. public by at 2016 super tuesday speech by republican presidential candidatan florida center marco rubio in miami. exploring the american story, watch american history tv saturdays on c-span2 and find a full schedule on your program guide or watch online anytime at c-span.org/history . good evening, everyone. welcome to the atlanta history center. i am clear haley. i am sitting here with three great scholars and very excited to have

atlanta history center. we're joined by scott nelson. these are three of many contributors to this new volume, a new history of the american south it just came out a couple weeks ago. we are excited to be here in discussion tonight and each of our professors in history 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. fitz is sitting here on the end. he is the editor of this wonderful volume. he is a professor of history at the university of north carolina at chapel hill. welcome, fitz, from north carolina. seated next to him is johnson. he's tedious early american history at the university of florida and drove up here from gainesville to join us. we are very grateful for you being here. lastly on the end, we have scott nelson, who is the georgia

professor of history at the university of georgia. he drove over from athens today. thank you for being with us. >> thank you for having me. >> this book covers a lot of ground. a goes back several thousand years and takes his out close to the present. it truly is a comprehensive history of the south. with so many contributors and ground to cover, i thought we would start with basic questions to the editor. and that is how this project initially came about. >> it came about when an editor of the university of north carolina came to me two decades ago. they suggested it was time to have a new interpretive history of the american south. i was keen to do it but life intervened and it took longer than i would have 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 lake career scholars but it took us so long to bring the book out that we are a little further in our careers now. in any case, the goal was to get people to would have fresh things to say about the south and not just get fresh things that but tried to get the authors to work together collaboratively. it makes it a little more challenging to write the book because you have to start with the early authors. john was one of the earliest contributors, not only in the period but in the actual writing of it. and then we worked our way to the 20th century. leaving that together was a

conscious goal of the volume from the onset. i think that what distinguishes from the other works with a single author or their multivolume single author. >> i want to touch on the concept of the south before we talk about more content specific things. it is a new history of the american south. but it goes back to many years before the concept of a united states would have existed. in the introduction to the book, you give some guidance about what this book is not. and the things it is not framed around. what other things as someone born and raised in the south, you giggle. it is not -- we are not looking at the south through this lens of southern distinctiveness because we think we are so different or special. we are also not be at the south

through other lenses as well. for purposes of this volume, how did you do find the south? and the place and time period, what led you in that direction? >> with regard to time period, this is the book that focuses on the history of the region from before european conduct but largely through the era of the emergence of a euro american civilization and what we call the south. while we do go back hundreds and thousands of years in some instances, the focus is 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 european in the region. we also did not want to start

with the assumption that there was a moment in time when the south became the identifiable thing we call the south. it may sound complicated but the way we work was backwards, so to speak. we think of the south, properly, because it is what we talk about the south as the states that were part of the confederacy and maybe some people for kentucky and oklahoma in a. there is good reasons to do that. we accept that that is the vernacular use of the south. we wanted to look at the history of that territory throughout the entire span of time as opposed to starting at jamestown or saint augustine and then tracing european settlement out from matt. the reason why that is important is because the south looks very different in 1500 or 1600 or 1700 or even 1800 if you are paying attention to all of the people who live in what we now think of as the south as

opposed to just euro americans. it makes a much more cosmopolitan south. >> jon, in your essay or your chapter, africans and europeans in the early south, taking us from that foundation that fitz laid about naming what was the south. your work delves into when the south, the area we know as the south started to become popular 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 the initial contact and how the relationships between white settlers, native americans, enslaved africans,

brought over from africa, how those things started out and how they change over the course of the period that you are writing about. there was quite a stark difference between where you start your work in this chapter and then where you end it. >> the larger question to get back to what fitz is saying, how to define the south . the earlier centuries that i was writing about, you know, historians, like myself who write about that period, have this conundrum. how do you write about this region that became the south before it was the south. no one in the year 1700 said, how do you like living in the south? during that period from 1600 up to the middle of 18th century saw profound demographic changes. in the year 1600, essentially, the entire population would

have been indigenous people, native americans. by the time the spanish and english and eventually the french began settling small pockets of colonization in florida, louisiana and virginia and carolina. and then begin to bring in enslaved africans, you see this profound transition. because of disease, where fair, slave trade and the internet's population decline precipitously. they go from 100% of the population in the year 1600. by 1750, they are down to about 20% of the population. in the european and african a population has risen dramatically by that point. paradoxically, most of the south , what would now call the south was still in native hands. west of the appalachian mountains this was still native territory. this was still dominated by indigenous people.

even the population had declined dramatically. what you would then see for the period of the american revolution and into the 19th century was euro americans and enslaved people beginning to push further and further south and west and displacing indigenous people even more. this period of 150 or 200 years involves tremendous changes in population and culture and economics. >> did that look different depending on which european country was settling? sometimes in the u.s., we have a tendency when we talk about early american history, we forget about florida and the spanish you were there. we tend to talk about the british colonies. did you see differences between spanish, french, british or what that look like? >> of course. that is one of the things we try to emphasize. that you have all these different colonial projects

going on with the french in louisiana. you have a catholic zone of settlement on the gulf coast, louisiana through spanish florida. when you go north, it goes to the carolinas. that is settled by the english. there is a religious tension built in there. catholic and protestant, the wars of religion started in europe lead the atlantic and come to the americas. that is very much a product of that. with corresponding changes and differences in the way those societies are structured, higher degree of incorporation of african americans and indigenous people in the catholic societies than in protestant british colonies, for example. >> one of the other frames of the book that is laid out at the beginning is that the south is a region that sees a lot of upheaval over many years. this is not unique to just the

south but is a defining feature. the third offer -- author we have with us tonight, scott. your essay focuses on the aftermath of the civil war. we are starting about the conception of the south and the people moving in and forming what we know as that territory. and in many ways, after the civil war, you have a situation in which 80% of the southern population, give or take, from being considered property in the eyes of the law to becoming citizens. some of them, the men in that case being considered voting citizens. you really have a massive democratic shift the bear in the conception of who gets to be a southerner and participate in society. your essay is entitled the bourbon south.

i wonder if you could enlighten us on the title. and then you start out with a bottle of atlanta history. given her on site, i thought that might be fun to delve into. >> the bourbons, after the war you have black and white settlers moving into the south with the southern homestead act. lots of black families getting land and buying land. we see a tremendous number of people going cotton for the first time. they have not grown it before. the bourbons are the ones -- the story about the bourbons in france is that they never forget -- what is the expression? they never learn and they never forget. the bourbons are the people who come in and try to retake the south and make it oh white enclave in which, you know,

white southerners rule the roost. they are called the bourbons by their critics, by the populace and others. they want to remember again and again what the south was before the war and during the civil war. that obsession with -- and dressing up as old south planters and all of this memorialization. you try to re-create some imagine south. ironically, the south is being brought together for the first time after the war. the southern states were not connected by railroads because they were so supported by the southern states, individually, they prevented the states from drying on each other. north carolina did not want traffic from south carolina. south carolina did not want traffic from georgia. it is when the confederacy comes in that you see a

continuous railroad that goes atlanta. atlanta is not a place of any importance until the confederacy brings bridges, atlanta to richmond to feed the confederacy. and then you see a south all the way to texas. you start to see this convergence. the curious thing about that is the environmental catastrophe that follows when you bring these railroads through and you see yellow fever and all of these other diseases that have previously just been coastal. you see scurvy and a lot of other diseases that are uniquely southern that have to do with all the cheap food that comes in by railroad into the south. the cheap food does not have vitamin c or iron. lots and lots of white and black people are eating food that is not good for them. you see the slowness and all of these diseases. the south is, kind of, i would argue become something in this period.

there is a kind of self. people like henry grady in atlanta, is about remembering a kind of south where the moonlight and magnolias henry grady with the atlanta journal- constitution puts together as a bourbon the way of excluding black people from voting. he comes up with this way of preventing black people from voting, not explicitly but implicitly. that is the story of the south. the bourbon south is the arrival in atlanta, you still see when you go into the statehouse. and it ensures that it will only be black people. the white people that vote and they will only be on juries. that is when we see a rise in lynching and all the other evils that are part of the south.

>> building off of that and taking into some of the mechanics of that more. this question is open to anyone. you mentioned the supreme court, specifically. there are other things that are more georgia or atlanta pacific -- specific. >> most of the cotton that is grown in the south needs 200 frost free days to grow cotton. it is the deep south that grows cotton. after the war when the railroad comes through, they can only get credit -- all the banks are destroyed by the war. the confederates come in and take all the gold out of the vault. and after the war is over, the bonds are useless. the only way to get credit is to grow cotton. that means that people who are up around here, up in the hills , who had never grown cotton in 1830s or 40s are going cotton because it is only thing you can get cash for.

and credit for. country stores and all of these other things -- when you think about cracker barrel, and old- fashioned thing but the cracker barrel was the cutting edge in the south in the 1860s and 1870s. it was institution that great view credit. a lot of distinctively -- you think about distinctly southern are much new things. atlanta becomes the hub for the southern railway. consolidating railroad run by radical republicans. it joins us together. most of the cotton, a lot of the cotton and of going out of virginia rather than through georgia. georgia becomes a colony, in a way. it is relationship to u.s. economy. >> it is interesting when you mention henry grady and the moonlight magnolias but then you also think about what he was known for, the phrase the new south.

explain. how do you go back to the past and making something new? >> he gave a speech at the union league around 1880 or '81 . is that right, fitz? he says we welcome you to the south. it imagines a south as a woman. we first start to see the south as a female character. the south needs capital. it is thrilling with investment. what he is offering is women. he is offering lots and lots of white women who have lost husbands or fathers during the civil war. there is a very large number of white men that were wiped out. a lot of men were wiped out by the word itself there are all these unattached women. atlanta is a city of women. these are going to be the hands that are working the cotton

mills. rather than just going cotton, we will see industrialization. industrialization is not what we see here. it is not these 20 story buildings. it is taking timber and turning it into furniture. it is taking tobacco and turning it into cigarettes. it is taking the raw materials and going one step up, that is what the south is. when we talk about this, places like atlanta, we are taking those materials and doing one more thing with it. >> absolutely. i want to go back before the civil war. i want to touch on, jon, what you left off with. we skipped a large time period. during this time, there was a shift in the way that enslaved africans and african americans and white people were relating to one another.

i do not want to leave this out about the native american piece. you talked about how the population was declining due to disease, war and other factors. as a definition of the south expands you include oklahoma, where there is a large native american population. can you talk a little bit about while all of this is going on simultaneously, what do we see going on in the lead up to the civil war? that he comes important after the civil war too ? >> as i said, during the 18th century, most of the south, even the proponents of the population was steadily becoming more and more european and african and the indigenous population was declining. even after the american revolution, well into the 19th century, most of the south was still occupied there.

what you see from the period when it comes to the constitution in 1788, and up until the first two or three decades of the 19th century, an increasing pressure driven largely by the federal government as well as speculators and privateers to acquire native land and dispossess native people from their homeland. what you see, gradually, especially under andrew jackson is a sense that native people will, for their own good, need to be removed to make way for white settlers and for the expansion that scott is talking about. the indian removal act, probably better known as the indian dispossession act.

it gets signed in 1830. the federal government is committed to moving indigenous people. from georgia, from florida, from the carolinas, you know, from arkansas, people moved west. when fitz says there is something to think about oklahoma being part of an extended south, that is one reason why that would be the case. >> i will just piggyback on with one observation. we tend to think about violent dispossession of natick americans in the west. and all the traditions and the violence that it depicts of u.s. government versus indians it is worth remembering the bloodiest war against american indians was fought in florida. the seminal wars. there are three of them. the violent occupation of florida is very much a part of

the story of the emergence of what we now call the modern south. >> through this whole book, i think, one of the themes that you all talk about in your work and all the other authors talk about is this idea of expanding the concept of who gets to be considered seven in this case. whose history will be included in this book is very different than whose history would have been included in a book like this 50 years ago ? i would like to hear from all of you about that process and the scholarship as well. both within this work but this is a reflection of many other things that you have been working on for quite some time. can you talk about how that definition of seven has gotten expanded and where you see that potentially going forward? >> i think that the definition has been utterly transformed over the last half-century and

i would call it a no pun intended, a revolution with a study of the early south. when i was in graduate school, the center of colonial scholars was still new england in the middle atlantic. there was wonderful scholarship on the chesapeake bay. that was the southern extension. there was a particular focus on early american history that excluded large parts of the south. in addition, we think back that it is not until the 1970s that there starts to be a large body of scholarship on women, black women, indigenous women, white women in the american south. prior to 1970, you can count on two hands, probably, the scholarly works that talked about women.

and then black southerners, it has just exploded in depth. we know so much more about slavery than we did 50 years ago. i think it is not just that the definition of southerners was changed but the written is just -- richness which we tug real people that we call southerners has not been transformed. >> what we think of as some vern -- seven. we talk about the religious traditions that comes out of new orleans. i talk about jazz. we talk about cooking and its relationship to african traditions of food and feeding oneself. an understanding that part of the south means a lot of the things we think of that are actually interesting and beautiful about the south actually come from the african

part of the south. and that tradition is lost. in the way that which was spoken of before. it used to be told that somehow there was this english tradition that was carried on the chesapeake. now we understand it is an african melding of african and european traditions that make much of the language and also music has this african american roots, native american roots. it is a richer south. it is the south that we actually admired. the south that we actually like. much of it is we need to see the gumbo. we need to see -- bringing together of all these rich, complicated and struggling cultural traditions. >> can i jump in? i like to tell my undergraduates but i asked them where is progresso? where did progressive food company start?

it is a new orleans company started by sicilians. new orleans has the second- largest sicilian population in the united states. what is the most famous sandwich associate would new orleans? they usually say a poe boy. it is a muscle letter. it is a sicilian -- it is sicilian inflows being emplaced -- embraced. >> the sense of cultural and demographic diversity is a function of this early period of the 16th, 17th and 18th century where the south is a place of incredible immigration a destination for immigrants from the british isles, germany, from switzerland, france, you know, spain as well and dozens and dozens of enslaved people from africa speaking many languages and different

religions. and cantering -- encountering indigenous people. to me, that is when we think about southern distinctiveness and seven -- southern, a sense of southern uniqueness. the collision of all these cultures during the 18th century was probably unprecedented, i think. and it contributes to all kinds of gumbo that these scholars are talking about. >> the way with jefferson and jackson and the political elites. everything that is interesting about the south comes from the slave quarter and the hillbilly hideout. the places that are separated from the kind of elite, southern traditions. so telling that south. telling the story about south is interesting and fascinating to

people. >> i will piggyback with one other thing. it is important for us to remember about the south. when i was being introduced to the history of the south, always heard about the southern sense of place. i don't deny, southerners have a deep sense of place. but so do vermont, go to french quebec -- lots of people have a sense of place. what other things is striking about southerners is we tend to think of rudeness they have been incredibly -- i mean this by african americans, by indigenous people, they have been incredibly migratory people. for example, in the antebellum era, some of the most mobile americans, according to the senses, were virginians, who are migrating out of virginia in numbers larger than migrating out of new england.

so that those southerners, whether they be coerced or they are moving by choice, who are populating the mississippi river valley. they are all moving all of the time. they are moving into louisiana. they are moving into the mississippi delta. it is a very mobile population in this region that we tend to think of as being very sedentary. that is because we think about the southerners who stayed behind. we forget about the southerners who are migrating out to texas and migrating out to bakersfield, california, or migrating to chicago, detroit or pittsburgh. it is a mobile people. they are adjusting to generational upheaval after generational upheaval. >> we were talking earlier about how scholarship on southern history in the former decades tend to focus on specific groups of people and specific histories. now, the history, we are

continue to study much more rich and inclusive of lots of different types of people. i did want to ask about sources. i think that can be a little confusing to people. if it is history, it happened. how can it be new history? i have wondered if each of you have such different aspects of southern history. i think it is interesting to know how that process has changed over the years of research and actually where you find some of the school stuff you read about. >> there is henry woodfin grady, which everyone has heard about. editor of the atlanta constitution. as a scholar, there was another henry grady. henry a. grady. he was a carpenter. unc bought a sight unseen massive collection of all-white railroad worker letter to his sister because they thought he was that henry grady.

it is fantastic for me. the only downside is he wrote on brown paper with a purple crayon. that is what he used for measuring wood with. his spelling was atrocious. henry a. grady is horrified by the south. he builds the south and build these railroad bridges with others. and he eventually becomes a construction foreman. when he goes to louisiana and mississippi, he says it is strange and peculiar. it is so ugly. i don't want to be in the south. henry w. grady is and how the south is one thing. this is the new south and it is the future. sometimes, the archive will lead you to people. henrik a. grady, a working- class guy, but he is the one closest to the black railroad workers and talks about the

kind of work environment that they are in and that kind of tracking that they do. the archive is always ready for a new kind of history, i think. >> i would say that question is acute for my period. the people that -- the authors and my team writing about the pre-19 century south, particularly writing about indigenous americans and african americans, where most of the sources are written by europeans. how can you study those people if they did not leave their own sources? this has been a question that has really given the story a lot of food for thought over the past decades. historians have made pretty good strides in recent years trying to use what limited

sources do exist to uncover, as best they can, the thoughts, the inner voices, the sense of personality that is revealed of indigenous people and african americans when written by european sources. it is a tricky thing. it is not easy to do. and especially with indigenous history, archaeology is a tool that is essential for people writing about native american history. work with whatever sources you can. and you try to make it as layered as textured as possible. given the understanding it is not always easy to do. >> i will use an example that goes back to when i first came to atlanta. i wrote my dissertation, my first book about lynching in virginia and georgia. when i did my research, you had to read newspapers on microfilm. i read it 50 years of the

atlanta constitution reading the first two pages and the fourth page, editorial pages, for 50 years. those of you have not worked on microfilm may not appreciate what that was. it affected my eyesight, actually. i had to wear glasses for a few years. the scholarship on lynching has been transformed over the last 30 years particularly in the last few years. i will throw out one example, the great southern historian woodward devoted his entire scholarship less than four pages -- and all of his scholarship to the topic of lynching. no one will write a comparable study of the length of his book and devote so little space to it. as i say, what of the reasons why, he was not -- he was not a

newspaper researcher to begin with. the research that it took me, literally, a year and have to do for my dissertation, you can now do in 20 -- well, you could do it in a millisecond but then you have to read all the stories on newspapers.com or atlanta constitution.com. to do the research to track down lynching evidence is easier now than it was just three years ago. we note immensely more about, not just lynchings, but also about attempted lynchings. they were incredibly hard to track down previously. that would be an instanced where the knowledge, so to speak was there inert and technology has made it possible to get to it so much more easily than you could have 10 years ago or 30 years ago. >> one other piece.

the source i use is folklore. and black music. it is the story of jon henry print that is something i have written a book about but all of these track liner songs that were sung and collected but go from the 1880s to the 19 teens. it was men who did 100,000 of them in the american south in 1900. those songs are by people, if there live in 1880, it was illegal for them to read in 1860 hearing their voices, very hard. that is why folklore and folk songs, many which have become blue songs are a source that we can use and discover tremendous material about. >> we are going to move to

audience questions and just a minute. be thinking about all the great questions that i know you have for our panel tonight. i want to -- i think of you teach both graduates and undergraduates. you are around a lot of young people you write books that people who are not historians and not students actually want to read. thank you. it is very well written. last to dig into bear. the book, started, as you noted earlier, many years ago. it came out during a very interesting time. i think we always live in interesting times. i will call it an interesting time and an interesting moment for history right now. there is a lot in the news every day and a lot of disagreements over whose history gets to be taught, how it gets to be taught. why is important are not important to teach and what some of the stuff means. i am wondering how you encounter that in your classrooms ? as i'm sure you do

every day versus when you get to get out a little bit and talk with folks who are not currently students. how have these conversations in the public sphere shaped, or not, your scholarship? >> that is a very rich question. it is also a moving target. for example, north carolina, there is legislation before the state legislature at this moment that will transform the way k- 12 students in the state learn history i guess what i would say is two things. we are in a world in which ap u.s. history influences enormously what anyone in high school in the united states learns about american history. on the other hand, we have a politicalization of what we learn and what is taught in schools.

i actually am fairly optimistic that those of us who are committed to the study of history and the teaching of history -- i like to say we have the facts on our side. if we have to engage in debates about the past, i think we are in a good position to hold our own. i do not say that with polyanish. if people want us to teach about free-market capitalism in the united states, bring it on. let us talk about slavery and how it fit into free-market capitalism. let us talk about the funding of railroads and what that meant as you described for people who used to be self-

sufficient farmers but then had to enter into the marketplace in order to get access to funding. in my own way, i think it'll be a trench warfare, to use a military metaphor. it will be a long struggle. i still think the facts are on our side. >> i would say, since i teach in florida, a state which is seeing some politicalization of the curriculum the past year so, this is a question that we think about all the time. i will give you one example. i just finished teaching a course on the american revolution. those of you who may have been fine the controversy about the 16/19 project which came out a few years ago. one of the problems was that the preservation of slavery was a driving inspiration for the american revolution itself. while the claim is not new, it has been made by many historians for the 1619 project came along

it somehow resonated with the public and became controversial. we talked about that in our class. to try to get students to weigh the evidence and to what extent, if any, was slavery part of the rationale for the american revolution itself. we looked at the evidence and the evidence is clear. it was not the only rationale but it was a rationale. the students, i had to make them aware of the controversy. what do you think about this? this is a way in which historians operate from using evidence, looking at arguments, looking at counterarguments and trying to come to your own conclusions. we can do that as a society to take these controversial things -- what is so wrong about thinking about this? what role does estate actually have in dictating what can and cannot

be taught in the classroom? we have to counter those things with an honest look at the history based on evidence. that is what my students did. they concluded that slavery was part of the american revolution. >> i will go at this orthogonally. i like the question about teaching and writing. to me, teaching is exciting. i teach the big u.s. survey, 300 students. these are the students who did not get a five on the ap exam. make up the three of the four. they are not history majors and will never be history majors. they'll be dragged kicking and screaming into history. i love that. i love being the person that meant they cannot graduate from southern without having a u.s. history course. you are going to take a class and get a job. and the job is going to be closely related to the course

you take. agriculture economics or whatever it is fashion design. you are going to get into that job and you will hate your life you will drink yourself to death. or you can think about where you fit in the past, in the long past of the american history. how did other people cope with the world around them? how did they confront the problems of their generation and how will you do? i want to save you from alcoholism. i want to save you from that world. and i think that your period, we cannot understand american history without drugs. they are on drugs, coffee, sugar, tobacco, cocoa. this is a drug world. it is a world of drugs that are being shipped back to europeans. i think trying to get their attention, the attention of an engineering student who would

rather be anywhere else, would rather be stuck in traffic then be in an american history class. when you get them excited about history and get them to think -- turned her head and think differently, my job is done. there is a feedback loop. when you teach and gets you excited, you get interested and you think, that is a good story. i need to write that down. i need to tell that story. that is the exciting thing about history as a writing discipline. it can grow out of a good class it is often really good, really sharp and really skeptical questions from students that push me -- they asked me, what is the solution have to do with the colonization of the new world? i have to go back and look at it and think about it more. to me, there is an exciting thing about skeptical students and teaching skeptical students and learning how to tell the

story that works. and go back to the sources, of course. we are all historians. we cannot just tell a good story . we have to have the sources that are on our side. i think so much of this book is like that. these are some of the best gems that we have kept for our classes that we have decided to boil down to present. your story about the great london fire of 1666 and how it is a really important precursor to the slavery of the south. to the transition of slavery in the virginia colonies has a lot to do the london fire of 1666. that is fascinating. and makes you think twice. the book is filled with observations and nuggets like that that are fantastic. >> i completely agree and it is never a bad thing to push everyone to show their work and

their sources. those questions are an opportunity to talk about things that we have not talked about collectively before. we want to hear from you now. i am sure there is lots of questions. please, raise your hand so we can see you and the microphone will come to you. >> how important were slave narratives and african american oral histories important in your book and the outcome? >> i will start off briefly. particularly in martha jones chapter and kate's chapter -- chapters that deal with the -- i will call them the early, roughly 1820 to 1860. the slave narratives definitely are important as well as martha

jones is interested in how black southerners are seeing themselves as residents of the region and as americans and members of a black diaspora. their voice is very important. and kate's chapter, she uses an organizing figure. there is definitely a very important voice. >> the narratives is written in 1933 and during the depression. they are great matches for the period of slavery but the period after slavery. if you want to talk about black life 1870s and 1880s, kirsten is one of the people collecting these materials. her description of the interview gaze of black life grew out of that.

>> what impact did the great migration have on the economy, the demographics of the south and was a resistance to people trying to move to chicago, new york, especially employers when there were trying to move away to suburban areas of north? >> the great migration is not in my period. it is work that is later. it is very important. it is critical to understand what makes the great migration possible. it is world war i, suffering warfare makes it impossible for employers in detroit and chicago to get a stream of european workers. we see others bring black

newspapers from detroit and chicago down to the south to show people about the opportunities that are available. there is a massive migration that changes the north in important ways. it changes the south is equally important. there is a continuous movement of people back and forth. this is the cultural tradition and much of what we think of is the blues coming out of that tradition. we see a lot of the violence that comes

so, it's fresh in my mind. and we see, yeah. sort of the destruction of important black cities, black towns where black people are thriving. that is a discussion in the 21st century. so, it's out of my field. but, there's a great deal talk about summer in particular. >> your efforts to stop it. there were definitely efforts to stop it for example here in georgia. there were efforts to stop trains from leaving savannah, and elsewhere. but, there is the classic example of the way american federalism, and american capitalism work. there were of course recruiting agents coming down from northern industrial centers. recruiting blacks to migrate north.

so, just as there are people trying to keep them in the south. white landowners, white employers. there are also white employers in the north moving heaven and earth to get them to come north. so, there were subsidies to migrate. so, there's a tug. they are countervailing forces in a way. then of course black people in the south. many of them were very eager to get out. so, they found their way. in wy and in south created distortions in constit >> i'm interested lin your comments on the way in which white supremacy in the south credit distortions in constitutional law, and then the legal structure. not only in the south, but federally.

what you think those distortions persist today? and if so, in what form? >> yeah. well. one of the things -- some of these are constitutional, and some of them aren't. so, one thing that occurs to me is there were things called the black codes passed in 1866. when andrew johnson was president he brings in -- it basically allows the southern states to reconstruct themselves with just white voters. they created a bunch of laws that make it basically illegal to be black in the city. have to have papers, and things like that. 14th amendment is an attempt, and radical reconstruction is an attempt to prevent that from happening. so to say, okay the states are not -- the congress as the states are not states anymore. their territories. they will have to bring peace to these regions before they can be brought back in as states. so, i would argue that the

black codes never went away in 1866. the things that formally said that black people cannot enter into marriages or get testified against white people. those things are stricken from state constitutions, but there are many other things. like very, very high fees. so, a relatively low amount of -- if you take something that's worth less -- anything more than $10, incidentally it's a fennel. the bar is $30 in virginia before the war. there is attempt to identify things that are associated with black men and women that take those things for misdemeanors and turn them into felonies. so, the 14th amendment -- their attempts after the 14th amendment for the state to sort of get around the 14th amendment. they way they do that constitutionally is what i call the supreme court cases. the civil rights cases.

and those basically say as long as the state doesn't say it's designed to exclude black people, it's okay. so, the 14th amendment still holds. everyone is a citizen. you can't deny decision citizenship based on race, color. but, if the state passes a law and it doesn't say it's doing that. but, it has the effect of doing that and it's perfectly fine. that's what the supreme court cases do. so, it allows states tremendous power to take -- to create white supremacy, and basically force black voters out. black people are putting in the 1860s and 1870s after the supreme court. those civil rights cases. we see the understanding clauses being brought. we see the poll taxes, and was the third one? all taxes, understanding clauses, and grandfather clauses.

in the grandfather clauses basically says, okay maybe you can read the constitution. okay. maybe you didn't pay your poll tax come up did your grandfather vote? there's an exceptional loophole made for why people don't pay the loop tax. so, yeah. the supreme court does basically weaken the 14th amendment. it's a powerful instrument when it's passed in 1866, but it doesn't really come into force in the south in many ways until 1966. 100 years later. that's my take. but, of course my specialty is the period from the 70s, and 80s. >> i think one consequence of that, as scott was describing it is citizenship for other groups who don't enjoy the privileges of whiteness was also extremely circumscribed. so, you can see the struggle of the 20th century, and 20th

century expansion of the 14th amendment. as an effort not just to compensate for the extremely restricted notion of citizenship as it had developed in the south. but, also across the country. so, that would apply to hispanic americans in the southwest as well. so, there was segregation in california public schools on the basis of asian identity as well as hispanic identity. and that had to be corrected along with white supremacy in the american south. >> one thing that's not discussed much is the fact that you can't be on a jury if you're not a citizen. it's not just that when people are allowed to vote. but, juries are only white by 1880s, and 1890s. that's very important for understanding the interpretation of crime. is that when if you are a white person brought into a jury, you're surrounded by white people.

you collectively define what's legal, and illegal. what's acceptable, and unacceptable based on your understanding of the law in these cases. and that tends to shape people's minds around the idea that a crime is black, and that order and law are white. so, it pulls people into the kind of what supremacist division. and the juries, i think -- the fact that juries then are white. but, black people are not allowed to have juries of their own appears is very important for understanding the rights of lynching, and these other things. because lynching becomes a kind of extralegal justice, but this presumption is that justice is primarily a white phenomenon. >> well, thank you all so much for joining us. thank you again to our panel. the book is a new history of the american south. i hope that you will read it. i hope that you will get a lot out of it. i know that i did. so, thank you very much. and thank you to the audience

for being here at atlanta history center tonight. and we will see you all again very soon i hope. >> if you're enjoying american history tv then sign up for our newsletter using the qr code on our screen to receive weekly highlights of upcoming programs like lectures, and history, american artifacts, the presidency, and more. sign up for the a htv newsletter today, and be sure to watch american history tv every weekend or any time online at c-span.org/history. 'g

and it is a pleasure to be hereg today with the honors college students in the university of

south.