in afghanistan. it occurred to me that along with all of the resistors as one might have for joining the taliban are all the ethnic reasons one have there was an economic motivation as well which was linked to climate change because in the war there are two positions on poppy, nato and the afghan government oppose it and its jacket. frequently more often than not just on rhetoric because there summoning programs. that doesn't mean that eradication this thread. the other side the tell ben defend the right to grow poppy. in facing this drought and adapting bobby farmers of this economic motivation to support the tell them because that's a conflict that will defend their right to grow the one dropped its early economically viable >> you can watch this and other

programs online at book tv. >> and now an interview from george mason university. >> dr. suzanne smith is an assistant professor of history here at george mason university, and she has a new book out published by harvard, "to serve the living: funeral directors and the african american way of death". dr. smith, what is the african american way of death? >> guest: the african american way of debt is a way of thinking about death as not just death, but connected to freedom and connected to the struggle for civil rights. in the book that tell a story about how the connection between death and freedom is so central to african-americans understanding of funerals and deaf that it hasn't been really considered in quite the way i do in the book before, but it is essential to our standing of the civil rights movement and also

the history of african american entrepreneurial ship. >> host: what is the story? >> guest: the story goes back to slavery. in african-american culture they call a funeral of going. in the book i trace the story beginning there, and in the west african transatlantic slave trade african slaves who tried to escape enslavement also jump ship on the middle passage. they call death on coming because they believe the point of death, the spirits would go back to africa, the spirits of literally go home. the home billing concept begins in the slave trade. in the book and began their and trade center slavery through the subfloor and into the formation of the modern general. during the slave time this lifts general becomes the central feature of the slave community. it's one place where african-americans are allowed to have some autonomy briefly brazil have funerals usually

limited night and was told the hushed harbors which was a group of trees usually in the back of the slave quarters. i argue in the book that the funeral was really the beginning, this lifts funeral was the beginning of the african-american church. this is the only place that african-americans were allowed to police themselves and have sickert space, and it becomes very, very important in that regard. and then eventually it becomes controversial. slave masters start to monitor these generals because it's also a place where they can gather and plan slave rebellion spirit the most notable would be gabriels rebellion, and it was also some concern that nat turner rebellion in 1831 was planned a funeral. even here in virginia, the commonwealth of virginia after net tonnage rebellion in 1831 there are a lot of slave laws that are passed saying this this can no longer have funerals by themselves. they must be monitored. to me that was evidence of the historic that the slaves general was resonant and eventually seen

as threatening to the system. and then i chased throughout the rest of the book, the civil war, the modern funeral and his reforms, mainly out of the civil war and the general history of the book. i talk a lot about the formation of the modern funeral history which comes out of the civil war and the idea of embalming. >> host: how did it come out of the civil war, and the bombing, how did that begin? >> guest: before the civil war embalming in the united states is primarily done in medical schools. it is the civil war when you have 600,000 soldiers to die, paris during the war that you have the rise of embalming. this is primarily because union soldiers, their families wanted their bodies transported back to the north for a proper funeral. and so and bombers would go out on to the battlefield and start embalming. then it was in this process the people realized he could preserve the body and then you could have a more proper

funeral. also i would note here that abraham lincoln was also and bald, and his body was literally transported. i believe it was almost two weeks across the country from the point of death in washington and all americans got to come to the train and mourn him. i argue in the book that was a key moment when americans realize that embalming was important to the grief process. like asset, and this time african-americans are serving in the battlefield helping some of these embalmers, and they start to become invested in this process of involving. now, after the war, the modern funeral industry is formed, 1880's and african-americans are leon adapters of the embalming and the modern funeral process. that is part of the story, but what is fascinating to me is actually at the point of the civil war at the modern funeral industry is born, and it's also after the civil war that jim-crow segregation is born. its most vivid forms, and so

this is an example in terms of history of black entrepreneurship or you can trace the rise of the capitalist industry along with this social segregation and how that played out in the funeral industry. >> host: today there are still white funeral homes and black funeral homes speech to the tradition continues. even after the civil rights movement in the 60's and the civil rights act : primarily barbershops, beauty shops, and funeral homes remain large reset it for the most part. a loyalty within black communities, which is one of the reasons i was interested in studying this. >> host: dr. smith, if you could expand of the entrepreneur as an aspect of black funeral homes. >> guest: in terms of. >> host: in terms of what you read about. >> guest: and what i talk about and what was perhaps most fascinating to me is that, as i'm saying, jim crow segregation is formed. ideally the african american funeral director is going to have a secure market of black

consumers because black people should go to the black funeral home. what happens actually is to the modern funeral industry takes off even more in the 1920's with the formation of the funeral home. we don't really have a funeral homes until the 1920's. before that embalmers would come to your house and you would embalm somebody in your home and lay them out in the parlor, which is why we ultimately change the name of the parts of living room. architects finally decided that the parlor in the 19th century home was still associated. when the funeral home started yet to separate that. architects said were going to call a living and the living room some people never associated with that anymore. in the 1920's federal home stake off. they step out of the home appliance a funeral homes, with the other thing that happens is hospitals, the modern hospital comes into play, and most people in america start to die in hospitals rather than in the home.

you have also the decline of the death rate. so my point here as a historian is that you see a rise of the modern hospital, the decline of the death rate, and the rise of the modern funeral industry, and that leads in the business and entrepreneurial ship to competition. more fewer homes than can -- more funeral homes and people who are dying a faster rate, so it's back to the race question. a lot of competition that people don't realize, and a lot of black people actually wanted to go wide general homes. they felt it was more prestigious, and the black funeral directors are fighting to give customers. they actually are kicked out eventually of the national funeral directors association on racist grounds, and a half to form their own association, and they form their first business, the first black trade publication. the colored and bomber. i talked about that in the book. the journal was called the colored embalmer, and have their own association, but in the journal, which i read carefully

they're always saying we need to find a way to secure the black bodies for the black funeral director. they don't feel they have a handle on the segregated market, and they want the segregated market for their businesses. by the same token, to your question about entrepreneurs, they're also the most economically independent african americans in their community. they see the price of jim crow segregation on their communities and they fight against and grow even know strict economic basis, it's kind of writing and to do that. they want to have a separate economic plan from customers. so one of the interesting arguments is how these black funeral directors become both leaders fighting against jim-crow and also at the same time arguing in their obligations that the need to make sure the black market of customers is always safe for them. there's a contradiction there, and i talk a lot about that. there is one funeral director for national, he actually -- he starts his own streetcar line in

nashville. he is economically able to not only have a funeral home, when the national city council and the state of tennessee starts secretary streetcars he says i'll have my own. he tries to create a whole separate world for the black community and, you know, he's quite successful at this even though ultimately some of those ventures don't succeed. my point is the book is the funeral directors fight against encroach on civil rights. >> host: suzanne smith converted to come up with the title? >> guest: that is a great story. the title comes from an advertisement, a furor home in detroit, the house of dates which was run by charles states ultimately. and i wrote my first book on motown music, its role in detroit. i saw this ad in a detroit newspaper that said nobody serves the living like dick. not only is the my favre title for a funeral home, but the ad, i.

that was the whole argument of the buck. the main argument on trying to make is that the ways in which these federal judges of the living was far more important and the ways in which to bury the dead . become once the line. >> host: the painting, front. >> guest: the painting on the front of the book is a lesser-known jacob lawrence painting. it is the city's skid from harlem. but most people don't know, there is a prominent couple on the front, and as you can see, three little dots next. a ghost of the dead person. people don't actually notice that, but it is a scene of a funeral in harlem. what was striking to me is the spirit of the dead person in the painting. that also kind of captured what i say about african american cosmology about death and a belief in african-american culture that the spirit of the

dead and the ancestors are always with them. >> host: dr. smith tomorrow when you went to sell this book to a publisher and use of want to write about african american funeral homes and their way of death what was the response to got. >> guest: the response of verse was skeptical, but when i made the argument and made the connections to my previous work on motown and some of the things you've already mentioned, there were quiet street. i primarily see myself as a historian of african american entrepreneurship, and already been talking about the story of this industry which was and still is was a segregated. >> host: what was the morse for lansing? >> guest: the morris for glancing happens in 1946, monroe georgia. it was, as historians talk about, the last mass lunging in america before people were shot. 1946. the postwar situation, and these

four individuals were shot by firing squad in monroe, georgia soon after a governor's election, gubernatorial a election in georgia. dan young, the funeral director in a row was again, as i have been saying, the most prominent men in the town and he opens the book from a primarily because he shows this example of the model of the book to serve the living that in the weeks before the luncheon he was actually trying to register voters, black voters in a row because of the first election that blacks were allowed to be voting in. and he gets involved in the lansing case after the fact and has the community come to his funeral home. and for the rest of his life he was pursuing the people in the community that he believed had committed a crime even though no one was ever convicted. and so i tell the story of him because he also showed, like i said, in terms of the story of the civil rights movement that

funeral directors, like i said, more often registering voters. in the case of a lynching there would often protect the family after the fact of the crime. and this became an african american committees one of the reasons that we were talking about the loyalty that develops around these homes because the funeral director often played so many roles in the community that people -- played roles in the face of violent crime that the community always rewarded the loyalty. >> host: you write about martin luther king's funeral. >> guest: yes. well, and also because bright again in solidified both his assassination, one of the things that was so fascinating about his general, when he is assassinated in memphis, the balcony of the hotel, who is the last person is based in? the chauffeur from a funeral home. martin luther king security detail throughout his career was a funeral directors. he would come to southern towns, the funeral homes have the limousines that would protect civil rights activists and taken

to the speaking events. so there is a scene in the book where he is getting ready to get his speech before he gets shot. the funeral home sitting there, and a chauffeur from the funeral home when this is the crime. his actual funeral is important because it and goes all these traditions have been talking about of the ongoing. i make an argument in the book about these funerals the muscle rights funeral's being political theater. whether you're talking about malcolm x's funeral, which is even more fascinating, i think, civil-rights activists learned that the funeral itself can be political theater, can be the place where we can fight the battle against racism and segregation, and they turn a lot of these funerals into dramas about that. king spheral is another example of that. >> host: what about cemeteries? >> guest: that is debated. for the most part they're not,

although i must say, at the end of my research there was -- it must the ben three or four years ago now there was an article in the new york times about a texas cemetery that was paddling out whether a white person to be buried in a black funeral -- what had been a traditionally black cemetery. the history of black cemeteries goes back to the 19th century where blacks were often segregated, at least to the worst part of what cemeteries and that you have, again to my funeral directors like charles steaks, preston taylor who financed cemeteries for black people that are elegance and in the garden variety of people want a high class cemetery. one other interesting story about cemeteries is charles takes found the detroit memorial park in detroit along with a group of a funeral directors, and it becomes so financially profitable that they are able to give home mortgages, loans to blacks in detroit.

blacks had been denied these mortgages from regular white owned banks at that time, so, again, in terms of the theme of the but these fuel directors are able to give home ownership to their communities through this profitability of their cemeteries that they themselves found it. i think that is an incredibly powerful story of how the black middle class tries to get a foothold in american society when the fha, the federal housing administration is often shutting blacks out of regular home loans. >> host: ready to grow up and go to school? >> guest: i grew up partly in detroit. where i went to school for college or -- >> host: college. >> guest: ucla. my family moved all over the country and i went to ucla as an undergrad, carnegie-mellon from master's degree and for my ph.d. >> guest: and what do you teach your george mason university? >> guest: i am the african american. i teach african american

history. because of my research on motown i teach a lot of courses on the history of american popular music. from this book, of course, i cannot teach about the history of death in america as well as the history of civil rights. >> host: when people walk into your class to the often expect an african american professor? >> guest: yes, they do, and it's one of the things i love about my job. allows uprising students. i love helping them to learn that the color of one's body does not define the body of knowledge that someone has, and i often tell students if i walked into the classroom and had taught chinese history i when asked the question as much. i notice as to somebody teach is medieval history, to you think it's a problem that we don't live in the middle ages. all learning should be about something that is beyond what you know. but i love. i have african-americans system at the end of my semester, one can of to me and said when i first met you are was so angry that you were white.

i wanted to. after two weeks interclass i learned that i could learn something from you. she said it changed my whole way of seeing the world and rice. and she thinks me, and i felt like, wow, you know, that is why do this work. this is a way to have students completely rethink how they define knowledge and identity, and i have often, you should go into physics class and say why is not by person teaching. and we get to that point in this country that will be great. then he should say, okay, this is where we should be divvied don't just ask what the teacher is a black. >> host: what is the racial makeup of a class? >> guest: very diverse. i would say at least half the students are students of color, and usually at least the third of the students aren't to nationals in spirit after ousted as from africa. so that is another thing, joy but teaching here at mason is that we have a very