books were all set in east tennessee, and the most knoxville centric is called sutrey about a guy who kind of escapes from middle class life to live among the fishermen of the river front. he lived here in a houseboat. ..

>> in the pulitzer winning novel travel the road. >> dr. suzanne smith is a professor at george mason university has a new book published about to called to

serve the living the funeral directors said the african american way of death. what is that? >> connected to freedom and the struggle for civil rights did in the book i tell a story about how the connection between death and freedom is so essential to african-american understanding of funerals that it has not been considered in the way that i do if the book but essential for our understanding of the civil-rights movement and african and american entreprenuership. it goes back to slavery. in african-american culture day call the funeral the home going and in the book phi trace the beginning fair and the transatlantic slave trade african slaves who

tried to escape by jumping ship on the middle passage jim believed to have the point* deduct their spirit goes back to africa that they would literally go home. the homebuildingiéóo concept begins with the slave trade been my book i began their then trace through slavery through the civil war in to the formation of the modern funeral industry but during the slave period the slave funeral of liz the central feature of the community where one place african-americans could have a talk to me briefly it was then a hush harbor in a group of trees in the back of the slave quarter. the slaves have the best the beginning of the african-american church. the only place they could reach for themselves to have sacred space. it becomes very important in

that regard. and then it becomes controversial white slave masters begin to monitor the funerals because also of they can also plan rebellions the most notable is gabriels rebellion in some concern of the turner rebellion was planned at a funeral. even here and the cover of the virginia after the turner's rebellion slave laws were passed to say that they can no longer have funerals by themselves and they must be monitored it is evidence that the slave fuel losses eventually seen as threatening and then i trace it through the rest of the book through the civil war period and when it forms mainly from the general history of the book, i talked about the formation and the modern its funeral industry coming out of the

civil war and the idea of embalming. >> host: how did it come out of the civil war? >> before that it was done in medical schools for the purpose of medical education not when you have 60,000 soldiers that you have that part of the death process because union soldiers wanted their bodies transported for a proper funeral soviet bombers would go back to the battlefield than in this process you could preserve some of body i have announced the abraham lincoln was embalmed literally transported for almost two weeks from across the country from the point* of death to spring full it -- springfield illinois all americans could come to the train to mourn and that is a key moment when they

realize that was important to the grieving process. in this period come african-americans serve on the battlefield to help the embalmers and become invested in the process. after the board, the modern fuel industry forms and african americans early are adaptors of the embalming and the modern fuel process. fact is part of a story but what is fascinating his at the point* of the modern funeral industry is born and after that the jim crow segregation is born it in its most vivid forms were you can raise the capitalist >> host: there is still white and black funeral homes? >> guest: yes. even after the civil rights

movement they have remained a largely segregated for the most part. >> host: talk about the entreprenuership 21 in terms of? >> host: what you write about 21 what is most fascinating to me with the black consumer black people should go to the black funeral home of the whites go to what the white but what happens is the modern funeral industry ticks off in the 1920 with the formation of the funeral home we don't have those until then before they would come to your house and you would embalm somebody ifs in

your home and in the parts other than changing the name to the living room that it was so associated with death with the funeral home started to separate the debt the architect said we will call the living room so people will not associated with death. in 1920's the funeral homes take off but the other thing that happens is who the modern hospital comes into play and people start to die in the hospital also the decline of the death rate. has a history news to the rise of the modern hospital, the decline of the death rate andy it rise of the funeral industry which leads to competition more funeral homes and less people who were dying at a faster rate.

so there is a lot of competition people don't realize that a lot of black people wanted to go to white funeral homes and felt it was prestigious and the black funeral homes are fighting to get customers and eventually kicked out on racist grounds and a half to form their own association and they form the first trade publication which is called the colored embalmer per car -- embalmer but they always say we have to find a way to secure the black body. they don't feel they have a handle on the segregated market and they want that. also the most economically independent african americans in their community and they see the price of segregation and they fight

against jim-crow even though on a strict economic basis it is hurting them to do that. they plan to separate economic black market so when of the interesting arguments is how the black funeral directors become both leaders fighting against jim-crow and also arguing in their own publication the need to make sure the black market is always there at which is a contradiction and i talk a lot about that and 12 straight -- starts his own streetcar line not only able to have the funeral home but when dennis c. star's to segregate streetcar he says he will have his own and create a separate world for the black community. he is quite successful although ultimately they don't succeed but my point* is a funeral directors are

always believed to fight against jim crow and civil rights. >> host: where did you come up with the titled "to serve the living"? day webex is a great story. coming from an advertisement from the funeral home called the house of big six -- big sandwich breaking on motown music and i saw this ad in the detroit newspapers to say nobody serves the living like him. but the bad cop my i.r.a.. to serve the living? that was all whole argument of the book that the main argument i try to make the way in the funeral directors serve the living was far more important than the wade day bury the dead sell that. >> host: the painting on

the front? >> the lesser-known painting a cityscape from harlem and most people don't notice a prominent couple in the front and you could see the three little dots next to them the ghost of the dead person but it is a scene of of funeral in harlem and what strikes me is the spirit of the dead person in the painting that also captures what i say about african-american in cosmology that the belief in the culture that the spirit of the dead and the ancestors are always with us. >> host: dr. smith when you sold this book to a publisher to say african-american funeral homes what was the response? >> guest: the response of first was skeptical but when i made the argument and the connection to reprieve is work and motown and some of

the things we have mentioned, they were intrigued. i see myself as a expert on african american entreprenuership and to talk about the industry that is largely segregated. >> host: was the moors for the lynching? >> happening in 1946 in monroe to urge an end as historians talk about the last mass lynching and four people were shot. post war situation. they were shot by a firing squad soon after the governor election and the funeral director in monroe was the most prominent man in the town and opens the book in the weeks before the

lynch chain trying to register black voters in monroe because that was the first election they could vote for a number of years and he gets involved in the lynching case after the fact to have the community come to his funeral home. for the rest of his life he was pursuing the people in the committee he believed committed the crime although nobody was ever convicted. i tell his story because these shows that in the case of the machine to protect the family after the fact and in african american in committees one of the reasons we talk a row what develops because a funeral director plays so many roles in the face of a violent

crime that to the community was always rewarded. >> host: you write about march in the 13? >> yes. it solidified the assassination one thing is when he is assassinated who is the last person who speaks to him? that more in the third keying security detail was a funeral director. when he came to a southern town the funeral home that had this limousines to protect them and take to the speaking events. there is a scene in the book he is getting ready to go to his speech before he shot and a funeral home is there and the chauffeur who witnesses the crime. his actual funeral it is important because it evokes traditions because of the home going and i make the

argument that the civil-rights funerals are being political theater whether talk about malcolm x which is even more fascinating, civil-rights activists learned at the funeral itself can be the place where we can fight the battle against racism and they turn these funerals into drama about that. >> host: what about cemeteries? are they segregated? >> guest: that is debated. for the most part they are not but at the end of my research, it must have been three or four years ago an article in "the new york times" about a texas cemetery battling of a white person could be buried in a traditional black cemetery. the history goes back to the 19th century where blacks

were often segregated at least to the worst part of the wyss cemetery than again funeral directors like charles diggs preston tailor who finance finance two in the garden variety the high class cemetery but but charles diggs found the the jury memorial park along with a group of the other directors and it becomes so financially profitable they could give home mortgage loans to the of blacks in detroit michigan and those that were denied from regular white banks and in terms of the theme comity love then they can give homeownership to their communities through the profitability of the cemeteries that they founded. that is incredibly powerful

how the black middle class tries to get a foothold when the fha is shifting blacks out of regular home loans. >> host: where did you grow up? >> guest: partly in detour eight. i went to ucla. my family moved all over the country ucla as the undergrad and carnegie-mellon for her master's and yale for my ph.d. >> host: what do you teach at georgia rest -- george mason? >> african-american history because of my research on motown phi eight teach a lot of courses on the history of popular music and now i can teach about the history of death in america as well as the history of civil-rights. >> host: to they expect an african-american professor run their walk into your class? >> guest: that is what i love about my job.

lo surprising students in helping them to learn the color of one's body does not define the body of knowledge and say if i walked into the classroom you would not ask the question and nobody who teaches a medieval history above all learning should be about something beyond what you know, . but i have had african route american students tell me when i first met you i was so angry that you were white and i wanted to send you after two weeks in your class i learned i could learn a something from you and it changed my whole way to see the world and race. she sang to me and i thought that is why do this work. it is a way to completely rethink how they define

knowledge and identity. you should go into a physics class to say why isn't it a black person teaching and? then you should say this is where we should be. don't just ask why the teacher is not black. >> host: what is the racial make up? >> guest: it is very diverse so it's at least half of the students are of color and 1/3 our international some who are from africa or, from africa. that is another joy of teaching at mason because we have a diverse student body and they bring a lot of perspectives into the classroom. >> host: professor at george mason in university and author of the book "to serve the living" funeral directors and the african american way of death".

>> host: you are watching booktv on c-span2 48 hours of nonfiction books every weekend we're on the campus of george mason university on the outskirts of washington d.c. for the university series we have the chance to come to some universities to talk with professors to of also written books that you might not have heard about joining us now is a history professor called meredith lair her book is called of armed with abundance. consumerism and sold during in the vietnam war. what was the typical experience of the american soldier? >> guest: i think the

american public has the assumption to be informed by television, movies and media coverage of a rifle platoon and those and limited danger living a life a of deprivation and a dead in during frequent danger. that is a powerful image and an experience that many vietnam veterans had during the war but not the experience of the war because by the 60s the united states had built an incredible apparatus to support its troops who more soldiers serving in a support capacity out of harm's way and as the war went on in jury the increasing comfortable way of life that was designed to

minimize the difference between living conditions in the u.s. in the u.s. military bases in vietnam. >>host: how many soldiers in vietnam? >> 542,000. >>host: how many american soldiers were killed. >> off the top of my head i don't it was the deadliest year in vietnam because of the tet offensive and the operations but i don't know if the -- deny the hardship of the soldiers in terms of emotional consequences but what i try to do is to complicate ideas about what it meant to a surge in vietnam and to give some credit to soldiers who don't see their experience represented in film or television or other

representation of the board. >>host: you have a chart most fiscal year through $19,721,968,325,000,000 is what you have up at 364 million why do include the chart? >>guest: one of the things i examined is consumers of the way it played in the american cultural life. military authorities recognize providing consumer goods to america and soldiers could maintain strong rob which is important because it is very controversial and a lot of people too not want to be there. also provide easy access to consumer goods becomes a way to ameliorate the problems that military authorities are seeing so they create the enormous post exchange

apparatus that is a retail operations and functions as a store to becomes the third and largest part mr. change in the world as a consequence with sales of over $1 billion and i should note those figures are not adjusted for inflation if they were, i don't have what they would be but what it would be staggering. >>host: what is this photo? >>guest: i found in an archive at texas tech university and three guys were playing around with their camera and that was a special purchase that it was talked about all lot and what they would say about their paychecks and these were precis not $99 sign point* and shoot but sophisticated cameras running $700 it was the akon a purchase and a rash of

flow taking because here they were taking pictures of themselves some of what the book is about how people regard the experience of the war. >> what was living in a saigon? >> it would depend on a few variables. some who were stationed in quarters that were hotel set were rented out by the u.s. military. living in saigon created a lot of problems because tens if not over 100,000 in the area to create a lot of problems they go out after hours to get drunk, that did zero dain relations that needs to be better and to

present themselves as targets for criminals or for the vietcong. if you're a soldier stationed there were random acts of violence in the tet offensive did brings the board to the doorstep but people living in saigon whose experience was isolated did not feel there is anything going on that there wasn't information:but i would not even know i was in a war to seven where was this stake in? bill magnificos but some guys who are getting ready for a party at the beach landing to have

requisitioned the beer and the hot dogs & haq of accruals already it set up a their related with supplies to have a party. said zero guys standing around barbeque pits those that are littered with empty beer cans so that is what we traditionally sees. >> i believe he is an english man and one of the road road to a modest two was interested. that proved very difficult when i try to find quality images, i did whined lots of not so quality images that had very of the focus of the day but the professional

journalists were charged with getting a story to sell papers. what they tended to focus on was the killing and dying and the images they produce are powerful and beautiful i have another photograph this famous bent another photographer herb they capture the other side of the floor and made it look like a great urgency. >>host: when do you get interested? >>guest: very early in my life. i did my first research report on vietnam in seventh grade. the reason was a limit daughter of a vietnam veteran and military

officers of that after my dad did two tours in vietnam did edge to its mark on my family and my parents marriage and their relationship with their children and i was fascinated with that in vietnam was a ross of jacked. i recognized that all my father was willing to talk but his experience, most adults were not. also trying to reconcile competing messages with what his war was like how it was being represented what did your father break in the prologue? it is about his experience in the war is a very personal subjects for me and i want to explain the genesis of the book so i explained the jury takes

into the province to live 90 advisory compound to work slowly with vietnamese infantry and it was very hard and dangerous and much more in the spirit of pa but in the second two were he went back and found a world he could scarcely a recognized. said then stationed at the largest base in vietnam and like the american outposts in southeast asia there was barbeque pits, hundreds of opportunities to dream come

a party, bowling alley, theater, working in the air-conditioned office and had questions about whether i doing here? what kind of a war is this? i heard those competing versions as a kid and it is not as though i set to write a book about that but the with this research shyster to find the evidence and that captured my imagination once again. >>host: is set to -- phi it may be controversial? >> i have dennis speaking engagements where i have some fairly hostile reactions from vietnam veterans for those who feels that point* team to the you

one situation that we erode the sense of sacrifice that is the wrong way because even if somebody went to see the it, basically were keying and say are still missing out on a lot and the world is passing you by and there is still in a sack serve 5/8 to be made. there are very few published memoirs by soldiers who served in the capacity to our self published. >> apparently the market does not want to hear the stories. was there a lot? >>guest: there was i think

the merck cam public has to take this fund soon face though they were not always angels. frankly, i drinking it it was encouraged that for those brothels on american bases that were tolerated and american medics were sent into a tree for venereal diseases and pests -- definitely a blink blink of roche to says secretary of period some then this since but it to give them from these women were purges of paying not own a prostitutes of growth

to create phi finance refugees and no less of this hope. so american soldiers often not think to pay much thought to that. s far s the dream team was concerned, a lot of attention is paid to drug use because we are experimenting with pot and other drug syria that culture carried into the bn no more but trading was pervasive and encouraged because u.s. military was the purveyor of alcohol and at times delivering two men in the field goal or available by the case and there was a ration program that put limits but it was a shocking quantity like four or five cases per month.

there were concerns that if they did not drink them they've would have the black market. so the clubs that were started by a unit that when everybody would pony a two do $5 then over the course of the war there reinvested to make it nicer and nicer. they don't have any water with just a little back room and they have swivel chairs and but i've was generating money that the u.s. monetary around in 1969 conducted the audit to see something like

$60 million of cash laying out in these cash registers and slot machines and that was used to build a high-rise hotel and a wife for military families who are unarmed. >>host: that basis yen the it numb are but to form the basis? >> there is not a model. i don't think they tried to replicate what happened in vietnam but it is of that basis and we often don't hear much about that and in their amenities they have eroded the distinction between the wars of an stateside standard of living. the book addresses some of that in the introduction and the epilogue to talk about consumerism and the

consequences of that. >>host: mereditn lair what do you teach? >> american history, a vietnam war. >>host: her new book just coming out published by the university of north carolina, "armed with abundance" consumerism and soldiering in the vietnam war" thank you for joining us said george mason >>host: death and redemption is the name of the book. professor stephen barnes

from george mason university is the author. first of all, what did say gulag? in short, an acronym for the chief administration of canso was a bureaucratic institution but we use a much more erred generally to be in the soviet first labor system also internally exile people as well and to talk about the soviet penal system but also to help political prisoners. >> when and how they developed? >> the first labor camps start very eerie in the soviet period. london himself uses the term concentration camp to foot the enemies of the revolution into the confirmation camp and begin to use the idea of forced

labor and to as a method to transform criminals but the deal expansion as to known as the multibillion dollar prisoner institution waits for the death of lebanon and the rise of stalin with the revolution from above. says he was in the midst of agriculture that takes away been forcing them to become state employees and there was a lot of resistance and some to send them off to siberia and to put she was

part of the institution but when does it end? has day massive institution come movies see it come to an end after stalin died is 1953. so by then there is relatively few political prisoners left. maybe forced labor camps continued throughout the period and then also with hardened criminals. >> he sent to a wider ride the of the people and first, these are those who are political prisoners or installed two new these few

both. >> putin instead of invades and two spoke of cup of coffee and the interest of terrorist intent but this is on a group of the other it can put it helped robbers and rapists and murderers and thieves those that are held and penal systems around the world. the third group that you know, classified protocol but it's what about absenteeism for work and a number of degrees that if

you take a few potatoes to feed your family and you can said then it is. >> can-do kit to that time social ethnically they violated the law but the mismatch was so severe that i don't consider them criminals but they weren't exact gave prisoners of conscience either the maps were found in based extremes like in the far north of siberia or central asia where i have done a lot of research for my book and this is like an extension of southern siberia. and we should not be confused to think that it

was nice there. we're talking places temperatures reached a big if putt at kid new have it not work among prisoners themselves? cards aimed at prisoners? the place they have way too little food to survive thomas sexual violence was rampant and every imaginable thing that could make one's life in absolute living hell. that is what the gulag was life. i was trying to do something new with the book. here we are, the 20th anniversary of the fall of the soviet union and as it came to an end we had access to official information on the labor camp system and it

was all classified during the soviet years. so we started to learn a substantial number of prisoners was released from the camps every year that forced us to think about what the system meant and what it was doing. when i wanted to do was too low texas instruments throughout its chronology in the ball publicity and institutions, the labor camps, the exiled people of the individuals but to make it manageable in the course of a single book but the hoover institution and stanford university as a graduate student, the stock could deal -- struck of a deal that the glove go to the central administration archive now available in the united states to different libraries. the original agreement was

for 1.5 million frames of microfilm and they have exceeded the number. nobody could ever go through all of this so you have to decide how do, but the project that is manageable but allows you to tell the story that you tell? so come to the given location and to shape still play but also to get out of the materials that are available that is a central archive to look at the wade the individual camp and its commanders and employees tried to do with the demands but they were receiving from moscow. there is a number of different places one could choose to do this but i a chose of a city of sentral cause expand. the third largest city but

the city built by blood labor and i chose it for a number of reasons and that has the phi friday of institutions but also because frankly, it is well below the arctic circle also been impossible locales and when it comes time to think about spending seven months going through the archives in the middle of the winter the idea of not having 24 hours of darkness it is quite appealing. it has allowed me to tell a story that both grapples with what the gulag means as all hold also at the specific institution to see the lives of specific individuals. >>host: now you have done their academic research, how accurate was saved archipelago? >> as tire worked on this

over the course of many, many years, i am always struck by how much damage it is truly amazing faking and i have all of these advantages he did and nobody would but i have access to information and i had access to his work. the main thing is in the midst of the difficulties of doing the work that he is so often right. i write about an uprising that happen june 1954 and a these prisoners managed to kick the guards and the gulag administration out of the camp's own and hole lead over 40 days. i could look at the official documentation from moscow and in the locality and it

read about the uprising. so many fascinating thing the spread of the prisoners using flying ties to drop leaflets. in the archives i find they were using kites and also broadcasting by radio. in the archives, the prisoners used running water to create lo what power station to power the radios to try to broadcast their message to the local population hoping they could get somebody from moscow to look into what they understood as violations of legality but again and again i found him to be correct. not everything. things he simply could not know because of the limitations of what he had access to but he is

phenomenal on the detailed incidents where he can talk to participants. he was wrong about the total numbers of presidents -- prisoners the number was higher but how could he have known or how can you extrapolate from your experience and talk from a number of people it into estimating that held over 5 million individuals? but i am far more astounded how much he got right and a few errors that are there to seven, and the camps were there? who ran those? how autonomous? >> the exact number of camps we cannot really know because it depends on your definition of a camp. when you think of a camp you may think of as those surrounded by walls then

everything that is officially a camp had a huge number of seven camps that were a zone. we're talking about thousands of the individual locales but the official number of camps but also less than 100 that sounds it make it to be much less important but they were run by the soviet police and the variety of acronym names of the well known kgb, run by these institutions to be the head of the camp may have been a position that somebody want to have as a stepping stone to something better but there was tremendous danger if there was too many escapes you

could end up arrested yourself. one commander was arrested december 1930a and executed for allowing too many escapes for a decline in discipline and it is a frightening position to be in and did you go down much more level like the armed guards not a position most people want to have. when it is 40 below it is 40 below even if you are a guard but you are still outside and you face criminal prosecution. they had to provide tremendous inducements are you work here two years and you can choose your next position to return to your home. they would demobilize use

red army soldiers to work in a gulag camps and in the soviet union you groovy had true free choice sosa sometimes you did it to lower you try not to be noticed. >> landesk the crew loved system collapse? to make it is in the terms of the population of the late staal when years and after it 1942 but march 1953 stalin dies literally three weeks after they announce a massive amnesties to release over 1 million prisoners, nearly half of the toll labor camp population at that time. they did this because they had come to understand it

was not a financial benefit but it costing them incredible amounts of money. they were performing very unskilled labor in horrible conditions and had to provide some amount of food to keep them alive and a whole system of circulation of crass-- classified material and had to pay for the guards and the administrators and understood it cost them tremendously. so what they did, after stalin dies to say we have lots of people who are not a danger. they have fallen afoul of the harsh legal campaign and says we have to change to your doing and proposes a amnesty to release people with relatively short sentences for not political

fences and then says if you don't change these laws we will soon have this many prisoners all over a again so it is the beginning of the decline of the gulag system then to be caught up as khrushchev of becomes the supreme leader of the soviet union and part of his strategy in power was to move away from the worst of the violence and also starts the process of releasing the political prisoners. but the gulag in terms of thinking of a forced labor camp system never collapses are goes away and turns its attention almost exclusively toward the hardened criminals.

there is a member that are held that his zeroth two of these small part agree find that using prisoners of forced labor.net go away. >> you are watching c-span2 we're on the campus of george mason university talking to some of the professors here who have also written books and repair currently talking with steve barnes death and redemption. as far as you can tell have you done more research in the soviet gulag archives they and anybody else? >> i don't know if i have done more but there are a number of other scholars who were doing work since the

late 1980's. but. >> it is a subject that greedy to more about and there are a lot of the young scholars and a former soviet union doing work on this today. i ran a conference that said davis center a few years ago we had well over 70 applications for those who are doing the kind of research that we need to understand the system of. this book is a very important contribution and of the begins to address some and eighth things to go into depth to understand. just think of the amount of literature on the nazi concentration camp there is nowhere near the

disinformation available on the soviet labor camps. and to know more about the system and all of the different localities and good different kinds of laborers and all of these things are critical and i am so pleased there are fine young scholars working on this today. >>host: weir did you come up with the term death and redemption for the title? >>guest: as a started by a saw in the gulag represents two important thing is it was a place of mass death even by official statistics coming in the labor camp paloverde 1 million prisoners die and it could be as many as 25% any given day in year.

but we have though is known this was an incredibly brutal fight when we got access to official information and come it no longer it is 25% to that is released every year. this is one hedge a 15,000 prisoners every year and that sometimes half a million people getting a house of the raises questions what does this is done been? who was getting and how do they determined who was getting out? to the soviets care what they were becoming and if they would be dangerous? so what i try to understand the gulag is to think of an attempt by the individual prisoner to be a part of that 20% is released every year to be a part of