the years was well it's fairly drought resistant and at first i didn't know that there was a drought in afghanistan veterans it turns out to was coincided with the project of nation-building in afghanistan, and paul b. uses 1/5 to 1/6 the amount of water that wheat requires so given this very severe drought the worst in living memory is one of the only crops that is economically viable for farmers in afghanistan. so it occurred to me that a long with all of the religious reasons one might have for joining the taliban or the ethnic reasons one might have there was an economic motivation as well linked to climate change because of the war there are the positions on poppy nato in the afghan government oppose it in the packet, frequently more often than not just in rhetoric

because there's so much corruption people can buy their way out of the eradication program but that doesn't mean that a revocation is an onerous to the former orie threat and the of the side, the taliban defend the farmers right to grow poppy. in facing this drought and acting farmers have an economic motivation to support the time again because that is the conflict the world to send the right to go to the one crop that's economically vital given the crisis the face. >> 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 funeral

directors of the african-american we of death. dr. smith is the african-american we've def? >> the african american way of death is a way of thinking about death as not just deaf but connected to freedom and to the struggle for civil rights. in the book until the story about how the connection between def and freedom so essential to an african americans understand of funerals and deaths of that is it hasn't been considered in quite the way i do in the book before but it is essential to our understanding of the civil rights movement and also the history of african-american entrepreneurship. >> what is the story? >> it goes back to slavery and the african-american culture, they call a funeral home going, and in the book i trace the story beginning there and in the west african and transatlantic slave trade, african slaves who try to escapes often jump in the

ship on the middle passage and the call it the home going because they believe their spirits would go back to africa, they literally go home so the home going concept began in the state delete the slave trade i begin their and trace back through slavery through the civil war and into the formation of the modern funeral industry. during the sleeper co, the sleeve futile becomes the central future of the slave community. it's one place where african-americans are allowed to have some autonomy briefly where they would have few girls usually late at night in what was called the bhatia harbour which was a group of trees in the back of the quarter and i argue in the book of fuel is the beginning of the african-american church the this is the only place african-americans are allowed to preach to themselves and have sacred states and it becomes very important in that regard. and then eventually becomes

controversy all like the slave masters start to monitor the funerals because also late at night they can gather and plan rebellion. the most notable would be gabriel and as planned at a funeral and even here in virginia in the commonwealth after the rebellion of 1831 there's a lot of sleeve laws tauter past saying that sleeves can no longer have funerals by themselves so to be there was also evidence of the historians that the sleeve funeral was resonant and eventually seen as threatening and the bye traced throughout the rest of the book the civil war period when the modern funeral industry formed mainly out of the civil war period in the general history of the book. i'm talking not about the formation of the industry which comes out of the civil war and the idea of embalming.

is there a target it cannot of the civil war and how did that come about? >> is primarily done in medical school for the purpose of medical and education and it's not until the war you have 600,000 soldiers to die and perished during the war that you have to rise of embalming is a part of the process because the union soldiers, their families wanted their bodies transported back for a proper funeral and so they would go out onto the battlefield and start in bombing and then it was in this process people realize to preserve the body and then you could have a more proper fuel and also the note here that abraham lincoln was also involved and his body was literally transported i believe almost two weeks across the country from the point of death in washington to springfield illinois and all americans got to come to the train and warned him and we argue in the book that is the cuban americans realize that it was an important of the process.

in this period african-americans are also on the battlefields helping some of these and the store to become invested in this process of involving. after the war like the modern fuel industry forms of the tv and african-americans are early on adapters of the embalming and the funeral process so that's part of the story but with this fascinating to me it's at the point of the civil war the modern funeral industry is born and it's also after the civil war that jim-crow segregation is born in its most vivid form so the six giblin terms of the history of black entrepreneurship where you can trace the rise of the capitalist industry along with the social and racial segregation and how that plays out. as to the socially today there are still white funeral homes -- >> the tradition continues. even after the civil rights movement in the 60's passing the civil rights act premier li

barbershops, beauty shops and funeral homes have remained largely segregated for the most part within the black community which is one of the reasons i was interested. >> dr. smith if you could expand on the entrepreneurship aspect of black funeral homes. estimate in terms of -- stood in terms of where you write about. >> what was most fascinating to me is as i say jim-crow segregation is formed a and i delete the guard is going to have a secure market of blacks and fuels because white people should go to the white funeral home, what happens naturally is the modern fuel industry takes off even more in the 1920's of the formation of the federal home so we don't really have funeral homes until the 1920's. before that he would come to your house and you would embalm somebody in your home and leave them on the parlor which is why

we ultimately change the name of the living room many listeners don't know that but the finally decided to the parlor the 19th century was associated with death that when the funeral home started it separates architect said we are going to call the living room the living rooms of people will never associated with death any more so in the 1920's funeral homes take off and we now take death out of the home and put it in a funeral home but 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 their home and you have the decline of the rate so my point here is a as a historian the 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 entrepreneurship the competition. there's more fuel homes and less people are dying in a faster rate so it's back to the race

question. there's a lot of competition that people don't realize that a lot of people want to go to white funeral homes. they felt it was more prestigious and the black funeral directors are fighting to get customers and they are kicked out eventually of the feudal directors associational racist grounds and have to form their own association and they form their first business, black trade publication which is what i talked about in the book and the of their own association but in that journal which i read carefully the you're always saying we need to find a way to secure the black body of the funeral director. they feel they have a handle the segregated market and they want the segregated market for their business. by the same token for altered nurse there are independent africans in the community and they see the price of the jim crow segregation on the community and fight against

jim-crow even though on a strict economic basis it is hurting them to do that. they want to have a separate economic black market as customers. one of the interesting arguments i have in the book is called the directors become leaders fighting against jim crow and the same time arguing in their own publications the need to make sure the black market of customers is always safe and sound and there's a contradiction there and i talk a lot about that and this one funeral director and nashville who starts his own streetcar line and is able to not only have a funeral home but when the city council in the state of tennessee starts segregating he says i will have my own street car and he tries to create a support model for the community and is quite successful even though ultimately my point in the book is the funeral directors always believe in

fighting against jim crow and civil rights. >> suzanne smith where did you come up with the title to serve the living? >> that's a great story. it comes from an advertisement from a funeral home in detroit run by charles digs and i wrote my first book on motown music and its role in detroit and i saw this ad in a newspaper that says nobody serves the living digs and not only is that my favorite mean for a funeral home but that was the whole argument of the book ultimately the the main argument and trying to make is the way in which it was far more important than the jury today from slavery to the present and you can watch throughout time walling it was so significant. >> and the painting on the front of your book?

>> the painting is a lesser-known jacob lawrence painting from harlem and what most people don't notice there's a prominent couple on the front and there's three little box next to them as the ghost of the dead person people don't notice that but it is the scene of a funeral in harlem and what was striking was the spirit of the dead person is present in the painting and that captured what i see but african-american cosmology about death and the believe in the culture that the spirit of the dead and the ancestors are always with us. >> when you went to so this book to a publisher you said i want to write about african-american funeral homes and their way of death what was the response to that? >> the reef sponsor at first was skeptical but when i made the argument and made the connection to my previous work and some of the things mentioned they were

quite intrigued. i can really see myself as a historian of entrepreneurship and i think the story of the industry which was and still is largely segregated is important. >> the morris ford lynching happened in 1946 and monroe georgia. it was the last map lynching in america. people were shot in 1946 so it is a post war situation and these individuals were shot by a firing squad in lonrho georgia soon after the governor's election in georgia and the funeral director was the most prominent man in the town and he opens the book for me because he shows the example of the model

of the book in the weeks before the lynching he was trying to register voters in lonrho because was the first election they would be allowed to vote for a number of years and she gets involved in the case after the fact and has the community come to his funeral home and so the rest of his life he was consuming the people in the community that he believed committed a crime even though no one was ever convicted so i told the story of him because he also shows in terms of the story of the civil rights movement that funeral directors were often registering voters and would often protect the family after the fact of the crime and this became an african-american communities one of the reasons we were talking about the loyalty because the funeral director often played so many rules of the community's -- and played roles in the violent crime, but the community always

rewarded. you write about martin luther king. >> because it solidified both his assassination one of the things he's assassinated in the hotel who is the last person who speaks to him? the chauffeur from a funeral home says martin luther king security through his career was funeral director it's the funeral homes that have the limousines to protect the advocates to take him to cut defense so there is a scene in the book the funeral home sitting there and the chauffeur witnesses the crime his funeral is important of course because it evokes these traditions i've been talking about of the home going in by make an argument in

the book about the civil rights to animals being political future to the kutz theater. civil rights activists learn the funeral itself can be political future and the place we can fight the battle integration and the trial of them into drama and king's funeral was a moderate civil appeared as an equitable cemeteries are they still segregated? >> that is debated. for the most part they are not although i must say at the end of my research it must have been three or four years ago an article about a cemetery battling not whether a white person could be buried in a black funeral home that would have been a traditionally black cemetery. the history of the black cemetery groesbeck to the 19th century where they were often segregated at least to the worst

part then you would have the funeral directors who finance the cemeteries for black people that are elegant and in the garden variety the people want the high class cemetery. one of the interesting stories of the cemetery is charles mind found that the memorial park in detroit along with a group of other funeral directors and becomes so financially profitable they are able to get home mortgage loans to blacks in the tree and then they deny the mortgages from regular bank said that time so again the funeral directors are able to give homeownership through the profitability of the cemetery that they themselves funded i think that is incredibly powerful in the story how the black middle class tried to get

a foothold in society when the fha federal housing administration is often shutting blacks out of homes. >> where did you grow up and go to school? >> i grew up partly in detroit where i went to school for college or -- >> ucla. my family moved all of the country and we went to carnegie mellon a into yale. >> what you teach your? >> i the african-american history professor and because of my research on motown i teach a lot of courses on a music and from this book of course i can teach about the history of death in america as well as the movement. >> to the often expect african-american professor? >> the do and it's one of the things i love about my job i love surprising students, i will

helping them learn that the color of one's body does not define the body of knowledge and i often told students if i go to the classroom and i talked chinese history they wouldn't say that as much or all learning should be about something beyond what you know but i've had african-american students tell me a the end of my semester one came up to me and said when i first met you i was so angry that you were white and i wanted to stump you and after two weeks in your class i learned about i could learn something from you she said it changed my whole way of seeing the world and she thanked me and i felt like well that's why i do this work. this is a way to have you completely rethink how they define knowledge and identity and i'v