a liberal or libertarian, the general word. >> professor anderson? >> i think just an example of his perspective on things, he didn't think the government should participate in the private behavior of almost anything where they didn't need to be participating. just remember oral argument once where the police were arguing that they had this urgent need to search a whole house when they were arresting someone down in the living room because there might be somebody up stairs that wanted to come down and hurt the officer. i remember he said, don't go upstairs. and then another question came out on the same line. but the officers need to make the arrest in a way that they didn't have to fear for what was going to happen to them in a way that made them feel unsafe. he would say -- he said, well, arrest him outside.

he really did not think that government needed to be vigorously participating in the human experience in a way that limited people and people's choices. i thought, you know -- i guess you know, from one perspective, the good lord gave them free will so let them exercise it. he did not believe government should be participating in operating in the small details of the lives of people. >> can you see how easy this was? all i had to do was turn the camera on and sit there. so easy. >> there's an art to it. perhaps one more question from the audience. yes. please identify yourself. >> good evening. my name is ron williams. i have a comment and a question. i think it's interesting that we talk about anger. particularly, we talk about anger in regards to black men because, you know, really,

there's a difference between destructive anger and transformational anger. are we talking about the fact that there is anger when it comes to injustice? but yet when we talk about these kinds of issues, there's a concern, is he angry? let's have a conversation about transformation and deal with the ills from which that anger springs. >> your question is in is. >> the question is, in terms of transformational anger, how would thurgood marshall deal or feel about decisions like citizens united and mccutchen that people argue undermine our democracy currently? is that the next civil rights fight, or is there something -- go ahead. >> i've paid attention to thurgood marshall for a long, long time. at least since that encounter in

1975. this man, if you got to define people between optimist and pessimist, in his early years, this is a man who saw a silver lining in just about anything. he was an optimist. i saw cases that he lost where he would write a memo saying, but here is what we got out of this. i know later in life he gets older and he gets ill and he becomes quite a curmudgeon. but the young thurgood marshall was an optimist who was kind of a big tent person. he was an organizer, because something that we haven't talked much about is as he is moving through the south, he is also building infrastructure. he is organizing people. he is creating chapters of the naacp. he is getting lawyers involved in civil rights. and you can't do that if you are

a pessimistic person. what he would do is his optimist was infectious. his diplomacy was another tool that he would use. and you can't use the kind of diplomacy that he was so effective in using if people feel as you approach them that you have a chip on your shoulder. there's a difference between that and i've got a mission, i've got something i'm going to do. the thurgood marshall that i have examined for a long time was a fairly optimistic person, a quite optimistic person. and i still don't fully understand how is it that most of the photography of him, he is

frowning. i mean, this was a man who -- if he came in, you would know he is in the room. he had a loud voice. he was loud. i mean, literally, i think it came from some of his father but also from that debating experience. you knew when he was in the room. he is probably cracking a joke. he is flirting with the women. and he is trying to find out where are we going afterwards to get a drink. >> we're going to have a drink outside in a moment. other concluding thoughts in honor of justice marshall? >> well, i guess i just want to caution against reproducing the troep of the angry blank anything, angry black men, angry black woman largely because, number one, as i said earlier, people do have a right to be

angry about injustice. especially when you travel 30,000 miles a year confronting it. so if he was angry, i want to say, that's okay. i want to challenge the idea that the only legitimate way to engage in social transformation is not to be righteously indig nant about it. and i think there is a level of righteous indignation about a contradiction between a promise and its reality that actually fuels social change. so it doesn't mean that you are not a pleasant person. it doesn't mean that you are not optimistic. actually, people get angry when they are optimistic. and that optimism isn't realized by actual transformation. that can be the thing that fuels you forward. [ applause ] so i don't want that to become

the legitimacy, you have to show that you are not frustrated before we listen to you or before you will be able to mobilize. i actually think we need more righteous indig anything about how much we have lost that he has given us. take it -- take this as a moment to try to renew the vision of civil rights that he basically dedicated his life for. >> jose? >> i think the professor's points are well taken. i think he and houston were angriest about the hypocrisy of the constitution as written. i think he thought that even in its words and its language that it was being applied in a way that was hypocritical on its face. and i think that that's what most of his fight was about is that you can't get on with validating yourself in society

when you live and govern yourselves by the structure hypocrisy. so i think that fuelled everything he did from the first cases he did to the last opinion he wrote, listing all the things that were getting ready to be dismantled that were, we just got to the place where we got justice in the right framework. and so i think he was fighting for the right to be an american, which means a right to be angry when you right and and a right to live and work. you know, he wanted to breathe life into the unworking parts of the constitution. and that's what i think he represented. >> you get the last word. okay, hubert humphrey, thurgood marshall, who is next? >> francis perkins,zq the firs labor secretary. two things i would like to say. it's inherent in the story that

he had to be an optimist. you could not go through what he went through and imagine a different world without being an optimist. there's no way he could have done it. would you have losted three days if you were pessimistic. the other thing as far as the smith decision goes, when we talked about the voting, the voting was so important because it was the very way people were suppressed. without the ability to vote, they couldn't vote the very people out of office who were suppressing them. so they had no power whatsoever. and that was -- that's why it was so important. it was at the basis of everything as far as i'm concerned. >> i very much encourage everybody to see the complete film. >> i should say, i think that was a dvd player. because we have had no problem with the dvd. if you buy one -- there's a 15-minute feature on there with justice s on there. >> i encourage everybody to read -- to perfect and read the

book. >> outside there. >> it has the addresses where thurgood marshall grew up, where his grandparents' grocery stores were, where he practiced law. you can walk from here to each of the addresses. it's fascinating to be so close to that history. professor, thank you, because you are going to publish a book about charles hamilton houston. i want to thank the audience for being here. join us for a reception outside. we can continue the conversation about mr. civil rights. [ applause ] you have been watching c-span's american history tv. we want to hear from you.

we would like to tell about you some of our other american history tv programs. join us sunday at 4:00 for reel america featuring films by government and institution al groups. that's 4:00 p.m. eastern here on american history tv on c-span3. here are some of our featured programs you will find this weekend.

next on american history tv, author and history professor michael ross discusses his book on the 1870 kidnapping of molly digby. she was abducted by two black women and it exacerbated racial tensions. the pratt library hosted this 50-minute event. good evening. it's very nice to be here at the pratt library surrounded by pictures of edgar alan poe and books about poe. baltimore in many ways has a feel a lot like new orleans, an old port city with traditions and quirky and sometimes spooky history. i always kind of feel at home in baltimore just as i feel at home

in new orleans. where i lived for ten years. what i want to do tonight is introduce you to this case that has kind of disappeared from the american memory. but for the summer of 1870 captivated the nation. newspaper readers across the country. try to explain it to you so that you can see what i saw as i stumbled across it. i began writing -- i found this story while i was doing much more traditional legal history. i was researching the famous slaughterhouse cases, the first case where the supreme court interpreted the 14th amendment. i was reading every single day of the new orleans newspapers in 1870. suddenly, there's this story about a white baby being abducted by two african-american women. the rumor begins to circulate that the baby has been abducted for use as a voodoo sacrifice.

what could that possibly be about? is that true or is that just the press telling a story? the new orleans newspapers talked about ghost sightings. the story picked up steam. the police are arresting voodoo practitioners. i realized i had stumbled on to something really quite interesting. so what i want to do is show you what interested me so much. this is new orleans around the time of 1870. the digby family were irish immigrants who had come with a great wave of famine irish. they lived in a swampy area known as the back of town. it's back in here. it was a low rent district because it flooded all the time.

it was a place where people of different races and immigrant backgrounds all lived on top of one another. it is here that on a summer evening in 1870 the digby children are playing out in the street and a neighboring teenager is watching them. and two african-american women come by and coo molly digby the child. eventually the teenager allows the women to hold a baby. and she goes off to look at the fire down the block and these women leave with the child. in a crime-filled city, this normally -- particularly in a poor neighborhood, this would have ended up on the second or third page of the paper in the city intelligence columns where every day there was murders and knifingkfh]q things going on. it would have disappeared into the mist. until it gets entangled in the politics of reconstruction. this is where that neighborhood is today.

the digby's back of town street is the street you walk down as you entered super dome to go to saints football games. the neighborhood torn down and urban redevelopment plans in the '50s and '60s. every time i went to a saints game, i was walking down the street of my story. people were getting ready for game time, i was haunted by the story. here is the thing i saw in the newspaper. this is from the mobile paper reporting the events in new orleans. you will see what it says. a horrible suspicion is connects in the mind with the abduction of infant child of mr. digby which took place on the 9th of june. it's important to this story because two weeks later was saint john's eve. saint john's eve is a sacred night in the voodoo religion and they consider themselves to be catholic. they practice a version of african religion and

catholicism. on saint john's eve they would have ceremonies on the lake. the newspapers of new orleans are now going to allege that molly digby has been abducted for use as a voodoo sackrifice t the ceremony. you see in the article, the secrecy in which the cruel deed is involved has excited a general suspicion that the child was stolen for sacrifice. according to the rites of voodooism which is prevalent among negros in louisiana. it's true, voodooism of the practicing of voodoo was a flourishing religion in 19th century louisiana. during slavety, it was kept under wraps because slave owners found it threatening. when the civil war ends, voodoo practitioners can practice in the open. this lends to whites' fears the society is being turned upside do down. this is a depiction of a ceremony that isn't too critical.

but this is -- the next one is the one that you would see more often, kind of sensationalize depictions. this is out of a new orleans newspaper. depravity and lust locked arms at a voodoo dance. again, you might write this off as just a sensational story. but i very quickly realized, particularly from the newspapers that were highlighting it, that the story was being used by the conservative white press -- by conservativ conservative, i mean people at the time who were opposed to reconstructi reconstruction. many of them were ex-confederates, former democrats and wigs who were appalled that the north backed by federal bayonets, had created reconstruction governments in the south where african-american

men could vote, where about a third of the louisiana legislature was african-american, where african-americans are serving in government positions, serving on juries and in new orleans on the police force. the reconstruction governor integrates the new orleans police force. these are african-american members of the louisiana legislature during reconstruction. and they were about a third of the membership of that body. here is african-american -- pictures of african-american men in louisiana voting after the military reconstruction act of 1867. and then the 15th amendment. and here is a black policeman in new orleans, a couple of depictions of black policemen in new orleans. you can see the caption from the man who wrote this book. the polite but consequential negro policeman. they were on the street with full authority to arrest white

people for many whites in new orleans, it was almost too much to bare, a world turned upside down in a short time because of the civil war. this is a critical depiction of the new orleans legislature -- of the louisiana legislature at the time where the critics of the legislature depicted it as a place where former slaves in from the fields illiterate, elected to office run amok in the legislature along with poor whites from the dirt perishes and the north of louisiana who they called sk eed skal low wag. this will be depicted in a movie and still haunts the american imagination that somehow the reconstruction legislatures were places where -- where things had gone awry. so as this case gets sensationalized, as the white

press is arguing, this is what we can expect, now that african-americans are free from slavery, over 10,000 move from the plantations into the cities. now that there's black policemen on the street who they suspect will wink and not when black people commit crimes against white people, the newspapers will start to demand that the reconstruction governor solve this crime. in particular, they're going to listen to the calls that this crime be solved by the elite white women of new orleans, the wives of the most prominent financiers in the city who are going to adopt the digby case as their own and travel to the back of town bringing baked goods to the house and a neighborhood they normally would never go. they would be in the frefrm qua french quarter townhouse and marching to the home of the reconstruction governor demanding that he solve the crime. i just want to read you a

paragraph from the book. a short reading from the book to give you some sense of how the book is written about these activities by elite women and why i found it so interesting. as the coverage of the digby abduction became more sensational, prominent white women from the most famous new orleans families adopted the case as their own. in late june and early july, wealthy women of new orleans would usually be preparing to leave town for cooler climbs. just as many theaters and restaurants closed for the season each summer, elite families put linen covers on furniture, packed white dresses, suits and hats into trunks and set off by rail and steamboat for the coast, the north or europe. in 1870, many women took time to march to police headquarters to

demand resolution of the digby case. they also went to the back of town, a neighborhood they avoided, bringing food and gifts to the digby's house. the case provided an opportunity tore the city's women to enter the public debate over reconstruction and to express publically their anger at governor, his police force and the emerging racial order in louisiana. raised in a culture that required them to behave, most elite women left public commentary on politics to men. but in early july, 61 women presented a petition to the governor urging him to do something so that the painful feeling of the community in regard to this lawless outrage may be allayed by the early restoration of the child to those who love it. the press applauded the petition made to the governor by our

ladies and demanded that he offer a state reward for molly's return. this is the reconstruction governor of louisiana, 28-year-old henry clay warmoth, a former union soldier elected to office largely by the votes of african-american men. his critics thought he was too young to be governor. they dubbed him the boy governor. but he believed that he was actually doing god's work. there's this image of the northerners in the south after the civil war where they are called carpetbaggers that they were there to make themselves rich and to exploit the populous. the votes of so-called ignorant negros for their own gain. warmoth actually believes in what some people have called the public of prosperity.

he believe d in they could brin improvements that they could lure into the fold economically minded businessmen who would realize that the republicans were doing things that they had long called for and that they might be willing to put racial animosity aside in return tore economic development. this is warmoth's goal. he is desperately wants to prove that his new integrated new orleans police force can solve this crime. and he accepts the petition. he puts up a state reward for the return of molly that eventually goes up to $5,000. about $40,000 today. which is a lot of money after the civil war. it will turn the case into the powerball of 1870 as everyone who sees an african-american nanny with a white baby thinks they have found the kidnappers of molly digby.

and he has a group on his side that is going to make new orleans and perhaps mobile the places where many historians argue if reconstruction was ever going to succeed, here it had the best chance. the group in new orleans that i speak of are the afro-creoles. they are a very interesting group, largely in louisiana and mobile. they emerge from the culture of french colonial louisiana where wealthy white men often had romantic relationships with mixed race and black women. and in this situation, when children were born, the white fathers, while they couldn't mary the women, made sure that their children had a start in life, made sure they had money,

got an education, they would ata attend bap timents. as a result, there's a class of free persons of color before the civil war who are going to continue on in leadership roles after the war that you don't normally think of when you think of the slave south. i want to take a moment and just read to you from the book about the afro-creoles so you understand why they are so important and why warmoth will have the majority of his police force and elected black officials in louisiana are afro-creoles because they are a polished class of people who could put the lie reactionary whites' argument that african-americans were illiterate and couldn't join in government. let me explain this to you. let me add one point so this makes sense.

what warmoth will do is he will have his police chief choose his best afro-creole detective, the first black detectives in american history, to be the lead detective in the digby case. the detective that he chooses is a man named john baptist jordan who comes out of this free person of color class and then joins the union army when he gets the chance and then becomes a detective in the police force. and our afro-creole detective, in some way the protagonist of my story, i'm going to place him within the context of his afro-creole heritage. as a creole of color or afro-creole, detective jordan blongs belongs to a class unique to the gulf coast.

in colonial louisiana, anyone born in the kol knee is a creole. over time, louisianans, black and white, who identified with french culture and language and feared being overwhelmed by the americans who arrived in new orleans after the louisiana purchase self-identified as creoles. afro-creoles of his class considered themselves to be cosmopolitan gentlemen and lady. bilingual and mannerly, they looked to paris for inspiration. many elite afro-creole men wore silk pants and fine jackets. they dined with silver utensils, filled homes with books and furniture, attended the och are a, published their own newspaper, studied classical literature, formed lodges and drew inspiration from the ideals of the french revolution. their ranks included writers, poets and xoeters as well as

doctors, merchants and skilled art sans. they constituted only 7% of the south's free black population in 1860, louisiana's afro-creoles held almost 60% of the real estate owned by the free black people. on under the slave regime, creoles of color took pride in the identity they shared with white creoles. they relished food, wine and french colonial architecture. white creoles patronized black butchers, carpenters, mechanics, they attended plays, fights and circuses together, albeit on a segregated basis. you get the idea. john baptist jordan comes out of this class. again, what warmoth wants to prove is the police force had been previously largely a group

of thugs. every mayor that came in would turn the police force into his private army appointing their supporters. in the 1850s when the no nothings controlled new orleans, they filled the police force with thugs who would beat up the irish and germans. right after the civil war, they fill it up with the men from henry haze's brigade but who were kind of anti-reconstruction. when reconstruction begins, the police force now will get afro-creoles along with white officers who are committed to reconstruction. the mannerly educated polished well dressed detective jordan is exactly the person that warmoth wants leading this investigation. images of white and black

creoles strolling in new orleans after a matinee. this is the police chief of new orleans, whose job it is to direct jordan and the other detectives in this investigation. interesting to a baltimore audience, he was part of the massachusetts regiment that arrived on pratt street at the beginning of the civil war in response to lincoln's call for volunteers that's attacked by a baltimore mob. they have to fight their way across the city. he was a member of that regiment. he knew how fearsome resistance could be. one quick side light. i had hoped he would play more of a role in the story. jordan is my lead detective. one other detective that plays an early role in the case but vanishes, i have to mention because it's fun, is a detective

named jordan noble who is 72 years old. he was andrew jackson's drummer boy. he is african-american and goes on to be the drummer boy as white new orleans forces fight in the mexican war. and then becomes an officer in the union army during the civil war. and then becomes a detective. early on, he and jordan go in disguise into black neighbors to get evidence dressed as common laborers. unfortunately, jordan who is my -- badger is directing the case. again, people are now looking for any african-american woman who is seen with a white baby. all over new orleans and the south, that had been the condition of things through all

time. so everyone who now sees an african-american woman with a white baby goes running to the police, i want to collect the reward. the newspaper fills with leads. cincinnati, all over the place. at one point they actually -- there was a traveling psychic in town. this is an era where many people, including president lincoln, who had had seances -- mary todd lincoln had seances to raise their said done, they had a clairvoyant claims she knows where molly is. i will let you read and find out what happens. so you understand, this is what engaged me. i'm reading dry stuff. the traditional legal -- looking for traditional constitutional cases. suddenly i'm sucked into this story. i didn't know it was going to be years before i would come out of it. these are homes standing in uptown new orleans at a street

corner called bell castle and camp. they are -- stand across the street from homes that are -- that were central to my story, since torn down, but look like thos . . . i'm not going to tell you tonight what happens to molly digby. i want you to read the book to find out. i will tell you who the republican reconstruction government eventually accuses of having committed the crime. and they eventually commit -- accused of committing the crime two afro-creole sisters, one who lived in mobile and one who lived in the houses across the street from these. those sisters ran a very interesting business. they were proprietors in both cities of lying in hospitals.

what that meant was they were places where when wealthy white women got pregnant in difficult sirs, out of we had log, they could go to one of the sister's houses and spend the time there during their pregnancy and have the baby outside of prying eyes. if a woman from a plantation family in mobile, in alabama, got in trouble, the sister in mobile would bring the woman to her sister in uptown new orleans. the reverse was true of a fine new orleans family got in trouble, she would go to mobile. the reason why they were able to pull this business off is because both of these women have exquisite taste. when at their trial all the papers do is fawn over what they are wearing, how beautiful their hair is, how striking lly

beautiful they are and how their home was filled with rosewood furniture and paintings. this is an interesting business model where these women in a world where there were limited career possibilities for african-american women could use their refined afro-creole sensibility to create a special niche in the economy of lying in hospitals. it is these women that get accused of the crime. the trial is in many ways what you think of as a classic southern courtroom drama, standing room crowds and a sweltering courtroom fanning themselves. but unlike the trials that you know from real life and stories like to kill a mockingbird where the outcome of the trial is predestined, reconstruction makes this trial so complex that in many ways it is nothing like what a trial -- had the same trial happened shortly

thereafter during the era of jim crow, you know these women would get convicted. but what makes this trial so compelling is that you have an integrated jury. there are at least three afro-creole men on the jury. a hung jury is a possibility. you have -- once these women are accused of this crime by the republican government, the confederate bar sign up to defend them. so you have this unique world where the republican government, which is the government committed to integration, is trying to convict these women who they think are guilty of the crime in order to prove that their police force works. but at the same time, they going after two african-american women in a way that when you know the history of southern trials, you are like -- it's a very

complicated situation. it makes the verdict one in doubt right until the moment when the foreman stands up in the final trial which takes place again tst the backdrop of the marti grau parades. no one has written about this story. this is the first time this story has been told. i'm doing the wrong thing. this is the -- hang on. let me go back a little. that's the courtroom where the trial took place. but i also want to -- i don't know what i'm doing here. there we go. this is a headline as the story begins to unfold. the associated press puts it out on the ap wire. both the investigation and the

trials all make national news. they are trying to figure out if reconstruction is going to work is following the kidnapping in the way today as we look for good news in america's effort to reconstruct other nations, you look for stories of successful public schools o)l÷something to tell you this is working. people are searching for examples. here we have this glamourous afro-creole detective and the -- a dashing young governor trying to show an efficient police force. this story is being read all over the country. and so that at one level i want the story to be a who done it, i want it to be one where you wait to find out what happens to molly. you wait to find out if the women get convicted. but i also want it to be a story that will interest people in that narrative, but at the same

time get them interested in reconstruction by building the context about reconstruction. some people of -- let's say who went to public schools before 1954, let's say, were raised in a world where their elementary school textbooks, north and south, gave the southern version of reconstruction, that it was a tragic era of carpetbaggers run amok. many of are you familiar with the movie "gone with the wind" and the famous scenes where the plantation overseer becomes a scalawag and african-american carpetbaggers. home from the lost adventure rxiáu$e tattered calf leaves. they came back to the desolation that had once been a land of grace and plenty. and with them came another invader, more cruel and vicious than any they had fought, the carpetbagger. the carpetbagger, he is holding

a carpetbag in the movie, is allegedly someone -- carpetbags were in the era of railroad travel, a cheap bag. if you didn't have a lot of money, you could buy your luggage made out of carpet. and came down to the south backed by federal troops to exploit the white south. the story that historians have been telling since the 1960s, but still hasn't managed to remove root and branch the old vision in the american memory, is that the carpetbaggers, the free men -- the free persons who -- it's a more complex story. there are examples of corruption but there's lots of them who believe -- they are evangelicals of progress who think they are bringing needed change to the south. my story helps reinforce that. i hope to get people to read the book who may be still wedded to

the old visions of row construction and will get a more complex view. again, i'm not doing anything novel here. the alternative vision begins back at the turn of the century, but tlen hen it picks up steam. there's been american experience documentaries. somehow, it doesn't sink in. go to the amazon reviews of my book. there's one reader after another says, wow, this isn't the the story of reconstruction we were taught in school. somehow despite all of this work of historians, either people still are wedded to the old view or they don't know anything about it. i like people who love the civil war and i often go out and see the re-enactments and talk to everybody. they know every last detail of the battles. but then you ask what happened

after the war. they don't know anything. it's kind of -- there's this disconnect. the civil war is important. we need to know every detail. what happens afterwards, it's murky. what i heard i don't like. we will ignore it. i think it's an extraordinarily compelling time. i'm hoping my book where i'm trying to tell the story is a lived experience on the ground brings that to life. this is -- onb bakaey. i will wrap this talk up. when i started writing this story, i thought i was the only person alive who knew anything about it. no one had ever written about it before. it was completely forgotten. none of my colleagues in history departments knew anything about it. and then as i started giving conference papers and other things, i started to get these e-mails. i got an e-mail from a woman named isabelle, a family

genologist, who turns out to be a famous new orleans family. in tracing her genology, realized they are descendents of detective jordan. we started doing research to put meat on to the bones of these figures who left very little historical footprint. when he get into the history of afro-creole families it's extraordinarily complex and rich. it takes tons of work to get the story just right. i'm pleased that i have become friends with isabelle and her uncle wayne, the famous new orleans creole restaurant family and one of the other famous brothers is from new orleans. i will be at little dizzies where we are having a book event with the

descendents of the first african-american detective in history to make national news. on the right, descendents of the digby family who will be coming to events as well. these are members of the family. susan golden perkins and gary golden and others who live in kerry, north carolina. it's a place where people have moved from all over the country. there are jobs in north carolina. the city that attracts relocating yankees. it's also relocateded new orlea orleansians. they didn't know each other. lived within a couple of miles in kerry, north carolina. i got them together at a house. they all pulled out documents. a box full of family documents. everything that came out i was like, no way. no way. the story has been kept alive.

there are all kinds of elaborate theories about who orchestrated the kidnapping plot and why which you will read about in the book. i met them as well. and then i got]99÷ an e-mail fr woman named sandra gunther-clark and her father jerry in new york. sandra was working at a business down near wall street. a stylish apartment on union square. it turns out they are descend t descendents of the accused women. i went to visit them. this is the golden age of genealogy research thanks to the digitized records. what happened with their family is that after the case ends, many of the children of these women who were mixed race afro creole women moved to detroit, new york and pass fder white. in the era of jim crow getting

out of the stigma of the laws there was more economic opportunity for someone who passes as white. the great age of passing the historians call it. over time the family didn't know they had african-american ancestors. in doing the research, jerry gunther lives in wisconsin and jerry and daughter sandra in new york found out they have african-american relatives and were fasfascinated by it. the people who stumbled into the story. it was very much alive. i didn't know it until i wrote it. it makes history fun when you have moment where is you're like, holy cow. that's wayne's restaurant little dizzy's, a famous creole restaurant in new orleans who will be hosting me next week. harold, the photographer, very quickly, was a photographer in new orleans who i had contracted to take pictures for the book through a grant i had received

before i realized the family had any connection to the book. my photographer hayward is a descendant of the detective documenting scenes from his own family's history. this is one of the things the press has put out. i'm hoping that in addition to being a who done it you will enjoy reading you will see the importance of the history and the layers of it and the courtroom logistics, et cetera. i try the story as a lived experience which i hope a good micro history does. so i'm leaving a lot of things hanging. the answers to things you are still asking are in this book. i'm happy to answer any questions from the audience. yes?

i'm sorry. for c-span purposes, if you could speak at the microphone. >> i know you don't want to necessarily drop a cliffy. but three questions. number one, did they ever find the girl? >> i can't tell you. >> that answers that question. number two, the creole african women who were accused, what white families were they descended from? >> they were descended -- from the -- the fathers -- let me put it this way. as far as we can ascertain, they are descendents of augustine fallen who came to the united states from haiti during -- after the haitian revolution, a lot of haitian slave owners as well as the mixed race class moved to north america. and settled in mobile.

as far as we can glean they are descended from that class. they are deeply immersed in the afro-creole class and their traditions. >> the third question, is your book going to be turned into an audio book? >> that's a good question. oxford university press, if you are watching, please turn my book into an audio book. >> thank you. >> thank you. >> were you able to get the court records of the trial? do they exist? >> excellent question . some of the key pieces of the court records were missing. other good parts were there. what i found is that the court stenographers, such as they were, basically summarized what was going on. and really the best blow by blow accounts are from all of the reporters. i don't know how they did it. it's clearly different reporters at each of new orleans seven newspapers and each is different

enough you know somebody different is transcribing it but similar enough to know they are all there. they managed to take down blow by blow accounts that run the next day in the newspaper. those were the best sources for what went on in the courtroom. the court records are good. lots of data about where witnesses lived, good official data. but the newspaper s pas pai spa brought the scenes to life. >> thank you. >> what impact did this case have on the relationship between the creoles of color, the free creoles, and the white community. >> allison, can you date that you're from new orleans and a descendant of an afro creole family. >> i am. allison peppin. >> the question again? >> the question was, this case, what relationships did change from the afro-creoles and the

white population in the city? >> here's the tricky part. there is a lot of mutual respect between the white creoles and afro-creoles in new orleans that's deeply strained by the fact that so many afro creoles fight in the union ranks. in beauregard fight for the confederacy. continues to be deeply strained when they joined the reconstruction governments. yet you can still see in the trial transcripts, in the relationships -- because they are related. there is still a muchtual respe, pride in the francophone traditions. what will happen. i don't know that this case is the cause of it. after reconstruction fails and white supremacy is restored in louisiana as in the rest of the south, there is a push comes to

shove moment as jim crow descends where many noncreole whites say to the afro creoles -- the white creoles, you are oath er with us or against us. you are intermingling against every kind of rule we are trying to put in here. white creoles distance themselves from the afro creole compatriots. i will get e-mail from this televised lecture with people arguing over the word creole. >> i'm sure. >> what it means, who can claim it. i have given you my version. it's a very contested word. i would argue through reconstruction it's not clear that split will happen. there is a brief moment during the louisiana unification movement where some white elite businessmen including general

beauregard convinced a number of elite afro-creole leaders to say they will abandon the republican party, join them in a new party committed to business called the louisiana unification movement. and the so-called best men of louisiana will now rule. it completely collapses as the white creole members are lambasted by noncreoles for doing it. beauregard doesn't show up. things fall apart. that's probably the last moment where a coalition could have worked. >> thank you. >> thank you. any more questions? >> all right. so my question is at the end of your book you discuss the coincidence between what you were researching and where you were at the time. can you explain that? >> yeah. again i was mentioning we were in the edgar allen poe room.

i'm not much of a believer in the super natural, but the houses i showed you earlier -- there. are across the street from the women who are accused. i found this story while i was with my wife at 5229 camp street. i began with the story of the kidnapping. then i found the women who were accused were operating this line in hospital. 5229 camp street is across the street from the houses on the exact site where the women ran in house but on a good portion of the story took place. i'm in the study looking at the houses they would have looked at where they were realizing somehow i have stumbled into the case at which these women are the central characters and i started drinking.

it seemed a remarkable coincidence. it is just that -- a coincidence. it is in a city that's spookimespooky. an uncanny moment. >> thank you. >> any other questions? okay. well, thank you. you have been a great audience. [ applause ] >> feel free to e-mail me. >> in this recent associated press image, protesters are blocking a street in front of the police department to call attention to grand jury decisions in missouri and new york not to prosecute white police officers for the death of unarmed black man. next on american history tv's real america series, the people and the police, oakland, a 1974 documentary.