that was a lightbulb moment and thank you for the final question, riley. >> and congratulations. [applause] >> booktv is on twitter and facebook and we want to hear from you. tweet us twitter.com/booktv or post a comment on our facebook page, facebook.com/booktv. >> and booktv today is on the campus of ucla in los angeles and were talking with professors who were also authors. brenda stevenson teaches history here at ucla. professor, what took courses to teach? >> guest: i teach courses on slavery and courses on women and also interracial dynamics. >> host: how long have you been at ucla? >> guest: 26 years. >> host: how is a change? >> guest: tremendous of its grown in student population has grown inattentive students that we have. it's going any kind the faculty

that we have any kinds of things that we focus on particularly in the history department which is of course where my heart is in my mind is as well. it's been a wonderful time here though. just seeing the change in of it. >> host: so you came the year before the l.a. riots? >> guest: i did. it was quite a shock to move from texas where i was, having been born and raised in virginia and coming here and being part of that, seeing it firsthand. >> host: have you written about that? >> guest: yes, i have. i was so impacted by those rights i wrote a book called -- the l.a. riots of 1992. i wrote a book that was published in oxford university press in 2013. >> host: who was latasha harland? >> guest: a 15-year-old girl

who walked into a liquor market, a grocery store in march, 1991 close to her home in south-central los angeles and she picked up a bottle of orange juice the cost $1.78 nine. she put in a backpack and went to the counter with two dollars a head. the shopkeeper felt she was trying to steal the juice. a fight begin. latasha knocked him down there she stood, at again she could walk out of the store and she shot in the back of it. so that's a she was and was on the major cases that begin the eruption that we now know as the 1992 riots or insurrection or rebellion of what have you want to call it. >> host: booktv is talking about that book before. >> guest: booktv has talked to me about the book. we had a wonderful conversation i do hope it is in your archives where people can go back and seat whenever they want and learn more about her and the book and the events of that

time. >> host: it is an archived but we are to talk today about your most recent book. here it is, it is called ""what is slavery?." brenda stevenson can what is the answer to that question? >> guest: slavery is an institution of bondage that is really been a part of who we are as a people since the very beginning. if you look at every civilization, every major civilization in the world, greeks, romans, egyptians, if you look at the chinese company look at latin america, if you look at what is north america, every place in the world has had slavery. we still have it today. there are millions who are enslaved every day and almost every country in the world, even in the united states. so slavery is one of those enduring horrific institutions that we treated and that we tend to turn a blind eye to which is why it is still with us today. >> host: we will get into the contemporary in the pit but how did it begin?

>> guest: it really began with people organizing their societies and deciding some people had to work and some people didn't. and so once you have a hierarchy within the society, those are people who are thinkers, artists, administrators can leaders, et cetera, decided they wanted other people to work for them. most visitations of slavery really evolved from those persons who are conquerors, who conquer other people and then they really subject those of the people to becoming their workers. the people who are going to work for them. and so this is really where slavery comes at most of the time. slavery has been used as a form of conquering, as a form of labor. it's also been used as a way of indicating one's wealth, because to be able to own of slates range of a certain amount of money, that you have a certain amount of status within your society. slavery is all those things and comes from all of those things.

>> host: is american slavery unique in any way? >> guest: american slavery is unique to a certain extent. i think what a lot of people don't understand about slavery in the united states is that it's an institution that last a long time, it lasted from relief the 1500 when the spanish first arrived in 1865. it's an it's an institution that became very racialized. race was associated with slavery if you are a black person and you are thought of as a slave first. you can prove that you are free if you had your freedom papers with you or someone could testify for you. but it became inflated with black discomfiting of african dissent. what else is unique about slavery in the united states is that we hav had become the largt institution of slavery in the american spirit often people think about brazil or latin america or the caribbean in particular, but at no place at

no time were therefore million slates on the ground as it was in the united states. in about 1862. these are the kinds of things that make the institution of slavery, the history of slavery in the united states unique. >> host: how did it begin in the states, and why africa? >> guest: it began in the americas. at the time of discovery really, of european discoveries of africa. and so when we had the portuguese arrived on the west coast of africa in 1450 or so, and beginning trade relations with africans who are already organized in their own society, their own government, their own trading system. and so the first things that they traded actually were not slates for the most part. very few slaves. and so what they're looking for mostly where which is an things that were exotic. so ivory, gold, spices.

those were the kinds of things that initially were traded between europe and africa. but as europe also at the same moment begin to quote-unquote discover the americas and to decide the well in those americas to a certain extent late in agricultural pursuits and with these agricultural pursuits, the desire or the need for labor was very keen. and so at the same time that europeans were trading for ivory and gold, they begin to also trade for people who could now be used in these colonial sites where the agrarian economy was being developed. and very labor-intensive crops such as sugar, coffee, tobacco, and then of course very much later cotton were introduced and

became basis for trade between the americas, africa, and europe, that more and more africans who are part of the trade were pushed into the trade. >> host: was there slavery in europe? >> guest: there was slavery in every place. we often think about feudal society, for example, in europe that were similar to slave societies. of course there were slaves in eastern europe. the word slave comes from the word slob because there were so many slaves that were in that part of the world at the time. and what are the interesting things about the slave trade is that it really does encourage globalization. items were traded around the world as europeans moved around the world with these goods from africa come with these goods from europe and now the goods from asia and the americas as well. >> host: when was it more or less outlawed in europe, and

when did the u.s. become the center? >> well, every society sort of outlawed slavery at a different time. we really think about slavery in europe ending or dwindling i should say after, in the early, the 18th century. at about the same time that it ends really come that the slave trade in in the united states. you begin to people in france, for example,, in england, for example, actually ending slavery on their territory but maintaining slavery in their colonies. >> host: brenda stevenson, were the african nations, the african tribes aware of what was happening? did they know what was happening to these young men and women? >> guest: africans themselves had slave societies, and so the first africans who were taken to the americas and europe as well,

because initially went to spain and portugal, to england and france and other places in europe as well, even places like norway and amsterdam, and the dutch had them as well. so africans had slave societies just like everywhere else in the world. these persons, the first persons who were taken as slaves were persons who are already enslaved in western and west central africa and they were the first ones who were fed into the slave trader did you know was going on? some people did know. some of them themselves had been taken as slaves. there are examples of traders themselves who fall into bad circumstances and become insulated themselves. so they were witnessed, but most people didn't know the extent of the brutality. that's what we believe, but slavery is a brutal institution

no matter where you find it. peoples lives and their desire or their lies are denied, the control of their lives, their bodies, their labor capacity. it's not there's any more, so slavery is brutal were ever you find it. >> host: all 13 colonies in the u.s. had slaves? >> guest: all 13 colonies in the is had slaves. other parts of the u.s. at the time that the dot belong to a became the united states, whether we look at the french colonies in louisiana, for for example, look at the spanish colonies in florida or in texas or in new mexico, all those places had slaves. and, of course, native peoples were enslaved first in the americas. so when europeans first arrived, the first people when they

colonize being enslaved were native people and native people themselves all five indigenous forms of enslavement. there was a lot of slavery going around. >> host: as we move south when was it being abolished in the colonies? massachusetts, for example, or new york. were there slaves leading up to the civil war in those colonies? >> guest: the american revolution really did in slavery to a certain extent and the united states, in what was then the new united states. so we see, for example, lord dunmore in 1776 in virginia saying that if you come fight for the british you can gain your freedom. that's one of the really first emancipation proclamation was this, of course, he did i did ir to get soldiers. he didn't have any and he was out there, outside of norfolk, virginia, can't figure out what the heck to do and just decided, i better take advantage of these people who want to be free and

he will fight for me. so that was one of the first emancipation proclamation, if not the first. but at the same time the american revolution brought a kind of moral conflict to those persons who were founders of our nation, a people began to abandon the institution of slavery in the northeast. and so we see by -- slavery and really disappeared in the northeast, and was outlawed in most of the other territories that became the united states of america. >> host: but it was a baked into the constitution for the southern states? >> guest: well, it did allow them to content have slaves. it did not outlaw slavery in the constitution. what it did suggest was that the slave trade could be discussed to be ended. by 1808 and it was at a dead and the african slave trade although

there was a lot of people were smuggled in afterwards, about 50,000 or so. but really it's after the american revolution that we began to see slavery section allies to the south. >> host: linda stephenson, there's a series that your book is a part of. what is that traffic it's called the what is series by policy press. and that is to give, you know, the reading audience an opportunity to learn about important issues of topics in actually world history that they might be interested in. so it gives them a broad introduction to various topics, whether it's slavery, whether it's african-american history, whether it's gender history, whether it's the french revolution, et cetera, et cetera pick those topics the capture one's imagination of perhaps he didn't have a chance to take a class in college or he didn't have a chance to see that pbs series or something like that.

it gives you an opportunity to learn something. it's a fairly short format. >> host: does a lot of first-person accounts in your book. where did you do your research? >> guest: first of all i'm from virginia which was really the center of slavery in the colonial period, and slavery remains aboard up until the time of the civil war there and through the civil war. so i kind of grew up in this history in a way, going to jamestown, going to williamsburg, going to all of those locations, studying at the university of virginia. my research is really done in the south. it's a dent in virginia, north carolina, in south carolina, in texas, et cetera. what i try to do is how a want people to really understand enslavement from the position of those persons who were enslaved. i think a lot of the

historiography prior to the 1970s in particular really focus on the perspective of those persons who owned slaves. we had a great revision that occurred in 197 1970 so it's pee really began to focus on what did the slaves themselves think, you know, and what kinds of documents will provide their perspective. so that's what i try to do. i really tried to get their voices into what i write. >> host: is there an extensive archive around the country of their voices? was it a lot of oral histories or what? >> guest: there were lots of oral histories. one of the wonderful things that happen during the great depression in our country was that the government paid for people to go out and capture u.s. history. one of those great projects was what we call the works project association in which they went into the south and they begin to interview aging men and women who had been insulated.

this was last generation of people and been enslaved and defined at what were their memories of their experiences as slaves. so we had that archiver with other archives of people had written stories at the time of freedom, 1840s, 1850s, 1860s where you have some very early counts to come out of the 18th century from people who gained their freedom and moved to england and were able to publish their stories. many of the stories fit into the abolitionist movement and so abolitionist really wanted people to understand what the institution was like so they could get people to abandon it. we had a lot of publications during that time frame as well. >> host: was there always at least a small abolitionist movement in the states? >> guest: there was always a small abolitionist movement. first of all africans of themselves with the first abolitionist because they were just run away and established

societies and try to get back to africa or tried to get away from the masters as soon as it basically landed. you have these advertisements and colonial newspapers about escaped from the ship, really the ship is doing the harbor before then a chance to even be sold, or just arrived, can't speak in english, don't know the names, don't know the names of their masters. these were the first to abolitionist were these africans who arrived and just said i had to get back to africa. i have to get back to some place where i'm not treated this kind of way. and then of course we have the quakers early on. we have methodists early on as well. some germans as well. and then as africans begin to regain their freedom, and they gained their freedom and different kinds of way, they, too, began to of course push themselves into and create an

abolitionist movement. >> host: were slave revolts a common occurrence? >> guest: slave revolts were a common occurrence. people always applauding and trying to end this addition or at least end there part of the institution, the part that effectively. so they were quite prevalent. but most of them were unrealized because someone would spill the beans or someone would hear something or something unusual. and, of course, those persons who were in charge of controlling the slave population, including their owners as well, the militia, the government, the controllers. they were always on the lookout for those persons who were plotting. one of the things that masters understood and that everyone, no one wanted to be enslaved. no one wanted to be a slave. and so they knew that people

would always try to undo this kind of, their bondage, and they're always trying to figure out how to keep that in bondage when the slaves are sure to figure how to get out of it. >> host: you have a list of many of our newly all of the slave rebellions in the colonies in the back of your book. we learn about nat turner in school. why did we learn about that slave revolt? >> guest: we learn about nat turner because i think it's to realize some of the great horrors of the institution to as i said there was great fear about slave revolt that slaves would arrive in the middle of the night and slip peoples throats and burn down their houses and things like that. this happened with nat turner, you know, in 1831, august 1831 in southampton county virginia. nat turner was a brilliant young man who was literate. he was a preacher.

he was a leader and one of the interesting things about him, like many of the people who lead slave revolts, he truly deeply believe he had been chosen to do this. he had been chosen for greatness. and that's one of the common themes i see enslaved leadersh leadership. we can see in leadership in general. yet this innate sense that he had this importance and he is being chosen to do something great. so we remember this particular slave revolt i think because it caused such a shutter throughout the south. 40 white people were killed. almost hundreds of black people were killed in retaliation. there was a public trial in which nat turner who was as i said a minister talked about god choosing him for this task. and it really was an enormous,

it brought an enormous credibility to the abolitionist movement which was really just get it off of its feet at that moment to say to people, this is what will happen if you continue to enslave people that no one wants to be enslaved. that you are at great risk for having these people in this kind of condition living with you. it really changed slavery dramatically in the country because the laws affecting enslaved people and also the laws affecting particularly free black people changed greatly after that, you're free blacks could no longer learn to read and write for example. people who were freed, now they were pushed out of seven states. you could stay for a year but that's all, even if yet family

members who were still insulated. there were certain occupations that you could not, that allowed greater mobility, for example, that you are not allowed to have. so it really did change and it caused a great amount of tightening other restrictions around free people of color and about slaves themselves. >> host: how large was the free black population? >> guest: it was about one-tenth of the slave population. so for example, if your 200,000 slaves, 2 million slaves in 1820 or so, then you have about 200,000 free people of color. of course, most of them were located in the northeast and in the midwest, but you also had, in terms of the urban population, large southern urban populations. the largest was in baltimore maryland. there was a large number in

charleston of course in new orleans, a large number of free people of color as well and other smaller cities. >> host: brenda stevenson,, what was the impact of harriet beecher stowe uncle tom's cabin? >> guest: harriet beecher stowe uncle tom's cabin was very impactful, very, very important. she really captured the brutality of the institution and in so captured the imagination of the world. that became the most important book of the 19th century. it was read more than any other book except for the bible. it was translated in so many different languages come even in chinese, and also, it was so popular that the press had to work literally 24 stomach to produce enough copies of it. it was really a big, big hit literary hit of the 19th century and, of course, some of

the first movies that are produced in the early 20th century are based on "uncle tom's cabin." so even edison, edison as an early, thomas edison has an early movie, silent movie of "uncle tom's cabin." >> host: did it sell in the south? >> guest: it did sell in the south, although it was also banned in the south, too. and so there were people who wanted to read it. you had to read it to be able to protest it. but also there were people who thought no, this is not good literature for the south. the south had its own propaganda machine, proslavery advocates for imported from the 1820s onward, who were producing literary tracks, who are producing stories about slavery, saying slave was something positive because you are taking uncivilized people and we were civilizing them.

people who are idle, making them productive. teaching them christianity and teaching them to have a skill and help them organize a family life because in africa they were promiscuous and over sexualized, et cetera, et cetera. there was this whole proslavery machinery that was very important a and it fed into the literary industry of the time and the things people did as well. they fought back. the south fought back. >> host: i think i have read that the man who wrote the hymn amazing grace used to be a slave trader do you know anything about that? >> guest: yes, he was a slave trader and that's why he was so affected by the whore of it. that eventually he gave it up and became an abolitionist and wrote this song, amazing grace. >> host: 1861, the civil war starts.

give us a snapshot of the south population, its culture, et cetera. >> guest: well, the south as in 1861 was the richest part of the nation. it was extremely wealthy, extremely the latest. those persons -- the latest -- those person at the very, very top were slaveholders. slaveholders were often the politicians will the state level as well as on the national level. the south was cotton, fed the industrial revolution of the northeast, and a briton. and so it was in a good place financially and wanted to hold on to it. it was a place that had a large slave population, almost 4 million people at the time. it was a place that was not slowing down in terms of the institution of slavery. they really wanted to reopen the

african slave trade. they wanted more territory in the west to expand. they wanted territory in latin america, particularly in the caribbean and the central america to expand, excuse me, to expand their plantations. and they weren't taking any prisoners. slavery was the key to fame and fortune and that's what they wanted to maintain. and what's interesting is that this is happening in the united states, slavery was booming at the time that it really began to dwindle in the americas. i mean, britain had emancipated slaves in the 1830s. france had emancipated its slaves in the caribbean in the 1840s. and so it was the united states in cuba and brazil that was

really still, you know, pushing for slavery and slavery was really thriving in these places. >> host: the middle of the civil war, abraham lincoln issued the emancipation proclamation. 1863? >> guest: 1863. >> host: any effect? >> guest: it did. one of the things that's interesting is that because africans at american slaves are so interested, so invested in freedom that as soon as the union forces arrive in virginia, in south carolina in 1861, faithfully. faithfully and they go behind union lines basically saying believing that this is an army -- they flee. an army of liberation. these were not armies of liberation, but this is during the american revolution, the war of 1812. anytime some force came down to fight what was the leak, which was the masters, they thought

these people must be here for me. and so the emancipation proclamation of 1863 did give legitimacy to those persons who were allowing those military men, who were allowing slaves and stand behind the lines and work behind the lines as free people. >> host: april 1865 is when the war ended. what happened to the slaves of the next day? >> guest: well, there were a series of days as you know because in some places like in texas, for example, slaves did not find out they were free until june so that's why we have juneteenth. all during the war masters were saying if i could just get to texas, they never thought the war was ineffective in texas and that's why you see this, this big gap in time. but some people left the

plantations immediately, because this notion of being able to walk free when before you couldn't walk beyond the small geospatial we ar area where plan was, was intriguing to them. some people went on to the next plantation or became sharecroppers. they just wanted to get away from the person who had been their owner. some people stayed. some people didn't feel like that any other place to go. and so there were all kinds of responses to it. and, of course, they really did take a lot of organizing, some of it done by the military, some of it done by the friedman spirits, son of it done by the friedman aid societies who came down initially to establish schools to educate people to prepare black men eventually for the vote, to be part of the electorate, you know, to prepare black men tv ministry because

they wanted to christianize those persons who would been enslaved. and so it took a great amount of effort of organizing how to help these people who had been oppressed in so many ways intellectually, socially, culturally, politically, to be prepared to become citizens of the united states. >> host: brenda stevenson, you write in your book that 20 to 39 people are still enslaved. who are they? where are they? >> guest: they are everywhere, unfortunately. who they are, they are mostly children and women. and one of the great truths about slavery across time and place is that most of the people who have been enslaved have been children and women. the people we consider the most vulnerable in our society.

that's one of the differences of slavery in the united states was slavery during the slave era that we were talking about is at you have equal numbers of men and women who are slaves, you know. but most of them are very young of course because throughout time and across time it's mostly been women and children as it is today. they are in africa. they are in asia. they are in europe. they are in the united states. these are people who are forced into work who are shut in, who travel, papers, documents or taken away from them. they are forced into prostitution. they can't escape. they are beaten. some of them are starved. some of them are drugged, turned into drug addicts so they have no control over what happens to them. many of them come out of war-torn situations that we see happening in the middle east,

that we see happening in africa. these of the most vulnerable people as people refugees we call them, refugees who are caught, and then who are enslaved. these are people who are still subject to slave trading raids in southern sudan, for example, and other places in africa. these are people whose parents are so impoverished that people take their children to pay for their debts. these are the people who are enslaved today. >> host: linda stevenson teaches history at ucla. here is her most recent book, "what is slavery?." this is booktv on c-span2. >> booktv visited capitol hill to ask members of congress what they are reading this summer. >> congressman upton for michigan what are you reading? >> i just finished into the wild literally last week.