♪♪ the managing library and for the brooklyn public library temporarily offering lobby service out of the new center for history as we anticipate the heopening of the brand-new branh this fall. on the economy hall the history of the free black brotherhood. i am so excited to be given this honor in part due to the connection between the friends of brooklyn heights. there was a connection and as a

branch we would beas interestedn supporting a virtual book launch after discovering the story behind the book and seeing the review in "the new york times" i'm shocked at the opportunity to be able to b host a program sharing this monumental book. but as the accolades and the publicity grew, so did the importance of the program. and as her friend was drawn on board, the brilliant author of the manhattan beach, this has become an event and we knew it. within economy hall, sharing with the world the free brotherhood of new orleans founded in 1836 that supported its community through the civil war, the reconstruction and the birth of jazz. it is a deeply personal story as

a new orleans native and a descendent of the community the robrotherhood served. it is a treasure. i'm deeply excited about the conversation that we are about to enjoy. >> please, take it away. >> hello, everybody. thank you for being with us. i am incredibly excited to have the chance to spread the wordea about this remarkable book, which i have been talking about for some years now. but which has surpassed my every expectation that said in an enormous sweep covering a lot of ouground and has a tremendous importance and yet is so readable and fun.

so i thought that in the very complex work, and i thought may maybe the best place to begin would be where you began in your introduction, tell us how this book came to be. it's a story that begins with your father. >> thank you. and thanks to everyone for being here. >> can you describe what are the journals and what is the organization that produce them?

>> it is an organization that started but i realized after reading the journal it's probably the most influential and prosperous organization. >> and what years do the journals cover? >> the journal from 1854 to 1857, so i was able to fill that out by doing some research. >> and you talk about the fact

that your father always pronounced it in a french way. but can you explain what this organization did and what its role was in the community that it served? >> at the time it was basically a mutual aid society. so they take care of the members and if somebody gets sick, they help pay for the doctor's bills and if somebody died, they would take care of the expenses. however, it grew over the century that is the politics became more important, they became much more politically active and around the civil war bely they became very involved n what was going on. you describe growing up amidst the kind of erasure of the community in which you were told

stories by people with various memories that they had heard about the past that somehow did not quite connect with the official histories, and there is ooa beautiful quote from your histories but i want to read. you said the people that were telling me stories each spoke of the past with the passion of a man wrongfully accused of a crime who repeats over and over his account of the moment that the cruise hit. can you explain to us what were the stories trying to assert or prove to use the analogy that you give us? what was missing from the official history? >> the history itself basically. the history of the community accept what the narrative was. you have to understand i went to

a segregated school and in those schools we knew what was going on because the elders would sit us down for longer times than we really wanted to listen and would tell us about this person's grandchild and did you know his grandfather did this or that. when i went to high school unilever the fourth i remember asking what did they do in new orleans and she said nothing. >> i wonder if this connects to something that was interesting to me in the distinction that you made between the definitions

of cradle that existed in new orleans as you were growing up. can you talk about that? >> yes, i can. there's probably hundreds of definitions depending on who you are talking to. but in my time, and you figure it started to rearing its ugly head post reconstruction. in the 1890s and onto my times. what we adhere is it's quoted in the book itself where the daily newspaper wrote about you hear about creole food but creoles are white, not negro. now this sort of went against our understanding because my mother spoke french, the people around me spoke french and one thing i would like to make clear.r. it wasn't a color. so sometimes people think that

if you are light-skinned you are creole but it doesn't. it means the old world is the te new world met in louisiana and it blended into different things. people could be any range of colors and they are creole. rarely are they delighted that there are white people that just married europeans down the line that are what they call white creole. we didn't make that distinction in the neighborhood because we felt was the mixing of the old world and the new world and it didn't matter to us. we were not really into race and color anyway. >> tell us a little bit about your own history and how you came to be born in new orleans, which you told me about in some fun stories. [laughter] my grandfather came from india

one of the first indians to come to the united states in the 1890s. hee came to new orleans and married a black creole woman who spoke french and was born in new orleans. she was the granddaughter of an enslaved person purchased by her husband and then freed. that is different from the other side of my family who the great grandmother of whom had children. they were born enslaved and they were until they were at least 20-years-old. and i remember asking my grandfather hugh is your family and he said who wants to know.

because of that history of enslavement he wasn't really proud of. so they all met down in new orleans. >> and what you say perfectly mirrors what you've described about the community that the economy was serving which was in the 19th century the multiethnic and incredibly inclusive. i was struck by the fact that they welcomed jews and put out an offer to chinese who might want to join. i wonder if you cannot explain to those of us who don't know necessarily that much about the south what did multiethnic mean in new orleans in the 19th century? >> i don't know if they you would use that term.

people were living in a segregated system so they were white only and those that were not the people who came into the community and to tell you the truth if you look at many communities of the united states you would see that is where they tend to be quite inclusive. in the south is especially if they needed. each other and worked together. and as i said they didn't believe racism. we just didn't believe it as a premise. it didn't make any logical sense to us. >> economy hall, your title comes from an actual place. and i wondered if you could talk a little bit about that place

and its history and also very eloquent in your book about the importance of actually having a place to hold meetings. let's talk a little bit about the actual place of economy hall. >> they bought a piece of property and in 1857 about 20 years later decided to build a home. they had heard of that other organizations had holes so they built a huge hall across the street from the original building so they built the hall in 1857 and it became the center of the community. they had several balls there and there were philharmonic philharc performances, theaters, opera. then as the civil war approached it became increasingly more political so people would come down to talk about suffragists. about having a vote.

they did voter registrations. they became very important to the community. that community basically survived. my father when he discovered on the back he discovered them because he was friends with a number of the societies, one of the last members. he said they were getting rid of everything that was in there and nobody wanted the box. but it's sort of storytelling and connecting. >> now let'sk talk about the physical documents. so your father took them and you described beautifully his building of cover to put them in and staining it and very lucky having a house that was elevated enough that katrina for example

didn't damage the documents that already were water damaged e because you mentioned your father had to put them out in the sun and let them drive because they had gotten t rained on and i have to say it's painful to think about. but many years passed and you becamepa a journalist and a fiction writer and writer of children's books and so talk about your return to these books that you really hadn't had a lot of very deep contact with until then. >> i knew the books were there the whole time because when i was a child, everybody said once the books got into the house, don't touchou them. they are two important. so i had it in the back of my mind but i never could make anything else. after i had been away for a long

time though and seeing the way that it was interpreted and knew that this was there i wanted to read and see what was there and when i saw the handwriting, the handwriting alone tells you. so i was drawn to the person that you saw his signature i grew up around here and my cousins cousins. so i knew the names and then to find out that this had been a schoolteacher in the bureau and all sorts of things will. these are minutes of meetings. one short excerpt, it is the

aspiration of the known to the unknown. he created the world only because he needed love. i mean. so, it is striking that these aree literary documents. were you surprised by that and by what you found in them and by the holder that the ended up taking over you and your own literate life. >> in a way it made sense. they were always telling people you can do this and this. i arrived in thed book a little

bit about how you couldn't get a phd so he is to drive from new orleans to canada every summer. he could live anyplace without segregation so it was one of his friends that told him you don't need to stick around here. get out of the country for a little while so when i saw these guys writing these encouraging works and inspirational workss o each other, it was surprising but it wasn't surprising that they did that because i had heard that a spirit in my community. >> what about the language of these documents. you mentioned a friend of yours described it as french-american. what is the language like and how is it different from just french or american english? >> well, it is not english until

about 1926. they are writing entirely in french until about 1907. then a little broken french and englishke by 1926 they go off od english. [inaudible] n] the way the french redhe in those sentencess that the census construction was for example when they started to get around the time of the civil war they started using words like [inaudible] n] which i felt was beautiful because it meant dear.

>> i'm curious about the process of the enormous undertaking of synthesizing 100 years of documentation into a historical work. and i guess i would love to share the timeline of how that occurred. simply reading these journals must have taken you quite a while. where were you in your life at that time and how did you fold this in, when did it become a full-time project. to take us through your interaction with that. >> only now is that a full-time project. a full-time job. it was about 20 years ago it started i basically would go through the journals to summarize what i thought was going on. when i came to something i

couldn't understand, i would add to somebody. they speak something like 16 to 18 languages. they were in the french. he could read french and spanish and that took about five years. after i did that i started seeing as i was going along with it i saw family names and people that lived in the neighborhoods so that kept me a little bit closer to it. then sometimes spiritual things would happen for example there was a fellow who committed

suicide and he wrote a suicide note and i was in the library and i didn't know who he was and i saw whom i hadn't seen in 30 years sitting at a microfilm machine and i said have you heard of these people and she said that's my ancestor and she didn't know he had committed suicide and that is the first time she had seen a letter in his work so okay i've got to continue this.un

one that had been giving you in a sense an oral history, opponent of the story even as a kid when you didn't always want to listen to that so what did you reengage with of that tcommunity and the role of the historian to try to fill out this picture.

of their parents didn't want them to go sometimes. >> do you feel like it further enriched your own relationship to your community? >> sure. yes. you know, we don't ever really leave. wewe are always .

it became much more fun. in these memories as i'm guessing now a lot of the stories are so crucial to get to be a bland record of them while they are still here and can remember. >> the people i was talking about none of these people are still around so i was very lucky

i was a writer and found asomething in the book so there are séances in the book. how many include the presence of ghosts? >> what was funnest to find out some of the historical then i would look at a séances journal and there would be a ghost talking about this thing that

happened. to undertake the job of trying to synthesize and sort of crystallize this enormous amount of material into a story and you make some bold choices and one of them you alluded to earlier but you choose to focus on one soparticular person. >> we can say it in english. >> he is a fascinating figure with an amazing history. i would love to share if you could telll us about him and wht it was about him that made you feel like he would be who to login on the loan the story?

>> first there were so many things going on. i had to find a person to hang the story on in order for it to move and not just to be the historical account. i'm a fiction writer so i wanted it to move like a novel and luckily living from 1812 to 1892 i had a long life to work with. but he was also present in so many things at the times when it was against the enslaved. they didn't mention him but they

mentioned the celebration. then he was very instrumental. so he has this beautiful handwriting and every once in a while how can you resist. he was politically active. all of his kids were named after the poet or the writer so it was fun to follow him.

>> so the sensibility and his own literary awareness and he was present for so many historical events into deeply involved. >> he was the go to guy. he was very precise about the way. every time they went to something new, then he gave a content page where you could see what was going to come up, so that made it easy. he was a really easy person to follow.

and they were dissenters that actually knew more than 100 years. >> it must feel as if you know him. it feels like you know his personality and what mattered to him. he was like a helpmate for you. >> he was a lot of fun. at one point because they get in arguments with each other at certain points and then there was one point at summer they didn't agree with another and he saw them on the street and hit him with his cane. so they came to the meeting and talked about this and he said i'm still bruised in the face because ofcc your cane.

because of your insult and your cane. and then he writes at the end he says it isn't my apology. it is my arm and he writes they embraced so close it was like they were one. it was beautiful. it was a lot of fun. >> i want to take this moment to say that in the chad i think that links are appearing for the book. pretty amazing anecdotes andnd remarkable. it's a very fun book to read and i urge all of you to buy it for yourself and your loved ones. another thing, so for sure he is a big part of what makes the book so readable but another part is you because you bring us into these moments with a full array of tools that i think

probably were honed in on your w time as a writer is a journalist bring us the senses, the closings. you put us in the moment. and it's tremendously compelling and i'm wondering because you also have a gigantic quantity of footnotes and i know you were relying heavily on sources but also on your own imagination and i wonder if you could talk to us a little bit about the craft and challenge of deciding where to draw the line about what you were willing to imagine and how you negotiated the questions. >> there is imagination and the in thesetting of the scene and o things the scene itself is true. so let me put it this way.

[inaudible] n] talking about the vote for black men. this was november. i looked at the i weather in november of 1863 on that. i was able to say he walked into the room or gave the speech. he didn't give the speech from outside so i can say it was around 7:00 because the service was atou 6:00 and now i know. so i can say he walked into the all about the time the sun was setting so the room was warm becauseas everybody had their overcoats on and it was crowded like 600 people or something. i don't remember but hundreds of people so you figure hundreds of men packed in a room, sweating

and its plaster walls. so i can do that. it's fact. it's not imagination. it's not imagination any of the words that are in there that are used or that were in the journals. the fact that i had a fabulous editor who wouldn't let me get away with anything. there was a street he said when did it become a street. when was it an avenue, was it an avenue in 1862 or 1867. so i found like five references and three of them had different things. so everything that's in there has been checked out.

>> so it sounds like it's not so much imagination as using your tools as a writer to connect the dots in ways that bring the quality of it to life in the moment. >> in itself it's the kind of reader 9 a.m. i have to feel something that's going on and the way that i get the information is through my census. that's how i get myen informatin so for me to feel anything it is through our senses. so for the reader to feel anything they have to know what it smells like and what the sound is. those are some things and also a little bit from journalism. i did a lot of pieces if you want to read something else i've

got some pieces after katrina that were very sensuous not like sexy but in the way that talking about what it felt like after katrina and coming through the census. >> you mentioned katrina now and i actually want to jump on and askac you a question because i s surprised to year you write in the book that in a sense the biggest rupture time of the biggest disruption of the community that you are tracking going back to the century was katrina and that event was shocking that in all of those years, and event of this century is the one that has been so disruptive. can you talk a little bit about that? >> most of these people most of the generations that i am

talking about live in the downtown areas of new orleans and they were where the levees broke so the flood came into our neighborhood and a lot of these people lost their homes. of the elders were in their 70s, 80s, 90s so we lost that connection. a lot of them there was one couple that he will read in the book that drowned in their house who were very closely connectedo most of the elders were re- evacuated. my cousin evacuated my dad. we took them out of townac but then they wereto getting heart attacks and strokes because they were out of their environment. the statistic was more than 80 people who were in new orleans time of katrina were born here so it is a city where people just stayed. they don't really leave. so the disruption of having all the neighborhoods flooded out,

losing those elders one thing or another that really did us in. >> and> you also mentioned a diaspora that has resulted with a number of people leaving the city that haven't returned i believe it was almost 100,000. >> almost 100,000 that haven't returned. there was the diaspora of the houses that were flooded. it was difficult to know to follow this whole white supremacy thing down the road where howell will get enough to pay for our houses and get enough to rebuild our houses with all kinds of problems like that. but who could get the loans to

come into the neighborhoods? ald lot of people with money bua lot of are being built up by corporations with and now amount of money that could come in with 200 to $300,000 doesn't mean anything. but the people that bought the house and it's now worth $300,000 and you can't get a loan you see the disintegration of the community. so they will go to houston or atlanta and they will say -- >> it's funny it feels like exactly what the economy was there to do, to try to pull the community back together, to find a tangible way for people to help each other than it feels like that is what we don't seem

to have any more. >> they are having a hard time. there are still people holding it together a little bit. i have a lot of friends that still live here or there. but we lost a lot because the economy was operating and part of their goal was to help one another. they educated each other. the house that i'm sitting in right now the new part of our house i can remember the day that all of the relatives andr friends came over and built the house they framed up the back of the house. they were cooking food and the guys came and they framed up the

house. and i don't know if my folks gave them much of anything. the next person that had a house to be billed everyone went over iron saturday for their house to be built. >> i'm wondering how your community has reacted to this remarkable contribution that you've made to it, which synthesizes so much history. >> they like me a little bit more. [laughter] what cangh i say. i think they like it. is that personal. >> that is exactly what's going on. ..ly

>>an exactly. and i have to remind everybody that you are not responsible esfor your ancestors and you don't get any benefits from your ancestors. if they were terrible in you want to claim then on —- them then you have to make a choice. you can do something on your own. >> you are in new orleans right now. is this thehe house where you

grew up quick. >> yes. and this is the house that i came to after katrina. i lost my dad. he had a heart attack so this is very special to me. it special to me in many different ways. >> it special to be in your house with you if not for the virtual nature of the meeting and then where so much of this took place feel like i'm seeing some questions coming in and we will hear from some of you.

>> is there a connection between the economy in the church? >> there was a connection attached to the catholic religion in the beginning for example the church and recognize them as married people so after the civil war your the end of reconstruction

they walked away then you started to see them more boots on the ground going to spiritualism because the catholic church was segregated they were not can i go for that. >> if you had stayed close to your computer when you lean back people have trouble hearing but then we have a question that i really love based on what you just said about the family connections , do you know the family? >> yes.

>> so remember i said the constitution at that time when it first came back into the united states lincoln wanted the south i'm sorry the southern states back into the united states as fast as possible and then louisianan came back without giving the right to vote for blacks and the police came and they killed everybody that they couldd and several other economy members think is one son was nine or ten years old they stabbeded the boy they shot

out his i was almost killed trying to come out of the building he was almost killed but they grabbed him and then they made the statement they said the floor was slippery with blood. so what i wanted to mention is that the history we think right now that everything we do is new. it is not. voter registration was going on. they were trying to stop voter registration of blacks.

and then they tried to kill elected officials there were mobs and militias but if you can learn something from the book but then realize there is a playbook to white supremacy and then you can do something about it because when they start denigrating people when mobs start to threaten them. >> how is that related to plessy versus ferguson? >> one of two black mutual aid

societies plessy versus ferguson was in the 18 nineties there were hundreds of mutual aid associations at thatny time with the citizens committee but the president is saying in support of the legislation and something that they are very much against the jim crow law. and for those of you that don't know the case that was taken to the united states supreme court for separate but

equal. >> but i just wanted to know if you can talk for a minute about music so many associate new orleans with music and jazz in particular can you talk about the economy and its relationship to music over time? >> but it is based with the music all the way through. all of these things in the early years but the last and when they were

driven out of jobs and legislation one of the places they played music was economy homes. and then the money that they raise goes to the poor people and that was circulated in the community. then you will see that was armstrong those were the first people outside of new orleans. >> did it have members that were enslaved as well as people of color? >> they did not.

because these people were millionaires no more than the new york society mixed with the elites in the lord important thing is that when there was slavery that there was a fear they would incite from haitian revolution but there was a good reason for them to be afraid so the police did not really free the people of color so they would go to jail so they did not do

that. with everybody to go to jail. >> i urge you to look at the chat in the recording people who know other people. we are pretty much out of time that i will ask you one final question from the economies mission to help one another and teach one another while holding out a protected hand for humanity you cannot shoot much higher than that we live in a moment of political strife and what can economy hall tell us if anything what can this story tell us how to

improve our own situation? >> may i quote you? but for those members in 1858 those isolations forever to be united to tear each other apart so thank you are not to have hatred in our hearts for one another into a fight the oppressor.

>> that is an excellent note to endee on it has been such a pleasure to talk to you i'm excited to continue the conversation thank you for joining us and please i urge you to buy the book. >> thank you so much i all enjoy the conversations tonight as much as i have if you have not had the honor to read this book economy hall. i urge you to it is a treasure. thank you so much and i hope you have a wonderful night.

host: larry kudlow will you write a book about your time in the trump administration quick. >> i do not att the moment i'm busy living life. never say never but not at the moment. host: how many jobs doo you have? [laughter] >> of course there is foxbusiness every day.