depend on a service that is and has always been of the troops and the troops.

it's tonight. we are honored to help launch a brand new book, in fact, a book that will be officially released on may 1st by an author who has been part of our american antiquarian society community for many years. robin bernstein is the dillon professor of american history and professor of african and african american studies and of studies of women, gender and sexuality at harvard university. she's the author of racial innocence, performing american

childhood from slavery to civil rights, which won five awards include doing best book prizes from the new england american studies association, the association for theater and higher education and the international research society in children's literature. for her first book, robin held a jay and deborah last fellowship here at a in 2008 2009. i will also add that professor bernstein has been a crucial advisor to acs current and e.h. grant historic children's voices after robin bernstein talks for a bit. she'll be joined in converse nation by kevin quashie, who is the royce family professor of teaching excellence in english at brown university. he's the author or editor of four books. most recently, the sovereignty of quiet and beyond resistance in black culture and black aliveness or a poetics poetics of being black aliveness has

been awarded to prizes. the james russell lowell prize from the modern languages association and the pegasus award for poetry criticism from the poetry foundation. so we are honored and pleased to welcome both robert robin bernstein and kevin quashie yee here with us this evening. and i'm delighted to turn the podium over to robin bernstein. welcome. thank you all so much. i am so thrilled to be here. thank you all for coming out tonight on this beautiful day. thank you. thank you, scott casper, for that lovely introduction. thank you. dan wolverton and stephanie corrigan for making this event possible. i think tied poor bookshop for supplying books for tonight's event. and i also want to thank c-span for sharing this conversation with their viewers on american history tv. i thank the american antiquarian

society writ large, which has been one of my most important intellectual homes since i had that fellowship here in 2008 to 2009. and that i was here for only one month and the month was completely transformative. it simply transformed my first book, racial innocence performing american childhood from slavery to civil rights. the expertise and generosity of the staff. the astounding resources and the camaraderie of the other fellows all enabled me to write a book that i could not have imagined otherwise. so many thanks. i also thank professor kevin quashie, who has generously joined me in conversation tonight. kevin has thanked, as has shaped my thinking since 2012 when he published his luminous book, the sovereignty of quiet beyond resistance in black culture in 2018. i came to brown to share early

work from what would become freeman's challenge. kevin responded with thoughts and questions. that pushed me to think in new ways about william freeman and his family being in conversation with kevin tonight feels like a gift and a homecoming. thank you, kevin quashie. i began writing freeman's challenge because of two moments of surprise as the first surprise happened when by chance i found a footnote about a theatrical staging of a black on white murder. and this was in 1846 in the city of auburn, which is in the central new york state, in the finger lakes region. i was astounded and here's why. my fields of expertise include american racial formation and theater and performance history. so what i knew from both of these fields was that in the mid-19th century, white people absolutely did not want to see

any representations of black on white violence on stage. it was too terrifying. it was to disturbing. it could not be contained within the framework of entertainment. and so for that reason, it simply wasn't present on the american stage. and i'll give you an example to show you how not present it was when people performed othello. othello, of course, contains a scene of black on white violence, and people would bend over backwards, turn themselves into pretzels to avoid showing that. and one of the things that they would do, white performers would perform the role of othello as an oriental ized character, as swarthy and as distinctly not american and certainly not african-american. so this is how much white people did not want to see these images on on stage. so when i found this footnote, i knew that something very strange

had happened to make white people behave in a way that was so different from other white people at the same time. so what? i asked was, what happened in auburn in 1846 to cause such unusual, such unexposed, acted behavior? so i started researching the crime that was the subject of the theatrical performance, and i started with the man who is at the center of it, whose name was william freeman. this is william freeman. i quickly learned that william freeman was an afro native teenager who was convicted in swore he didn't commit despite a he was convicted and sentenced state prison.e auburn the auburn state prison was distinctive because it enclosed factories where prison prisoners were least two.

private companies usually for $0.30 a day. the prison pocketed all of this money. the prisoners received no cut william freeman was forced to manufacture animal harnesses, to dye silk and to make carpets. these goods were sold throughout new york state to consumers. and this was my second surprise. i thought convict leasing in new york in the 1840s in factories is like many people associated convict leasing with the post-civil war south and also with agricultural labor. i was familiar with important works like michelle alexander's, the new jim crow and douglas blackmon's slavery by another name, and these books along with ava duvernay's film 13th, suggest that profit driven carceral practices began with the civil war. after the civil war, with the end of southern slavery and the passing of the 13th amendment, which famously states that

neither slavery nor involuntary servitude shall exist in the united states, except as a punishment for crime. but in fact, convict leasing existed in the north decades before the civil war. it developed in the context of northern, not southern slavery, the end of northern, not southern slavery and the auburn state prison where william freeman was incarcerated, developed this practice. so this project began with two surprises. and when i took these two surprises in a question emerged, which was did these surprises have any relationship to each other? was did the practice of convict labor in the auburn state prison somehow lead to white people behaving in auburn in such an unusual way to figure out the answer to this question. i wrote freeman's challenge the murder that shook america's

original prison for profit. so who was william freeman? william freeman grew up in auburn, in the black neighborhood of new guinea. he was born in 1824 into auburn's most prominent black family. his enslaved grandparents were revered as the founders of the duke of new guinea. william freeman grew up in a osknit, lively social world, organized around private gatherings, churchntslavery action, home based education and work. but alongside william freeman near new guinea, something else was growing. and that was the auburn state prison. the auburn state prison was international, really famous because it innovated a novel form of incarceration. unlike other prisons at the time, the auburn prison was not established primarily to punish or to confine or to redeem people. rather, it was built by white businessmen for the explicit

purpose of stimulating economic development. the building of this prison in 1816 caused $20,000 in state funding immediately to flow into auburn. and at the time, auburn was a tiny little village with fewer than 2000 people. and $20,000 is the equivalent of half a million dollars in today's money. so you can imagine if you have a tiny little village with 2000 people and all of a sudden you have what is now half a million dollars flowing in, it is going to transform everything. and that is exactly what happened. the builders go, this was the plan from the beginning. the builders goal had nothing to do with justice or reform. their goal was to transform auburn from a village into a city, and that and that is what happened. the business was the excuse me, the prison, the business. the prison that was a business was built on the banks of the west go outlet. so you can see right here this river, this is the alaska

outlet. and it was built on the banks of the alaska outlet for the explicit purpose of powering factories. so even before the prison was built, i imagined to enclose factories for the purpose of manufacturing goods. the deed this land here was sold to the state for $1 and the deed actually states that a dam wil be built. and you can see the dam right there. a dam would be built in order to power these factories ins the prison and also to power the private businesses of the men who sold this land for a dollar. so they the people who created this prison, viewed the prison as a vehicle by which to soak up state funds, manufacture goods, stimulate commerce, build banking, and develop land and waterways. in short, they reimagined the prison as an infrastructure for capital ism. this economic plan was supported

by what became known as the auburn system of incarceration. so the auburn system, a system of incarceration, has a number of characteristics. one is that the auburn system, the prison, ran through a system of extreme social isolation. the men who were imprisoned in auburn were put into solitary confinement every single night. and during the day they worked in factories. they worked together in these factories, but they were not allowed to speak to each other at all, ever. and they were not even allowed to look at each other's faces at all, ever. so this was an extreme social isolation. people could go in auburn, literally for years without speaking a word and without looking at another human face. of course, people did find ways

to communicate. of course, people did find ways to look at each other's faces. but that was extremely risky because another characteristic of auburn, another characteristics of the auburn system was extreme physical violence. so this and the violence was necessary to enforce the extreme social isolation. and because this is inhumane, this is unhuman. so there was solitary confinement every night, total silence at every time, at all times, and work in factories. and what's really important to understand is that the purpose of the social isolation, the purpose of the silence was productivity. the goal was to increase productivity. and the concept behind the isolation was not punishment. the concept was how to control people and get them to work as much as possible. and that was the concept behind

the extreme violence as well. so the auburn system is widely known to scholars of u.s. prison history. and one of the key ideas that i hope comes through in my book is to foreground what the system was for that. it was a system that relied on torture. it was a system that relied on inhumane practices, all for the purpose of manufacturing, all for the purpose of making money. and it absolutely worked. so here is what the prison looked like from the outside and you can see it looks like a giant factory because th's basically what it was. and i want to point out just a couple of aspects of this. fit of all, everywhere you see a smokestack that's marking the locaon of aactory. so you can count the smokestacks and you know exactly how many factories ther were in the prison. and these were all prison factories that were run by private companies leasing prisoners.

the other thing i want to point out about this image is the locomotive in the bottom left hand corner. so the train tracks actually grew in relation to the prison. they were bringing romita ariel to the prison. they were taking goods away from the prison. they were also bringing touris to and from the prison. the prison was actually making additional money through tourism, believe it or not. and that's something i can talk about more later. and the last thing i want to point out about that train, besides the way it marks the infrastructure of capitalism, is that locomotives were actually built inside the prison. locomotives were one of the one of the salable commodities is that were actually built by prisoners in the auburn state prison. so i'd like to share a slice of friedman's daily experience in the prison. one of the things that's

important to know is that the extreme size, social isolation and was designed to reduce workers, men to machines. and that was actually the language that was used that the that the prisoners should be like machines. and it was all designed to dehumanize and to maximize, to maximize productivity. so i'm going to show you i'm going to share with you a little bit of the daily routine that made that happen. every morning, freeman and the other men marched into the prison yard. they emptied their their light tubs, which were to use as a bathroom into the underground tank. rinse them with pumped pump water and set them aside. then they joined the lock step. this is the lock step. it's a form of marching very closely, a 's designed to prevent men from talking to each other or from seeing each other' faces they rejoined the lock step and marched through factories that ed carpets, clhe

barrels, furniture and more with each chamber generating a different racket, a different shade of smoke as raw material began to smolder or boil, as men peel to assume their workstations. the line dwindled. the last stop was freeman's the game shop. there, amidst gusts of dust, 72 men made animal harnesses and hardware for carriages in 1841, which was william freeman first year. there freeman d others almost built almost 7000 animal rnesses, plus hundreds of saddles, stirrups and related items. their work was sold wholesale oil at a total market value of almost $32,000. the contractor bought the year's labor from the prison for a fifth. that amount just over $7,000. less than $0.35 per man per day. freeman's job was to file rough iron that had been imported from

england. smoothing it in preparation for a lacquered finish called japan, running alongside nine other filers, he burnished the surfaces of buckles, rings and other hardware for saddles. freeman filed every morning for 2 hours, then marched to the mess hall for a half hour breakfast, marched back, filed more, marched, ate dinner, marched. filed every movement regimented every day, the same. another prisoner described this life, quote. each morning, when i seated myself in the shop and cast a look around me upon things, two familiar with my sight, my impression has been accompanied with a sigh. i am here yet. freeman resisted his forced labor from the start and he resisted in a lot of different ways. he resisted by working as little as possible. he resisted by reducing his productivity. and he reduced he resisted by

clowning around, which came with enormous physical risks. he he made other people laugh. and this was a very risky but very humanizing thing to do. and he also risked. he also resisted by telling the guards point blank that he did not want to work. he wanted to. he felt that it was unfair that he was being forced to work, as he put it, for nothing. he demanded wages. his claim was simple, but it challenged auburn's defense pinning idea. he insisted that he was not a machine, not a slave, but instead a citizen with rights, a worker. upon his release from prison, he pursued his claim through legal means. he appealed to magistrates who mocked and dismissed him. and then william freeman turned to violence. william freeman committed a quadruple murder that terrified and bewildered white urbanites.

a high a high profile trial ensued, and the trial got very big, very fast. and it got it. it made national headlines. and one of the reasons that it got so big so fast was that william henry seward, who was then best known as the governor of recent governor of new york, defended freeman pro bono. and, of course, we know that 20 years later, after this, william henry seward would become the secretary of state to abraham lincoln and he would broker the sale of alaska. if you've ever heard of seward's folly. that's him. that was in the future, however. the prosecutor was john van buren, who was the son of the recent president. martin van buren. so this was a clash of the titans, and it got very big, very fast. and the there were daily transcripts of the trial, went out daily on telegraph, and they got published far and wide. the trial attracted the

commentary of walt whitman, james mccune smith, horace greeley, a lot of very well-known people commented on it. now, freeman was entirely clear about why he killed he wanted back pay, and if he couldn't have it, he would have payback. but no one, the prosecution or the defense, wanted to hear freeman's challenge to the auburn system, because the auburn system was the engine behind auburn's prosperity. and by this point, the auburn system, the auburn state prison, was actually a major engine behind new york's prosperity. it was also a major player in party politics. so the prison was very important to a lot of different people, and nobody wanted to hear that it was wrong to make people work for no pay. so nobody wanted to hear it. white auburn ites, particularly, did not want to hear it. so what they did to not hear

this very clear critique that they could not hear what they did, instead was they invented their own story. they invented their own stories in order to drown out what freeman was actually saying. they could not hear the in their effort to silence freeman's critique of profit driven incarceration, white people developed two stories, which were both racist libels that were then relatively novel. the first libel that they developed in order to drown out freeman's challenge to the prison was what would later be called the black, quote unquote, social pathology model. and this was became a century and a half a century to and 2012 decades later became really important to the moynihan report. so they are so seward argued that freeman killed because of of what would then become called social pathology. the other libel was created by

the prosecution, and that was the libel of, quote unquote, innate black criminality. and that was the story that was told in the theatrical performance that was in that footnote that i found that surprised me. so much. white people in auburn wanted so urgently to deny freeman's challenge to the prison that they would actually rather see black on white violence, then hear that challenge. they were using the disturbing image of black on white violence as a distract action from something that they found even more disturbing, even more threatening, which was what william freeman was saying about the prison in their midst. these paired libels were amplified and disseminated in stories about freeman theater, literature, visual images, and above all, the press. and then, of course, black

people had to figure out ways to live with these emerging young, racist ideas. they forged many strategies, including what kevin quashie calls quiet. and i hope this is something that we can talk about in a few minutes. william freeman story is not over. today, we all live with the racist ideas that incubated in his trial and the auburn state prison itself still exists. it is now known as the auburn correctional facility. it is the oldest continuously operating maximum security prison in the united states and manufacture ring continueso define it. today, all new york state license at are manufactured in the auburn correctional facility. so the people who manufacture your new york state license plates, they are literally walking in. william freeman's footsteps. so freeman's story is not over, but a portion of it actually

might end literally in the next five weeks. there is a bill that is up to the need for the new york state legislature, and it's coming up in may. and there are there's two bills that are coming up. one is called the no slavery i new york act. and i realize that using slavery to refer to forced carceral labor is a conovsial thing. and that's something that we can talk about but that is what this bill is called. and what this bill does is it it says it basically says that no onwill be forced to work in a prison in new york state or in any rcal institution in new york state. it does not take away labor. does not take away the opportunity to work for people who want to. what it does simply is it takes away the possibility of being forced to work, which is exactly what william freeman objected to. then there's a second bill, which is called the fairness and opportunity act for a fair

fairness and opportunity for incarcerated workers. and this bill addresses the second part of friedman's critique. freeman wanted not only to be not forced to work, he wanted an opportunity to build a life for himself. so when he wanted wages, he wanted not only wages, but everything that wages confer. he wanted economic stability, dignity, justice. he wanted self-definition as as a free man. his name itself. so this second bill addresses that part of freeman's challenge that he wanted dignity in his work. he wanted wages that could enable him to build a life. these two bills before the new york state are before the new york state legislature right now. and what they are doing is they are delivering william freeman's message into the 21st century. it is time to listen and to act. so i ask you to consider going

to 13th forward is a wonderful organization that is leading the the the the charge to passhe two bills go 1h forward. find out how you can support these bills and together we can finally end forced labor in prisons in new york state. thank you. how are you? i'm great. thank you so much for being here. yeah, it is an honor to be here with you. thank you. i hope everyone's well and safe. thank you so much for that introduction. i'll say just briefly that on this is such a magisterial book and by that i mean the musician david crosby was famous for saying that he loved things that

were better made than they had to be. and what you've done in this book is taken a really comp fixated story in the way that perhaps every story about race in america is complicated because of our compounded in capacities of facing the thing. and you've just found a narrative way of trying to to witness what is difficult. so what would an incredible, incredible book. and i'm so glad that it's here. i'm so glad that people will get to experience it. congratulations. thank you. it's a gift. it's a gift to all of us. so you said in as you were speaking, you said you mentioned the kind of isolation and the one could even think of the kind of metaphor of silences that reverberate across the story, not just in the prison, in terms

of freeman's. freeman's what he's able to say about what he did, what people are able to hear and not willing to hear and maybe not willing to understand. could we talk a little bit more about how you as you're doing the research for this book, how were you thinking about how voice andiveness is operating across the story? yeah. thank you so much for that question and thank you so much for being here. it is such an honor to be in conversation with you. i have learned so much from kevin quashie and i'm so grateful to him for being here. one of the there were there kevin. there were two prime directives as i was researching, two make things was always trying to do. one was to blame freemans voice. i was always trying to find his voice. he never wrote, he never wrote anything. hey never wrote out his storie.

he also did testify in any of the trials. everything that we have from him is filtered through people who heard him speak and it was a lot of white people but also love black people, people in his family said what they heard. every single one of those people was biased. missing one of those people had anan agenda. and so there were reasons to not simply on a literal level belief anyone story about what friedman said. the way i sought to hear him was by listening across the stories. so with many people of all describe the same set of events, they all said things that echoed each other and harmonize with each other. seemed likely it was true. the first directive was always listen for the voice and not

just of freemen but of his family. a freeman had a really interesting family and i learned a lot about them, but most of them did not leave written records. i was always trying to find their perspective, , what they d to say about themselves and a really profound moment in the was thinking if only they have written ande. that i thought well, they did right, they had to of written in various ways. i just need to find the writing. i just need to find in the right way. one day i realized that the name, , thees name the family cn for themselves, the surname, because when william freemans grand prize became free they codenamed itself anything. they could've made themselves after their former enslaver. lots of people do that but they didn't. they chose to name themselves freeman. i realize that their autobiography. it's an autobiography in one word, freeman.

that's what they wrote. that's the most important thing that i can hear.e so that was one prime directive but then the other prime directive was to try to infer as little as possible. i don't have access to william freemans interiority. i don't have access to his psychology. and he never wanted to overestimate my access to who he was on the deepest level. my second prime directive was always to focus on what he did, what he experience, what a know he experience. i kevin the winners writing i was asking myself at this moment in the story what did freeman see? at this moment in the story what could freeman here or not here? because he was at one point beaten so badly while he is in prison that he actually became deafened. so what kitty here?

what could he not here? what could he see or smell, touch? and what did he say? these were all the ways i was trying to d deal with silence. i was trying to find what i could find and go no further, not infer things i didn't actually have evidence for. >> we will leave this year to take you live now to the u.s. senate where today members are meeting for a brief pro forma session. watching live coverage on c-span2. the presiding officer: the senate will come to order. the clerk will read a communication to the senate. the clerk: washington, d.c., october 4, 2024. to the senate: under the provisions of rule 1, paragraph 3, of the standing rules of the senate, i hereby appoint the