>> host: on the campus of ucla and we're talking with professors who are also offers teaching history professor stevenson would you teach?. >> this year on women's history and their dynamics. >> host: how long have you been here?. >> 26 years.

it has grown with student population and the students that we have and the faculty and students that we focus on in the history department. it has been a wonderful time here to be a part of its. >> you were here the year before the riots. >> i did. it was quite a shock to move from texas born and raised in virginia to come here to be a part of that to see tougher stand. >> have you written about it?. >> yes. i did. i wrote a book published by the oxford university press.

>> who was with taisho?. >> a 15 year-old to walked into a garage restorer 1991 close to her home to grab a bottle of orange juice she put in her backpack and went to the counter but the shopkeeper thought she was trying to steal the jews in the fight began and she had a gun as she tried to walk out the store she shot her in the back of the head that is one of the major cases that began the direction of the 1992 riots. >> host: booktv has talked to you about that book. >> we did have a wonderful conversation people can go

back and see it to learn more about her in the events of that time. >> host: it is in the archives but today we are talking about your most recent book what is the answer to the question?. >> slavery is an institution of bondage that has been a part of who we are since the very beginning every major civilization in the world by the egyptians or the chinese of latin america everyplace in the world have slavery even today billions are in slaved every day in almost every country of the world and slavery is the enduring and terrific institution that we turn a blind eye to.

>> host: we would get into contemporary but how did it began?. >> deciding that some people had to work and others didn't. so once you have that hierarchy, those leaders or decided when other people to work for them. most evil those who were the conquerors, during a their people and then making them become their workers so this is where slavery comes in and most of the time. so as a form of labor and to imitate one's wealth because you had a certain amount of

money so slavery is all of those things. >> host: is american slavery unique?. >> american slavery is unique to a certain extent what a lot of people don't understand about slavery in the united states it is an institution that last a long time from when the fed -- the spanish first arrived from 1865 and then became very rationalized if you enslaved the black person if you could prove you were free with your freedom papers but it was completed to be black or african descent. also we have the largest institution of slavery even

more the latin-american or caribbean could it not time for there 4 million slaves on the ground so these are the things that make bad institution in the history of slavery unique in the united states. >> why africa?. >> it began in the americas with those discoveries of africa so when we had the portuguese arriving on the west coast and beginning trade relations when they arrived in their own society or their own government so the first thing they would trade were slaves because there were very few. so they were looking for

riches and exotics like ivory or gold or spices initially that is the was traded between europe. but also they began to discover the americas is a cultural pursuit with the desire or the need for labor so at the same time of ivory and gold now to be used with the agrarian economy could develop use the crops such as sugar or coffee or tobacco and then of

course, later was cotton that became the basis of trade for africa that more more africans that were part of the trade. >> was there slavery in europe?. >> there was slavery every place. so those that were similar to a slave society the word slave because there were so many slaves and that part of the world at the time budget is interesting as it does encourage globalization as the europeans moved around the world with the goods from europe and then asia and the americas as well.

>> host: when was it outlawed in europe and when did the u.s. become the center?. >> every society of what slavery at a different time. when you think of it ending war dwindling in the 18th century ad about the same time really the slave trade ends in the united states actually ending slavery with their territory but would maintain slavery in their colonies. >> host: were the african nations or tribes aware of what was happening?. >> africa itself had a slave

society so the first africans that were taken to the americans initially to go to spain and portugal and france and other places as well even amsterdam the dutch had them as well so africans did have slaves societies just like elsewhere so those who were taken with those that were already in slaved and they were the first ones that fed into the slave trade. some of them themselves there were examples of traders themselves that would fall into bad circumstances but most people did not know the extent of the of brutality

but slavery is a brutal institution people's lives the ed baird denied control of their lives so slavery is brutal where you find it. >> host: of 13 colonies?. >> yes. and other parts of the united states at the time did not belong to the united states like the french colonies and louisiana for example, or florida or texas all of them had slaves so

when the europeans first arrived when they colonized the native people themselves are also participating with the enslavement. >> host: as we move south when is it abolished like massachusetts or new york? was that leading up to the civil war?. >> the of revolution did end slavery to a certain extent in the united states so we see lord dunmore in 1776 in virginia say the fight for the british you can keep your freedom that is one of the first emancipation and proclamations that he did to get soldiers because he did not have any. so trying to figure out what the heck to do so i better

take advantage of these people who want to be free so that was one of the first "emancipation proclamation" that the same time the revolution brought a kind of moral conflict to those who were the founders of our nation and people began to abandon the institution of slavery in the northeast say you can see where slavery had disappeared and was outlawed in most of the territories that became the united states of america. >> it did allow them to continue to have slaves and did not outlaw slavery but the slave trade should be

ended by 18 '08 of blood there was a lot of people who were smuggled in after words. . .

>> i'm from virginia fleshing center of the slavery in colonial period and slavery was important until the time of the civil war there and through the civil war. i grew up in this history in a way. going to jamestown, going to williamsburg, going to all those locations, studying, matriculating at the university of virginia. so, my research is down in the south. it's done in virginia in north carolina in south carolina, and texas, et cetera, and what i try to do is i want people to really understand enslavement from the position of those persons who were enslaved.

i think a lot of thelight prior to the 1970 -- the history prior 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 will provide this perspective. so that's what try do. i really try to get their voices into what i write. >> host: there is an extensive archive around the country of their voices? was eight lot of oral histories? should there were a lot of oral histories. one of the wonderful things that happened during 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 projects 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 was the past generation of people who had been enslaved and to find out their memories of their experiences as slave is. so we have that archive, and other archives where people have written their stories at the time of freedom to 1840s, 1850s, 1860s. very early account that come out of the 18th century. the stories fed into a abolitionist movement, and so abolitions wanted people to understand what the institution was like to 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: was always a small abolitionist movement. first of all, africans themselves were in the first

abolitionists because they would just run away and stab roots and try to get away from theirmasters sand they land it. you have these advertisements e in colony newspapers, just survived, can't speak english, don't in the names or the names of their masters the true abolitionists arrived and said i have to get back to africa to someplace where i'm not treated this kind of way. then of course we have the quakers, early on, too. we have methodists early on as well. some germans as well. and then as africans began to gain their freedom, and they gained their freedom in different ways -- they, too,

began to push themselves into and create an abolitionist movement. >> host: were slave revolts a common occurrence? >> guest: yes. people were always plotting, and trying to end the institution or end their part of the institution, the part that affected them. so they were quite, quite prevalent, but most of them were unrealized, because someone would spill the beans or someone would hear something or some people thought something unusual, and those burns who were in charge of -- persons in charge of controlling the slave population, including their owners, as well the, militia, the controlleres, always on the workout for those persons persoo were plotting. one thing that masters understood and that everyone -- no one wanted to be enslaved.

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 win the slaves war trying to figure out how to get of it. >> you have a list of nearly all of the slave rebellions in the colonies in your book. we learn about nat turner school. why do we learn about that slave revolt? >> guest: i think 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 and split people's throats and burn -- slit people's throatses and burn down their houses. this happened with nat turner 1831, august 1831. in south hampton county, virginia. nat turner was a brilliant young

man who was literal, he was preacher, he was a leader, and one of the interesting things about him, like many of the them who lead slave revolts, he truly, deeply believed that he had been chosen to do this. he had been chose for greatness. and that is one of the common things i see in slave leadership. we can see leadership in general. he had this innate sense of his importance and of his being chosen to do something great. and so we remembered this particular slave revolt, think, because it caused such a shudder throughout the south. 40 white people were killed. almost -- hundreds of black people were killed in retaliation. in was a public trial in which nat turner, who was a minister, talked about god choosing him

for this task, and it really was an enormous -- brought an enormous sort of credibility to the abolitionist movement which was just get off its feet to say to team this is what will happen if you continue to enslave people, that no one wants to be enslaved. you're 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, free blacks could no longer learn how to read and right, for example. people who were freed now, were pushed out of southern states.

you could stay for a year about that's all, even if you had family members who were still enslaved. certain occupations you could not -- that allowed greater mobile, for example, that you were not allowed to have. so it really did change and it caused a great amount of tightening of restrictions around free people of scholar around slaves themselves. >> host: how large was the free black population during the period? >> guest: the free back population was a ten only inform the slave populationment so if you have 200 -- two million slaves in 1820 or so then you have -- 1830 so-so you have 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 population, large southern urban free black population.

the large nest baltimore, maryland. a large number the charleston, of course, new orleans, a large number of free people of color as well in other smaller cities, too. >> bra deb stevenson, what was the impact of harriet beecher stow's uncle tom's cabin. >> guest: that 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 back except for the bible. it was translated in so many different languages, anyone chinese, and also -- it was so popular that the presses had to work literally 24/7 to produce enough copies of it. it was really a big, big hit,

literary hit, of the 19th 19th century. of course the first -- some of the first move individual produced in early 20th century are based on unel tom's cabin, and -- uncle tom's cabin, even edison -- thomas edison has an early movie, silent movie, of uncle tom's cabin. >> did it sell in the south? >> guest: ed did. it was also abandoned in the -- it was also ban 'ed in the south, too. you had to read it to protest it, and also people who thought this is not good literature for the south, and the south had its own propaganda machine going. there war pro slavery advocates from the 1820s on ward who were produce literary -- story about slavery, saying slavery was positive because you were

taking uncivillized people and civilizing them, making them productive, teaching them christianity and teaching them to have a skill and have them organize their family life because in africa they were promiscuous and oversexualized, et cetera, it's. a pro slavery machinery that was very important and fed interest the literary industry of the time and the speaking industry, the lectureships that people did as well. they fought back. the south fought back. >> host: i think i've read that the man who wrote the hymn "amazing grace by used to be a slave trader. >> guest: he was slave trader, and that's why he was so affected by the horror of it all that eventually he gave it up and became an abolitionist, and wrote this song, "amazing

grace." >> 1861, the civil war starts. give us a snapshot of the south, its population, its culture, et cetera. >> guest: the south, as in 1861, was the richest part of the nation. extremely wealthy, extremely elitist. those persons who were at the very, very top were slaveholders. slaveholders often were the politician as well on the state level as well as on the national level. the south had cotton -- cotton fed the industrial revolution of the northeast, and of britain. and so it was in a good place financially and it wanted to hold on to 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 the caribbean and central america to expand. to expand their plantations. and they weren't take anything prisoners. slavery was their key to game fortune and that's what they wanted to maintain. what is interesting is that this was happening in the united states, slavery was booming at the time it 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 united states and

cuba and brazil that was really still pushing for slavery and when slavery was really thriving in these place jazz middle of the civil war, abraham lincoln issues the emancipation proclamation, 1863. >> guest: 1863. >> any sneak. >> guest: it did have some effect. one thing that is interesting is because african slaves are so invested in freedom that as soon as the union forces arrive in virginia, in south carolina in 1861, flee and to behind union lines, saying -- believing this is an army of liberation. of course. 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 elite, which

was their 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 to come and stand behind the lines and work behind the lines as free people. >> host: april '65 is when the war ended. what happened to the slaves the next day? >> guest: well, there were a series of days, because in some places, like in texas, for example, slaves didn't find out they were free until june. that's why we have juneteenth, and all during the wars -- in fact just get to texas, never thought that the war would impact them in texas, and that is why you see 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 spatial area where your plantation was, was intriguing to them. some people went on to the next plantation over, became sharecroppers. just wanted to get away from the person who had been 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. of course, it really did change a lot of organizations, some done by the military, some by the freedom spirit, some done by freedom eight 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, to prepare black men to be ministers because they wanted to christianize the persons who had been enslaved. and so it took a great amount of effort of kind of organizing what -- 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. >> you write in your book that 20 to 30 million people are still enslaved. who are they? where are they? >> guest: well, they're everywhere, unfortunately. who they are, they're mostly children and women. one of the great truths about slavery across time and place is that mose of -- most of the people who have been enslaved

are children and women, the people who are most vulnerable in our society. that's one of the difference of the safely in the united states, during this slave era, is that you have equal numbers of men and women who are slaves, but most of them are very young, of course, but throughout time and across time, mostly women and children, as it is today. in africa, they are in asia, they're in europe, they're in the united states. these are people who are forced into work, who are shut in, whose travel papers, documents are taken am from them, they're forced into prostitution. they can't escape, they beaten, some of them are starved, some of them are drugged, turn 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 are the most vulnerable people as people refugees, as we call them, refugee to a cause, and then who are enslaved. these are people who are still subject to slave trading ways in southern suddennan, for example, and other places in africa. these are people whose parents are so impoverished that people take their christian to pay for their -- their children to pay for their debt. >> host: brenda stevenson teaches history at ucla. hereto her most recent book: "what is slavery." this is booktv on c-span2. >> book tv recently visit capitol hill to and members of congress what they're reading this summer. >> i intend to read different book