. we are here, digging up soil because we are about to plant a garden. i will not be satisfied nor will my husband until every single veteran and military spouses once the job has one. at the and of the day, my most important title is still mom in chief. [applause] >> in 2008, michelle obama became the first african-american first lady when her husband, barack obama, was elected our 44th president. as first lady, her focus has been on current social issues such as poverty, healthy livin., michelle obama, the sunday night on c-span's original series, "first ladies: influence and image," examining the public and private lives of the first ladies and their influence on the presidency.

sundays at 8:00 eastern on american history tv on c-span 3. >> coming up next, on american history tv, harvard university lertcandidate luke wil talks about 19th-century detective work in the west. he talks about why they were needed in the west, and why they worked undercover. this is about 20 minutes. luke, when did you first decide to focus your studies on the law in the west? graduatestarted school in colonial america, but then i was in laramie, detective papers. they were completely fascinating. i did not expect to see them.

at that point, i decided to switch into detectives and wyoming, and the mountain west. host: what did you find out about these detectives that really intrigued you? have been justes about everywhere in the 19th century west. the first one i ever saw was in a saloon, trying to talk to everyone he could. drinks.uying everybody they are all undercover private detective. they were salesmen, travelers, posed asse, one woman a doctor. host: why would detectives be in the west? who hired them? guest: it is usually the s.ilroad, the minde these are enormous corporations

with investors from new york, london, boston. millions of dollars passing hands here. they have a bunch of workers and small populations spread out across about a million square miles in the northwest. ranching managers also ended up being the senators. they did not know who these people were. sometimes these people were going on strike and demanding wages. for them to know who they were, if they were trying to unionize, to break them up, or if they just needed to control them, sending the detective out was the best way they it was to do that. host: it sounds like they were most spies. without the idea more so than prosecuting crimes? a 19th-century detective was going to find a criminal conspiracy wherever he or she looked.

they would go into a saloon, and they were spying on people. the questions they are asking is who is stealing the cows, the horses? it is quite remarkable that wherever they go, they always -- not always, but they always the these organized criminals in positions of power and behind-the-scenes, very sherlock holmes evil. host: did they write their stories down to report back to the detective agency? what kind of records and accounts are you looking at? guest: detectives are writing down every conversation they can remember. there are always taking notes and typing them up into reports. they could be 1-10 pages long. they want to be as detailed as possible, which is quite nice for me as a historian. .hey have secret mailboxes

the first principle of being a .etective is don't he caught you have to act and stay in character always. if you don't do that, it can be very dangerous, you could be killed. one of the parts of the job is to find a way to communicate that information back to cities or chicago where they would have telegraph operators, mailboxes. host: how are these individuals trained? what did you find out about the personal lives of these detectives? let's say we are at detectivenational agency in chicago. it is the biggest one in the world. they say they need to find a r because of mine owner says i have these workers that i think maybe stealing from me, i don't like what they are doing, i need to find some way to see

what they're up to and stop them. in chicago, or denver, the agency will put out anonymous advertising in the newspaper and minoers? they will find one who they find trustworthy, maybe he has membership into unions. andthey know will not turn go to the other side. once they settle on one, they will send him in with the back story. we do not learn too much about these detectives when they mostly just because the their work and go away. turn on thethem agency and decide these are really the ferry is corporations. there are a couple of tell-all books written where these detectives reveal all of the papersing on and still

from the pinkerton's to sell. was a widespread thing in the west at the time? guest: it is hard to find exact numbers because agencies destroyed their papers. my job is to find the ones that slipped through the crack. people were terrified from detectives. this is how we know people knew they were there. state, inng becomes a the constitution, there is an article that band interactive agencies from coming into the state and spying on people, get, it happens all the time. host: was it a dangerous job? didn't pay well? guest: the standard fee that the was aboutagency paid eight dollars per day. agency will take a cut of that. founder, hadn, the

a huge estate. they were making money. west, there is a strike attempt to get a $40 per month wage, so a dollars per day is quite a bit of money. .eah, very dangerous host some of these accounts that they write, which may be fictionalized, but very interesting, one of the tropes is the workers find out who they are, and they have to escape with gunshots at their back before they are caught. if you are found out, you could definitely die, and there are examples of detectives being killed in the field. host: in the course of your research, have you found one individual and his account that you find particularly interesting? can you elaborate on that individual? named there is a good one

the cowboyvin, called detective. he started with the be good since. he believed there was an anarchist threat and started working with them to find urban anarchist in chicago. later on in life he would say, this was actually made up -- the weren'tt anarchists actually as he claimed. from there, he has a remarkable string of operations where he is working, posing as a bandit, posing as a cowboy, going to new mexico, alaska. the agency is chasing criminals to australia, hawaii. host: what kind of criminals? tsest: livestock theaf are the big ones. one of their fake publicity

events is jackie james, his ga ng. they firebomb his house, and it turns out he is not home. i think they and that killing his half-brother. quite violent stuff. host: you talk a little bit about the disguise of these detectives and the characters that they took on to stay undercover. doctor that for well, posed as-- a doctor. you talk or about that story. guest: this is an a small town called a flow, wyoming in the northern part of the state where the ranchers are amongst the very wealthiest americans. they have wrenches and decide that all of their cattle are being stolen, that almost every settler there is a criminal. these ideas they get from detectives operating there.

there is a big invasion where they hire an army of 52 people in 1892 to invade the town of buffalo, and all of northern wyoming, with the death list of people they want to kill. invasion failed. the people fight back. after this, the people are very alerts. there is a story that a priest comes to town that was really just a traveler just that missionary. jesuitn missionary. in a brilliant move, the .inkerton send in a physician he convinces them that he is a real doctor. he was probably actually military trained by 19th-century standards. people trust their doctor.

while he is giving them checkups and operations, he is talking to them and asking them questions -- what do you think of the ranchers, do you think there are actually thieves here, what will happen next, do you carry a gun with you? all of these intelligence questions. one is this vicious of them, one time he records someone in a hotel asking, are you actually a doctor, we think you may be a detective? he commences the person that he is real. host: where did you find those records? guest: at the huntington library. records that were in the hands of a cattle baron and they were just released now. host: many people have these stereotypes of the west based on queuing western movies and books.

do you find that people also have a view of detectives? have you had to deal with that in talking about your subject at all? est: the historians who talked about detectives in the last 40 years were labor historians and the pinkerton's were always the bad guys. they were always breaking unions. there is history about how nefarious they were, which is true, but they were doing other stuff too. the way i'm trying to look at them is look at information, as to how does the government learn about in subjects who are hundreds of miles away. if we look at the early modern world, like a lot of governments have no idea what is going on in the peripheries are far away, so detectives, in this way, our major development to find out who these people are. a question that i come across a lot is our people really feeling

what the detectives are saying. we have one quote where a personve says every damn is a thief. it is clear that every person was not a thief, but again, there was best and crime. jesse james was a bandit. host: when the detective spread the information back to whoever next?them, what happened how do these companies deal with what the detectives aren't covering? really interesting. in most places, they are not a powerful police force, like we see today, or what associated with new york or london. instead, you have these undercover detective agencies and it is the companies that are really the domain.

at the extreme scale, you will see an invasion kill all the ieves. that is not common. .e will see vigilantism maybe it is not as anarchic as a dime novel or movie would make it out to be. host: you say it would be rare that this evidence would be collected and then someone would be brought to justice before a judge somewhere? guest: what detectives are trying to do is get a concession. a concession,a ca you can bring it to court. one of the famous pinkerton programs is they take out the molly maguire store in the coal pennsylvania and hang

some of them based on this big east is -- investigation. they were irish. that was a hotly debated subject. in the west, and wyoming, what i found is people do not like going to court, they like something things themselves. work how do you see your contributing to the overall understanding of western history? particularly because it sounds like wyoming is an area of focus for you? guest: wyoming, melt colorado, new mexico, laces like that. i think detectives were almost everywhere. in all these rural areas, they were in the saloons. in 1905ersity of idaho

-- the pinkerton send a detective who runs on the track team for a month. the: d.c. that fitting in larger picture of the west? guest: it is not the individuals on the frontier, like we used to think. there is the military cleansing the native americans, or the railroads, the telegraph lines. the federal government and washington, d.c. has a huge role in taking in the future region and make it part of the nation. the question is how do they exercise that power? a tentative conclusion is that they are farming out that power togovern and punish detectives weather than enforcing of themselves with their soldiers or federal marshals.

host: when did this use of detectives begin to phase out? where dcd trajectory -- do you see the trajectory going? guest: after the 1930's and new deal, congress had had enough of the labor espionage and detective agencies. there are new laws that you cannot do this. it is at this point that the bigger to an agency destroyed all their papers, making my life a lot harder. surveillance is something that is always in the news and something i was thinking about, and in a lot of ways resembles the work that the detectives were doing in the 19th century. we taken for granted that the .tate knows everything about us and an earlier world, everywhere, for almost all of

human history, it would have been considered insane. i do not know if there is a direct connection between things that edward snowden is fighting today, and what the pinkerton's were doing, but it is very reminiscent. host: you are working on your dissertation at harvard. what is the timetable for finishing? do you hope to publish any of this in a book someday? what is your plan? guest: i am only in my third year. 0th years, i 1 would love to end of the shorter end than that. i would love the dissertation to become a book, one that appeals to a wider audience, not just academics. i love sharing stories. host: thank you for talking about your subject with us.

>> every weekend, on american history tv, on c-span 3, 48 hours of programs and events .hat tell our nation story this afternoon at 2:00, historians and authors on the life and legacy of stokely equalhael, a voice for rights and black power in the united states. they are joined by a former student nonviolent gordon in committee field secretary, charles cobb. >> stokely called it an apprenticeship in struggle. no matter where you come out five years later, stokely eventually moved to africa and embraces pan african socialism, others embrace the democratic party. >> then, elizabeth gray on the use of opium in the 19th century.

>> the attitude towards women drinking at the time was that this was very inappropriate, the woman should not drink. this be something that she could look to as an alternative? >> on sunday at 10:00, the road to the white house rewind. we look back to the campaign of urs the as he toward state of new hampshire. >> you see new hampshire change from a time when you were losing 10,000 jobs per year to a time when you are gaining 12,000 jobs per year. that is partly because we have had fiscal responsibility -- president clinton and i put in place an economic plan that has .alanced the budget an >> al gore went on to win the democratic nomination, but george bush.

american history tv, all weekend, every weekend, on c-span 3. ♪ >> three months ago, the first air cavalry division ships all from charleston, south carolina. young men trained in a new concept of war, proud, sure of themselves, but still to be tested in battle. they were destined for the high country of central vietnam. last week, some of them came home. were the price of victory in battle. cbs news correspondents were there. >> this is where it all began. .he special forces cap on the night of october 19, at 11:00 p.m., the first mortar rounds fell.

>> what kind of fighters are the viet cong that you met here? >> i would give anything to have 200 of them under my command. they are the finest soldiers i have ever seen. >> it was clear that the enemy had been hurt badly, but we paid dearly. it was almost like looking at old newsreels of korea and the .acific war the same faces, the same agony. >> it was pretty bad. we kind of want right into an ambush. ground.he tried to look around for trees. there was elephant grass about three feet high. to look over that, stivers could pick you up really easily, and let you have it. >> doesn't frighten you now to think about it? >> yes, does.

it was pretty bad listening to your friends crying out for help, not being able to do a thing. we just could not do anything. all pinned down. >> the secretary of the army has asked that i expressed deep regrets that your husband died in vietnam on november 14, 1965. me, they said they would bury us, and if they takeover bundle country at a time, before you know it, all little countries will be taken over, and eventually be would be we could notnd take them. he said, i would rather go now then have to wait until 20 years, and have my son go because it may be too late in 20 years. aim, fire!

aim! fire! ready! said, i will stay here. ,> on american history tv charles cobb joins a panel of authors and historians to discuss the life and legacy of civil rights and pan african movement leader stokely carmichael. his legacyiscusses as a voice for equal rights and the black power movement in the united states and is an organizer for the revolutionary party. the association for the study of african american life in history posted this event. it's a little under two hours. >> good afternoon