the united states. on c-span 3. georgetown history professor director of the schumm berg center for research and black culture discussed the legacy of the 1912 election. >> american history is at the organization of american historian's annual conference in milwaukee and we are joined by michael casen who teaches history at george and khalil mohammed at the schumm berg center for research and black culture. thank you for join joining us. you are here at the conference to look at the 100th anniversary of the election of 1912. why was 1912 important? >> it was election where progressivism reform of different kind, especially

economic reform was on the agenda for all the major layers were there were four in that year which is unusual in itself. the intum bent president and the oeshlist and all of them. from indiana. terre haute. all of the different way where the platform is opposed to big business and the trusts or the monopolies at the time. it was also a time of a lot of upheaval in the country. upheaval among workers and between black and white and upheaval culturally too. it's the beginning of modernist culture and an exciting time. >> you used the term progressivism and we heard the term being used quite a bit what's your definition of that?

>> my students always ask that and it takes a while to explain it. progressivism at the time meant people wanted a more efficient government and wanted a government and a social order ynlly that was dedicated to harmonizing social relations and that would be more democratic. part of that was that they wanted to try to bust up the big businesses and regulate them more strictly. >> was this the first that progressivism had a voice? >> no. i wrote a biography in 1896 and in many ways even though he was defeated. >> shifting the focus slightly from presidential level to how people imagined it on the ground. progressivism had a very

accessible concept to everyday people who wanted a better quality of life. who wanted certain state responses at the local level. even things such as political reform to make sure they were held accountable or responsive to voters. you get certain kinds of referendums that come into plays that k lou for everyday voters to be more invested in who would represent them. police reform is on the tables and all sorts of grass roots organizations that can be responsible in way that is the federal government might or might not have been and they didn't start at the top. >> what do you see and what's the stand on the 100th anniversary. why does 1912 matter 100 years later? >> for me it's this wonderful moment where african-american let leadership in this election

don't know where to go. they are looking at roosevelt who had the promise of representing the best traditions of the republican party by lincoln and he came into his position in the wake of mckinley's assassination and his star had dimmed greatly by 1912. even though he talked a tough game when he came to progressivism, he was courting southern dell gets in the third party race. they were not certain if they could -- this is the first time that the republican party is not the heir apparent for african-american voter who is were view in numbers. as it turns out, the rights in reference to woodrow wilson, the dark horse at the moment, he hopes he is the president for all the people. i think that actually reason

eads so profoundly because we have the opposite in play. he is one of the leading in-electuals who represents as a party leader the traditions of a white supremacist party in terms of everything following the civil war, they see in woodrow wilson a kind of intellectualism and thoughtful leadership that could ultimately tlod him being the president of all the people. they are almost completely the reverse. the president of all the people in the 2012 election is to push back against the potential where the president had special interests like african-american orula tono voters. there was an interesting ark over 100 years in how the language is used in terms of the big approach to reform and change. >> the whole language of the

people against the whole language of the people is created in the progressive era. before then too. you have a lot of ambiguities and contradictions. there were a lot of progressives who think jim crow is a progressive measure. only when white or black people will develop separately will they not get in each other's way. there is a dispute between booker t washington and also it is important because think of a lot of the institutions we have today and the laws we have today. the income tax amendment and that becomes part of the institution. >> the demonstrations. >> even the regulatory state and on the one hand and criticism on the other came into being in the progressive president.

>> for some conservatives like glen beck say america started down the bad road in 1912. wilson was the beginning of the last triumph making a huge state. >> you said that the progressives were more successful by not becoming in the presidential power and you pointed out a number of things that became law. we have not had a progressive candidate for president or one elected president anyway. >> we're progressive candidates and the party was basically an instrument for roosevelt to run for president. he lost the nomination to the incumbent. >> would you view president obama as a progressive candidate? >> i would. i would. in some ways the term liberal took over for the term progressive for a long time and progressive is back to be used again. in both cases, there huge differences between barack obama

and woodrow wilson, but they both of them believe at least in using the government to be a power to the power of big business. >> the and person that we skipped over is franklin dell no roosevelt who embodied at the federal level, the sort of best ideas of the progressive era and some of his administrators cut their teeth in government in the progressive period. >> who are was a democrat back then. he supported wilson and became part of wilson's cabinet. >> they are all pretty prominent americans. why in the 100 years have we had an election with that firepower in terms of four separate parties and candidates. >> why this goes back to the structure of the system and most times the two parties are able to absorb discontent on the

right and the left to a large degree and convince enough voters that third pears don't make a lot of sense. you will be wave yourg vote or helping the greater evil. we had other third parties, but they are like the progressive party of 1912 and one-shot deals. 19% of the votes and the largest since tr himself in 1912. he runs again in 1996. 9% and he gives it up. >> there is another point to add too. obviously in the wake of television as a platform for big media's in electoral politics, it's much more difficult for candidates today to mount successful independent matters and one they think that is counter intuitive. on the other hand the way that the media works is much more easily discredited.

you could produce them out of the hard scrabble, anti-big business world of terre haute, indiana who could gather resources regionally and build upon them without being attacked outside of print media which is difficult today. any real contender today has to go up against big money and big media. that is difficult to maintain a strong edge. >> what do you believe c-span to be the only network and everyone can take part. you wouldn't have to worry about ads. >> we will go back to the comment about the endorsement of wilson. that was a moment you mentioned that began to attract african-americans to the democratic party in the end of the eight years of wilson, how did they view this person? >> terribly. there was a huge disappointment

for any number of reasons. probably the most celebrated moment of wilson's betrayal was one of the first hollywood blockbusters of a movie called the birth of the nation. this was a movie that celebrated southern redemption and celebrated the role of the clan and reclaiming the virtue of southern nobility and the removal act of african-american leadership. row wilson who had been the president of princeton university endorsed the film. it's a true story of race relations and really saw it as a moment of reconciling long standing regional differences between the north and south difference of racial equality. that was a betrayal to the people who supported. later they supported the interview and it's not as if it

was a critique, but it was significant. federal patriot is to southern congress people. he purged african-american leadership and 31 federal jobs held by glak republicans and down to eight within three years under wilson. >> segregate and allowed southern cabinet officers and the post office departments and others as well. there was a great moment in 1914 where there was a group of black leaders who come to meet with the president. we had a newspaper journalist from boston denouncing the president in effect in his office. after that wilson said i don't want to be with these people ever again. they don't understand me and we have nothing in common. that was an amazing moment. >> you are writing recently and

the recent book is called american dreamers and how the left changed the nation. we have been talking about progressive politics. that's the general thesis of your book. >> thesis is really about people to the left of progressivist and liberals. >> to the left? >> yes. radicals. the original meaning of the term left is people who want a spundamential transformation of the society. so i trace people who were interested in the transformation from abolitionist to socialist to communist to new leftist and others. the thesis is that this kind of left has failed to build institutions and parties and unions and other groups that can vie for power politically.

it's been much more successful i think in changing the sort of moral sense of american society and changing people's attitudes about issues like first slifry and racial equality and gender equality. theed why of homosexual equality didn't come out of the left entirely, but certainly people in the left in 1960s were an important part of that gay rights movement. >> you see it as these individuals for racial rights or homosexual right oers any number of things, you need people on the far left. >> yeah, yeah. you need people to dream big dreams. big dreams that are very much in the american dream. calling for individual freedom to be respected and extended to everybody regardless of race and national origin, sexual preference and gender.

and also for calling for -- we also have responsibility of taking care of one another. radicals argue that means you need to have much more social leveling. certain redescription of resources too. i trace how people on the left in many ways succeeded in changing people's minds about those things and we in social movements as well and not in many other parts of the country are forming parties that lasted long and had a lot of party in forming radical unions going on strike. if that's the argument. >> as black leadership been a line with the left or is there -- are there marriages of convenience here and there on issues? areas where brudly speaking american leadership disagrees.

180 degrees from the american left? >> it's a lot messier today than it was in the past. >> '? >> because you have a strain of social conservatism that doesn't match their electoral politics or political voice that tends to be democratic and some kind of reformist version of anything that starts on the black left. on one hand you had a long tradition who were international in scope who saw colonial rest of the world as evidence of capitalist imperialism and threw their hat in with socialist movements and in the context of the popular front that is a golden era that everyone talks about. the combining interest of labor and racial democracy. there is a richer history over the course of the late 19th and early 20th century of

african-americans leaning much more to the left and aligning with left politics. the critique of black leadership and those who were sympathetic to the organizing of the left and not self-identifying as socialist or communist or a variation of left politics, there was internal racism and manipulation of become people for the purposes of sort of gang leverage in the american ideological debate and not really recognizing the unique challenging of african-americans and the call for subverting the race question to the class question. that was a problem for eugene debs who had an explicit vision of racial equality among black and white workers. it basically called for known imaginative way that the real problem was always class which wasn't true. it was both race and class when it came to african-americans. without recognizing that

sensitivity and without listening to the voices of those who pointed it out, it created long standing friction. the final problem was at the union gate, at the workshop floor, african-americans often had a choice either to subject themselves to discrimination among uniyos of yons or to fall in line with companies who were holding out the carrot of opportunity in the wake of labor strikes. that problem was always there. richard wright, a famous african-american writer described this in a book called 12 million voices with the puppet ear and it is bosses of the buildings who used their leverage to dwight and conquer. they self identified as white socialists and those on the left who were ambivalent hmong black leadership. >> you pointed out the beginning

of the parting of the ways of african-americans and republican party and teddy roosevelt was not a member of the republican party. why has the party of lincoln has such trouble in recent elections. >> the short answer is barry gold water. >> democrats became the senate republicans. >> the realignment of the political party with fdr becoming the party of a coalition democratic standard there and combining labor and women's sufferage and cultural modernism as well as african-americans moveing for the south to the north, it split to the democratic party and you get strom thurman who represents the dixiecrats in 1948 and there is a long steady road to the erosion of white southern democratic support for the national party. the national party under truman makes gains and eisenhower is

fairly moderate even though he is a republican, it suggests that the race question is gaining a so by the time you get to the early 1960s and the wake of sustained civil rights activism, there's a move towards the repudiation of the democratic party, and ultimately a republican strategy emerges and republicans take over the south. >> i want to ask you about the political support for progressive causes, because i think an excerpt from your book "american dreamers", you write about the working class support of progressive ideas and causes. >> in the period of 1912 was one period when there was a lot of white middle class, working class people, small farmer,s small business people were not on the left.

but they sympathized with the anti-monopoly, anti-trust, prolabor things that people on the left were saying. you know, the socialist party was predominantly a white party at that time. radical causes from jumping past to the 1930s and '40s. you have this alliance as you mention mentioned who have resources and you have people more at the bottom of society.

they don't see the need to make radical changes. they thought it was changing the face of america and enlarging the gap between the rich and the poor. that wasn't true earlier and not true later on as well. so in many ways throughout most american history on the left, it's been more successful than this top and bottom alliance in putting forth are rebellious ideas of a different society and not organizing the majority of people to support their goals. >> looking back to 1912 and professor kazin just referred to the 2012 election, can that wind up being a real issue of debate between the two candidates and how -- where do not only african-american leaders but

where do other political leaders line in their view on the issue of inequality and what is called inequality between them? >> this is not clear what the debate will be. we know under president obama there's an effort to galvanize working people. he certainly has proposed a jobs bill and clearly in his case there's a sensitivity and a kind of policy-based response to contemporaneous debate. and they have been very successful in pursing a politics of supply side economics that argues that inequality can be addressed by putting more money in the hands of the people by shrinking government and those people can be rich or middle class. as long as they have their money, the markets will take care of inequality. they are both for addressing the issue of inequality but these are both long running differences as to how you do that. we live in a different time than we did before. the country was most certainly center left in the moment of

woodrow wilson's success as opposed to being center right today and think about we're moving from a moment of 1912 into kind of a period of lazy economics of three african-american presidents in the 1920s and yet you end up with the new deal. we live in a different time than we did before. the country was most certainly center left in the moment of woodrow wilson's success as opposed to being center right today and think about we're moving from a moment of 1912 into kind of a period of lazy economics of three african-american presidents in the 1920s and yet you end up with the new deal. so whatever blip on the screen of center left politics and addressing questions of inequality go from 1912 to 1972, you've got only really a small window in there that produces the great depression and we

basically build an infrastructure and institutionalize the best of the ideas and establish our social welfare system that gave voice and fuel to the emergence of the new right. they are still fighting against the impact of fdr's policy. "the wall street journal" just had an op ed talking about president obama and roosevelt in his 1936 election run. in effect, the stakes are much different today because there's a much more compelling populist attraction to the supply economics and the right has been advocating for it for a long time. >> one of the things that we talked about earlier, grassroots progressivism, it explains why it was a center-left country then and it's more of a center-right country now, those

building up structures, institutions, like labor unions, farmer unions, like naacp, which was founded before 1912, settlement houses, many others, women suffer rage groups which what was going on in the political room and helped pressure politicians like it like they are not to become more progressive. woodrow wilson was not a progressive until 1912 and then he realized he had to be more progressive to get elected. and similarly, or in reverse, conservatives have been building very strong institutions i think in the last 30 years and politics is not just about people who run for office or even about the parties. it's about social forces and when the social forces are organized on one side or another side of the political spectrum, that obviously helps that group -- mitt romney on one side and barack obama on the other

side, we'll hear so much about them. you will be talking about them on c-span, journalists the horse race. but which one wins and loses is a lot to do with who is enthusiastic about them or who enthusiastically dislikes the other candidate. that's a lot about what's happening the last 20, 30 years, which sets the stage for that. >> before we wrap up today, i do have to ask you about the american dreamers. you write about ted in there, dr. seuss. >> yep. >> what do you say about him? >> well, you know, i read dr. seuss' books when i was a kid and i read them with my children, of course, when he was no longer writing them and i was struck by something which anybody who has read them seriously, at least not all of them but a lot of them, he was a

man to the left, but the battle book and the sneeches and lorax which was recently made into a not very good movie, language creative ways, art creative ways really reflect and represent the views of the left about racial quality, anti-authoritative and anti-fascism, and i could keep going. and so i started the book saying it was inspired by dr. seuss because i thought about writing this book re-reading dr. seuss to my children and realizing that the left would be influential sometimes without even the creators of these ideas saying, i'm on the left but in fact they become part of the cultural bloodstream, if you will. >> i think this is a great place

to go because one of my favorites is all of the places you'll go. and it's one of my favorites because i kept getting it at every smile phone in graduation. one of the things that it speaks to, to what mining kell is describing, is the embrace of the contradictions of life's journey, that the part of the sort of main stay of the left is to take on the challenges and the uncertainty of a future and to be vigilant about what it means to protect democracy, not to simply embrace aspiration as the key to the future, which is very much conservatism because aspiration becomes about the individual, becomes a retreat as to what an individual is willing to give to their future.