>> my name is rachel kim in anaheim for managing life. a public temporarily out of the new history as the eagerly anticipate the opening of a brand-new branch this fall. it is my pleasure to introduce the event tonight. fatima shaik and jennifer eagan on "economy hall" the hidden history of a free black brotherhood. i'm so excited in part to do connection between the friends of brooklyn heights library's friends group and a robust group that supports the brooklyn heights library in so many ways and my connection to fatima shaik i was asked by the president is if that's a branch would be interested in supporting fatima and a book launch for "economy hall." after discovering the story behind the book and seeing the

glowing reviews in "the new york times" i jumped at the opportunityty to be able to hosa program sharing this monumental book. has the accolades in the book publicity grew so did the importance ofta this program and then fatima brought her friend jennifer eagan on board. this has become an event we knew it. within "economy hall" fatima shaik shares with a rope that free black brotherhood of new orleans founded in 1836 to support the community through the civil ward reconstruction terrorism and the birth of jazz. this nonfiction narrative is american history that needs to be shared. highlights forces that need to be heard and it's a deeply personal story for fatima herself and is a new orleans native and send it off the brotherhood. this book is a treasure and i'm

deeply excited about the conversation we are about to enjoy between fatima shaik and jennifer eagan on economy all -- "economy hall" the hidden history of a free black brotherhood. fatima and jennifer please take it away. >> hello fatima. hello everybody. thank you so much for being with us. i'm incredibly excited to have a chance to spread the word about this remarkable book which i've been talking with fatima about for some years now. which has surpassed my every expectation in being a work of history that is covering a lot of ground and of tremendous importance and yet it's so readable and fun. i thought it's a very complex work and i thought maybe the best place to begin would be where you began fatima in your deduction. tell us how this book came to

be. it's a story that begins with your father. >> thank you jennifer and thank you to everybody. i found some journals and he found them in the 50s. i was already a writer but i was looking for something to write about. i looked in the closet of "the wall street journal" and realized this was history. >> can you describe what are the journals and what is the organization that produces some? >> the journals are the meeting of economies and it's an organization of black men that started.

i realized after reading the journals this is probably the most influential and prosperous organization in the south either before or after the civil war. >> in years to the journals cover? >> the journals themselves cover from 1836 to 1935. the organization last until at least 1950s because that's when the journal was -- so that more than 100 ear period there are some places that are missing around the civil war in the journal from 1842 to 1857 so there are a few gaps that i was able to fill in. >> he talk about that your father pronounced in the french way. could you explain what this

organization did and what its role was in the communities served? >> at the time it was basically a legal aid society. a society takes care of its members, their health and if somebody gets sicko help pay for their their hospitalization and they also bury somebody. if someone dies they take care of the burial service may give the widow some money however grew over the century so they became much more politically active and around the civil war they became very involved in what was going on. around the united states and the world. >> growing up in the 1950s in new orleans amidst thehe kind of erasure of your community history in which you were told stories by people with various memories of the past were stories that they had heard about the past that somehow did not quite connect with the

official history and there's a beautiful quote from your book that i want to read. you said that the people who were selling these stories each spoke of the past with the rpassion of the man wrongfully accused of a crime repeats over and over his account of the moment that proves his innocence. i love that and can you explain to us what were these stories trying to prove in the analogy that you give us? what was missing? >> the history itself basically. any sort of community with the narrative from down south. in the schools we knew was going on because their elders would sit us down for longer times and we really wanted to sit and tell

us about you know that friend you brought home is -- grandson and his grandson -- granddaughter did such and such. when i went to high school and we ripped off before school to integrate i remember a nun and i was asking her questions about what the black people did in new orleans and she said well nothing. >> i wonder if this connects with something that was interesting to me that you explain to different deformations of creole that existed in new orleans when you were growing up. can you talk about that? >> yes, i can. there are several definitions of

creole depending on who you talk to put in my time you see white supremacy rearing its head during the i construction. they got virulency in the 1890s into the 1950s. what we would here is that creole metlife and it says that in the book itself. the daily newspaper wrote when you hear about creole food. creole is. this went against our understanding because we were front and one thing i'd like to say if he was not a poet. some people think if you write that you are creole.

you can have people of african descent that can be in the range of color that are creole. there are people who married europeans down the line who were arrayedd creole. creole. we didn't make that distinction my neighborhood because we just felt it was a mixing of the old world and the new world and it didn't matter. >> can you talk a little about your own history and how you came to be born in new orleans? >> gets really complicated. my grandfather came from india and one of the first to come to the united states in the 1890s came from new orleans and married a black creole woman a black one who spoke french who

was born in new orleans. she was the granddaughter i believe of an person in louisiana and i don't think you heard this part she was freed before she had children. that is different from the other side of the family the great-grandmother of whom had children by her owner. they were born and they were until they were 20 years old. i remember asking my grandfather who was your family and he said well who wants to know? he didn't talk about the past because of the history of.

they all met in new orleans. >> what you say perfectly mirrors what you describe about this community that the economy was serving which was in the 19th century multiethnic and incredibly inclusive. i was very struck by the fact that the economy welcomed jewish people and the put out an opera to the two chinese who may want to join and i'm wondering if you could explain it to those who don't know necessarily that much about the south what did that mean in new orleans in new orleans in the 19th century? >> i don't know of if they would use that multi-terminology multiethnic. the people who had privilege living in a segregated system there were places there were only and everyone who is not or was o nonwhite.

you are nonwhite essentially so to tell you the truth if you look at many communities black communities in the united states you would agree that nonwhite people were -- and that's where they started their businesses. the black community tents to be quite inclusive in the south people work together and as i said they didn't believe in racism. it was a premise that didn't make any logical sense to us. >> "economy hall" your title comes from actual place and i wonder if you talk about that place in 18th century and also about you were very eloquent in your book about the importancer of actually having a place to

hold meetings. let's talk a little bit about the place of economy hall. >> economy hall in 1836 was a small house in 185720 years later they decided to build a grand home. they heard other translations have hall's and it was across the street from original building. it became the center of the community and there were philharmonic performances and is the civil war approached it becameal political so they had o talk about the suffrage movement in the 1860s and the black man having the vote in the voter registration drive so it became very important community. that community basically

survived. my father when he discovered those journals on the back of the truck he discovered them because friend was part of the economy society. he said they were getting every rid of everything that was in there. so the storytelling was no more than 100 years. >> and yet now we talk about the physical document. your father took them and you describe beautiful he and building a cover to put the men and staining it and very likely having a house thatuc was elevad when katrina for example did noe damage the documents which are ready with water damage because you mentioned your father had to put them out in the sun and let

them dry because they got rained on. i have to say it's painful to think about. you became a journalist and a fiction writer, writer of children's books and talk about your return to these books where you had not had a lot of contacts until then. >> i need the books were there the whole time because when i wasks a child everybody said one the books got into the house you couldn't touch them. your child couldn't touch the stuff that i heard in the back my mind. after i had been away for a long time seeing the history is i interpretive i wanted to read what was in them and when i saw the handwriting just the

handwriting alone tells you the people that were very educated. the person who you saw a signature i grew up around him. he is my seventh cousin so i knew the name and to find out he was a schoolteacher in the freeman bureau had all sorts of things that were really fun to find out. >> a surprise to me was the beauty frankly of some of the excerpts from these documents. these are minutes of meetings and i'm just going to. with -- read one short excerpts. love is a beautiful dream. the aspiration of the known to the unknown, created the world

only because he needed toca lov. i mean that's not what you expect to find inot meeting minutes, would that we did find them. so if striking in a sense these are literary documents. were you surprised by back? were you surprised by what you foundum in them and buy the whoe but they ended up taking over you in your own literary life? >> i was definitely surprised by how literary they were. in a way though it made sense because as i knew my father and they knew my father's friends they were always telling each other you can do this. i read in the book a little bit about how he couldn't get easily a ph.d. in united states so he had to drive from new orleans to

canada. so 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 wordsnc and these voracious words it was surprising that i saw it written but it wasn't surprising that he did not because i heard that spirit through my life. >> what about the language of the documents because you mentioned a friend of yours described it as french-american. what is a language like and how isca it different from just freh or american english? >> is not english until 1926. they are writing entirely in french and there was a little broken french in broken english.

the way the french red in those sentences was the sentence construction was likes a -- for example when they started to get around americans in the civil war when they got around americans i started using words like. i felt it was just beautiful. >> i'm curious about the process of the enormous undertaking of synthesizing 100 years of

documentation into and historical work and i guess i would love to share the timeline of how that occurred. simply reading these journals must have taken you quite a while. where were you in your life at that time and how did to world the senate when do to become a full-time project? take us through your interactions with them. >> only now is it -- it was a full-time job. it was about 20 years ago that i tried to read the journal and i tried to summarize what i thought was going on. when i came to something i couldn't understand i would ask somebody.

there was a priest who spoke something like 16 to 18 languages. these journals [inaudible] because the french or he could be spanish. after i did that i started, and as i was going along with it i saw the people that lived in the neighborhood. and sometimes some really spiritual things would happen. for example there was a fellow who committed suicide in the road a suicide note and i was in the library and they didn't know who this guy was.

i saw hers sitting at one of of the machines and i said do you know who these people are in heavy for four heard of these people and she said that's my ancestors. she didn't know that he had committed suicide. so that made me say okay i just have to continue this. [inaudible] i was trying to be a published writer and i had a full-time job as a teacher and i was writing stories in those short periods of time. >> course you have a tremendous

resource which was your own community who have been giving you in a sense this history component of the story even when as you said as a kid you didn't always want to listen to it. how did you reengage with that community and am no role of an historian to set up that picture and what were those experiences like? >> that was probably -- some of these people were friends of mine. [inaudible] when i got talking to them about the music that was being played

therear and their their parents didn't want them to go sometimes, that was it. >> do you feel like it further enriched your own relationship to your community? >> oh sure. yes. if you know anybody from new orleans we are always -- we can live somewhere else. he gave me more people to know how i was connected. [inaudible] her parents and her ancestors were both members of economy hall in the 18 50's. so that became much more fun.

but i will always carry new orleans around with me as you y probably have seen. >> get so lucky that you began the project when you did in the sense that you caught a moment where more of this existed in the living memory that i'm guessing it does now. a lot of these stories it's just so crucial to meet the people and to record them while they are still here and can still remember. >> they are people that i was talking about the 100-year-old woman her daughter have passed. none of these people are still around so i was very lucky to talk to them and i talk to them it was like the second step for myself the names of people that they knew as tried to see if i could talk to their older

family. this whole process was like. it was luck that my dad found the books and luck that i was a writerou and we found somethingn the books. it was luck that i would bump into these people. there are séances in the book. >> i love that. and there were minutes. how many meetings included the presence of>> ghosts? [laughter] >> it was fun to find out some of these events. i would look at the séance journals and there would be a ghost talking about this real thing that happened. it was great. >> oh boy. the stories about how you the fiction writer and journalist

undertook a mammoth job of trying to synthesize and crystallize the somewhere missed mass history and material into a story and you make some bold choices. oneto of them you alluded to earlier you chose to focus your days on one particular person. >> we can say it in english. >> he is a fascinating figure with an amazing history.as i'd love to hear if you could tell us about him and what it was about him that made you feel like he would be the to lock-in on for 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 just to be a historical historical account for them a fiction writer so i wanted to move like a novel and likely he lived from 18121893. he had a very long life. he was also present at so many things at a time when it was for the to read he had school and the taught some f of these. then he became part of the reconstruction and he was the grand marshal of the emancipation the celebrated and it was covered by "the new york times." i was able to get a lot from that. and then he he was also a poet.

he has this beautiful handwriting and every once in a while the minutes would say he gave spontaneous poem. how can you resist someone who stands up at a mensa meeting in gives a spontaneous poem? politically active and he named his children after writers. while one child was named françoise l'enfant and another was named homer. all ofwr his voice renamed after writers. it was really fun to follow him. >> so combination of his sensibility and his own literary awareness and the fact that he was presentor for so many important historical event and

so deeply involved that it made him a guy who could -- >> he was the r go-to guy. when he took the minutes he was very surprised about the minutes. every time they mention something new he would number them and send he put it in contents page so you could look din the contents page. it's very clear. he also if anythingg important happened he would it. he was an easy person to follow. and he's one of those people he's not a senator or president or congressman.

[inaudible] >> it must feel as if you know him. it feels like you know his personality and you know what matters to him. he was sort of like a helpmate for you. >> yes. he was a lot of fun. in fact at one point they would get in arguments with each other and then he wrote there was one point where one fellow disagreed with another one and hit them with his cane. the two men came to the meeting and they talked about the send ones that i'm still bruised in the face because of your cane. and then he writes at the end, the other one says it is not my

apology. [inaudible] they embrace so closely they were like one. it's just beautiful writing. >> i want to take this moment to say that in the chat i believe links are appearing for these book. these are amazing anecdotes about her remarkable event. i all of you to buy it for yourself or for your loved ones. another thing he is a big part of what makes this book so readable and the other part aigs you fatima because you bring us into these moments with the whole array of tools that i think probably were known as your time as a fiction writer and a journalist.

you bring out senses clothing and smells and you really put us insm a moment. it's tremendously compelling -- compelling. and i'm wondering if you have a gigantic quantity of footnotes. i know you were relying heavily on your own imagination. i wonder if you could talk to us about the challenge of deciding where to draw the line about what you are willing to imagine and how you negotiated those questions? >> there's imagination and the setting ofg the scene. the scene itself for me put it this way. they were talking about the culture of black men. it was november.

i looked up the weather at that time and the time of the sunset. i was able to say i know for example francois gave the speech. i can say that from flaw was --. [inaudible] he walked into the economy hall just about the time the sun was setting in the room was warm and it was crowded. i believe there were 600 people, hundreds of people so you figure hundreds of men packed in the room will be moist and the plaster walls, i thought i could do that because it's not

imagination. it's not imagination in any of the words. the quotes in the newspaper or the journal and the fact that i had a fabulous editor who would not let me get away with anything, nothing. there's a street that economy is on. she said when did it become a street and when wilson avenue? was an avenue in 1862 or an avenue in 1867? everything it's in their has been found. >> it's sounds like it's not so much imagination as using your tools as a way to connect the factual dots in ways that bring

the sensory quality of the two live in the moment. >> right. fiction itself i have to feel it. this is the kind of reader i am. i have to feel something is going on and with the way i taken information is through my senses. i apply them and that's how i get my t a information. everybody feels to their senses so my readers have to know what ity smells like and what the sound is that they are hearing and then they are in the room. >> i also brought a little bit of journalism. i've got some pieces from these times the raptor katrina that are very not like.

and away talking about what it felt like after katrina coming through the senses. >> you know you mentioned katrina now and i want to jump in and ask your question because i was surprised to hear you writing your book in a sense the biggest disruption of this community that you are tracking going back to the early 19th century really was katrina. that is something that is really fractured the community in certain ways. i was sort of shocking to me that in all those years and the fans of the century is the one that has been so disruptive. can you talk a little bit about that? >> most of these people, most of these generations i'm talking about lived in the downtown areas of new orleans in the downtown areas of new new orleans were where the levees broke. so the floods came into our

neighborhood. a lot of people lost their homes and elders were in their 70s, 80s and 90s at that time. so we lost that connection and a lot of them, there was one couple that drowned in their house that was connected to the economy hall. most of our elders were, we evacuated them. we took them out of town but then they were having heart attacks and strokes because they were out of their meijer. thee statistics were more than 0 people who were in new orleans at the time of crew trainer were born here. it's a city where people stayed. they don't reallyy leave. so the mass disruption of those downtown neighborhoods and losing those elders from 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. >> yes comelm almost 100,000 hae not returned. you can read it on the web site about this. there was a diaspora. the houses were flooded. it was very difficult. let's it's just followed this whole white supremacy line. howard going to get enough insurance to pay for houses? people were having all kinds of problems like that. a lot of people with money were from out of town. a lot of them could not rebuild

where they were snatched up by corporations that were building housing for people with a lot of money who could come in and pay 200 to $300,000 foron a house. and people who bought the house for $5000 the house now is worth $300,000 you see the disintegration of the community. if you go to houston art landa landa -- [inaudible] >> it feels like it's exactly what the economy was there to do, to try to hold the community together and to try to find a tangible way for people to help each other and it feels like that is what we don't seem to have anymore. or our community does not seem to have anymore. >> they are still people, the a

lot of friends that still live here and they get together but we lost a lot because the economy were operating at it time of. part of their goal was to educate one another. that's what they did. they educated each other and if they needed their house built they would ask one of their friends to do the job. the house i'm sitting in right now the new part of our house i can remember the day that all the relatives and friends came and build back the house. they framed at the back of the house. they cooked and they came in framed up the housese and the priest came and blessed the frame. the next person that needed house built every when the -- everybody went to saturday to their house and that's how it

was rebuild. >> and wondering how your community has reacted to this remarkable contribution you have made to it which synthesizes so much history. >> they liked me a little bit more. what can i say? i think they like it. everybody was thumbing through the index >> that is funny. it is that personal. [laughter] >> if they are not in the book why are they not in the book? >> that is so funny and it's a bomeasure of how just diffracted my own past as i can even imagine being part of a community b like that but that s

really so telling and it's so human nature. we all want to be included and make sure our ancestors were given their proper due. >> exactly, exactly and i have to remind everybody when you look at history this is something i learned you are not responsible for your ancestors and you cannot take any benefits from your ancestors. if your ancestors were and you don't want to claim them -- you have to make a choice. and do something on your own. >> that was funny. you are in our lives right now? >> i am. >> usess the house where you grw up? >> this is the house that i h gw up. behind me through the window is the porch where the books were

found in this house we were able to keep after katrina. this house did not play. i lost my dad though. he had a heart attack but we were able to keep the house. so this is very special to me. the book is special to me. >> it's special to be in your house with you. it's something we wouldn't be able to do if it weren't for this virtual nature of our meeting so there's a silver lining to be present in a 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 will hear from some of you. >> i have one more thing i would like to talk about. go to questions first. >> you can fold them and whenever you want. was there a w connection between

the economy and the church? >> they are was a connection. they were very attached to the catholic religion the beginning. for example the government did not recognize marriages -- the catholics could get married in the church recognize them as marriedd people. after the civil war when white supremacy after the civil war near the end of reconstruction white supremacy to cold and the guys in economy hall we started seeing them go towards spiritualism because the

catholic church was segregated to and they were not for that. so many of them left then. .. lean back some people having little bit of trouble hearing. we went there we have a question i really love it based on what you just said about the family connections to your book, do you know the family? >> yes my yes,. [laughter] the musician was my father's godfather his own godfather? >> was he almost killed by mob? >> yes thank you for mentioning that. remember i said they're trying to get suffrage for black

people, right? the constitution at that time the louisiana constitution when it first came back into theiont united states lincoln wanted the southern states, lincoln won the southern states and back into the united states. so he did the 10% solution and louisiana came back. came back however without giving the whites to vote for blacks but many say they're going to have a convention that convention the police came and killed everybody that was in that room. he was there so were several other economy members. lucian was there i think his son was nine or ten years old. they stabbed the boy, they shot out his eye. the shot r-uppercase-letter, was almost killed when he was trying

to get out of the building people return to get out of the building because they're o cornered. hey' was almost killed but they grab the man in front of him when he is coming out the door and killed him so he was able to run away. rick kaplan made a statement. he said the floor was slippery witht blood. the things i wanted to mention it and i'm glad you brought this up. we think that right now that history, everything we do is new, right? as it is not. these men were fighting for voting rights, voter registration was going on, and their people trying to stop voter registration a black suit. but it familiar right now, right? there is police violence. there were militias that went and try to kill elected officials legitimately affected officials.

if you can learn something from this book, do not wish to be preachy but there's a playbook for white supremacy it happened in the. 1860s. if you have the playbook if two things coming on the pike right now and do something about it. you'll know this or denigrating people. with that sort the police to kill people. and threatening them got something going on. >> another question, how it was a economymy halt related to pley versus ferguson? >> the member of the economy society or probably one of the first -- they were among the first. maybe one of two mutual aid societies. plessy versus ferguson there were many more hundreds of mutual aid physicians by that

sign. when the president of the economy society he was also member of the citizens committee. they were involved in taking the plessy case to court. that president is saying -- and many of you are in support of that legislation against the jim crow law. they were very much against the jim crow law and the plessy versus ferguson for those who don't know was a case taken to the united states supreme court to prevent separate but equal. okay, i wanted to ask one more

question and maybe we will end it fairlyy soon. i wonder if you could talk for a minute about music. summative associate new orleans with music, jazz in particular. you write a lot about jazz inte the book. can you talk about the economy and its relationship to music over e time? >> sure pretty coach of the new orleans jazz and heritage festival ucf content. it's based on thisl particular hall. the economy of the musical all the way through all these things in the early years in the last incarnation that was of music indicating as children, were driven out of jobs with the legislation. they played music to make money. one of the places they played

music was in economy hall. they would raise money with the partyci. they go to the poor people or for the nuns. in circulating in the community if and when you read the book you will see louis armstrong suffered. people came to economy hall. >> another question is, did a economy hall have members that were enslaved as well as free people of color? >> they did not. they did not. they did not. these people were millionaires. one of them had homes italy, france, and louisiana. they did not mix t with the slas

no more than the new york society mix of the lower classes in the new york society, right? the second thing the more important thing is that it was against the law. when there is slavery free people of color and the enslaved ncould not mix. in fact the police start attending the mending bench at the meetings i do know it's gone too long but it was a fear that the free people would incite slaves to revolt. the father was in the haitian revolution. there is a good reason for them to be afraid. so the police really did not want free people of color they would go to jail in the police start attending their meetings. so they did not do it. besides the social class thing they would also go to jail everybody would go to jail. >> when this is done i urge you to look at the chat and the recording we have gotten

granddaughter, other people who knowth other people that means more to you than it does to me. ucwe are pretty much out of tim. i'm going to ask you one final question which is kind of a tough one. you quoted this in part from the economy's mission to help one another and teach one another while holding out a protective hand to sufferingumany. you cannot shoot much higher than that. we live in a moment of such tremendous division and racial tension and political strife. i wonder what economy hall can tell us, if anything it's a lot of weight to put on you. but what can the story tell us about how to improve our own situation and live better? >> me a quote to from economy hall?

i wasn't expecting that question. but i want to read to you something from the members in 1858. this african blood that runs in our veins there is all of our crime. let's preach our patrons they can follow the test of eternity come out of the isolations that our oppressors afford. for they would like to see us forever disunited, tearing eache other's apart, having only hatred in our hearts for one another. we can say it but we should do is we should not have hatred in our hearts for one another and keep going together to try to fight the oppressors. >> hear! hear!. i think that is an excellent note to end on. ed has been such a pleasure to talk with you. i'm excited to continue the conversation the next micu. thank you all so much for joining us.

and please, i urge you to buy this book. thank you so much. i hope you have all enjoyed this conversation tonight as much as i have it. if you had not had the honor of being able to read this book, economy how the hidden history of the free black brotherhood i absolutely urge you too. it is a treasure pre-thank you so much again. and i hope you all have a wonderful night. ♪ if you are enjoying book tv sign up for our newsletter using the qr code on the screen to receive a schedule of upcoming programs, author discussions, book festivals and more. book tv every sunday on cspan2 or any time at booktv.org. television for serious readers. ♪ >> weekends on cspan2 are an

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