booktv is end the campus ucla in los angeles and we tower can with professors who are authors. bren brenda steven, what would

you teach. >> i teach coreses enslaverry and courses on women's holiday and interracial dynamics. >> hang how you've been at ucla. >> for 26 years. >> how has it changed. >> changed tremendously. has grown in student population, grown in the kind students we have. it's grown the kinds of faculty we have and the kinds of things we focus on, particularly in history department, which is of course where my heart and is my mind is as well. it's been a wonderful time here, though, just seeing the change and being part of it. >> host: you came the year before the l.a. riots. >> guest: i did come the year before the l.a. riots. 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. >> host: have you written about that? >> guest: yes i have.

i was so impacted wrote a book, about the l.a. riots of 1992. i wrote a book that was published at the university press in 2013. >> host: who was latasha harlan. >> guest: a 15-year-old girl who walked into a liquor market, a grocery store, in march, 1991, and close to her home in south central los angeles and picked up a bottle of orange juice that cost 1.79, putin is in her backpack and went to the counter with the $2 in her hand, the shopkeep us thought she was trying to steal the juice. a fight began. latasha was knocked down and -- she was shot in the back of the health one of the major cases that began the eruption that we now know as the 1992 riots

insurrection or rebellion. >> host: booktv talked to you about the book before. >> guest: yes, we had a wonderful conversation. i hope it's in your archives where people can go back and see it whenever they want to and learn more about her and the book, and the events of this time. >> host: it is in our archives but we're here to talk to you about your most recent book, called "what is slavery? " what is the answer to that question? >> guest: well, slavery is an institution, a bondage that is hat 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, the chinese, the latin america, look with what is mother america, every place in the world has had slavery and we still have it today. there are millions of people enslaved every day in almost

every country in the world, even the united states. and so slavery is one of those enduring horrific institutions that we created and that we tend to turn a blind eye to, which is why it still exist toy. >> host: we'll get into the contemporary in a bit. how did it begin? >> guest: it really began with people organizing their societies and deciding that some people had to works' some people didn't. and so once you had a hierarchy within the see site, people who were thinkers, artist, administrators, dependenced the -- decided they wanted other people to work for them. most a slavery evolve from people who are conquerors, who conquer other people and then subject the other people to becoming their workers. the people who are going to work for them. and so this is really where slavery comes out most of the time. slavery has been used as a form

of conquering, a form of labor, it's also been used as a way of indicating one's wealth because you have a certain amount of money, and that you have a certain amount of slaves in your society. so alivery is all of 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 is an institution that lasted a long time, lasted from really the 1500s when the spanish first arrived until 1865. it's an institution that became very racialized, associated with slavery. if you were a black person you were a slave first. to prove you were free, if you had gore free tom papers with

how or one could testify for you. it became sort of conflated with blackness, with being after african descent. what else is unique we come from larger institutional slavery in the americas. people think about brazil or latin america or their caribbean but no place, at no time were there four million slaves on the ground as there was in united states in 1862. so, these are the kinds of things that make the institutional slavery, the history of slavery in the united states, unique. >> host: how did it guinn the state -- did it begin in the states states and why africa? >> guest: it became in the americas after european discoveries of africa, and so when we have the portuguese arriving on the west coast of africa in 1450 or so and beginning trade relations, was africans who were already organized in their own

societies, own government, their own trading system, and so the first thing they traded were not slaves for the most part. very few slaves. so what they were looking for mostly were riches and 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 began to, quote-unquote, discover the americas and to decide that the wealth in those americas to a certain extent lay in -- as cultural pursuit and with he agricultural pursuit the desire or need for labor was very keen, and so at the same time that europeans were trading for ivory and gold, they began to also trade for people, who could now be used in these

colonial sites where the egg grayan economy was being developed and very labor intensive crops such as sugar, cover coffee, later tobacco, and much later, cotton, were introduced and became bases for trade between the americas, africa, and europe, and then more and more africans who were part of the trade, were pushed into the trade. >> host: was there slavery in europe? >> guest: there was slavery in everybody place. we think about feudal societies in europe that were similar to slave societies. of course there were slaves in eastern europe. the word slave come from the word slav because there were so many slaves in that part of the world at the time. and one of the interesting things about the slave trade is

that it really does encourage globalization, items were trade around the world as europeans moved around the whorl with these goods from africa, 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 it -- when did the u.s. become the center? >> guest: well, every society sort of outlaws slavery at a different time. we think about slavery in europe ending or dwindling, i should say, after -- in the early -- the period of the 18th 18th century. about the same time it ends really -- the she slave trade ends in the united states you have anymore france, for example, in england, for example, actually ending slavery on their territories, but maintaining slavery in their

colonies. >> host: brenda stephen serena, were the african nations aware of what was happening? did they know what was happening to these young men and women? >> guest: africans themselves had slave societies and the first africans who were taken to the americas and to europe as well -- because they all -- some initially went to spain and portugal, to england, and to france and to other places in europe, places like norway and amsterdam and the dutch had them as well, so africans had slave societies just like everywhere else in the world. and these persons -- the first persons who we are tan were already enslaved in western central africa. and they were the first wounds that fed into the slave trade. did they know what was going on? some people did know who were african slaves. some of them themselves had been taken as slaves.

examples of traders themselves who fall into their circumstances and become enslaved themselves so they were witnessed, but most people didn't know the extent of the brutality. that is what we believe. but slavery is a brutal institution no matter where you find it. people's lives and their desires for their lives are denied, control of their lives, their bodies, their labor capacity, it's not theirs anymore. so slavery is brutal wherever you find it. >> host: all 13 colonies in the u.s. have slaves. >> guest: all 13 colonies in the u.s. had slaves. other parts of the u.s. at the time that did not belong to what became the united states, whether we look at the french colonies and the louisiana, for

example, french colonies in florida or in texas or in new mexico, all those place had slaves, and of course native people were enslaved first in the americas. so, when europeans first arrived, the first people that they -- when toy colonized, they enslaved were native peoples and native peoples themselves hads 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 chose colonies. >> guest: the american revolution did end slavery do a certain extent in the united states, what was then the new united states. and so we see, for example, lloyd dunnmoore saying if you

fight you can gain your freedom. that was the first emancipation proclamation, he did it in order to get soldiers. he didn't have any and he was out there in the harbor and outside of norfolk, virginia, trying to figure out what the heck to do and he decided better take advantage of these people who want to be free and will fight for me. that is one to the first emancipation proclamations, i. 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, and people began to abandon the institution of slavery in the northeast and so we see 18th, 16th, 17, slavery disappeared in the northeast and was outlawed in most of the other territories that became the united states of america.

>> host: but it was baked into the constitution for the southern states. >> guest: well, it did allow them to continue to have slaves. 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 was and did end the african slave trade. there was a lot of people who were smuggled in afterwards, about 50,000 or so. but really it's after the american revolution we began to see slave have i sectionalized to the south. >> host: there's a series of your book. >> guest: called the "what is" series by policy press. that's is to give the reading audience an opportunity to learn about important issues or topics and actually world history that they might be interested in. so it gives them a broad introduction to various topics,

whether it's slavery, african-american history, gender history, whether it's the french revolution, et cetera, et cetera. those topics that capture one's imagination and perhaps you didn't have a chance to take that class in college or you didn't have a chance to see that pbs series or something like that, gives you an opportunity to learn something, fairly short format. >> host: there's a lot of first-person account inside your book. where did you do your research. >> guest: i'm from virginia, which was really the center of slavery. in the colonial period, and slavery remains important up until the time of the civil war there, and through the civil war. so, kind of grew up in this history in a way. going to jamestown, going to williamsburg, going to all those locations, studying matriculating the university of virginia. so, my research is really done in the south. it's done in virginia in north

carolina in south carolina, in texas, et cetera, and what i try do is i want people to really understand enshaven from the position of the more thans who were enslaved. a think lot of the history friar to the 1970s will be focused on the perspective of those persons who owned slaves, and so we had a great revision that occurred in the 1970s in which people began to focus on what did the slaves themselves think? and what kinds of documents were provided their perspective, and that's what tried do. i try to get their voices into what i write. >> host: is there an extensive archive around the country of their voices? what is a lot of oral histories. >> guest: a lot of early histories. one of the wonderful things that happen during the period of the

great depression in our country was that the government paid for people to go out and capture u.s. history, and one of those great project was what we call the works projects association, and they went into the south and they began to interview aging men and women who had been enslaved. this is the last generation of people had been enahead and find out their memories of their experiences as slaves. so we have that archive. we also have other archives where people have written their stories at the time of freedom, so 18440s, 1850s, a 1860s, and very early accounts from people who gained their freedom and moved to england and able to publish their stories. means of these stories fit into the abolitionist movement and abolitionists wanted people to understand what the institution was-like they could get people to abandon it.

so we had a lot of publications during that time period 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 themselves were the first abolitionists because they were just running away and establishing new societies and trying to get back to africa or get away from their masters as soon as they basically landed. you have these advertisements and colonial newspapers about escape from the ship -- the ship was still in the harbor before they had a chance to be sold or can't speak english, don't know their names, the name of 0 their masters the first true abolitionists were these africans who arrived and said i have to get back to africa, i have to get back to someplace where i'm not treates this kind of way. and then of course we have the

quakers early on, too, methodists early on as well, some germans as well, and then as african americans -- africans began to gain their freedom and they gained their freedom in different kinds of ways. they, too began to of course push themselves into and create an abolitionist movement. >> host: were slave revolts a common occurrence. >> guest: were a common occurence. people were always plotting and trying to end the institution or at least end their part of the institution, the part that affected them. so they were quite prevalent, but most of them were unrealized because someone would spill the beans or someone would hear something or something looked 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 patroller, always on the lookout for those persons who were plotting. one thing that masters understood and that everyone that -- no one wanted to be enslaved. and no one wanted to be a slave. so they knew that people would always try to undo this kind of -- their bondage and they were always trying to figure out how to keep them in bondage. >> host: you heave a list of many or nearly all of the slave rebellions in the colonies in back of your book. >> guest: yes. >> host: we learn about nat turner. why do we learn about that slave revolt? >> guest: we learn about nat turn irbecause it realized some of the great horrors of the institution. there was great fear about slave revolt that slaves would rise in the middle of the night some and slit people's throats and burn

down houses. this happened with nat turner. in 1831. august. in south hampton county, virginia. nat turner was a brilliant young man who was a literate, preacher, a leader, and one of the interesting things about him, like many of the people, is that he truly deeply believed that he had been chosen to do this. he had been chosen for greatness and that's one of the common themes in slave leadership. we can see leadership in general elm he had this innate sense of his importance and of his being chosen to do something great. so we remember this particular slave revolt, i think, because it caused such a shudder throughout the south.

40 white people were killed. almost 100 of black people were killed in retaliation. there was a public trial in which nat turner, who was a minister, talking about god choosing him for this task, and it really was an enormous -- brought an enormous sort of credibility to the abolitionist movement, which is just getting off of its feet at that moment. to say, to say to people, this is what will happen if you continue to enslave people, that no one wants to be enslaved. you are at great risk for having these people in this kind of condition, living with you, and 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, free blacks could no longer learn how to read and write for example. people who were freed now pushed --'re pushed out of southern states. you could stay for a year but that's all, even if you had family members who were still enslaved. certain occupations that allowed greater mobility that you were not allowed to have. so it really did change and it caused a great amount of -- the tightening of the restrikes around free people of color. >> host: what the free black population. >> guest: about a tenth of the slave population. you have 200,000 slaves, two million slaves in 1820, then you have -- or 1830, you have about

200,000 free people of color. most of them were located in the northeast, and in the midwest, but you also had in terms of the urban populations, large southern urban free black populations. the largest was in baltimore, maryland. a large number also in charleston, and new orleans, large number of free people of color as well in other smaller cities, too. >> brenda stephenson what the impact of harriet beecher stow's uncle tom's cabin. >> guest: very impactful, very, very important. she really captured the brutality of the institution, and capture 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. translated in so many different

languages, even in chinese. and it also -- it was so popular that the presses had to work literally 24/7 to produce enough copies. it was really the big, big hit, literary hit, of the 19th 19th century... ... also there were people who thought this is not the south and the south had its own

propaganda machine going. there were advocates that were 1820s onward who were producing literary tracks and producing stories. about slavery, who was sleep seen as slavery which was something else positive and you were thinking about civilized people and we were symbolizing them, making them productive, teaching them christianity and teaching them to have skills and having them organize their family life. there were mistresses and they were over sexualized and etc. so there was this whole host slavery machinery that was very important that fit into the literary industry of the time and the speaking industry, lecture ships and people that things that people that as well. the south fall back >> i think i read that the

man who wrote the hymn of loving amazing grace was a slave trader, did you know anything about that? >> it was a slave trader and that's why he was so affected by the horror of it all. that eventually he gave up and became an abolitionist and wrote this song, amazing grace . >> 1861, the civil war starts. give us a snapshot of the south, the population and culture, etc. >> well, the south in 1861 was the richest part of the nation. it was extremely wealthy, extremelyelitist . those people who were at the top were slaveholders, holders often were politicians as well on the state level as well as on the national level. the south had cotton, fed the industrial revolution of the northeast and of britain.

so it was in a good place financially. and they wanted to hold onto it. it was a place that had a large slave population, over 4 million people at the time. it was a place that was not slowing down in terms of the institute and place. they wanted to reopen the african slave trade. they wanted more territory in the west, they wanted to expand. they wanted territory in latin america and the caribbean and central america to expand. excuse me, to expand their plantations. and they were taking any prisoners. slavery was there key to fame and fortune and that's what they wanted to maintain. what's interesting is that this was happening in the united states. slavery was booming at the time that itbegan to dwindle

in the americas . britain had emancipated slaves in the 1830s. france had emancipated its slaves in the caribbean in the 1840s. so it was the united states and cuba and brazil that was really still pushing for slavery and what slavery was driving in these places. >> the middle of the civil war, abraham lincoln issued the emancipation proclamation, 1863? >> 1863.>> and the effect? >> it did have some effect. one of the things that's interesting is because africans in the american slave trade are so invested in freedom that as soon as the union forces arrive in

virginia, in south carolina in 1861, they flee. they flee and they go behind virginia lines. leaving that this is an army of liberation. of course it was not. these were not armies of liberation. this was during the american revolution, the war of 1812. anytime a fourth came down to fight the elite which was, they said they must be here for me. so the emancipation proclamation of 1863 did give legitimate states to those people who were allowing those military men who were allowing slaves to come and stand behind the lines and work behind the lines and treat people. >> april 65 is when the war ended. what happened to the slaves on that day? >> there were a series of days because in some places like texas, for example, slaves found out they were

free in june and that's why we have juneteenth. precisely, andall during the war , if i can just get to texas they never thought that the war would impact them and that's why you see this gap in time but some people left the plantations immediately. because this notion of being able to walk free when before you can walk beyond the small area where your plantation was. some people went on to the next plantation, became sharecroppers, they just wanted to get away from their owner. some people stayed. some people didn't feel like they had any other place to go. and so there were all kinds of responses to it. and of course it really did take a lot of organization, come of it done by the free

spirits, some of it done by aid societies that b came down initially to establish schools, educate people to prepare black men eventually to be part of the electorate. to prepare black men to be ministers because they wanted to christianize those christians who had been enslaved . so it's just a great amount of effort of organizing how to help these people who had been oppressed in so manyways intellectually, socially, culturally, politically , to be prepared to be citizens of the unitedstates . >> rhonda stevenson, you write in your book that 20, 30million people are still enslaved. who are they , where are they? >> they are everywhere,

unfortunately. who they are, they are mostly women and children and one of the great truths about slavery across time and space 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 the difference between slavery in the united states and slavery during the slave arrow that we are talking about is that you have equal numbers of men and women are slaves . but most of them are very young of course. but throughout time and across time it's men and 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 are travel papers, documents are taken away from them. they are forced to the constitution. they can't escape, they are beaten. among them are scarred, some of them are drug addicts so they have no control over what happens to them. many of them, out of war-torn situations we see happening in the middle east, we see happening in africa. these are the most vulnerable people. refugees as we call them, refugees to a cause and who are enslaved . these are people who are still subject to free trading 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

debt. these are the people who are inslate today.'s brenda stevenson teaches history at ucla, here is our most recent book , "what is slavery?". this is book tv on c-span2. >> you're watching tv, television for serious readers. here's our primetime lineup. at 7 pm eastern, medical center president and ceo kurt newman recalls his career as a pediatric surgeon and offers his thoughts on the current state of healthcare. and eight, ucla history professor kelly hernandez talks about her book, city of inmates. conquest, rebellion and the rise of human caging in los angeles 1771 to 1965. at 8:20, physicist jeffrey west discusses the laws that govern everything from plants and animals to cities and economics. on after words 10 pm, rosa delauro talks about her congressional work on social programs and