>> and i'm very pleased to introduce chandra manning of the radcliffe institute for study at harvard university and not their what this cold war was over. a calf a wholly original play but it was like to escape slavery, how emancipation happened and how citizenship in the united states was citizenship in the united states was transformed. in the wall street journal mike smith says the refuges striking, a highly engaged narrative from the uplifting story of the journey toward freedom. we learn something about the fragile picture of the coming of the dignity and courage of the people, please join me in

welcoming chandra manning. >> thanks to all of you for coming today. i'm surprised to see anybody. with the election just three days ago and the outcome we know will make history going forward, i was not sure if anybody would care about what happens 150 years ago but i'm glad you did. the story really matters. it is a story of refugees at the center of american history. a story of success and failure and how those things are often intertwined, a story about making and defining citizenship not once and for all but on an ongoing day in day out basis. it affects all of us bearing responsibility. what i want to do is talk about how this book came about. i will give you a glimpse into

what it says. i want to ask if any of you have been to a psychorama? do you know what it is? an enormous secular painting. one is the battle of gettysburg, it is 377 feet long and 42 feet high. imagine a football field end to end including the end zone, 42 feet high, and every inch is painted in intricate, exquisite, elaborate detail. that is a psychorama. they are overwhelming. they are impossible to enter gradually. you can only enter total immersion and once you do you are overwhelmed and only know how to make sense of what you

are seeing, you have to remain lost and disoriented for a good long time. that is exactly how it felt to buy this book. i thought i should have figured this book thing out and it should be straightforward and that was the first thing i had wrong when i first got started. the second book means it did grow to some extent out of my first book. my first book was about what civil war soldiers thought about slavery. it end in the spring of 1865 and ended did it at a moment of tremendous promise and fluidity where race was can hurt and right were concerned. it ended did at a moment when the united states quickly passed the united states constitution, the 13th amendment ending slavery, expanding citizenship and expanding the right to vote to black men. every one of those with the

revolution, three passed in quick succession. put that in perspective, the united states only pass two amendments ever since the bill of rights up to that point. it was clearly a rich moment. i want to know how you get from that moment to 1896, plessy versus ferguson, jim crow and lynching. that was the book, that was the question i set out to answer when i began the second book. what i have is this book, "troubled refuge: struggling for freedom in the civil war". when i set out to write this book about citizenship and rights in the decades following emancipation, timing had everything to do with it because it was 2009, the 200th anniversary of abraham lincoln's birth and it immediately followed in 2011-2015 with the

sesquicentennial of the civil war. thanks to those things i received a lot of invitations to give talks usually about emancipation and citizenship. it should have been down the center of the plate, and easy talk to give, exactly what i was working on, should have been able to wake up in the morning and give it is i couldn't. what i quickly discovered was emancipation and citizenship where two different things, and didn't understand either one very much. emancipation first. where did people start being slaves and start being something else. have 1 million of them went through the process of exiting slavery in place is called

contraband camps. contraband camps were refugee camps that followed the union army throughout the south to support. don't know much about those, nobody else knows much about those but contraband camps, people get mental images of ted's full of smuggled cigars, sound like a good place to start. a nice little scenes that are in the introductory section of my book on emancipation and citizenship that takes place in contraband camps. better find out something about contraband camps. in deciding to do that it was exactly like entering a psychorama, step into the middle of this enormous story and be totally overwhelmed by the details of what i was finding, details of people's lives inside refugee camps. i was overwhelmed by the particularities of men, women and children's experiences and i

could not find any kind of analytical framework or narrative arc to make sense of this, putting them in conversation with each other or to put them in conversation with congress or the president or the larger story of how slavery ended to do. i was lost and really stuck. i kept going in circles. finally a basket of eggs drove the first 200 distraction, then tried an experiment. the basket of eggs was an episode i came across involving women in north carolina. she put a basket of eggs and her children into a canoe, walked 12 miles up the coast to the union army and delivered those eggs to general burnside's and delivered herself and children to freedom and that story stuck with me because eggs. eggs in a canoe, the most

fragile products you can think of. doesn't take much to break an egg and she had kids in the canoe. if they are like my kid the eggs would be broken in half a mile, how is she going to get them safely, never mind the eggs, house will to get the people to safety? i didn't know if her children could, to make sense of this story. timing stepped in too. about the time they wouldn't let go of my brain. they were significant challenges, and the oldest son, it means something specific in this story. a lot of ways life is hard but one of them has to do with how he perceived, the perception. when most of us come into a new place we receive from the

general to the specific, you walked in here today and so did i and at first we were aware of four walls, ceiling, we know we are in a room and we quickly know we are in a bookstore, the bookstore is a familiar place, safe and fine and even though we haven't been here before we know where we are in space, we are safe and secure and go about the business of what we do in a bookstore and eventually we feel in details, notice the book we are looking for, we notice the big picture first. my son precedes the opposite order. he is no more aware he is doing it then you are but he begins with the very specific and works out. he walks into a place like this it depending where his eye falls first, maybe it would fall -- is this an end? fall on this an end first and he would have to take into account

every single book on that end, the pictures on the covers would register, he would notice the title, eventually work out there were three rose and copies underneath and then the whole end, he would go out a little further and a little further and a little further. for a long time most of the time, he is disoriented. he doesn't know where he is. it feels overwhelming, feels panicky, makes it superhard but also means he almost always notices ing's the rest of us miss. it totally changes my world. i got the idea what if i look at these eggs the way my son would? if i stop trying to see a big picture they fit in and start with the x, what do i notice that i had missed before? what i noticed with eggs are probably what the woman had that day. i noticed the waves.

i noticed the shakiness of the canoe and i noticed that she couldn't see an outcome to this story anymore than i could. all she could no is the details of what that they brought her and the enormous risk she faced. to decide, take one step and then another anyway. she made me see in a way i hadn't before that to exit slavery was to go up against hard power with absolutely no assurance of success, to look real threats right in the face, to have no idea what would happen and to do it anyway. that is what it felt like to leave slavery. the first part of this book, "troubled refuge: struggling for freedom in the civil war," tries to tell that story. the story of leaving slavery, exiting the state of being owned by another person and doing it in places called contraband

camps. i want to emphasize what that woman helped me see, that is everybody's experience of emancipation began in the particular details of exactly where they were. i want to start with a paragraph or two first contraband camp in virginia. as the story goes, all point comforts at the tip of a peninsula formed by the james and york rivers way down the atlantic coast of north america, weary grateful travelers spend at the in a 17th century ship guaranteed to make any landfall look like a refugee. judging from first appearances, it is beautiful, skirted by the atlantic ocean and chesapeake bay with sandy beaches and rocky outcroppings in the breeze that blows, relief and oysters that littered it sure is added a

touch of luxury. certainly compared to the wreaking, disease ridden 17th century ship it must have seemed like a haven or even a paradise. and in the clip of general benjamin butler, plenty of oysters but no water no matter how. in the 1860s us soldiers set out 900 feet into the ground without finding a drop. finally they realized the facility and gave up. without massive intervention, it was neither helpful nor permanent. no place can sustain life for long. the too was the case of civil war contraband camps the first of which at a u.s. army installation at all point comfort called fort munro, the first of many contraband camps spread wherever the union army went through the occupied south. there were specific places where

you emancipation began, for nearly half 1 million former slaves including contraband camps black men, women and children sought refuge from the army, sought refuge from slavery. they found it in the sense of escaping their owners wrath but the environment natural and man-made they encountered made for troubled refugees. when the commonwealth of virginia left the union april 17, 1861, it remained in the hands of the u.s. army and it was to that army that three enslaved men ran on may 23rd of 1861 making sells the business of general benjamin butler, the officer at fort monroe. part of the story of butler it is contraband in the lives of three men then meets the eye, we will look at both later. it goes like this.

sheppard mallory, baker and james went to work building confederate fortifications when they learned their owner, confederate colonel charles mallory plan to remove them further south for the confederate army and separate them from their families. they decided to look at portland's row. the colonel sent an agent to demand their return and compliance to the fugitive slave law but refused, to build fortification, armed rebellion against the united states and the of war to confiscate has contraband. butler used slaveholders own assistance this lambda legal property of their owners to release from their owners grasp. they are unavailable in peace time. and wherever the union army went, enslaved men, women and children go to a blue line, and

unimaginable risk to get there. they gambled against us, family search party, they shoot the sound of unexpected flips, they defied the dire threat of their masters, but the slaves ran and hunted them down. so they came. they found work where they could. they aided the union army when and where they were able and began the long journey from slavery to freedom. tells the story of the journey from slavery to freedom literally in stories, and they made the journey and contraband camps in the east, tended to establish themselves early in the war in 1861 and stay put. if you picture contraband camp you might think of a landscape painting. to tell storys in the west, camps in the west if you think of it as a kaleidoscope, the army moved them, camps sprung up and went away all along rivers

and rail lines to the west. east and west, day in and day out men, women and children had to build a path out of slavery, into something they hoped would be freedom. i love parts one and 2, chapters numb one and 2 of this book because it tells their story and i will tell you one of them. they are not all happy. i will tell you a happy one because we could use it. my favorite takes place in an island in the mississippi river near memphis. a woman found herself there, 1864 in this massive place she doesn't recognize anybody, it is confusing and overwhelming until she hears a voice that sounds familiar but she hasn't heard it in 15 years, it can't be who she thinks it is and turned around and it is exactly who she thinks she is.

hasn't seen her sister in 15 years. she was sold 16 years ago. her sister was sold because her two young boys had been sold away and her sister was grieving and crying so hard, not fit for labor anymore, she would not stop for those boys. the woman at the sister reunited and for a few minutes they couldn't even speak they were so overcome. there was more good news. those boys were in the camp too. those stories repeated over and over and over again and some other things were not quite so wonderful. the story of a woman who followed sherman's army through the carolinas, fought for freedom and collapsed on the beach and died of exhaustion alone and by herself. each of those worries is a film -- little vignette on the wall of a psychorama. the first couple chapters i try

to let you see each of them and understand them, if it stops, we just told the stories we would never get into the middle of the psychorama room and figure out the meaning of the whole sum of its parts may be so parts 2 in 3 of the book try to come to an understanding of what these stories add up to. they add up to a story, stateless people, and the united states government and contraband camps. they did not achieve what former slave hoped they would. those helped in the war to destroy every. they redefined the relationship

in the united states, and not for themselves, but parts 2 and 3 tell that story. and it was very high. throughout and before. that surprised me. the second incited hinged on is the civil war wasn't -- was a refugee crisis, emancipation was a refugee crisis. the first one, re-enslavement. most events in world history make more sense -- thinking for a moment. the civil war ended did this slavery. we forget how likely it was, no such thing would have happened at all not because of any union reluctance to end slavery because that is how it usually

do, wars make more slaves. this one endeded the institution of slavery in the united states. it was not inevitable that it would do so and the story of how it did so is more complicated than we thought and we don't understand it at all. until we look at what is going on in these camps between former slaves and the union army. chapter 3 of the book tells that story. the second central insight, emancipation was a refugee crisis. understand some things more clearly. what conditions were like, conditions of sitting slavery were really like for many people who exited slavery. the closest things we got our refugee camps today, not places any of you would like to be. we have a un and there were no such things in the 1860s. understanding the refugee crisis

lens texture to the story of what it is like. it also reminds us we have encountered refugee crises in us history before. the refugees are a part of the american story. understanding emancipation is a refugee crisis helps us see the statelessness of the emancipated at the moment of their emancipation and that is to be uniquely vulnerable. people who study world war ii tell me the refugees were most vulnerable, without passports because do not have the protection of a national government. that is exactly where these former slaves found themselves at the moment they left slavery. the things they wanted out of freedom were the things they always wanted. they wanted their communities to

care for the people they cared about had always had the power to deny them. in the 1860s slaveholders did not suddenly change their mind and decide they were entitled to those things after all. former slaves had access to a source of power to overcome slaveholders, these half-million former slaves got themselves to that port of power and allied the union army, they nursed and hospitals, built fortifications, took care of livestock, did the million and 2 things it takes to take a 19th century army in the field and motion and when steak a stronger claims the protection of the union army and national government than a slaveholder trying to overthrow that national government could. they changed citizenship in three ways.

first, before the war, the states and not the national government adjudicated citizenship, partly because of what happened. second of all, citizenship during the war was no longer limited by race and that happened because of what went on in civil war contraband camps. as a result of the civil war citizenship involves the right to protection in a way it had really not before the war and that happened because of what went on in civil war contraband camps. part 2, former slaves allied with the union army and the war to win slavery and redefine citizenship. sounds like the end. you got a book, you can tell me there are three parts to this book, that is not end and it is not the end because as it turns out, neither legaling slavery nor redefining citizenship turned out to be once and for

all the kind of test. part of this book is about early efforts to translate that wartime alliance between former slaves and the union army and national government into a piece term alliance and the translation ever resulted in the 14th amendment which was also an imperfect market. a couple thoughts on what it is i hope the book will achieve. i would like it to lead to a deeper understanding what it was like to exit slavery. being a slave to not being a slave. i would like it to make it impossible to ignore how great a threat of reenslavement was and how long the risk lasted. i would like it to lead to an understanding how former slaves and that includes enslaved women and children both of whom worked for the union army, how they helped win the war and end slavery but also redefine

citizenship for everybody and not just themselves. i would like it if this book could lend an appreciation for the success and failure bounce up in all those in which none of those things, end of slavery, winning the war, redefining citizenship, none of was fully triumphant. sometimes structural forces are a huge overpowering destruction of war and people just plain won out. the abolition of slavery was one of the most revolutionary things ever to happen in the united states but it was also fragile and reversible. our job is not to celebrate with empty triumphalism or shortcomings. our job is to protect it because it remains fragile even today. finally i would like this book to instill appreciation for the definition of citizenship as an

ongoing project. sometimes citizenship borders expand and sometimes they shrink. that is true in every era including our own so defining citizenship, giving it meaning in people's lives is not the job of people who lived through the war. it is our job too every day. thank you. [applause] >> i would love to take any questions. in the back. you are next. >> i'm curious how much if any direction union field commanders had about dealing with a situation where they are winging it? >> that is a long complicated story, chapter 3 and chapter 4.

what is the direction? with it clear and straightforward? no. the direction comes almost immediately but they added on the fashion as the war unfolds. butler makes a contraband decision in may 18, '61 and the war department immediately endorses the decision and said yes, you did the right thing and other commanders, you should do the same thing, you shouldn't send slaves back but then in august 8th they expand that endorsements with instructions from the war department and they have two parts, one says soldiers do not send slaves back but also says soldiers do not fight slaves to come to camp in the first place in the reason is slavery should be adjudicated by civil and not military authority. it should be the decision of civil authorities, not military officers. one of the concerns central to the civil war that we missed is

real fears about the relationship between civil and military authority. and unraveling of slavery trips of over that relationship all the time. orders come out, part a or part b, they focus on the back and those are the ones with open arms or you have other commanders who focus on part b, don't entice them in the first place and they do their best to keep them out. if you are in tennessee or arkansas and trying to run you have no idea which guy you are going to get. the risk to you is acute throughout the war and the war went on. it came down august 8th and they were ambiguous. >> you mentioned it is unusual to have three amendments to the constitution passed so quickly. did the former confederate states vote on fat or was it just the northern states?

>> that is a complicated history as well. the 13th amendment before states are back in the union, confederate states back in the union and ratification is a condition for entering the union. if you want back and you got to ratify it and then the 14th and 15th, the story is not exactly the same but similar. those are in fact ratified by most of the confederate states, some hold out but most don't for much longer. but ratified. under duress. yes? >> after hostilities ended at the business started, how is the story of the contraband -- the argument of the debates?

did feels commanders argue for the amendments? >> the army is behind the 13th amendment and even the 14th amendment. by the 15th amendment soldiers of gone home so it is hard to get voices aggregate. they are absolutely behind the 13th and 14th amendment, mostly. the reason is twofalls. by being in the confederacy they are utterly convinced slavery started this war in the first place. if you want to win the war and keep it won you have to rip it out by the boots and make sure it can never come back and the strongest way is a constitutional amendment. the same with the 14th amendment. even after the passage of the 13th amendment, the threat of the risk if not the institution

or reinstitution of legal slavery conditions like it remain strong so part of what the 14th amendment is about is securing the 13th amendment. it is hard to read slave someone. who is a citizen. the other thing it does, and the 15th in particular, they help the republican party, the party of lincoln and the union have a constituency in the former confederate states because former slaves if they are voting, they are hoping they are able to build a republican party in the states themselves. asmac >> your first book was about soldiers, this is about contraband camp. how do you get from the first topic to the second topic? if i'm not asking too much what

might be next? >> question a and question be which it is much easier to see in retrospect, but now it seems so obvious. it was obvious from the beginning not from our camp standpoint but what things looked like in 1865 and years immediately following the work the quickness of those amendments, political climate, anyone would have thought was coming in 1861 and i really began by wanting to know how you get from that to 1890s and early part of the 20th century and segregation. what happened? not just that but what happened after the war but that was the first question i began with but quickly discovered i didn't know enough to answer that question so i had to go back and look at where it began and that put me back in camp.

i found the same guys i saw the first time who i now see again through another angle which is a fascinating experience. that is a relationship -- what is next to each talking to some people over the weekends, and essay about not having a book to write right now but i was kidding. so many people would totally read it. and essay about living in a decision about living in the fence about living without a clear storyline right now. writing this book gave me an appreciation for in between this. if i could write anything i would write about baseball because i need a book but even then i don't know what i would say. >> can you talk a little bit

about what actually happened to the former slaves that slid -- fled to comfort and camps and what happened specifically to those camps? how welcoming was the community that surrounded them >> initially what i wanted to do was go a decade after the war and follow where it went and i ran out of steam but i also, the story of the war itself, so much more than i thought, they became two separate stories. what happens to them? some of the camps stand you recognize them now as arlington national cemetery. on the estate of robert e lee, the contraband camp during the civil war. it was the inhabitants of the

village the first doug arlington cemetery, that became arlington cemetery. it is a moving place for a lot of reasons but one particular one you might not have known, section the 7, row after row that say citizens, citizen. those are free people from friedman's village, he died, and where buried, almost 20th century. early areas become neighborhoods. the war is over, it becomes less in terms of protection.

and confederate soldiers down. the army is there, obvious advantage that isn't so obvious after the war. this happens as people leave, hit the road and try to find loved ones they haven't seen in 20 years. after the war, things, army supplies i gathered so that is gathered and some are left to their own devices. the story of what happens after, as varied as any other part of the story. the summer of 1862 in particular, the idea there is a labor shortage. i have a bunch of people here

that could use something to do. i have a 4 to fight and they make me feel vulnerable because there are points i could be attacked on and organize the transportation of former slaves in camps on the mississippi river into the midwest and did this with lincoln's blessing of 1862, one of the most astute things lincoln ever did and you know how the election of 1862 went, the elections of 1862, the midterm elections, these former slaves did not go well for the republican party. and voters might have thought getting rid of slavery, i don't want that, there was a lot of that. after that rather than the government, they go to churches

and communities and that's went better but that remains uneven at best. in the pack. >> question about your sources, where they britain, where do you find the story about the eggs? >> i could talk about this all day. i will try not to. the first book that i wrote was about union and confederate sources, people -- you read it and they tell you what they thought and that was pretty straightforward but on this side, and most don't. it was a different process. one of the beauties of the army and federal government is they wrote everything down so using war records and government

records in ways the makers of those records never envisioned or intended ovens up all kinds of vistas. a couple examples. our quartermasters are in charge in camps, quartermasters, the union army lifts things like how many are coming are going out if there is a big huge jump and no soldiers move i know what happens. the record of ships going up and down the mississippi river, same thing, tracking people through pieces like that, and lenders in the national archives lifting the names of contracted to work for the government and union army and i can find those names and can trace the name back to

plantation records and my very favorite source our transcript because former slaves testified, they testified in the published courts, wherever the union army was, when big between martial law and civil law, testimony of african-americans, for good reason, they want the union to win their testimony, their testimony, there is this thing called the american friedmans inquiry commission, and it was authorized by the secretary of war and congress consisting of people to travel to confirmands -- contraband camps and they interview people and make transcriptions of the interviews. soldiers and generals and former

slaves, thousands of pages on microfilm but handwritten. that is where the eggs come from which they go to churches and right back at what they see and what they are doing. there are some warmer slaves who can read and write, in savannah, georgia, she makes her way to camp to write her life story later and records after the war, when black men joined the union army in later years they are entitled to a pension or if they die so are there survivors. to get a pension you have to produce a birth certificate, that kind of thing, people enslaved at the time of marriage or birth don't have those things are what they do instead is narrate what they did during the war and that is the pension

file. you read the community but that is what i thought. designer minister interested in saving the religion. and say more about that. >> you will be delighted to know there is a young woman named abby cooper writing about religion, and a year or two out, all over the place and nonobvious. the question of whether slaves and religion. the ways former slaves practice

but also they are fascinated, might as will get this out of the way. they are fascinated by what they see is a gap between former slaves fervency in matters of religion and what they see as lack of fervency and others, family relationships, reproductive habits, and unseemly amount of commentary on childbearing habitat enslaved women in the reason there is so much is soldiers and even ministers can't figure out how people who are sincerely religious seem not to take it so seriously, not a great deal of recognition of how conditions under slavery would make standards to which white middle-class people could hold themselves. and the the side but i will say

and people who come from the american missionary association by expression and we should be struck by it because we know most for many slaves under slavery a christian but i think we have visions of their christianity being circumscribed by owners and white people in their own balcony and all kinds of laws about not being able to gather and i am not sure we recognize the degree of the unique religious expression that does come out in the use camps. in south carolina and elsewhere, women at the age of 16, real leaders among the community, if you want to get anywhere, seen

as the spiritual leader among the women and that is how you get there. new england woman from massachusetts, she wants to start a school, and re-people want a school but they are not so sure about this. harriet figures out peggy is the leader of the prayer circle and if he can get peggy on the side it will be fine. peggy takes a while to make her mind up but when she dies everybody comes to the school so there is definitely an almost autonomous community among former slaves and finally it takes a great deal of faith to put your kids in a canoe. you have to believe in something you can't see in order to do

that. union soldiers asked at one point, terrible stories about what happened as you came to us, why did you do it anyway. i knew you couldn't take me anywhere. and that force, don't think we can understand that without an appreciation of that which anybody else? >> a couple questions about the amendments. the 13th was passed by states the remains in the union but didn't the union government not recognize secession which was convenient to just ask the northern states to ratify? >> the understanding was you can't do it, so is murder and murder happens anyway. once the war is over and

confederates are conveniently out for a while congress can pass the amendment and it does, it passes pretty early but to get back into the union a condition of being readmitted into the union, by that i mean representation in congress, civil rather than military authority. for that to happen, it is required to ratify the 13th amendment. there is argument whether they revert to the territorial state. they are not outside the united states but they are treated almost as territories and in the period immediately following or they are readmitted so they are part of the united states. as soon as they can tell us they are capable of being loyal to

the united states and they are loyal, they ratify the amendment. >> asked about the timing set up to secure the problems of the 13th. that answers the question why they were together. >> the 15th cured problems of the 14th. it doesn't because citizenship, and ongoing process, us history, it doesn't automatically include the vote. republicans who crafted -- it was a state matter. it was a tricky mechanism.

it encouraged states to have black men on their own accord, at the state but not national level. what that does was representation within congress was not a function of straight up population but a voting population and the hope was georgia or whatever would have more representatives in congress and way to get them is enfranchise more of a population. 50% of the population is in georgia and georgia said not to. once it is clear the confederate states are for congressional representation rather than members of their own accord, the 15th amendment, as i was saying before, what i hope it will do is give a constituency. slaves were originally counted as 3/5 of a person, they must of lost that representation. >> they never counted as 3/5 of

a person. representation in congress is a function of all the white population and three fifths of the black population. what that did was give southern states representation in congress because the interests are not represented in congress so that is out once the war happened over representation. what many republicans, that is out. if you want representation in congress you have to show us that the interests of everybody, former slaves are represented and you do that by there are representations, depressed

representation when states don't enfranchise black voters but the 15th amendment gets back up because everybody counts. does that make sense? thank you very much all of you. [applause] >> thank you to chandra manning for being here. that was wonderful. anybody who came in late, they are 20% off today. thank you for being here. [inaudible conversations] >> the question, what animates her is so important. was eleanor roosevelt really

identified with people in once, in need, in trouble? that is all about her alcoholic family. her father died at the age of 34. how much do you have to drink, drinking too much which how much -- how much do you have to drink to die at 34? what is that like? her mother died when she was turning to the wall. her father died when she was 10 and a great good fortune to go to school in england and meet the mentors that those of us had who made us what we all, and no biography, i was at the graduate center for many years and i told

my student, the biography is too late and -- marie celeste was a great educator and inspired eleanor roosevelt and her message was what do you think? what is your opinion? she didn't want anybody to repeat anything and if you wrote a paper that repeated what she said she would tear it up and that was eleanor roosevelt's lifelong journey. everywhere she went. tell me, what do you want? what you need? the goal was to make it better, to make it better for all people especially people in want, in need. so the new deal, think of it.

the new deal confronted the depression with the goal of employment and the goal of affordable housing. so everybody, full employment and affordable housing and education, excellence quality education for everybody and eleanor roosevelt began to talk about tuition why don't we have free college tuition? the boys and girls, women, in the history department at johns hopkins's, it was segregated by race and gender and in our lifetime, eleanor roosevelt was

fighting and she was fighting beginning in the 1930s involving two, i have this incredible speech she makes in 1934 in which the educators of america have a resolution, segregation has to go. children of color, it hurts white children who are persuaded they are somehow better when in fact they are not in the language of that resolution of 1934 is pretty much the language of brown versus board of education whereupon eleanor roosevelt draws up the cost -- across the stage in the speech expected to support a great

event. this is what we must do, recognize they go ahead together or they all go down together and that what she said to the end of her life. >> what is interesting in your books, you quoted letters to friends and family, undermining her own political skills and she doesn't know politics, and what is important is claiming she's not an expert politician, she is working for and with franklin, in a larger way of rounds him

and fascinated by the this of the things she would show him, the speeches or her writings before and other times she wouldn't so if you could talk about how she did that artfully, that is the political calculation what she shared is what she did that really worked amazing things in the country even if it was only rhetorical. not always politically expedient. >> her gift was the recognition we needed to build wisdom. she understood that from the 1920s on but we do it with amazement and make the politician see support for these issues because there are dixiecrat, democratic party is dominated by the southern democratic party.

and eleanor roosevelt is against greed, she uses the word, we must end greed and encourage democracy but you have to go door to door, block by block. she called it movements, then you could have changed. that was her contribution. i say never go anywhere without your man because i was born in the bronx so i always say never go anywhere without your gaining that she never went anywhere without the women of the democratic party and the progressives who were her allies. fdr was better at juggling. he had to negotiate conservative realities that she did. she wanted to organize movements and she did.