imagine a a population that'sn suffering frompt disruption, actually has tangible things offered to them rather than pc promises. my guess o is i don't know if is a democrat or republican that takes that intervention, don't really care, that could make a difference. >> let's wrap upp on that optimistic thought that there's gold in the center. that would be a wonderful dream, and for t those who want to drem it, "the wall and the bridge" is a very important reading to start thinking about it. thank you so much to our viewers for listening. thank you to my friend, glen, for speaking about his book today. we hope you find a chance to react and think about these issues. >> thanks. >> there are a lot of places to get political information, but only at c-span2 you get it straight from the source. no matter where you are from or

where you stand on the issues, c-span as america's network. unfiltered, unbiased, word for word. if that happens here or here or here, or anywhere that matters, america is watching on c-span. powered by cable. >> at least six president recorded conversations while in office. here many of the conversation string season two of c-span's podcast presidential recordings. >> the nixon tapes, part private conversations, part deliberations and 100% unfiltered. >> let me say the main thing is that it will pass. my heart goes out to those people who, with the best of intentions, were overzealous. but as i'm sure you know, i'll tell you if only, if i could've spent a little more time being a

politician last year and less time being president, i would have kicked their butts out but i did know what they were doing. >> find presidential recordings of season two on c-span no mobile app or wherever you get your podcasts. >> my name is rachel team and on the managing librarian at the brooklyn heights branch ofei the brooklyn public library temporarily offering lobby service out of the new center for brooklyn history as we eagerlyan anticipate the opening of a brand-new branch this fall. it is my pleasure to introduce this event tonight, fatima shaik and jennifer egan on economy hall, the hidden 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 the brooklyn heights library friends group and it's a robust group that supports the brooklyn heights library in so many ways. the connection with fatima's, as

a branch would be interested in supporting her in in a virtuk launch for economy hall. after discovering the story behind the book and thing the review and reading the glowing review in the "new york times" i jumped at the opportunity to be able to host a program sharing this monumental book. but as the accolades and the publicity grew, so did the importance of this program. and then fatima trooper friend jennifer egan on board, the brilliant author of manhattan beach. this has become an event and we knew it. w within "economy hall" fatima shaik shares in the free black brotherhood of new orleans founded in 1836, the support its community through the civil war, reconstruction, white terrorism and the birth of gas. this now fiction narrative is american history that needs to be shared. t highlights voices that need to

be heard and it is a deeply personal story for fatima herself as a new orleans native and a descendent of the very community the brotherhood serves. this book is a treasure. i am deeply excited about this conversation where about to enjoy between fatima shaik and jennifer egan on "economy hall: the hidden history of a free black brotherhood." fatima, jennifer, please take it away. away. >> hello, everybody. thank you for being with us. i am incredibly excited to have the chance to spread the word about this book that i've been talking about for some years now that has surpassed my expectations of being a work of history that's an enormous sweep covering a lot of ground and has a tremendous importance and yet

is readable and fun. i thought it's a very complex work and i thought the best place to begin is where you begin in your introduction. tell us how this book came to be. it's a story that begins with your father. >> thank you to everybody for being here. i was already a writer by that time and i looked in the closet and saw all these journals and realized this was an important part of history. >> you can you describe what are the journals and what is the organization that produced them?

the meeting of the economies and it's an organization that started in 1836 and what i realized in reading the journals i realized after reading the journal is it was probably the most influential and prosperous organization. >> what years do they cover? >> 1836 to 1935. the organization lasted at least until the 1950s because that is when they were getting closer so they carved out more than that 100 year period but there were some places that were missing. around the civil war is missing. the journal is missing so there are a few gaps i was able to fill out by doing some research.

>> and you talked about the fact your father always pronounced it in the french way. can you explain what the organization dated and the committee that it served? >> it was basically a mutual aid society that takes care of its members and their health. they became more politically active in what was going on in the united states and the world. a. >> you described growing up in the 1950s in new orleans amidst a kind of erasure of your community history and which you

were told stories by people with various memories of the past for stories that they heard about the past and that somehow yet did not quite connect with the official history and there is a beautiful quote in your book that i want to read with a man wrongfully accused of a crime that repeats over and over his account of the moment that proves his innocence. i love that and i thought can you explain to us what were these trying to assert or to prove to use the analogy that you give us, what was missing from the official history? >> the history itself basically was missing. the history of the community of any sort of community except the white supremacist narrative you

have to understand i went through segregated schools and in those we sort of knew what was going on because our elders would sit around for a longer time than we really wanted to listen and they would tell us about that friend you just brought home is this person's grandchild and did you know he did that. so we learned it like that. when i went to high school i remember distinctly asking her what did the black people do in new orleans. >> i wonder if this was something that was an interesting distinction that you explained to the different

definitions in new orleans as you were growing up. can you talk about that? >> there are probably hundreds of definitions but in my time it started you think of the white supremacy rearing its ugly head post reconstruction. what we adhere is there is a quote in the book itself the daily newspaper wrote about when you hear about creole food they are white not negro. this is sort of went against our understanding and one thing i would like to make clear is creole is not a color.

sometimes people think if you are light-skinned you are creole but it doesn't. it means the old world and the new world matt in louisiana and blended into different things so you could have people of african descent like any range of color. rarely are they white but there are white people that married europeans down the line that were what they call white creole. we didn't make that distinction in my neighborhood because we just felt it was the mixing of the old world and the new world and we were not really into the race and color anyway. >> can you tell us about your own history and how you came to be born in new orleans which you've told me about and it's a fun story. a. >> now it's really complicated. my grandfather came from india

probably one of the first to come to the united states in the 1890s. he came to new orleans and married a black creole woman and i say that because it was a black woman that spoke she was the granddaughter i believe of an enslaved person purchased by her husband and then freed. that's different from the other side of my family whose the great grandmother of whom had children by her owner who did not free his children. they were born enslaved until they were 20-years-old and i remember asking my grandfather who is your family and he answered who wants to know.

he wasn't really going to tell anything. because of that history of enslavement, he wasn't really proud of it, but his father was a slave. but they all met down in new orleans. >> and what you say perfectly mirrors what you described about the community that the economy was serving which was in the 19th century, multiethnic and incredibly inclusive. i was struck by the fact that the economy welcomed jews and put out an offer to chinese who might want to join and i would love it if you could explain to those of us who don't know necessarily that much about the south what did the multiethnic's mean in new orleans in the 19th century. a. >> i don't know if they would do his best terminology but the

people that had privileges because they were living in a segregated system so there were places that were white only and people that were nonwhite or they might call them color the people who came into the community and to tell you the truth if you look at many you will see they go into the community often. that's where they make their first businesses and it tends to be quite inclusive. people needed each other and worked together and as i said they were not it's a promise it didn't make any sense to us. >> economy hall comes from an actual place and i wonder if you

could talk a little bit about that place and its history and you are very eloquent in your book about the importance of actually having a place to hold meetings they said we are going to build a huge hall across the street from the original building. it became increasingly political so they had people come down who talked about suffrage and they

met about having the vote and voter registration so it became very important to the community. he discovered them because his friend was a his friend was one of the last members of the economy society and they said there were getting rid of everything that was in there . nobody wanted these books though he took them to the dump. but it's sort of storytelling and it came down from there. we know more than 100 years. >> now let's talk about the documents. your father took them and you describe beautifully his building covered to put them in and staining it and very

luckily having a house that was elevated enough that katrina for example did not damage these documents which already were water damaged because you mentioned your father had to put them out in the sun and let them dry because they had gotten rained on in this dump truck which i have to say is painful to think about. but many years passed and you became a journalist and a fiction writer and a writer of children's books and talk about your return to these books that you really have not had a lot of very deep contact with until then, it seems. >> i knew the books were there the whole time because i was a child everybody said once the books got into the house, don't touch them . you're a child, don't touch this stuff. i had it in the back of my mind, sometimes when i would come home i would look in the cabinet and i could never make anything out.

after i have been away for a long time though and had seen the way it was interpreted and new this was there, i wanted to read and when i saw the handwriting, just the handwriting alone. just the handwriting alone tells you these are people that are very educated. a so i was drawn to the person, you saw his signature. i grew up around the book deals and to find out that luther had been a schoolteacher and had been involved in the bureau and also to things, it was fun to find out.n >> one thing that was surprising to me to see the beauty frankly of some of the excerpts from these documents. these are minutes of meetings and i'm just going to leave read one short excerpt.

iflove is a beautiful dream. the aspiration of the knownto the unknown . the diving orain ravished by prometheus. god created the world only because he needed to love. i mean, it's not what you expect to find in meeting minutes but would that we did find such things. so it's striking that in a sense these are literary documents.were you surprised by? were you surprised by what you found in them and the hold they ended up taking over you and your ownliterary life ? >> i was definitely surprised by how literary they were. in a way though it made sense because you know, i knew my father and new my father's friends. they were always encouraging

me. they were always telling each other you can do this. i write in the book about he couldn't get a phd or he could very easily get a phd in the united states so he had to drive to canadaevery summer . he could live in a place without segregation. it was one of his friends that told him you don't need to stick around here, get out of the country so when i saw these guys writing these encouraging words, these inspirational words to each other it was surprising that i saw it written but it wasn't surprising that they did that because i had always heard that same sort of language, not exactly that spirit in my community and my life. >> what about the language of these documents? because you mention a friend of yours describes it as french american. what is the language like and how is it different from ljust french or american english.

>> is not english until about 1926. their writing entirely in french and then it's a little broken french and broken english. by 1926 they go over. the french, the way the french are in, i'm not a french scholar the way the french read in those sentences is that the sentence construction was sort of like an english construction. or for example when they started to get around americans which was gearound the time of the civil war and we call them americans because they usually are anglo-american and they got around americans and started using words like astalemate. i felt it was just beautiful because he was the chair and they loved him.

[inaudible] >> i'm curious about the process, the enormous undertaking of synthesizing 100 years of documentation. in two a historical work. and i just 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. how did you this in, when did it become a full-time project . take us through your interactions with them. >> you're making me laugh because only now is it a full-time process . i always had a full-time job. so it was about 20 years ago that i started with trying to read the journals and i basically would go to the journals , put down the

space and try to summarize what i thought wasgoing on. when i came to something i couldn't understand because the frenchwas too difficult and involved i would ask somebody. there was a priest , i want to count out . father distefano who speaks nothing like 16 or 18 languages so go to father distefano. these journals were in french , some of the journals that i had used to understand the genealogy of the men were in spanish he could speak read spanishand spanish. that took about five years . after i did that, i started seeing and it sort of as i was going along with it i was so amazed with my neighbors. i saw family in the people that lived in the neighborhood so that made me a little bit closer to it. and then sometimes some really spiritual thing 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 this guy was and i saw the person that i knew in grammar school that i hadn't seen for 30 years. i saw her sitting at one of my machines and i said do you know who these people are and she said that's my ancestor. [laughter] that's my ancestor and that was the first time she had seen a letter in his words. so you know, that made me say , it took me about 20 years. had i known i was going to work on one book for 20 years i would not have given it to somebody like you. i don't think i would have worked long. i was trying to be a published writer so i did a

little children's work, and had a full-time job as a teacher . did a couple short stories which are possible in short times. so that is the timeline for me. >> of course you have a tremendous resource which was your own community who have been given you in a sense and oral history components of this story. even when as you said as a kid you didn't always want to listen to that. so to what degree did you reengage with that community and in the role of oral historian to try to fill out this picture and what were those experiences like ? >> that was probably some of the most fulfilling experiences because of these people were old, a friend of mine who sort of married into myfamily, we're all cousins now . he had an i think about 100 years old and somebody else in her daughter who was about eight years old and they had

advanced and her mother had also danced in the economy hall . her mother's son had never of economy hall so when i got to the venue they would tell me about the emusic being played there and you know, that their parents didn't want him to go sometimes so i get these rich really rich stories but that was sort of the work. >> you feel like itfurther enriched your own relationship to your community ? >> sure, yes. if you know anybody from new orleans we don't ever really leave. we're always, look at jean baptiste. we can live somewhere else but we're always in new orleans. it gave me more people to know how i was connected. what i found out my son and i have been connected. and she found out from her parents who had met, her parents were both her parents

and sisters were both members of economy hallin 1850 . i mean, so that became much more fun. that was just fun to know. but i guess i'll always carry new orleans around with me as you probably have seen.ou >> is so lucky that you began the project when you did in the sense that you caught a moment where more of this existed in living memory then i'm guessing it does now. a lot of these stories are seething and it's crucial to get to people and report them while they're still here and can still remember . >> the four people i was talking about, my friend's mother has passed, her mother's friend has passed. it's 100-year-old woman and her daughter has passed though none of these people

are still around. i was very lucky to talk to them and i talk to them when i started sort of like the second step.when i started seeing thenames of people i knew . and to see whether i can talk to their older families . and this whole process was sort of, it was locked. it was like my dad found the books. it was luck that i was a writer and found something in the books. it was luck that i would bump into these people. there are scances in the book. >> i love that. there are scances that are recorded inthe minutes . how many meeting minutes included the presence of ghosts? it's really nice. >> you know what was fun is to find out some of these historical events and then i would look in the scance journal and there would be a ghost talking about this real thing that happened. soi can quote the ghost.

it was just so great . >> now i'm curious about how you the fiction writer and journalist undertook the mammoth job of trying to emphasize 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 your gaze on one particular person. ludger boguille, is that how you say it? >> we can say it in english so we can say boguille. >> he's a fascinating figure with an amazing history. i'd love to hear about if you could tell us about him and what it was about him that made you feel like he would be the gaze to lock into the

story. >> at first the story, 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 to be just historical account. i'm a fiction writer so i wanted tomove like a novel . and luckily, eludger boguille leave list from 1812 to 1892 so i had a long life to work with. he was also present at so many things in a time when it was against the law for the enslaved to read he had a school and he had someone kind of on the side. then he became part of the, he became part of the reconstruction government. he became active. he was the grand marshal of the emancipation day celebration. it was also covered by the new york times so they didn't

mention him but they mentioned the celebration and got a lot of color from that. then he was very instrumental. he was also a poet. it started out life as a poet. so he had this beautiful handwriting. every once in a while the minutes would say boguille gave a spontaneous poem. so how can you resist if you're a writer, how can you resist somebody who stands up at a men's meeting and gives a spontaneous poem. and it was just wonderful so i love this character. he was politically active, and he was, he named his children after writers . one child was named charles watson, another one was named homer, i think it was homer. but all of his kids were named back, all of his boys were named after poets or writers. so it was fun to follow him.

>> so it was a combination of his sensibility, his own literary awareness. the fact that he was present for so many historical events and so deeply involved in the economy y that it made him the guy that could bring you all the rest. >> he was the go to guy. he also when he took the minutes she was very precise aboutthe way he took the minutes .every time they went to something new he was number of them and then he gave contents page . so you can look at the contents page and see what was going to come up in the minutes so that made it really easy. it was very clear to read his minutes. he also if anything important happened he would underline and make exclamation points or he would write capital letters. he was really easy person to follow .

he's one of these people who is not a senator or president or congressman, just a person they had a tear more than 100 years . >> it must feel as if you know him. it feels like you know his personality, know what matters to him. he was sort of like a healthy you. >> he was a lot of fun. in fact at one point, they would get in arguments with each other at certain points and then he wrote, it was one point that one fellow didn't agree with another one and he saw him on the street and hit him with his cane and he bruised them in the face so the two men came to the meeting and talk about this and one said i'm still bruised in the facebecause of your cane .

i am bruised because of your insults and your cane. and then boguille writes it word for word and he says the other one says it is not my apology that i want to give you. it is my arm and he writes they embraced so close they were like one. it was beautiful. >> i want to take this moment to say that in the chat i believe that links are. for this book. these are pretty amazing anecdotes and remarkable tidbits. it's a very fun book to read and i urge all of you to buy it for yourselfand your loved ones . another thing, so for sure the is a big part of what makes this book so readable thatthe other parties you . because you us into these moments with awful array of

scene setting tools that i think probably work phoned in your time as a fiction writer and journalist . you bring us sentences, closing, smells. you put us in the moment. and it's tremendously compelling. i'm wondering because you also have a gigantic quantity of footnotes and i know that 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 challenge of deciding where to draw the line about what you were willing to imagine and how you negotiated those questions. >> there is imagination in the setting of the scene. it's in choosing the scene. the scene itself is true. so let me put it this way. someone one night they had a

meeting economy hall. there was talking about november, we look at the weather in 1860 on that day. i looked at the time on sundays. so i was able to say and i know that for example boguille walked into the room. and you know he had to walk into hethe room because he couldn't give the speech from outside i can say that i know those meetings began around 7:00. the sunset was at 6:00, now i know. so i can say he walked into the economy hall. just about to the time the sun was setting. the hiroom was warm because everyone had their overcoats on and it was crowded, i think it was like 600 people, i don't remember how many people but hundreds of people

so you figure hundreds of men packed in a room . it's going to be sweaty and moist and its plaster walls. so i can do that. because it's a fact. it's not imagination. it's not imagination in any of the words that are in their or the words being used . the courts that were in the journals for, basically heeverything. i had graduates, kathy mizell nelson who would not let me get awaywith anything . she asked me, there was one street. a street that the economy is on. we call it ursuline street. when was it an afternoon, one was in an avenue in 1852 or avenue in 1857 so i found like five references, three of them had differences. so we had, we sussed out everything that's in there.

so thanks to kathy. >> it sounds like it's not so much imagination as using your tools as a writer to connect the factual docs in ways that bring the sensory quality of its life. and in the moment. >> it's fiction itself is, i have to feel fiction. this is the kind of reader i am. i have to feel something is going on and the way i take in information infection is through my senses. i have five senses and that's how i get my information so for me to feel anything that's how everybody feels. so for me for my reader to feel anything they have to know what it smells like and how it tastes and what the sound is that their hearing. then there is a sense in the room.>> there are also things and i also brought a little bit from journalism, i did a lot of pieces if you

all want to read something out i got some pieces in in these times. they are very sensuous and not sensuous like sexy, sensuous in the way that talking about what it felt like and coming through the fences. >> i mention katrina now and i want to jump on and ask you a question because i was surprised to hear you write in your book that in a sense the biggest rupture, the biggest disruption of this community you are tracking going back to the early 19th century really was katrina. that event has really fractured the community in certain ways. that was sort of shocking to me that in all those years event of this icentury is the one that has been so disruptive. can you tell me about that? >> .because most of these

people, most of the generations that wi'm talking about lived in the downtown area of new orleans . in the downtown areas of new orleans where the levees broke so the flood came into our neighborhoods. and a lot of these people lost their homes. the elders were in their 70s, 80s, 90s at that time we lost that connection. there was one couple that you'll read in the book that drowned in their house. who were very closely connected to economy hall. most of our elders were e, we evacuated them. we took them out of town but then they were getting heart attacks and strokes because they were out of their environment. i think the statistic was more than 80 people were born here. so it's a city where people just stay. they don't really leave.

so that disruption with all of those neighborhoods, the downtown neighborhoods wanted out. losing those elders for one thing or another. that really did us in. >> you also mentioned basically a diaspora that has resulted with a number of people leaving the city who have not returned . i believe it was almost 100,000. >> almost 100,000 had not returned. well, you can read on the website about this. because there was the diaspora, the houses were flooded. it was very difficult to know . let's just follow this whole white supremacy thingall the way down the road . where in redline neighborhoods so how are we going to get our houses, how are we going to get the loans to rebuild, people were all having all kinds of problems

like that . who could get the loans? fa lot of people with money. usually from out of town. a lot of these that we couldn't reveal are being built by corporations that are doing standard housing for people with a lot of money can you come in and 200 or $300,000 for a house doesn't mean anything to them . it's a bargain but for people who bought the housefor $5000 and the house now is worth $300,000 and you can't get a loan because they retired , you see the disintegration of the community so they'll go to houston or atlanta and they will say listen, i'll just stay here. >> it feels like it's exactly what the economy would was there to do.

to try to hold the community together. to find a tangible way for people to help each other and it feels like that is what we don't seem to have any more . that community does not seem to have any more. >> that community is having a hard time. there still people holding it together . there are still friends who lives here but we lost a lot because economy, they were operating in a time of enslavement. so part of their goal was to educate one another and help out so that's what they did. they educate eachother . if they needed to get a house they asked one of their friends . in fact, i'll tell you something. the house i'msitting in right now, the new part of our house i can remember the dates all the relatives and friends came over and built the back of the house . they were cooking food. they cooked and the guys came and they framed up the house. the priests came and blessed

them and i don't know if my book came to much of anything but ybthe next person had a house that needed to be built,everybody went on saturday to their house and that's why this community was 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, you know. what can i say? i think they like it. >> that's so funny. so really it's that personal. one line in the book. >> that's exactly what's going on. and then if they're not in the book why am i not in the book?

>> that is so funny. it's a measure of how refracted my own past is that i can't even imagine being part of a community like that . that is so telling and it's so human nature.bu we all want to be included and that our ancestors were given their proper due. >> i have to remind everybody when you're looking at history, you are not responsible for your ancestors and you cannot ttake any benefits from your ancestors. so if your ancestors were terrible and you don't want to claim them then you can't claim them either. you have to make a choice here and do something for yourself . >> so you're in new orleans now. >> i am.

>> and is this the house where you grew up? >> yes, this is the house where i grew up . the porch finds me is the porch where i like the books andthis is the house i come to .it didn't flood, we were able to keep the house afterkatrina . i lost my dad though. he had but we were able to keep the house and this is special to me too. the book is special tome in many different ways . >> is special to be in your house with you. it's something real we really wouldn't be able to do work for this virtual nature of our meeting. so it's a silver lining to be present in the house where so much of this took place. i feel like i'm seeing some questions coming in here. i'm going to take a look at those and we'll hear from

some of you. >> i have one more thing i like to talk about. >> you can pull that in wherever you want. was there connection between the economy and the church? >> there was the question. they were very attached to the catholic religion in the very beginning because the catholic religion gave them. [inaudible] for example the government did not recognize americans that were enslaved. [inaudible] the catholics could get married and the church wouldrecognize them as married . so they were attached there for a while after the civil war when white supremacy became active in the civil war and near the end of reconstruction when white supremacy took hold of the church and the guys in the

economie, many of them broke away from the church and you started seeing them, they were talking about having scances and going towards ritualism and other protestant religions because the catholic church was segregated two and thenworked up for that . so lots of them left then. >> one comment, if you would stay close to your computers when you lean back i think people are having a little trouble hearing . >> and then we had a question that i love. based on what you said about the family connections to your book. you know the crump family. >> my georgia was with frank crump. i used to call him godfather. >> was ludger boguille

almost killed by a mob? >> thank you for mentioning that, yes. ludger boguille, remember i said they were trying to get suffrage for black men? the constitution at that time when it first came back into the united states, lincoln wanted to sell the southern states back some. he one of the southern states back into the united states as fast as possible so he did the 10 percent solution and louisiana came back. it came back however without getting the right to vote for blacks so many blacks decided they were going to have the constitution. and that convention was set upon by police. the police came and killed everybody they could that was in that room. ludger boguille was there and so were several of the members. lucian was there but i think

his son was nine or 10 years old . they shotout his eye . they shot love, ludger boguille was almost killed when he was trying to come out of the building because people were trying to get out into the corner. he was almost killed but they grabbed the man in front of him and killed him. ludger boguille was able to run away. but kaplan made his statements and he said the floor was slippery with blood. the thing that i wanted to mention and i'm glad is that the history. we think that right now that history l, everything we do is new. and it's not. these men were fighting for voter rights t. for voter registration was finalized. there were people who tried to stop voter registration. that is going to sound pretty familiar right now. there was police violence because a lot of the police were members of white

supremacist groups. there were malicious emtried to kill elected officials legitimately elected officials. there were mobs and militias so what if you can learn something from this book i don't want to be preachy but realize that there is a playbook for white supremacy and it happened in the 1860s and if you know the playbook you will see the things that have come outside right now and you can do something about it. because you will know they start denigrating people, when they start usingthe police to kill people . went mobs taking duly elected people and threatening them because you've got something going on. >> another question. how was economy paul related to plessy versus ferguson? >> the members of the economy society were probably one of the first. there were among the first, erone of two black usual aid societies.

it started in the 1830s. plessy versus ferguson was in the 1890s. there were many more hundreds of mutual aid associations that time and many of them supported the plessy versus ferguson case. he was the president of the economy society and was also a number of the citizens committee. they were involved in taking the plessy case to court. the economy raised money for it and the president is saying i know many of you are in support of the legislation against the jim crow law. it was so they were very much against the jim crow law and the plessy versus ferguson decision for those of you who don't know was a case that

was taken to the united states supreme court to prevent separate butequal. they did not end . >> i wanted to ask one more question that and then maybe will end fairly soon but i want if you could talk for a minute about music. so many of us associate new orleans with music. the jazz in particular and you write about music in the book. can you talk a little bit about the economy and its relationship to music overtime. >> if you go to the new orleans jazz and heritage festival you will see a can call the economy paul tent. it's based on this particular hall because the economy had their music all the way through. they had five harmonic, opera and in the early years and the last incarnation was of music in the economy paul was there. the same people who use to come together and support each other and build their houses, when they were driven

out of jobs and white supremacist legislation they played music. one of the places they played music was in economy hall. they would have a party. they would raise money and pay the musicians that way and the money they raise would go to the poor people or to the sons and the money was circulated in the community that way so if and when you read the book you will see that louis armstrong playedin economy hall . the people who came to economy hall were the first people to take notes out of new orleans. >> another question is do they have members that were enslaved as well as free people of color. >> these were, they did not. they were probably millionaires and one of them

hit home with italy, france and louisiana . so it really didn't mix no more than the elite of new york society. the second thing and the more fimportant thing is it was against the law . when there was slavery free people of color and the enslaved the police started attending the meetings. i don't want to go on too long but there was a fear that the free people would insight slaves to be enslaved to revolt as they had in haiti. ludger boguille's father was in the haitian revolution so there was a good reason for them to be afraid. the police really did not want free people of color. i think they would go to jail and the police started attending their meetings so

that they didn't do it. besides the social class thing, they would also go to jail.>> when this is done i urge you to look at that chat and the recording. we've got frank comps granddaughter, other people who know other people so it may mean more to you than it does to me. we're pretty much out of time but i want to ask you one final question which is a tough one. just a quote. you quoted this in part from the economie's mission. to help one another and teach one another while holding a protective hand to suffering humanity . you can't shoot much higher than that. we live in a moment of such ominous division and racial tension and political strife and i wonder what economy hall can tell us if anything. a lot of weight to put on

you, fatima. but what can this story tell us about how to improve sour own situation and live tbette ?? >> a quote to you from economy hall. i wasn't expecting that question but i'd like to read to you something from the first of the members in 1958. it said there's african blood that runs in our veins. here it is, all of our crimes. others who have been oppressed unjustly, let us preach the patriots that they must follow the path to fraternity and come out of the isolation oppressors fall on because they would like to hear us forever disunited, tearing each other apart having only hatred in our hearts for one another so i think what we are to do, we should not have hatred in our hearts and keep going together to try to fight the oppressed.

>> i think that is an excellent note to and on. it has been such a pleasure to talk with you. i'm excited to continue the conversation the nexttime i see you . thank you all all so much for joining us and iurge you to buy this book . >> thank you so much. i hope that you all enjoy this conversation tonight with fatimah and jennifer as much as i have. if you have had the honor of reading this book, he in the history of a free black brotherhood iabsolutely urge you to . it is a treasure. thank you so much again and i hope you all have a wonderful night. >> if you're enjoying tv sign up for our newsletter using the qr code on the screen to receive the schedule of upcoming rams, author discussions, book festivals and more. he every sunday on c-span two, television for seri