hello, everyone. good. my name is kashif andrew graham. i am outreach librarian, religion and theology of vanderbilt's divinity library. and i'm so excited to be today with hala allen, who is author insurrection. hawa is attorney and author whose work has appeared in the chicago tribune los angeles review of books latham's quarterly and the baffler, amongst other publications, she lives and works in new york

city. now, as a side note, the southern festival of books remains completely free. and we want to keep it that way. so please visit us on the web at ww dot humanity tennessee dawg to donate or you can also donate via the festival of books app. so how is going to read for us and then we'll a conversation and we'll open it for an audience. q&a and when the q&a starts, please the mic in the corner just get better audio. however, take it away. thank you very much because so i'm going to read from third chapter of the book called a house divided, which largely talks about the insurrection act invocation during the civil war and leading up to the civil war, which is interspersed with my personal narrative from which i'm going to share this excerpt and the subtitle for. this portion is irrepressible conflict.

i had much interest in history. the subject in and of itself was not the source of my disinclination. i was educated in a public school district in suffolk county island that was well resourced. for that reason, drew residents to purchase homes and qualifying neighborhoods, ensure their children could attend. one of the primary or secondary schools encompassed by the district. i'm not ungrateful, but entire experience was an ordeal much of the history i remember studying was presented under the moniker of social studies. a catch all for certain fields of learning, including history and geography that. unlike, say, math or english didn't neatly fit into any other discipline within the school's curricula as a proverbial only black kid. my class, i just. i dreaded social studies class in part because whenever the teacher would make mention of the word slave or slavery. several of the kids would turn to glance or outright stare. me i would sit there at my desk

on the receiving end of these looks and awkwardly pretend i wasn't being forced on display or whatever we were discussing at that given moment was clearly causing the white kids to feel uncomfortable and. their immediate response was to project that discomfort onto me. i have the vocabulary at the time for this silent interaction laced with malevolence, but i remember how i felt ashamed. i know what i felt ashamed about. again as i then left the words to name the source my feelings. however, was being made clear with the uttering of the word or slavery and. the almost accusatory stares in my direction was that my present day being directly associated with enslavement, a badge of inferiority was mine and mine alone to carry whenever. slavery was discussed in the classrooms. not only could i count on the stairs, but also the teacher's reassurance that. we, meaning all of us, present day beings, learning social studies at that very moment, should not judge those historical by our contemporary

morals. i never felt included in that we are the bomb of historical, which seemed intended to soothe the potentially guilt, potentially guilty consciences of the white kids who managed to thereby distance themselves from the karma of any and ancestral enslavers, while pinning the burdens of slavery, the enslaved onto me historical relativism, but choice of their sense of innocence while their in my direction seemed to project some kind of guilt. beyond the context in which i supposed to be learning history. the subject matter itself presented barriers to my early willingness to engage with it. my grade school with history consisted of names, dates, notable events and geographical that i was compelled to memorize textbooks and recite on test and which then, frankly would promptly evaporate from my mind. the textbook presentation of history as a simplified, sanitized list of chronological factoids, largely devoid of

narrative, is, of course, intentional. the project of teaching history is from the project of imprinting with a sense of nationalistic identity and patriotic fidelity. and this, at its core, as paradoxical as it is guided by a single self-contradictory intention to teach what happened in past without really teaching what happened in the past. it is mission that is ultimately impossible. what i remember learning about the civil, in short, was that it was a american war, fought to end slavery. it was long, bloody brothers against brothers, etc. despite the barrage of names places and dates i was confronted with in my state compelled study of history, i came away with what amounts to slogans, the kind that infiltrate and remain lodged in one's memory long after the details of the product that was being sold have faded from recollection upon a closer reading while clear that the civil war did effectively

slavery. it is also clear this goal did not drive the country to war in the first place. yet i was taught more or less that northern brothers came to arms against their southern brothers because slavery was wrong. well, i can't pretend to remember precise details. i was taught. i am certain that the lesson impressed upon me was the moral rectitude of white. only years that i figure out that just because the civil war formally ended slavery did not mean, that it was fought in order to end slavery, as frederick douglass stated, quote, the south was fighting to take slavery out of the union and the north was fighting to keep slavery in the union and, quote, only years later, did i discover that the union's enlistment of -- soldiers in the war against the confederacy was considered by union military a necessary evil to the flagging morale and defection. white soldiers. as w.e.b. dubois writes in black instruction in america, quote, freedom for the slave was the

logical of a crazy attempt to wage war in the midst of 4 million black slaves and trying all the while sublimely to ignore the interests of those slaves and the outcome of the fighting. end quote. it was only years later that i found out the emancipation proclamation, in essence, a utilitarian move to induce yet more enslaved people to flee from their masters and join union union ranks. a governmental offer made to consummate civic transaction military service in exchange for freedom. in fact, lincoln's to arm -- soldiers and formally emancipate slaves during the civil war was considered by confederate officials as a move to incite insurrection. concurrent with historical erasure is the selective imparting effects, omitting whatever is disruptive to the sanitized, nationalistic portrayal of history, while including and highlighting whatever bolsters it.

i am particularly stubborn about filtering and selectively ignoring anything that i can tell is being aggressively marketed to me. although swan songs of freedom fighting founding fathers, i repeatedly came across in a variety of media were time and again deflected by my own self-protective willful ignorance. i just did not want to know, though i was repeatedly being taught happened when whatever happened, who did what and to whom. what was was why? why these things happening without this distinct perspective, without any narrative throughline. i was simply unable to care. this so-called history. any reckoning with the why or, any unavoidable facts like the existence of slaves or slavery, or mollified by historical, and that useful yet illusory notion of progress overshadow a violent past with both the evidence, the promise of a bright future. none of these observations are new. w.e.b. dubois himself in the last chapter of black reconstruction

in america, writes that history is propaganda, lies agreed upon that are characterized by libel, innuendo and silence with respect to which evil must be forgotten, distorted and skimmed over. when dubois wrote black reconstruction, he was not merely recording history, but revising it, and he so in the face of so many pernicious theories or schools of thought, including that of archibald dunning of columbia university, who interpreted the reconstructed reconstruction period as a grand mistake. when northerners interfered with southern affairs using federal military as mortal blackmail while inept, the -- were elevated to political power. they were not equipped to wield. in fact, presented the paper that would become black reconstruction. at a 1909 meeting of the american historical, which dunning himself despite the paper's gracious reception at the meeting. it did not influence contemporary scholarship reconstruction as, david levering lewis noted in the

introduction to a 1998 edition of black reconstruct, quote, african scholars were not silent, only unheard or dismissed the white academy and quote, during the 20th century and beyond, historians have continued to challenge such renderings, connecting the lines between names, dates and names, places and dates, narratives that expose biases and dispel the spell. persistent. so it is then that in my reading and, relearning of history, time has no and the true definition of history that is any history that is actually with learning is news. it remains the case that all is considered. news isn't inherently new, but only new to the one who has no knowledge of it. the conciliatory notes conciliar notion of progress notwithstanding. current events often are not new, but merely reincarnated versions of history. thank you very much. wow. well, firstly, i have to say,

the whole thing of being in the classroom and you know, it's a social studies segment or session where we're talking about slavery and all the kids turn around and look at you. i i absolutely relate to that. all of a sudden, i'm like, i am all of a sudden the ambassador or, you know, for slavery. like, why all looking at me, i'm learning about this, you know, just like, you know. so i got my really two that i wanted to talk about a moment early on in the book. when you describe the scene with your white boyfriend at the time. so barack obama has just been it's 28 and in what i describe as sort of an afro pessimist fashion you can correct me on that. you sort of say white people going to be afraid now or are white people to be afraid now that a black person is in charge and you are a white boyfriend is very upset by that statement and slams the computer, your computer down. but i'm speaking the election in general.

do you think that with barack obama's white americans were seeking absolution and if so, do you think that perhaps that statement stoked that barack obama's election couldn't fix things and maybe that was what your boyfriend was afraid? well, this is the interesting part of the book, and well, i'll just i'll just give a little preface. we understand what we're talking about. so the book insurrection rebellion, civil rights and the paradoxical state of black citizenship focuses on the insurrection act 1807, which allows the president to dispatch federal troops and or federalize the national guard of the given in order to suppress domestic unrest. so the book essentially about the various instances in the insurrection act was invoked and sort of toggles back and forth between these instances in history and my own personal narrative and, my own personal

reflections. so in the context of that overall, the first chapter where you're picking this material from pretty much sets the scene by just looking at the legal landscape with respect to antebellum, south and we get these sort of categories of the enslaved and the white citizen and. well, not, not quite yet the white citizens, but rather the the enslaved prior to, you know, the constitutional invention convention. i go a little bit, you know, further back in time in order to sort of set scene there and in that chapter i go back and forth between these various passages that discuss the sort of fear of slave insurrection and my personal experience of the election of barack obama. and without being explicit, it what i'm really trying to do is really consider whether or not these fears that we're contending with in the present

day are and are are basically the lingering emanations from what we as a country encounter during that time in terms of the fear of black uprising. right. so so in that context it's interesting that you asked me like what do i think people thinking and i'm always i'm not reticent to to say what i think people are thinking because throughout the throughout the book i am essentially speculating about the role that, emotions and, the sort of mode, that sort of sort of feeling based motivations that there might be behind what we see as sort of rational invocations of law. and, you know, the sort of revision of history as a sort of march toward progress that seems somehow, you know, sort of rather than very messy at the time. and something that, you know, is sort of a and isn't i'm talking colloquially, not necessarily historians, but of a rather than

something as that is a sort of manifest of various, you know, difficult emotions. right. so in thinking about fear, i did speculate as fear as being a a of underlying reason for anger that i experience that slamming down of the laptop in my or in the response to my admittedly remark, you know, which i just made in passing, really think about. but in sort of, you know, carefully picking out certain from my life that i thought could animate the various chapters, the book, i thought that would be a good one because it shows that perhaps as i'm speculating, right? the you know, despite, you know, this election of the first black president and all that, you know, celebrations in the street and whatnot, we're still dealing with the sort of undercurrent of, you know, the the the sort of the unfunny, well, unexplored. well well under explored and

still present of, you know, tensions around this idea of, you know, white supremacy versus a black supremacy. right. and then doing to us what we did to them essentially. right. because the during the antebellum period, you know, the fear of slave wasn't necessarily about from what i read in any event, about the fear of, you know, black people in the united states and whether enslaved or not seeking, you know formal freedom and equality, but rather, the idea that there could be a flip the hierarchy and then, you know, there would be this sort of black power in charge that will then revenge for essentially what they had suffered. right. so i so i do speculate about that and i speculate about how these you know, despite fact, they were walking around acting as if, you know, that's ancient history and that we're living in

the present. and none of these issues are really affecting our everyday. we are sort of inheritors of the the consequences of these legal definitions inherit as inheritors of this history. and you know we're not should be purely, you know, just navigate our lives spontaneously in a grassroots manner where we're sort of incorporate these sort of conditions, narratives and responses and into our daily perceptions of things, right. so, you know, i, i definitely would say i while i was speculating that this this the reaction that i encountered was sort of somehow related to this fear that i was looking at, you know, in the context that antebellum time and sort of seeing it pop up, you for a moment. it's like in a in a, you know, in a sort of, you know, way that was i was being sort of reprimanded. but you i ended up i ended that anecdote with asking with asking him, are you scared?

right. so it was a it's it's really i just gave myself the license to do what i think you're absolutely not supposed do as a historian because i'm not a historian, which is to of sort of pry into the and minds of people and say what think people were thinking without necessarily having any evidence of doing that. so there is a sort of meditative, speculative sort of inquiry into these sort of underlying motivation ones that do touch things like these sort of fear based emotions. for example, in that first chapter, right. and i think i mean, i think what you do, i think it's skillful the way that personal history and history, which person your past, your personal history is history, but the way in which those things intersect, i think is is you do that with aplomb. and i would also say that, you know, historians who do not acknowledge i mean, they're getting an object heavily but it is just not it's not real.

i mean you always have sort of a viewpoint and i think better to acknowledge that and write from that place right. and i'm glad you said that, because in an the legal history, you know, looking at these insurrection act invocations and my personal narrative, i was aware that what i was doing is sort of allowing the reader a peek behind the veil is like, who is writing this? like, who is this person? especially since i spent a lot of time critiquing this idea of narrative, right? and the idea that we're not just, you know, history is not just about imparting facts, but it's doing so in the context of a narrative which is implicit right and i sort of expose myself as, you know, perhaps a unreliable narrator. it's to the reader to determine that. but nonetheless, it's like i present this and then i also present some some anecdotes about myself so that the reader can see where i'm coming from and perhaps do own analysis of

whether or not the sort of larger portrait that i'm painting, you know, aligns with they consider true, considering how i have sort of sort of betrayed my own, you know preoccupations my own maybe weaknesses and reverence, for example. so yeah. and you you're essentially putting yourself forward to say you analyze me here i am, i'm laying all my cards down on the table. this is i'm this type of narrator right. and as you're you know, deciding if this is true or worthy of, you know, your trust, i've laid that out the table for you. and i'm also being explicit about the fact that i'm putting forth a narrative, also a theory. right. so what i will say in terms of the insurrection act 1807, again, it allows the president to deploy federal troops or have to deputize the national guard in order to suppress, you know, instances of domestic unrest. fairly unusual to from the

federal level domestically, because it's typically the state governor who has the commander in chief of national guard. and then they would engage in, you know, deployment of those troops as they saw fit. but when they were either overwhelmed or at the federal level, i think the executive that there were some violations that they were unable or unwilling to remedy in the state, then you can have an a sort of invocation of the insurrection act, whether unilaterally or at the request of the state governor. so what i saw largely was that there was this pattern with respect to the usage of this act, which really surprised me. it was used most recently to suppress the riots that occurred los angeles in 1992, but you might have first heard of the insurrection act if if you, you know, have at all when. george, george.

okay, that's a freudian slip. when donald trump threatened to invoke it in response to the george floyd uprising in 2020. right. so people were very dismayed and they thought, this is you know, this is this is an overreach of federal military power. it actually is very much in line with a pattern that had i sort of uncovered looking at the insurrection act beforehand right and is this is in line with this pattern of using the act in order to either suppress so-called race riots? again, you know the l.a. riots in 92, the that occurred in baltimore, d.c. and chicago and martin luther king jr was the detroit riots of 67 and detroit riots of 43 going even further back in history, you can look at the bleeding, right. the contest over whether kansas would be a free state or a slave state. and you know, when the border ruffians from missouri where to wear infiltrating in order to disrupt you know the the process

determining you know the status the state that the insurrection act was invoked in order to suppress that instability and then a military historian actually links the dispatch of federal troops to suppress the nat turner rebellion to the insurrection act as well. so there's this sort of race right, to sort of, you know, line of of of invocations. then on the other hand, you do have these implications in order to enforce the civil rights of african-americans. and, you know, the i think the ones that resonate most with, you know, people from, you know, just a know they're they're sort of general relationship to this history as the desegregation of public schools in mississippi, mississippi, alabama and arkansas as well as the of the the the insurrection act to the rights of civil rights protesters to march from selma to montgomery.

so there are there are other instances, and they are they don't necessarily fall in line with this trend. for example there were there was an invocation and seattle and tacoma washing tend to suppress unrest that occurred when white union laborers were trying to force chinese railroad workers out of the city in order to protect their sort of dominion over that that of work. so but nonetheless, do see these eruptions, though they in all cases they don't include african-america. you do see these eruptions occurring either, you know, to sort of suppress these race riots or enforceable rights, largely with african african americans or black people in america being the subject of this act. so that's overall context in which i intersperse my personal narrative of with these incidents and was a very an interesting guide through history as because given that i've just admitted i never liked

studying history, but using the act as a sort of entryway into history was really illuminating because i saw this pattern not only of the use, you know, to suppress race riots or enforce civil rights, but also, you know, it sort of destabilized this of progress, which and back to your, you know, notion of afro pessimism, right? yeah. i don't know if i myself were proclaimed afro pessimist, but don't i don't disclaim the title. okay. you know, i'm fine with that. but, you know, this this idea of progress and you know, the you i like always think about you know these commercial maybe car commercials or you know insurance commercials with martin luther king jr's i have a dream, you know every every year and you know, this idea that we've come so far, not that necessarily. we haven't but in in the context of this act, when i look at this history, i see that what we have taken to you to be progress seems to be concessions in an ongoing and bloody battle over

the full incorporation of black americans into the united states citizenry. so i know there's a lot of you know, acknowledgment that, you know, the 13th, 14th and 15th amendments were passed after the civil war. but, for example, you know, the civil rights act of 1964, that was passed right at the right after. george wallace is famous stand in the schoolhouse door. right. and then we have voting rights act of 1965. that comes right on the heels of bloody sunday. right. so we have these of insurrection act incidents that seem like flashpoints that that coincide with these major incidents and african american history and sort of show the sort of war like over you know, you know, black freedom and or what we like to package as progress. yeah, that's solid. and then of course of the legislation comes forth and it doesn't have teeth. and so it's largely symbolic. but since you're talking about

as we're talking about insurrection, i wanted to talk a little about language. so chronicling the shift in language from black to crime or black person to underserved person, i forget exactly which example specific example you use, but say you offer this phrase, which i think is succinct matano me aids and abets myth solid. so i'm about how this is true in the way that in terms of the terms insurrection, protest and how those are employed. yes, that's that's my main preoccupation. i'm very glad you asked me that, because i'm very attuned to how language on the one hand, obviously think we can do. we tend to think of it as as acting in a passive, something that is purely descriptive, something that, you know, basically details a verbally, you know, as an communicate some

sort of events that occurred in the world. right. but there's a way also in which the language actually creates events. it's a it's a it's a productive. instrument. right. so that you use language, you know, you're it can be used in an active way. you sort of create or maybe even distort the one's perspective on the given that you're describing. right. and ways, you know, this doesn't always have to be malicious, not necessarily malicious intent, but, you know, we're all coming from our own perspectives, our own biases. so of course, the way that we describe the world is going to say as much about us as it does about what we're describing right. so when you come to insurrection right. so this is the insurrection act. passed in 1807. there is no definition of insurrection in the act, if it were passed, you know, in 1987, you would probably verbose with all these different definitions on these qualifications and

maybe they would say insurrection when example of more people are doing such and such when they're armed or whatever it is, i don't know. they might have come up with a legal definition. so there, there is no legal definition in the of an insurrection. so i do make this case that it was that the insurrection defined in practice and it gives us this very interesting through line where. we see, you know, this sort of the sort of warlike contest over incorporating black people into the citizenry of the united states. but colloquially, right. these terms are also used. it's not just that we have these legal interpretive interpretations or legal pronouncements, but we have these what i would call a culture war, right. where the discourse this is like this sort of battle, like terrain over what are we going to name certain events. and we've seen that for a long time in the context of you know black uprisings like do you call them riots do you call them rebellions right.

when you call them riots, what you're is sort of imputing a sense of you're imputing i guess blame or culpability on the rioter. right. because you're you're it's so it's that is the picture that comes to mind when you hear right. like the sort of wanton destruction of property and you know, the, like a sort of loose cannon running the streets, just, you know, committing arson, destroying things. right. when you hear the word rebellion, then you start to think, well this person is not just acting, you know, just you know, spontaneously and with some sort of malice in their heart responding to some other sort of injustice that they're rising up against. right. so we've already had that on that context of black rebellion. now, fast forward the january six. it's you know, it's like is this was this an insurrection or? was this a protest that got out of hand? maybe best it was a riot, you know. so we're having these these contests, again, the nature of what we should call these these

incidents and in a way, i think it's very clear how the use of a particular word is, not merely descriptive in that case, but it does is it creates a perception in the mind of the public, which then creates a sort of, i guess, kind of prepares the public for, what, a later legal pronouncement will be or what a legal interpretation will be of that event. right. so i that's why we were seeing the ferocity over what to call, you know, for example january six, right? because you call it if it's a protest that got of hand and you then maybe what comes to mind as protesters generally have first amendment rights and that should be protected if it gets a little bit out of hand. and, you know, should we really, you know, bringing down the, you know, the gavel, these people then when you say insurrection, you start to think about, oh, this they were trying to trying to violently overthrow the and this is like a massive crime threat to democracy, right and then the context in which you

understand the event shifts and that prepare cars the terrain for then the judge to come in and then decide one way or the other how to interpret these events. right. yeah. and in, in the book you take issue with the term peaceful protests. why is that? that's i mean, i have that sort of taught to me as right way. yes. yes do you take issue with that? well, i don't have a problem with peaceful protests in and of themselves. it's the terminology that i have that it did great me because. there's this idea that a protester when you qualify a protest you have to qualify it when you use the word protest qualify it by peaceful in it almost it implies that a protest, you know, in and of itself might be violent unless unless you attach it attached to this peaceful the good kind where yeah. the good kind of protest.

so there's that. but also it to me it just grates because sort of speaks to this idea of sort of language edge war that we're engaged in where we have to, to sort of insist that a particular event be characterized in a certain in order to fend off, you know, certain kinds of interpretive issues. i would then leads us to legal action. do you see what i'm saying? absolutely. so i don't see term peaceful protest as being benign. the protest itself might be the peaceful and going to be benign, but usage of that term is, one, which is trying to characterize the in a particular way for a, you know, basically i and i as a, you know, coming from a legal background, i basically see it as characterizing it in that way in order to then frame event in such a way that it requires protection, right. and this sort of, you know, in the same vein as, say, the civil

rights protesters marching from selma to montgomery. like that's the insurrection act was invoked in order to protect the first amendment rights to march peacefully. right. but when we had a donald trump threaten to invoke the insurrection in response to the black lives matter protests nationally, the response to his threat was like, no, no, no, these are peaceful protesters. right? so that that terminology was used at an event to try to shield them from that action and in a way, recharacterize them and perhaps in the same way as the civil rights. and i'm not saying that this is i'm not quibbling with the intent. i'm quibbling the fact that this even has to be done and the fact that we have these polarized perceptions of the state of the same events, and then we're constantly engaging in these battles and all of it to determine we're going to describe them in order to sort of shape, you know, the cultural

perception and manage, you know, sort of legal action and state action and police and military action. right. in this context. right. so one thing i will say about the black lives matter, the threatened invocation of the insurrection act by donald trump, response to the black lives matter protests is that it's a perfect of how insurrection, in a sense is in the eye of the beholder, because he could very well have this, you know, looked at all the the reports well, they many of them came out afterwards. but if he had been in a different mindset he could have seen the protesters who were coming under fire. but the rubber bullets and tear gas, you know, and you know, all this police brutality, there are at least a thousand reports i think i saw on one. you know, later investigation just getting sense of exactly like where the violence was prompted, who was prompting the violence. so he could very well have

responded in the way that lyndon johnson did and said we're going to invoke the insurrection act to protect black lives matter protesters right to peacefully protest, right. so it depends on how the the person who has the power to sort of invoke these this legislation and looks at it. and that's where we to something that you would we used to call critical theory. yeah i don't i don't know anymore who knows i mean been like yeah i went out. exactly. i come from a time when critical race theory was about, you know, seeing how laws that are, you know, facially could be applied differently depending on the sort of racial characteristics the people to whom it's applied right. i don't i still don't understand. the new critical race theory is, although i understand that it's being argued about at school boards and and whatnot, but that said, i think this act is a sort of really interesting test case to see how people perceive

themselves on one side or the other of this sort of notion of the potential insurrectionist or the violent person. yeah. and especially i think because a lot of folks, this is the first time like in, in when donald trump suggested that he would use this act. this was the first time people i think a lot of people had heard of it, of course. and they have that association and and are not necessarily aware the ways in which it was used to protect also. exactly. african-american protesters. and so that's it's interesting. it's going to be interesting, i think, to see how people relationship to that the act change is over time, time. and i think and that's and i think what we're dealing with right now is the the culture war aspect. right because we're we're waiting to see how could be potentially interpreted in the future and the fact that the term insurrection was applied to the you know, the january six ralliers. right. sort of seems to be setting a

sort of narrative mood or a narrative tone that is somewhat foreboding. right. and so it's in a way, it's like foreshadowing, right? and it's sort of like sort of prepares the public perhaps you that sort of invocation being used in that context. and what i will say, i mean, if just to be clear about the historical. in the 1870s, ulysses ulysses s grant did invoke the insurrection act in response to ku klux violence in south carolina and throughout the 1870s, he'd something called the enforcement acts with a language is very, very close to the insurrection act in terms of the right for the authorization of the president to use to dispatch federal troops. and you call forth the militia to, you know, the law or suppress domestic unrest purely in the context of enforcing 14th and 15th amendments, you know, the sort of fledgling of

freedoms of the of the newfound freedmen and women, as well as suppressing the kkk. i think one of those acts, one of the enforcement acts of the 1871, is called the ku klan act for that very reason. right. so there are this is not a completely a completely unprecedented narrative shift, but even in the context of what calling, you know, the january 16th correction. i mentioned sort of at the coda of my book because all of this was happening while i was trying to finish and it was just very interesting that like all the themes i was talking about were coming out, you know, in the current as i was finishing. but nonetheless, you know, that what you could well interpret the action to interfere the certification of the election as a way to suppress you know black vote right because a lot those mail in ballots were at least interpreted or associated with black voters.

so i don't know. i mean, it's in a way it's it's a lose it's a lose association. it's nonetheless a pattern that seems to be reasserting itself over and over. and i think for me, anyway, this was a very useful exercise to reexamine in the context of creating a sort of larger tapestry where i can fit these facts into it and they just don't seem random, but like i can now see, okay there is there seems to be a pattern there seems to be some sort of cycles that we continue to through. there seem to be, you different characters sort of enacting like the same kind of, you know, sort of actions or had it seemed to seem to have same kind of underlying preoccupations and motivations despite the, you know, the linear progression time and the fact that we are, you know, the now and not in the past, right. was they making progress? yes, exactly. okay. we're going to take questions just a moment. so get those ready.

but i had an aha moment when. i was reading. i want to talk for a minute about as a model defendants. hmm that is. wow. and you quote toni morrison here. you know there will always be one more thing right and so the model defending, it seems to me, assumes that will eventually encounter the law or death by police. and so my concern is, if you're living as a model defendant, i think you're describing this as sort of like a tax that we, you know, are burdened by. but if you're living as a model defendant, who is it for? as it's not really for you? because if you were to die, i mean, look, is it for you know, is it for that your family that will be left behind? i mean i'm really about that. okay. that's an interesting point. so the model i talk toward the end of the book about this concept of, you know, being a black citizen in america is it's like being a model defendant. and that's a take on the of the model plaintiff in where you had

the naacp and other civil rights groups that would carefully choose black plaintiffs for you know to cases because they didn't want them to have any blemish or stain in their personal history that could then affect the merits of the civil cases that are bringing forth. so then, you know, we we know about claudette colvin, who? rosa parks. right. but then think she you know, she had an abortion or she had a child as a teenager. there was something in her past that would have made her sort of put her more under scrutiny and perhaps then therefore affect the of the case. so then rosa parks was you know, the became the sort of primary sort of icon or model in that context. so i, i thinking about that. i said, well, perhaps living as a black person, united states is like living as a model defendant because you're on the defense essentially. right.

and but, you know, none that you're you're sort of on the defense despite and perhaps even having a valid or a valid case that you've injured. right. or that you are have been subject, you know, to some kind of mistreatment. right. so this was i discussed this in the context thinking of trayvon martin or, thinking about michael brown and as those sort of new a new were sort of that spate of cases of black police brutality against black young black men where, despite the fact that both of these young men were shot and killed, you know, in dubious at best dubious circumstances. but, you know, what seem to be increasing the library closes. 20 minutes okay rather than three or four for a library card, just make your to the service desk from the first one where we still have more to talk

about. yes. or are they where they seem to be, where they seem to be targeted. one case by the self-appointed neighborhood watchman, george zimmerman, and the other case by the local police. so they, in effect, were victims in the classical sense of the word. they were killed. right then. the the the narrative, you know, shifted to sort of discuss their personal character or whether, you know, trayvon martin's hoodie michael brown was no angel, according to, you know, the new york times, etc.. so there's this idea that you they had it coming in some way and there was this you know, so there was again, narrative war between, you know, one side sort of sort of painting them as, you know, sort of prospective criminals or it's sort of associated with criminality. and another side to redeem them by saying, no, they they were young kids or trayvon martin had skittles. right. were constantly engaged in this sort of battle of language to sort of reconstitute events, you know, in preparation for, you know, the civil or the civil

trial that will ensue. right. so i did talk them as model defendants. and i said, you know, could sort of extrapolate from that to own experience and feel like when you say, you know, what are you defending yourself against? i would say just in the act of acting, you know, going your business in everyday society, there's a way perhaps, you know, but i would say i was engaging with you as as a black person. i may try to present myself sort in a fashion that will not invite you scrutiny. right? right. of course, it's sort of like that twice as good thing. like there's there's a long history of this as a not just, you know, this is not just it just happened to me, right. this there's a there's this ongoing engagement with this, like trying to present yourself in a way that you would be impervious to any kind of attack or or even criticize. right. and it's it's it's unhealthy. yeah. yeah, i agree.

agreed. okay. we have time for probably two brief questions. does anyone have a question? you do. please proceed. to the mic in the corner. any burning questions. oh, okay. yes, please go right ahead. i am tracy. thank you for being here. i just a practical about why you took on the project of writing a book and writing this book specifically at this point your life. well basically so there's sort of background to all of because i didn't just you know i didn't kind of decide write about this this is a very intricate thing to decide to write about. but what really was that? i was just curious at the time when hurricane katrina was occurring, i was curious why. there had been such a delay in the federal response, and that's when i uncovered the insurrection because was, as it turned out, although the governor of louisiana had asked

george w bush, then president, to dispatch nfl all military, you know, assistants or and all federal assistance, you know, including the through the stafford act, which is, you know, invoked to allow for federal in the event of a manmade or natural disaster and in which the troops dispatched, wouldn't have the authority to sort of arrest anyone or search or seize evidence, that kind of thing, the way they would under the insurrection act in any they would be there just to sort of assist local law enforcement and sort of be acting a passive sort manner under the direction of the governor. so governor blanco did make that request in a timely fashion. but george w bush didn't want to send any federal through this draft stafford act. he wanted to send them through the insurrection because there had been all these reports of violence. i remember that in the superdome, they're saying there's you know, there are people know, being attacked or

even murdered. and there talks about, you know, rape and then rooftop sniping, saying rooftop snipers. and a lot of these reports, they just it's just like that. it's almost like the fog of like the fog of natural disaster. there are these fears that people are just going to, you know, become this sort of hobbesian kind of. yes. the looting, the fear of the looting. it's like the fear bubbles up again in contexts. i do talk about that in my book. so that sort of overtook the actual facts on the ground and it created this sort of exaggerate bubble of rumor to which george w bush said he was responding when he wanted to use the insurrection act. however, the governor did not want him to use the insurrection because she wanted to maintain control over the all the military response on the ground. and in fact, i don't think she necessarily it seemed like she didn't a too much of a care about the safety of her constituents because in her public remarks, she didn't

mention borrowing national troops from neighboring states and, saying that they had, you know, these, you know, semi-auto, automatic rifles that were locked and loaded and they were ready to shoot to kill if meanwhile, this is the context in which people stranded in a and a flood and a flood in major city. so i that's when i discovered the act and that's when i was curious what else has this been used? and then i saw the history and then i wrote a legal article about it and then started writing a little bit more mainstream articles about it, which caught the eye of my editor at norton. and then we discussed how to sort of present this in a way that would be more palatable to, you know, for mainstream audience. and that's where the interweave and a personal narrative came in. so that kind of came in as a last stage of the as a phase of this research. but it was very interesting to see how, you know, despite the fact that that was a natural disaster we still were dealing with the same themes over and over again where, you know, you

have these disruptions and then these are the same age old fears rise up to the surface and they distort how people perceive, the events on the ground or, you know and create and the which then create a state legal response you know so these so so these you know invoke invocations legislation and interpretations law. these are not as rational as we would them to be or we would like to believe them to be in all cases. and this is certainly. you know, this book pretty much touches on that know throughout these various instances. all right. well you so much that's all the time that we have how allen everybody thank you if you wish to purchase insurrection we'll be at the tent in just a few and enjoy the rest of the festival. i hope you enjoy on about bookso

the latest news about the publishing industry with interesting insider interviews with publishing industry experts will also give you updates on current nonfiction authors and books the latest book reviews and we'll talk about the current nonfiction books featured on c-span's book tv. ke that. that's a different. that's a different animal. and now joining us on about books is tiffany justice. she's with a group called moms for liberty first off mrs. justice. what is your group? we are a nonprofit grassroots organization of parents across the country in our mission is to unify educate and empower parents to defend their parental rights at all levels of government and when you say all levels of government, does that include? checking and monitoring. what books are in school libraries? sure because we have government schools. have you ever recommended a book being removed from a library?

am i personally haven't recommended a book be removed from the library, but if i was still sitting on school board, which i did here in florida from 2016 to 2020. i'm a mom of four children who attend public school ages 17 through 10 if i had been aware of the books that were in these libraries and i wasn't but i would have then actually asked for many of these books to be removed because i do not believe that they are appropriate for the age groups in which they're being presented and it's this more of an age group thing for you than it is a political ideology. yeah, i don't really think politics belong in this conversation at all. what we're seeing is some very sexually explicit graphic material that has made its way into our classrooms and our campuses and our school libraries, and i think parents would like to know a couple things including how did those books get there and what processes and procedures are there to stop that from happening again there. be accountability here for what children are being taught and exposed to in school and does

that begin with electing the school board? yeah, i absolutely i mean i love local control and i love serving on school board. it was a wonderful opportunity and i think it's important that every community have that conversation about what's being taught in the schools and how people feel about it in the community and every voice can be heard, you know, there are situations where moms may have a concern about a book and maybe that concern as it is kind of reasoned out. it doesn't hold water. but the truth of the matter is that parents have the ability and the right to ask questions about their children's education. it's the fundamental rights of parents to direct the upbringing of their children. well one of the witnesses mrs. justice at the recent congressional hearing on book banning was mindy freeman. she's a philadelphia area mother and she was talking about her trans daughter. i want to get your response to what she had to say. lily also happens to be a female of trans experience.

she is proud to be trans and we are proud of her. being able to be visible for others and seeing herself in the books. she reads is so very important. i want to be clear. if there is one sound bite to arise from my appearance here today, let it be this one. no book made my child become transgender any more than a book could have turned her eyes from brown to blue. let me tell you a little bit about lily's journey. lily will tell you that as soon as she could recognize herself in the mirror the person looking back at her was not the person she was. the male presenting person reflecting back at her did not align correctly with her being. as lily was growing up during her younger years. she presented in what would be considered a more feminine way. as someone that had never known a transgender person while this out of gender norm behavior made my spouse and i questioned what was going on with lily. we did not discourage her from joining the things she loved. in early elementary school lily

lacked the words insight and confidence to describe what she was feeling. as school activities began to separate boys from girls this only frustrated her. in fourth grade when boys and girls were separated to learn about what was going on in their bodies during puberty lily began to panic. after sharing her feelings with my older two daughters. she came to my spouse in me. we did not have the knowledge of everything lgbtq, especially trans related. but what we did know is that we loved our child and that we would support her no matter what and this is when our learning journey began. we shared with lily's fifth grade teacher what lily was going through and her teacher brought to our attention alex. gino's book george now melissa an award-winning children's novel about a transforth grader and said that lily had the option to read it. we appreciated the visibility that this provided to lily as well as the support not only by

the teacher but by the school for having age appropriate books accessible on the shelves. mrs. justice, what's your response to what mindy freeman had to say about her trans daughter? now, i think there's a lot to unpack there to be honest with you. i'm glad that the parent and the teacher had a good line of communication and that the teacher was able to work with the parent as the parent was directing the upbringing of their child as they have the right to do to find resources to be able to help to support that child. and should that book that was referenced in that video be allowed to be in the lutt school library as far as it sounds like a book that's covering a lot of sensitive content including the sexuality and the gender identity or the sexual orientation perhaps of a child and so, you know, i will be honest and tell you that we have a contagion going on in this country something called rapid-onset gender dysphoria where we are seeing a huge spike

in children that are identifying as transgender. it's extremely concerning to me as a mother and as a woman the idea that we're somehow telling boys or girls that there's a right way to be a boy or a girl. it feels regressive in fact, and so there's a lot to talk about in that comment and what those mother in the comments that mom made but there's no doubt to me that that mom loves her child and wants to give that child everything that they need now. should that book be on a public school library to be accessible? every child and i think there are many parents across this country. that would tell you the answer to that is no in fact, it should not be available to every child. does that mean that the book is being banned? no, sir. it does not mean that it is being banned. it can be in public. it can be in public libraries. it can be in bookstores. there are lots of different places where parents can access that type of a book or community resources can be provided. however when we're talking about public schools, and we're talking about all of our children together, there's a bit of an understanding that we've

had about the roles of school and home and those boundaries and so what i think you're seeing parents across the country saying is i raise my children the government doesn't we don't co-parent with the government and there are certain sensitive subjects that we would like to be able to be directing the conversation around for our children. this is one of those things parents are very concerned about this idea about gender identity. that was never discussed in any of our public schools. now taking a front-row seat in our children's education and everything they do including for many of our girls how safe they feel in the bathrooms at their school. so public schools have made accommodations for children for a very long time and i think in this situation there need to be accommodations made for this child. so this child feels safe and valued that the mother is still directing the upbringing of the child, but that the other children and parents that that school also have the opportunity to broach these type of sensitive subjects that really we still believe belong at home.

tiffany justice, was there an incident or a moment that created that made you co-found moms for liberty. yeah, as i said, i'm a mom of four kids i unpack a lot of backpacks and then i ran for school board in my own community, but during covid i have to tell you that the normal procedure of a parent coming and expressing concerns about their child at that local level was broken at that time during covid and what i saw was a system a school system. that was very intent and would do anything they could to protect the system and the children were left to shoulder the burdens of adult selfishness and fear oftentimes and as a mom and as a school board member what i saw was districts ignoring parents ignoring their concerns about virtual learning and we are now dealing with a nation of children who are grappling with two years of lockdowns in this pandemic that have affected their lives in ways. i think many adults cannot even

imagine parents voices need to be louder than any other stakeholder in conversation about education parents need to be part of these committees to decide. what's appropriate for children to be learning in schools and local control and school boards are one of the best ways to be able to do that to get elected. so, you know tina and i co-founders just felt like parents needed a voice and we could help them to find that voice tiffany justice co-founder of moms for liberty. i'm excited about tonight's speakers. and i wanted