about 40 minutes. >> michelle gillespie who was r.j. reynolds? >> he was selling chewing tobacco and became the best manufacturer in the country. >> how did he become that? >> because he was the second assignment ousonof 16 children o planter before the civil war who owned over 50 slaves, the largest in patrick county virginia. his father lived in virginia and so r.j. reynolds was born in 1850 and learned the whole business of growing tobacco from his father, and his father was

also entrepreneurial and pretty shrewd and recognized it is great to grow tobacco but it might be even better to sell it himself and to process it and manufacture it and so he took that and he created on his own plantation in manufacturing and he had a slave and his sons figure out how to turn the tobacco plant into chewing tobacco and so he was selling chewing tobacco before the civil war. and after the civil war and during the period of reconstruction he had his sons continue learning the business. so his father was very entrepreneurial and figured out that you were losing money and tobacco trade over the course of the middle of the 19th century in the end of the civil war and reconstruction and he taught his sons how to do the business. his sons realized the plantation was too far away from the marketing possibilities that you are going to sew the tobacco you

couldn't do it the old way the old way was to get into wagons and take this tobacco, this chewing tobacco and head into the appalachian mountains and go down the backbone shoulder of the mountains and so the tobacco to the people that lived in the hollows and the valleys and he would send his sons out to do this. while his son realized that made some money but it was not a very smart way to market he realized the future lay in railroads and having closed access to the railroads and bigger efficiencies of the scale so when r.j. reynolds was a teenager after the civil war, he went to baltimore and in baltimore he studied accounting and he went to the county and what he did in baltimore as a young man was to learn how the business works. the business modernizing of the

period. >> how did he end up in north carolina? >> because he came back to baltimore and looked at his father's plantation and small-scale manufacturing. and he said i'm going to work for you a little bit longer so he saved up money and his father paid him for his part of the share and the golden leaf tobacco market was going to be best served a little bit south of where he was in patrick county virginia so he moved to wednesday north carolina in a tiny little town in the et 60s and 70s. a couple thousand people, but because of its location, there were tons of young men like himself who realized people were just beginning to grow a long north carolina and virginia border was gold in their pocket if they could bring it into a warehouse and better yet if they could manufacture it.

he was one of those dozens of men that arrived in wednesday night. hwinston. he came in 1875 and had the equipment of about $7,500 at the time which is about $140,000 in today's money. he took that money and bought a lot and got a warehouse and he was so cheap that he slept upstairs in the manufacturing and he credits his early beginnings to about a dozen african american man who worked with him. in the beginning in 1875 he really was one of dozens of other men like him setting up these warehouses on early main factoring tobacco. but pretty quickly he figured out that he could do some changes, some innovations that other people were not thinking about. he bought his steam engine and

he was able to provide light all through the winter so he was able to manufacture through those short days or the long nights in the short days so he was able to produce faster than anybody else was and he also looked around the town of north carolina and south of the border and he said this town is going to be big someday and he pushed to get an extension of the train service to wednesday wednesday . he bought land for private reasons, he pressed for public utility and ran for the city council. he decided he was going to make this place work and put all of his heart and soul into making him grow and prosper, so he emerged as his younger brothers like to see by the 1880s biggest blood in the town of wednesday and that he was doing

very well commercially, he was doing very well with manufacturing, he was buying tobacco from the tobacco farmers counties away that were selling to him exclusively. he had a big personality because probably he'd gone into the mountains to sell that tobacco as a young man. he learned how to talk to anybody and everybody and that carried over into his transition from this agricultural world to this new manufacturing world that he was in charge of. so he could talk to the farmers. he could talk to the african american men. he could talk to middle class families and some of the more well-to-do families love to have a r.j. reynolds come to their weddings come as he was a very charming guy that everybody seemed to like and everybody wanted to be attached to. by the 1890s, his tobacco manufacturing was so successful

that he probably was the largest manufacturer of chewing tobacco in the country by the 1890s. >> wended cigarettes come? >> r.j. reynolds was actually slow aching the transition to cigarettes. they have become popular by the mid-19th century in europe and james buchanan and her have north carolina, so about an hour in today's time an hour and a half away were very quick to make the transition to cigarettes. they were the first to buy the manufacturing machinery that you needed. they were manufacturing cigarettes. r.j. reynolds for someone that ended up being innovative in the 20th century, he was kind of behind the times in the late 19th century. perhaps because he was so successful at cornering the tobacco market. he had about 40 different brands

he would fix his labels on. he seems to have everybody's markets so he didn't really feel a burning desire become a burning desire as i if were to make the transition to cigarettes. he is going to end up making a transition in 1913 with the camel cigarette it's going to take a bunch of changes in his outlook and changes in the market for him to make that transition. there was a panic in 1893. and when that panic happened, he thought about retiring. he was about 43 at the time. he thought about retiring and he said i want to take some big risks and he spent the 1890s -- even though the economy was beginning to think growing and growing his company. he was going to big bat. he went into such debt to create

more and more buildings and extend his market that his top management people left unanswered this man is crazy but he was crazy like a fox because he ended up bringing in his younger brothers and put them in charge of the company with him. he kept growing and he found he was getting in trouble by the late 1890s. and after that point, he went to james buchanan duke, the duke of cigarettes. he went to james buchanan duke because since 1893 he had been buying up the american tobacco co. and monopol monopoly come hn buying up all of the tobacco companies throughout the country. he had stayed away, duke stayed away from r.j. reynolds because he thought r.j. reynolds was doing to chewing tobacco and that was old-fashioned. it was a lower class clientele. he wasn't interested. he thought cigarettes and pipe tobacco were the way to go.

but r.j. reynolds like a fox said i need more capital here. i've gone into debt. i still want to grow my company. i need more capital. but people didn't realize and i found out in the course of the research is that r.j. reynolds went to duke and said okay but i need your capital. come to bite my company out. me under the american tobacco monopoly and you will be glad that you did. so he came to winston and they made a secret deal. and to his friends r.j. reynolds said it looks like i'm going under but i'm not really. you watch and see what happens. once the r.j. reynolds tobacco company was under the duke monopoly under american tobacco, r.j. reynolds dot american tobacco to buy out all of his competitors in wednesday in and north carolina and everywhere around including the hanes

textiles. i don't think most people realize the famous corporation today started out as a tobacco manufacturing. anit might have stayed tobacco manufacturing if r.j. reynolds hadn't convinced duke to buy the company out from under them and in the early 20th century they such textiles after that. once the r.j. reynolds has no more competition, he sits and keeps selling his chewing tobacco. he goes to new york all the time and one for the corporations work in the early 20th century and learning how they work he comes back and uses the ideas of modern corporations and how they work, about how to have effective management teams and about what is going on in the advertising of new york city and he takes all of that game and then he builds research components of the company and he brings in a swiss scientist and they are working on using other flavorings and a very quietly

they are working on the new pipe tobacco and they are also working on cigarettes. they are not supposed to under the terms of the american tobacco monopoly. they are not supposed to do this at all them about he is doing this. and in 1907, right as the supreme court is starting to look at american tobacco and say this is a monopoly just like standard oil this is bad into we can't do this anymore, r.j. reynolds .-full-stop prince albert smoking tobacco and the duke is spending so much time worrying about the supreme court looking at the american tobacco company that he lets it go by and so r.j. reynolds cells prince albert smoking tobacco in a beautiful can with prince albert by this on the front, and it hit the market like a wildfire. and everyone buys the prince albert tobacco and he is a great success. two or three years later the supreme court breaks up the

american tobacco trust and r.j. reynolds comes out smelling like a rose tree at the supreme court breaks it up into four different companies, makes them smaller, and r.j. reynolds gets his company back. meanwhile he has been investing in doing research i and cigarettes, and in 1913, he then launches the camel cigarette, and it has the most brilliant, absolutely brilliant advertising campaign. it was so brilliant in new york city are the preeminent new york advertising company that people still study that advertising some of that whole advertising strategy. that whole today. and it started out with ads in all of the popular magazine magf the time saying look out, something is going to come. and then in the next month it would say the camel is coming. look out. and it would build up to this anticipation of launching the actual camel cigarette at the

camel cigarette at 50% of the whole market in the 19 teens. so r.j. reynolds was able to do something that i think is quite extraordinary. he was born in 1850 in slaveholding virginia who learns the tobacco industry, learns the tobacco agricultural world but transforms himself by the early 20th century into a leading manufacturer. and by 1920 he is the top 120th corporation in the country. so this little small-scale farm launches this man who has the most successful cigarette brand. >> when did winston become winston salem north carolina? spinet that is a good question. in 1913 they were two towns separated by about half a mile. salem had been started by the

moravians who came down from bethlehem pennsylvania and the 1760s and they wanted to set up a community in north carolina and building their community and bring new recruits. they had come from germany originally. they were very cultured, very well read people. they probably were the first to bring the aging century america. so they came to this pretty wildly in the dark airliner piedmont in the 19th century. they educated their sons and daughters and so salem prospered through the end of the 18th century and into the 19th century and really prided themselves when things were very cultured, middle-class group of

people than half a mile away we have wednesda winston that is ag all of these i wouldn't say they are due well z. is attracting bees then out to make a buck and they seem to be the antithesis of everything that we have stood for. the thing about these tobacco folks in textile folks, too for coming to winston is that they recognize that the future lies in building the manufacturing world and using the transportation opportunities of trains and using advertising and by the end of the 19th century even though ceylon isn't thrilled about the growth in the manufacturing and of the new populations that winston is drawing the salem has to pay attention and by the early 20th century, the likes of winston are saying to the townspeople

look, manufacturing is the future. we have a great industrial city that is taking shape before our eyes. you really need to join us. we need to incorporate together. and if we do, we will be better. we will be able to attract more businesses and able to attract more investment if we come together. so, a lot of people were not excited about that. but by 1930 corporation happened. >> i think we have done a disservice michele winston because the name of your book is katharine partners of fortune in the making of the new south. who is katharine? >> she gets top billing for a couple of reasons. i should say she gets the top billing because i really started out this book project to look at katharine reynolds. i've been a historian of the women in the american south and when i arrived at wake forest

university i realized that she was really seen as the leading light of winston-salem, that her ideas about social reform, her commitment to the environment and her interest in the social issues was something that everybody that lived in the winston salem area is a part of the legacy of what it was all about. so i started researching katharine first. she was born much later than the man she is going to marry. she was born in 1980 and he was born in 1850. so a 30 year difference celebrated. they didn't get married until 1905. he had never married before by the way. he had been a bachelor. katharine was a fascinating figure to me because she had done all of this change but an act of researching her life i

realized she couldn't have made the mark that she did without r.j. reynolds. not only has wealth, but also his part today to support enabled her to use her imagination and intelligence and skills and leadership abilities. and that if she had not married r.j. reynolds, she may not have had the kind of legacy that she left us. >> what were some of the causes? >> she was interested in all kinds of things. she was one of the founding members in winston-salem and was interested in the federation of the women'federation ofthe womes committed to the women's business organizations. she cared deeply about all of the social services and hospitals, the orphanages, she would give families meals at thanksgiving time to help them

celebrate even though they were experiencing the rest of you she was interested in the women's right to vote. every conceivable club effort in the early 20th century katharine had a finger. she was never a sustained leader in the movement but she was behind them either giving money or serving on the board showing the people not just of winston-salem but north carolina and beyond that women can have an important public role to bring about critical social reform to the era. >> what were some of r.j. reynolds public causes? >> r.j. reynolds is an interesting person in that respect. r.j. reynolds didn't take on the same prominent benevolent philanthropic efforts that katharine did that were bigger in the city and the state scope and national.

r.j. reynolds was a bit different. he was very strategic. so, while he was a great philanthropist, his philanthropy was very local. and usually his philanthropy was for whites and blacks in the period was the jim crow segregation. very unusual to get equal money to white and black entities. so he gave his money to orphanages and he gave his money to churches and he gave his money to the benevolent societies but also all very small local ones. i argue in the book these were the people that supported the company. in a lot of cases these were the employees at these were the people that he wanted to be connected to in the community. i think that he gave equally

quite strategically. we might have to say to ourselves r.j. reynolds is way ahead of himself and is opposed to the jim crow segregation but that isn't the case. he accepted the racism that was part and parcel of that world. but i think what he did understand is that by giving act quickly to african-americans and whites he was saying to those i care deeply about your social issues, about your community and i want to support your community and they have a connection to you both as your employer and someone that cares about your welfare beyond my factory. he also did this i think because he was having to deal with the reality of a very heroic and jim crow racism and a time for african-americans in this 20th century south. many were of course so dismayed by having the right to vote taken away from them and having

their civil rights taken away from them and literally from extralegal violence that many african-americans wanted to leave the south and go north. a r.j. reynoldthe r.j. reynoldsg to support your community. i'm giving money to the churches and to your society to say i'm going to take care of you stay here in winston-salem. >> and he was a democrat? >> he was a democrat, that a democrat at that time doesn't mean the same to being a democrat today means. in fact the democratic party was the predominant party in the early 20th century. and the democratic party had used racist investors to get rid of republican populist challengers. so the democratic party was the party of the all whites in the early 20th century. so, that really shouldn't surprise us. it was essentially a

conservative party for white men in the early 20th century. >> from your book r.j. reynolds and embraced life and he named several of the brands after his favorite girlfriends. over 100 years later local stories continue to circulate about his dalliances as a single man. his white and black communities recounts several world traditions about sexual relationships with black women in particular. >> absolutely. absolutely. r.j. was a robust healthy vibrant man in every sense of the word. he loves to live life large. he loved hunting and he loved drinking and even though he was incredibly hard-working and disciplined in some respects, when he let his hair down, he let his hair down and he didn't marry anyone until he was

54-years-old. i was able to document the fact that he did have at least one child out of wedlock. the story goes and gets told by members of the family the story goes that he was out hunting with a friend in a neighboring county and had a relationship with the farmer's daughter who subsequently became pregnant, and had a son. that son was in an orphanage for part of his life. but by the time he was seven or eight i was able to find him in winston living in the home of r.j. reynolds's brother and sister-in-law who essentially adopted him as their own but i also found that that young man was being tutored by the r.j. reynolds and i could find this young man being collecting fees and to learn how businesses work

and by the time he was in his 20s he was working for the company. he ended up being an important manager in omaha nebraska. he died in 1918. his son died four years later early in life that he had over $600,000 in his estate and he gave that money to a number of charities and actually ended up getting more money from him perfectly than himself. so it is an interesting story to see how he took care of this young man. and he married r.j. reynolds in 1905 and he knew about the sun. i was never able to document.

i suspect once he and katharine were married and he was faithful for the 14 years of their marriage he expressed deep love. he had four children with katharine and then he became ill with pancreatic cancer at the end of their marriage. she had been told in 1914 not to have more children. she was pregnant with a fifth child with r.j. reynolds and had some heart trouble and her doctors actually aborted the fetus and told her to not have any more children.

when he died a year later she fell in love with a young principle that she had hired for a school she was pulling on her estate. he was a handsome young man and was 12 years her junior and was a world war i veteran and was also deeply committed to education. and i think that they felt very madly and passionately in love. and she was very committed to having children with him. she married him in 1921 and she became very committed to having children with him. there is a word in my town she forced his hand here. in 1924 there were concerns.

she was 43-years-old. there wasn't a healthcare for the women of that age and time. she went to a hospital in new york and was on bed rest for the three months preceding. he was born in may of 1924. her husband sent a telegram home to every one at the estate and three days later she died of an embolism. a very sad story. the city was destroyed when they heard that katharine had died. the city was very sad when r.j. reynolds died earlier in 1918 but he live to be 64 come he had a full life and the best compa company. when katharine died, the city mourned because she was only 43-years-old and there was the sense that she would have done more for the city than she had already done i and her body was brought back by train and a

funeral was arranged for her, six different ministers spoke at the funeral from six different pages. the government was closed in honor of this woman in 1924. i know of no other city that shut down for the death of a woman in the 19th century. it was particularly in the american south in this period so deep within the morning for katharine and the understanding of her commitment to the people of that place. >> she discovered when she couldn't escape the confines of the southern womanhood which she came to see as unending duties on behalf of others and a does e leadership of the tobacco company increasingly disregarded

her authority after the death she looked to the cultural expressions of modernity as a means to which to find pleasure. >> absolutely. when she realized she wasn't going to have the kind of voice in the company that she had up to this point with her husband, i think that she was instrumental in the success of the campaign for the cigarettes. they were good friends and how best to raise cattle. when he died, she didn't have that kind of influence in the company anymore. and the company was not interested in even bringing in her new husband into the company as well. and i think she's all that door was closed to the business side of her that she had been able to cultivate through r.j. reynolds and she let her hair down a little bit and it was in her

late 30s and 40s she saw the new generation of the 1920s and she embraced that. i think she was passionately madly in love with her second husband and i think it was a kind of awakening in that relationship. i was lucky that i was able to meet the sun that was born in 1924 a few years before he died he was living in baltimore and i spent a couple days with him and he gave me the love letters between catherine and her second husband and that's where i make that argument because she says i'm going to embrace my life. i'm going to think that what is the best culture i can bring to the city, i'm going to have beautiful clothes and i'm going to remake myself and you can literally see in the photograph how she goes from the 1905 kind

of late victorian woman very young but still up to her neck her sleeves covered and by 192100 can see that she is waiting sleepless outfits. and she is just presenting herself in a very different way. she says life is short. i have my four children. i'm going to embrace life. >> michele r.j gillespie, what s the r.j. reynolds company today? >> today it is reynolds american so it has joined with another tobacco company. it has had a story life in many, many ways in winston, but it's have to be more international to develop new clients abroad rather than the united states. reynolds has gone through the

master settlement of the late 1990s. the company has downsized. you open the newspaper and learned that the company had left more people go. but it's still headquartered there. if manufacturers fewer and it still has a huge imprint on the town but there are so many residences who very early on were beneficiaries of not being employees but also getting stock and that has grown and grown over the course of the 20th century and there had been a really, really good profits made from this as well as the 1990s. so, it is an extraordinary city

during the depressio depressione more millionaires per capita and most of that came from the success of the cigarette trade. switch was about having an extraordinary scene. we have the first school for the arts in north carolina. we had one of the first arts councils in the country. so, there are ways in which the wealth that came out of the tobacco company along with the textiles and other companies have contributed to making a small city culturally it pretty exciting place. >> what's the connection to wake forest university and what's your connection. >> my connection is an easy one. i'm a professor of history. i've been there since 1999.

i should also say my husband is a graduate. i'm very fortunate to come to wake forest because i knew it had an extraordinary liberal arts educations that it's a pleasure to teach at lake forest. it is a big beneficiary of the reynolds family. originally in 1844 is originated just north in the town of wake forest north carolina and it was extraordinary in the higher education. the family was able to persuade this liberal arts college to move itself from the middle of the state to winston-salem. it was a part of the estate and it was the beneficiary of the

foundation funds for the scholarships for the profession ships for the faculty scholarships for students. succumb in many ways the history of the family are interwoven together since the 1950s. >> we have been talking with michele gillespie author of this book katharine and r.j. reynolds partners and fortune of the new south. take you for your time.

is the truth is for conservatives to win the right to govern the three core groups of the conservative movement, for policy conservatives, and the economic conservatives have to work together to elect candidates and for the foreseeable future, the conservative movement will have to use the party ticket the candidates elected or they will

simply lose. >> up there will continue to be many freak show moments when the interest of the different groups collide. in the circus, the freak show was a hugely popular attraction. it was so popular in fact that he couldn't get his patrons through the sideshow as fast as he would have liked. some of them would linger for hours. so he solved the problem by posting a huge sign over the door that read to the egress. here they went through the door and found themselves outside learning what you already know that egress means exit. yes, the conservative leader's wish that they could find a simple way to show their

troublesome factions. the conservative leaders can't agree among themselves which groups should be cast out of the movement. the conservative movement has a movement of ideas. but it may be the enemy of victory.

for the first african-american regiment to fight in world war i. the 369th infantry regiment. the harlem hell fighters. he spoke at the university of pennsylvania for a little under an hour. [applause] >> can you hear me if i talk like this. can you hear me in the back

class how is this? thank you for coming. i've got to say this is new for me because i've never done a reading of a comic book and i'm not really sure how to do that because what happens is someone comes up to the podium and says i'm going to read me the book what japan did to china again but its pictures, so do we just all say wow look at that? and here's another page so i think what i'm going to do instead is just talk about it, how it came to be.