>> i may c-span >> of next, a panel of historians and scholars hold a panel is nothing who is black in america. it is part of a three-day conference calling the future of the african-american pass. it was cohosted by the national smithsonian museum of history and culture and the american historical association. prof. berlin: thank you very much feared i would like to affirm that i am ira berlin, and this is a discussion black, with the expectation that anybody of

african descent has the same opinions, shares the same music, can play and dance pretty much the same way only to discover that that is not true. course, have formalized this notion, and it is something called the one drop rule, which we used to distinguish race relations on america, orland compare race or understanding race on mainland north america from elsewhere in the world, and it of course speaks to the fact that african-americans and africans have had a common enemy and have had a shared experience, all of which complicates our understanding of ,he question of who is black

and those of you who were here last night, when our discussions kind of mobilized and moved notions of identity, the question of exactly what blackness means clearly grew and became on the floor. we know this from a historical perspective, we know people who were dragged across the atlantic started off not as africans but golan's -- angd olans. on that trip, as sidney mintz and richard price tell us, there is something called shipmates that began to arise with people with a common experience. by the time they got to the side of the atlantic, the distinction between those very us africans

began to morph into something we call creoles or african-americans. some of those people got free. we talked about the difference between free and slave. of course, there were differences between people who lived on plantations and people who lived on farms, people who lived in urban areas, and of course this is just a beginning of those distinctions, which took place in different forms, not the least of which of wars were distinctions between men and women and distinctions of gender. we are not going to talk about all of those distinctions today, but we will try to deal with this question of who is black, and in some way set the table sessions,st of the and during the next two days.

my colleagues on the platform, most of you know who they are. are in the program. tiya miles just to the left of me at the university of miss again -- of michigan. as near as i can say, she does just about everything. african american, african culture -- go down the list. it is quite impressive. my colleague at the university of maryland, elsa barkley brown, our lead author of our discussion today. will try to put a frame on what we would like to talk about. ,ylan penningroth next to elsa

and at the end, cleanup for us white.is deborah gray they will appear in that order. according to the instructions that we have been given, that i have been given, according to the instructions i have been given, everybody has 10 minutes or thereabouts. a generous 10 minutes, but not that generous. and we are going to try to leave plenty of time for audience participation in what should be a really interesting session. so thank you all for coming, for getting up early this morning. .o be here at 8:00 i take it most of you just stayed up all night. [laughter] prof. berlin: so that is good.

and i will introduce elsa. do you want to talk from there, or would you like to calm up. -- come up here? brown: goody morning. who makes up or what makes up black america? to discuss it in ways in which my students and i together can push and open up conversations about the composition of african america. , and the last you years, to begin my introductory african american history courses with the explain of lisa collins' 1998 film tree shade. mayfield, i high school student, faces an

assignment to create the family tree to say who are her people. at the out only african-american student in the classroom, she was both embarrassed and perhaps terrified as she sketches out her people are. she follows her fema line that three generations to the early 20th century, naming her ancestors, but all that she can put next to each name is the word convicts. and the searching any archive for her ancestors, all she might be able to uncover would be there for lease record, he affirmation -- would be their police record, affirming convict. she put together a thing made of all women inces,

service work with complete stories of their own. -- the domestic service to prison pipeline. class, we viewed the 1997 mock human oumentary "watermelon woman." the conversation is about silences, about ghosts, about archives, and about the silences in archives and also the silences in families. lack savannah mayfield's of knowledge initially in her family. about the silences in official lee has shown us that sometimes you have to create your own history. our commerce station our class

is also about desire. i challenge the students and consider what histories we desire, what history we would be ashamed to have come a what histories do they not want me to tell in the classroom, what histories do they not tell in their families. why will those silences exist? some will be because there are no records, some will result imagine,faile failure to but will there be some silences because there are things we do not want to know? history you do not find worthy of learning or ashamed to call out as part of "who is black america?" so what are some of the silences, and how and where are they produced? words, what are the various spaces where we create particular notions of who is black america. the classroom, the archives,

public discourse, the family. some of the silences confuse black americans about who they can be. a case in point is the 1920's ,alifornia club woman nationally known for her column in the "oakland tribune," and her club work, including her work in the passage of the and type luncheon bill -- the anti-lynching bill. most of the time, she was financially destitute and on more than one occasion homeless. the letter to w.e.b. dubois, she that are funds but also said he need not reveal her need for money to other members of the race. archives,ings in the

some may be created and what our own desires are or who we want black america to be. much wonderful recent work reveals the long history of black men and women incarceration, uncovering names and condition under which those imprisoned live. early work has been central here, takes a somewhat different tact in her new work on mary todd, a woman who appears to be a fairly close -- cold-blooded murderer. i am looking forward to seeing to thestudents respond composition of black america. of course, the silences in our history reflects the public discourse. though we have the beginnings of histories that publicly own black bodies, the relative silence contributes to the relative silence in our public

discourse. the concerted effort it takes to keep reminding that in the forefront of black lives are women, my all, a black transgendered woman killed by police outside baltimore directly before the murder of freddie gray. i am hoping we can discuss archives,roduced and family member -- family memories, and political change, to rewrite the past and reconsidered -- reconfigure the voice. my hope in my class is that my students challenged me throughout the semester to fill in some silence, and when i can't, which is also the case, we do not fill in the silence with something more easily discovered or more power double scale, but rather we take the tell us something about the diverse aspects of

black america we still need to fill in. [applause] prof. miles: good morning. i'm going to be about tracing african-american lives in native american spaces. there is no such thing as a new world in reference to the rather, in the 1660's, the land that we now know as the territory of the united states was people to buy hundreds of societies with nations close to 5 million, this explores foreigners, again, uncharted

recognizey have to the business communities. this is also the case for the africans who came across the atlantic who had deserted the call of the slave trade. these africans landed not only in the old world proper, and not just in spanish, english, and french colonial settlements or the u.s., but they also landed in ancient culture and communities of native north america. the social, spatial, political, and cultural formations of these people were complex, long-standing, and tangible. those of african dissent found .hemselves having to navigate in aan-american history

space that is native america gives new information and deeper understanding about the diversity, dignity, and price one of black this land. across the eastern seaboard in the deep south and even in the west, black and native people met in a series of encounters that became consequential for african american life. the english colony of virginia in the 1600's,a black people wore enslaved ,longside the native americans four tobacco, rice, and indigo plantations. enslaved black men were brought onto farms where nate native indentureded as servants. they often coupled. black and native men worked

relatively together. were sold in slavery. thesed slave people from the sioux, ottowa, and other nations. they traded dear, beaver skins and others. american slavery solidified, and white men pushed further into the interior, cherokee, creek, chickasaws, seminoles, these

nations to varying degrees settled plantations of their own. refer in shorthand to a configuration called the black community, and black people in the u.s. do share a bold and -- however, that we begin to define our areas and look at the fine print, we see that african america is illuminated as a richly, variegated population. sexuality, religion, these are all important. but i would like to add to that , the black population possesses native roots. , i am pointing to historical patterns of experience within the native

community, ancestral and family ties with native people, and culturalistent narratives and mythologies about a and b. i think many of us in this room have heard african americans talk about long, straight hair as a sign of indian blood, high cheekbones as a sign of indian may wonder, and we what that claim is about, what that narrative is. an order to reach finer understanding of the composition of black america, we must see the community and cultural narrative of black people in native spaces and consider the way in which a black-white binary and indeed a red-white binary has often

occluded our interpretive vision. it is part of the project of drawing a broader picture of black cultural complexity. it is not to suggest that that lends to be rose-colored. we cannot deny nor should we got the largest populations of native americans and black americans were brought together through colonial forces of slavery, or that they came to being by injustice and suffering. the 1600's and 1700's, black people were newcomers to north america, and their livelihood , on the on native land seizure of native lands. native american southerners owned a proximally 5000 black 1865. in

the slave people reveal a catalog of abuse. they also revealed that native slavery was in some places in time more flexible than what we recognize as american slavery. theinstitute under direction of booker t. washington in the late 1800's were taught that they start at a higher level of civilization than native american students who were also in school there. and blackmail soldiers -- an d male soldiers, known as buffalo soldiers, policed the native americans. wrongspite the perpetrated and harms in jordan in this tangled web of exploitation and survival, african-americans have recalled thoseences in words like of historian gilda naylor.

who wrote, "born and raised among these people, i do not want to know any others." scholars are beginning to think through the way relationships were distinct from those. for instance, a chickasaw hasrary scholar acknowledged in her own nation black enslavement, has said that we need a new word to talk about black people, a word other than settlers, and she has turned the nts. arrivva med the word arrivants. we can trace those lives, , andthing the at times

documented history as well as cultural memories. been the importance in the space of african-american lives. in an article entitled "the one ofns of negroes," the longest unwritten chapters in the history of the united states is that of the negroes and the indians. several articles were written in "the journal of negro history" about this topic. but afterwards, the subject really fell into the footnote, and it was not until very recently, after the year 2000 approximately, that there were several writings on this subject. these new monographs are dealing not only with just seeing that black people lived in native spaces, not only with

recognizing that native people owned black slaves, but also more generally, sexuality, geography, and formal economic networks, kids in the community, racism, migration. native american history scholars are finding their way to see black life into these spaces. it has taken us a bit of time to fully realize carsey woodson's vision. to continue drafting woodson's unwritten chapter, cubs and consequences, unveiled multiple "ans of america of the terms

black america." [laughter] [applause] prof. penningroth: good morning. i'm going to stand up. i talk faster that way. [laughter] if you look at a church history from the early 1900's, you will read about two things, law and property. so many dollars raise in one year, so much money spent to buy the land and raise up a building. the crowning moment came when aowds of onlookers watched crowd proudly set the mortgage on fire. these matter because as carter g woodson pointed out in 1930, more african-americans think

money into church property than anyone else. legally, in most states then and now, a church is a religious corporation that holds property for the benefit of its members, pointn x slaves in 1855 to their local circuit court and filed the paperwork to incorporate or appoint trustees, they took for themselves property rights, taxes and 10, and the standing to sue and be sued as a collective rather than individually. as the georgia supreme court put it, trustees watched over the civil rights of their congregation. believers, a pastor, a deed, and trustees -- these were the pillars of a black church. the church has dealt a lot with courts in the 1800's. they were asking to borrow money against buildings and lands to defend against lawsuits by contractors or unfriendly neighbors. churches alsoty, became tiny schools of business and law, a typical business meeting would open with prayers

and bible readings and hymns, and then they moved to the money business, reporting the latest church fundraising, entertaining, buying lumber and tools for a new building, giving a hardware man a deed of trust. if you are lucky enough to sent be sent to one of your annual conferences, you may hear a delivered by a leading black attorney. law was in the everyday life of lack churches from the pulpit to the deacon's office to the pews, and that legal culture and form how the churches were ron, how they handle crises, and to an extent, people's sense of themselves as christians. as we'll know, african-americans attacked jim crow in the streets and in the worker sent segregation and discrimination were in part legal, the attack raised questions about black american'' relationships to law.

consider dexter avenue baptist church where martin luther king was first called to the pulpit. dexter was famous at the time a deacon's church, where ministers got kicked out constantly, unlike more baptist churches where ministers held more of the power. on the first sunday morning, september victim in 1964 -- kingmber 5, 1954, announced that morning, leadership distance from the pulpit to the pew, and it has to be respected and the central figure around which the policies and programs that the church evolved. it was a coup -- i am quoting a scholar on that. [laughter] prof. penningroth: a risky grab of leadership, that is my word. and the kind of thing that sparked thousands of lawsuits in american churches -- and it

worked beautifully. dexter worked in a world structured by law. signed contracts, mortgages with the lenders, and it had it shares of lawsuits and near lawsuits. in 1932, a depression-penned dexter could not pay its pastor's celery, and only avoided a lawsuit by selling off the church car. nine years before king arrived, the deacons had gone to court to issue out another pastor for abusing his wife. when king took people fit in -- took the pole bit in 1954 -- the 1954, he addressed the court in the religious life. -- one built not only on the writing of thoreau and gandhi, about dexter come in also watching his father at ebenezer running a church.

the church was governed by rules, just like schools were. the guidelines make it very clear. to critics who felt that they talked too much civil rights in that church, king retorted with an even more bold declaration of than he hadpower dared when he took the dexter pulpit or it i will quote at length here -- "you called this ebenezer, and you may turn me out of here, but you cannot turn me out of the minister because i got my guidelines and my anntment from god almighty, and anything i want to say, i'm going to say it from this pulpit. it may hurt somebody. i do not know about that. somebody may not agree with it, but when god's weeks, who can but prophesize? the word of god is upon me shut up like fire in my bones, and i have got to tell it all over everywhere, and got had called me to deliver those that were in

there was nonow way that dexter or ebenezer or any other church is going to fire martin luther king junior in 1956. get that kind of lingwood was exactly what guy generations of less famous ministers fired or sued. plenty of baptists believe that god had not called her ministers to deliver those who were in captivity, not in the way that king was leaving. in fact,ose baptists, joseph h jackson, was president of the baptist convention, and any resulting lawsuit would have hinged on exactly the issues that king raised in his sermon. who has the authority to call and dismiss a pastor? what can church members do when the minister had hurt somebody. ? by the 1950's, church leaders had built of a store of experience with legal tools, like injunction, trustees, corporation, and the role of law in a christian life.

they could now apply those lessons learned in internal church life and an routine church business to the external problem of racial injustice. the most famous example was king's letter, "from a birmingham jail," which laid out civil disobedience in the face of oppression. king wrote, "the injunction has now become the leading instrument in the south to direct action to the civil rights drive. " now, if the injunction meant anything to white readers, it probably reminded them of the labor injunction, the killer of unions. familiarwould be most with injunction, the weapon in a church fight. underneath the references to saint augustine, king's logic proceeded in a prosaic second register. it was moral when it targeted unjust law, and unjust laws were

those that violated "the moral that a the law of god," majority group forces on a minority but does not make binding on itself for a law on a minority that, as a result of being denied the right to vote, has no part in enacting or devising that law. this is exactly what church law offices had been about ever wase bethel ame incorporated in 1976. richard hof reverend singled in a sued out and used, get ready, a poll tax to strip people of their voting rights and ran through his own agenda. poplar springs, 1928, atlanta, in 1963, in america and those are just once i got

through the state supreme court in 1960 and 1961, king was among the warring reverends who lobbed injunctions at each other in court in philadelphia, and kansas city, to get control of the national baptist convention away from jackson. i tried to convey a rich engagement of black churches and institutions. right from their founding, black churches were incorporating, buying and selling property, defending what both they and the court called their civil rights. as white supremacy waved down in n, those were the only rights like people could claim, and claim them the day. the legal culture of black churches begin a bridge between civil rights and property and contracts and the civil rights of desegregation and eat all protection. 60's washts in the 19 as much about fire insurance as

mass-market. the fire insurance is what made it possible, not just in the as king put it, "litigation costs money," or that black rights often came from the pulpit or that a major bar association held its meeting at a church, but because they led from the culture. armed withd in practical knowledge and a pragmatic faith in-laws abilities and limits. thank you. law's abilities and limits. thank you. [applause] white: i, too, am going to stand up and talk from this mic.

i titled my presentation this morning "from new negro to post black: who is black america?" i would like to start with two imaginary conversations. the first one, while fingering poetandwritten copy of james weldon johnson's "lift every voice and sing," a sunset strip father, "no more "yes, sir" to whitey and holding my head down, no more sitting in the back of the trolley, no more picking cotton. i am a black man. i am going to get an education, a good job, and a wife who i will protect. i'm going to fight for my rights as a negro american and show the world what the negro race has to offer. negro.am a new a ma"

a man of few words, his father looks at him, his son, and he says "they lynch new negroes the same way they lynched old ones." forward, 90 or 100 years later, the son talks to his father -- the sun's great-grandson talks to his father, and while holding a copy of barack obama's "dreams do not father," says "i have to identify as black. i am a man whose politics and opportunity are not raised by my -- i did am not afraid to be post black." tray ofnherited the reticence from the men and his family, the harlem-based father says to his son "cap drivers are

still not going to take you to harlem to die. post black sustaining on the corner the same way they leave regular blacks." [laughter] these two imaginary yet realistic conversations demonstrate black identity in the 20th century and some of the generational and gender issues involved. an expression of black modern ity is indicative of the new negro movement, which reflected the hope of people who were like other americans and other westerners becoming modern, meaning they were migrating or immigrating to inome more urban, more meshed in the industrial lives, economy, more engaged with financial institutions, more scientific and more asthma politics here people specifically were moving from america, to full

citizenship, and from espousing a philosophy of uplift through self-help to an embrace of uplift through civil rights. the second conversation is indicative of the way some young black americans are dealing with postcard entity -- postmarked -modernity, a black president, has offered modern blacks a waste to self identify many ways to become black. while they do not reject their blackness, they never the less are expressing a desire to not be circumscribed by a group definition of blackness. they understand their race is one of many eyes in the variables that define them. so i'm going to talk a little bit this morning about what i marches,the 1990 mass

the million man and woman march, to demonstrate the similarities and differences between black ity and eddie post-modernity. talk with the early conversation, you know, at the turn of the century, african-americans understood that to be part of the modern world and to take part in what ity, they had toddie throw off sharecropping, they to theestablish rights fruits of their labor, they had to be able to move, and they needed the taxes that they paid to government to underwrite their civil, educational, and housing rights. the attendees of the 1909

national negro conference, for example, took as their starting point the idea that blacks were citizens, entitled to human rights, and they demanded that >> the given social, -- that blacks the given social and political rights as well. they criticized the system of cropping, disenfranchisement, they demanded that blacks be given free and complete education that was not restricted to just industrial education. they insisted that every civil rights accorded from the 14 amendment be given to black people. demandedtimes, they that blacks be given the right to intermarry, not because blacks were dying to marry whites, but because marriage is they wereght, and who allowed to marry was a denial of the basic right of american citizenship. they were also mindful of the fact that the laws against intermarriage left black women

with tatianal acts by white men. most black americans, therefore, wanted to be integral to this american society. though there have always been people who follow the precepts garvey,p turner, marcus theg back to africa, but won where blacks live separately in the country or ones where blacks were back to africa, the precursor of the nub lace naacpd any discrimination based on race or color is barbarous. we cannot have it. determination based solely on peculiarities based on color or skin is an unreasonable human savagery of which the world should be thoroughly ashamed.

most black organizations, therefore, worked tirelessly to read america of that barbarous discrimination. they worked tirelessly for black human, civil, social, economic, and political equality. for the most part, when african-americans excepted segregation at all, it was accepted as a measure of self-defense that was necessary to fight oppression and to build a community strong enough to withstand the insults and injury of jim crow and all that went along with it. "parallelle developed institutions" as a measure of self-defense. black sororities and fraternities, black colleges, the black church, black professional organizations were founded because we were excluded from white organizations that were part of the modernity project. proves to be thev

achilles heel of white supremacy. it provided a way to develop a range of distinct institutions that they control. it allowed blacks to defy whites and become modern in a spite of tote americans' desire confine african americans to a primitive, premodern existence. black community was essential to becauser modernity group strength was stronger than individual strength. group accomplishment went further than individual accomplishment. it was our exclusion that created "our country, our black community." at the center of mattel costings book "black is a country," is the notion of black people not as unimagined country, as

benedict aniston would have it, froms it to separating whites, willing in the 1960 to against thease united nations and plead their rights as other nations were doing. stephen han trace of this black nation back, a nation under our feet, the title of his magnum opus. looking at the early conversation between father and to, we see a son ready embrace a black identity, song, "lift up your voice and sing," which became the black national anthem, and the courage that he had recently taken on. he was ready to take on the world as the new negro, a new black man, along with him word dark skins, light-skinned, almost all-white people because of the one drop law passed in the colonial 19th-century would discern anyone with black

heritage as black. along with caribbean migrants whose numbers went from 5000 20,000 between 1850 and 1900, and whose numbers increased to approximately 140,000 between 1899 and 1937, along with him were blacks of all social and economic classes because jim crow laws and systemic terror made blacks second-class citizens, forced to live and play together, and a meaningful distance between what w.e.b. dubois euphemistically called the "veil." all blacks develop their own style, aesthetic, food, their ways of knowing. let's fast forward the second conversation where the son talks about social construction and he does not want to be limited or find by any preconceived notion of blackness, where the sun wants

to express his individuality. 1990 5 millionhe man march and the 1997 million woman march, and look for the answer of who is black america, self-help and self-defense was by the 1990's disintegrated. this is ironic and paradoxical because the variables that drew these people to these marches were black identity, yet the black consciousness, the consensus over who is black that had serves to energize african-americans for most of the 20th century was disappearing. let me give you just an example of what i mean. the calls for unity at both marches -- if we were so united -- [laughter] prof. white: if we were so united, then why was there a

need to call for unity? that unity was in short supply. similarly, if black men and women were so together, why did marches on separate two separate national mall's? homosexuals have to a partn and fight to be of both marches? that black america is not what it used to be, that modernityon of post- and post blackness is something have talked about. charles s johnson -- can i have

one more minute? a martin luther king talk, and he called it the "end of the black american narrative." he argued that the african-american narrative of slavery, jim crow, lynching, everything that has dominated is tired. american narrative which emphasizes the experience of victimization is quietly in the background of every comer station we have about black people, and when it is not fully articulated or express, it is our starting point, our agreed-upon summit, are most important deposition for dialogue about black america. what johnson argues is that african-americans need to bury this narrative because black people today are too complex and multifaceted to be so easily

characterized. if we had the numbers of africans,, biracial, we begin to see you just what he recognized. anotherlike to end with not so imaginary conversation, ok, and this time the father is a white contemporary of the 21st century who, with the help of a large black electorate, was elected mayor of a big american city. wifed his bisexual black who traces her roots back to her grandmother from barbados has a heartfelt talk with their biracial son. they explained to him what they call the drill. it is the self-imposed procedure learned by most people of color upon being stopped by the police. "move slowly, keep your hands

where the police can see them, explain all of your hand procedures so the cops will know what you are doing. if you are in a car, turn on the light if it is at night. if it is at night, put your hands on the steering wheel and make no sudden moves." the biracial son with caribbean roots is startled by his parents' candor, but he nods his head in the affirmative as he stares at them in disbelief. thatof you will recognize last conversation as that between mayor dubois zero of new york city -- mayor bill de blasio of new york city and his son. [applause]

berlin: i'm going to give the panel one more shot of trying to deal with the question of narrative of status within of inheritance, of experience, of circumstance, livesngs that make black what our president called a mongrel people, indeed, the american people, bringing so then wets together, and will open up our discussion to the audience. >> do you have a questions? prof. berlin: go ahead.

all right, the panel has conceded to the audience. [laughter] prof. berlin: this is not what martin luther king suggested about authority. once you have it, you are not supposed to surrender it. microphones over there, and we have microphones up there, and if anybody wants a question or to make a short statements -- a short statement, they can go up to the microphone. yes, please say who you are. phil: my name is filled dogged, i'm from california. this is aement -- great panel, i missed the start because i came late from arlington. i want to speak about the narrative being tired. the narrative informs where we are today, the political conversation that is at the bedrock of the 2016 election -- what is more fundamental to the

campaign than its narrative about african-americans being this, that, or the other? further, but iny think you know where i am going. it is an interesting and important dialogue. i have done work around dubois' idea of consciousness, and we today in 2016 still have to deal with this concept that is a part of our essence, this idea of double consciousness. thank you. marvin: hello, i am marvin jones. i am from a community, a mixed-race community in north carolina that is 270 years old, and i have always been mistaken as white. i have also been mistaken as black, sometimes by myself -- [laughter]

up in blacki grew communities landowning. we always spoke different, but we were always part of the african-american community, and that's one thing i have learned. we help set up black institutions, even though we always look near white or near indian, always living on the edge of what was white, what was african, what was indian, but i have learned that being black is part of a community sometimes and not always even having the postcolonialica, a gene from africa, and i now yield my time to this person and my neighbor from the neighboring county, alvin smallwood. forn: thank you very much yielding your time.

harris, and i have a question for professor penningroth. as i understand your presentation, you are looking at the black church and your experience gained through use of the law and legal instruments. my question to you is where would you place fraternal orders the elks, the masons, and so forth, since in many respects, their use of the law preceded that of the church. i am trying to remember the name , i believeologist she is a sociologist, at harvard, who has written a book on these fraternal orders -- pardon? thank you so much. i was having a brain freeze. it happens more frequently than i would like these days. but anyway, she really looked at

the development of the legal experience through these fraternal organizations. i just wondered -- where do you place them in your story? prof. penningroth: thank you for that question third i will answer very quickly that the -- they areders part of my book. they should be a bigger part of my book. right now, the church is occupying more space than the fraternal orders. meon't -- it is hard for sitting here on the stage on the fly, but i would say they used law beginning around the same time in the late 1700's. and i do know the work, and i am also -- one of the things that they talk about is this battle that develops and intensifies in the late 1800's over the use of insignia and rituals, and that

is what the court battles are ostensibly about. think, point, i out -- and i think i would emphasize this more -- but the battle was probably just as much over the insurance business, that is to say they are both theeting for customers, and battle intensifies earlier when companies like prudential try to get in. so in essence, the black fraternal orders get out of the insurance business, which had been their lifeblood since going back before the civil war, so that is a huge and important story. that is really worth telling, so thank you for that question. arwin: arwin smallwood, my question is rectitude professor miles and in general, as marvin jones just mentioned, particularly in south carolina, you have large numbers of mixed-race people who are of

native ancestry, and it goes back to the and placement of native people and the mixing with african, and i believe that that first 200 years of history, late 1500s to the 1600s, before the revolution, is really the formation of what we call african-american. how would we get the generation of -- the next generation of young scholars to fully examine that? we talk about the rights, all these other things, but we have not fully examined the relationship between native americans and blacks in the first 200 years of colonial settlement? hello, ariwin. thank you for that question. one of the things that we face as a challenge is we have to really go back, as you indicated, and i find that it can really take some encouragement and enticement to

get students to want to look at the 1700's. part of what our job is, i suppose, is to really unveil the nuances, complexities, and really interesting nature of this material in the colonial period so that the students will say i can study that, i can study migration and the same moment. bothhave taught paths of the african-american history -- my enrollments are always hard foigher for the secd half. >> i'm a student at the university of maryland. i'm one of those people that actually does liek to -- like to look into earlier thanks. here i am, guys.

i have a question for ms. miles and miss deborah about identity. i know a lot of people do not like to use the term afro. afro something else did with that context, how do we talk about these interactions between different races and different people and different generations of people, while grappling with this identity and question of putting afro in front of something or not? because some people feel like it takes away their american-ness or their something. >> thank you for that question. prof. miles: i'm comfortable with afo. afronative.

in part because there is not the term black indian. term thaty general collapses various identities. afro-native is more open. and up driving us into cul-de-sacs because they do not convey the nuances. one thing i wish i could do encourage you to do better is try to invent new language to capture the complexities of the populations we are talking about. add to that by saying that we are in a moment where i bi-racialwhole structure of american identity is in a flux. it's mostly because

we have had such a large influx of hispanics or latinos who either will identify as black or white or mostly will identify as hispanic regardless of what their color is. and i think that with the immigration of so many no of being the notion black or white, whether it is what you want to check with on the census or now that you can check more than one or two, i think a lot of people see this just asserting so much, a great, asserting so many more of the variables that make up identity and to be quite ho s think a lot of

americans want to be pigeonholed anymore into the one or the other. and i think when you use afro, which i do not have a problem with, or african, you, that's wh at exactly you are doing -- you are privileging one aspect of identity over another. and i think that is what particularly millennials and a more a younger generation are trying to get away from. >> good morning. i live and work in new jersey. in newark, new jersey. i have a couple of comments spur jerseyiansister new deborah gray white. professor whyte mentioned the magic word sentence -- census. i would like to say a little bit about that looking forward along the lines you mentioned and that

is of increasing black at the city. -- ethnicity. when i say i live in new jersey we have a lot of people from the caribbean but voluntary immigrants from the nations of africa. and some of them identify straightforwardly as african-american, and others have very distinct says, more of an immigrant sense of superiority over local black people and so forth. so, there are lots of different ways of being african african-american. and i think that will become more salient in the future. the other comment i make, as an expert on white people -- [laughter] with thehas to do beauty, i think the protectiveness of the community, the black community.

at we do have a sense of community identity. and i think that has been in our ways part of persistence, our ability to survive. and i think what you see on the other side is that individualism has probably hurt white people in the sense o f falling rates abuse andty, of drug thso forth. much talk about white people dying off or poor white people dying off. and i have not seen a comment about individuality as a factor in mobility -- in morbidity. just two comments. thank you. >> my name is moses.

and i represent the association of african-american life in history. the name of the association very much, so i wanted to say, i have two questions about anti-blackness from two groups with regard to solidarity and grassroots movements. right now we have problems where young folks who don't identify as black refer to themselves and everyone around them as the n-word. and also have their peers refer to themselves as such. to the point that it alienates our elders at city hall meetings and local community meetings to oppose movements like the black lives matter movement because not feel that it's sort of, a respectable movement with ofard to what their notions

black this represent. these individuals stand behind police of as a lot of the time. every time i go to a city hall contingency, is especially in atlanta and los angeles, there is a contingency of conservative lack people -- black people who oppose the black lives matter movement, but who expect us to respect them as elders. my question is, how can we encourage our revolutionary elders to hold our more anti-black elders accountable? to how can we get our allies stop celebrating anti-blackness in their solidarity? not easily done. gray white: i would go back to something gates said.

"who's afraid of blackness." there are 40 million ways to be black. there always has been 40 million ways to be black. it is just that, you were compelled to be black in a particular way. before, paradoxically, before the freedom movement. that, atuccess of least in terms of letting loose a black middle class. the immigration of so many people of color. i don't just mean even africans or caribbeans, but south africans, brown people. there are so many ways now and so much more freedom to be black . and this is despite and in killing of young

black men and women by police. the now that there is this, ability to express different kinds of blackness, and to act on it, we're beginning to see what always has been. and that is 40 million ways to be black. [inaudible] paper really exposed some of those internal fissures we always experienced as african-americans in history. to connect with deborah said with a question about generational tensions, age tensions, linguistic tensions. . it is not a new challenge

it is an old challenge. we are continuing every day to try to work on solving it. >> good morning. i'm not historian or scholar. book everyto read a now and then as written by the likes of you all. my question is for professor white. i'm always interested in the discussion of class within the black community. history and current events clearly show that regardless of social economic race has always been our -- so, my question is, it is a discussion of class, a distraction? people like you all and others has written that race has been the -- within the black community. white: political scientists have recently noted statistic-ized it?

whatever, however. the linked fate and the idea of linked fate is dissolving. and this is beginning in the 1990's and through the first 16 years of the 20th century -- we're finding, i'm not a political scientists, but they are finding that the feeling of linked fate is declining among black people. guessen as late as, i notion black people were asked are black people a single race? %, rounded off to 40% of what people said no. -- of black people said no.

i am not making this up. this is from the pew research center. i think it's rather astounding. if not profound. blacke linked fate that people used to feel is tenuous. hello. my name is mary elliott. atm a museum specialist here the national museum of african american history. i'm culterating the slavery and freedom exhibition. youri really appreciate e acknowledgment of silence. in this experience of putting together the exhibition, we've had people come forward with ,bjects, documents that

non-african-americans, white knowe say, i did not what to do with this. i have held it for so many years. a betterus to have understanding of the black experience and america, and it is important these people are coming forward now. in the exhibition, we look at slavery and freedom when we talk realities ofsh slavery but the resistance, the resilience and the survival. we have had some experiences , and the way, for example we took apart a slave cabin we had a young woman who was descended from the enslaved community associated with the cabin. she told me she did not want to talk to another woman who's white who was descended from the slave owning community. talk to herant to because she said she keeps telling me that we are related. i don't want to hear it. so, i told her, you should talk with her, because the fact is

that this is a shared experience and she is going to have information about your family that she is calling her family as well, just like you might have information for her. i think it is really powerful you have brought this u up here. and i would like to know how you will prompt dialogue with your students, because you talked about it and i thought about in the context of african-american students, but this is, it cuts both ways -- black and white. family memory that people don't talk about. then there is some shame on. both sides. i'm interested in how you would do that and how you speed this 21st-century museum helping to move that dialogue forward. prof -- yes, my students are a range of people in the

classroom. so when we are talking about silences or shame or some -- or what we want to know, we are talking about the range of what different people want black american history to be. and for some people what they think that means, if they are b lack, what they think that means about their own history. that is a conversation that will always happen in the classroom. i think the main thing that i'm always trying to do is to get us to be able to talk about everything. to not have any things that can't be on the table. to allow there to be conversations that we don't know they are into, that i do not have any idea what the answer is to that. i'm perfectly fine with not knowing what the answer is, as long as we do not take it off the table because i do not notion to answer that question.

and that collectively we try to figure out what could we do that helps us move forward with continuing to have the conversation. i think in general my approach to thinking about african-american history who's black, etc., is that i think most of the time when we see unity what we are looking at is silence. in order to get to unity, a lot of people have been silenced. a lot of people were not in that narrative. so, if we're telling a story about that, that we need to figure out who we want hearing. putthen, as long as we can those voices out there -- we be able to resolve how we tell the history -- but andoal is to silence less less people. and that is what i would hope

which isng in history, not necessarily creating -- not trying to create a new narrative. not trying to say we are going to come to another narrative that we are all going to agree on. sorry. just what i hope for the museum is that there is a lot of things that we have been silent about and show up in the museum. and -- in some kind of way and spaces for people to add other things that they think as silent. because we are all going to create something that has silences in it. but you have a lot of things that have been silent and not to worry about whether, i'm not running the museum, so i can say not worry. not to worry about the things that people are going to be upset about that are included, etc. [applause] i'm from newark, new

jersey. the assumption that i think some of us make is that being black was only a protective device to get us through and beyond jim crow. well, i have a problem with that because there were many of us who thought that blackness or being black had a lot more value. if you reduce it to a protective moment, then you lose that value or you -- it's possible for someone to take it away. so, i use as an example the whole concept of the blues. we are losing the blues. it ase we won't accept part of the black phenomenon, as

part of black culture, as part of the essence of not noly being -- only being black but being american. we are integrated -- no longer necessary to be black. somebody else has picked it up is enjoyingr and her. now we look upon our own culture and we say, yes, it is nice to be apart of something and not to be considered, black, white or anything. there are other people hard at work making sure the extract -- it is like a corporate takeover. you take the wholte thing but you rejected that which you don't need, but keep that which is useful. we had better step up and reclaim our identity. >> speak briefly to that and say that those last words, i am going to remember. we need to step up, recliam.

aim. we talked about beauty and protectiveness in her comments. there is beauty in that history, beauty and that cultural connection. i think we need to focus on that and lift that up as well. i want to just add that i heard a presentation recently by psychologists. i wish i could give you a citation. -- a when parents talk about black pride to their adolescent children, those children do much better, they have fewer incidences of depression. in our day there really is a psychological protective factor to positive blackness. when it comes to the exchange between parent and child. morning.wartgo

i am from the university of minnesota. i also wanted to thank you for bringing up the silences in the archive. my question is, in your practice as historians, when you are looking at the history of the formation of african-america in today,0's, 1600's, even when the documents are missing, when they were not collected, when they were destroyed and not valued by institutions, how do you call attention to those silences? how do you document silences when the documents are not there? brown: very carefully. [laughter] >> somebody want to? the documentsy are never there, at least for once you want. -- the ones you want.

and that's true for the 20th century as well as the 17th century. in some ways, i think it is easier in the 17th and 18th century because so much has been destroyed. in the 20th century you have so much you can't know. how do you sort? are,he documents you want the smoking gun is never is never there, but you can find lots of evidence and put it together in ways that help us understand that story, some of which has been spoken of here. prof. miles: i also think you have to begin to read what exists differently. done, someve historians have done really ads thatk with runaway

yield very little information. but it is amazing. i will give you one example. my colleague whose book is about to be published. she had one document from the 1700s of a black woman who ran away from a plantation in bridgetown. one runaway ad. one runaway ad. what the ad said, it said, forget the woman's name, but she's probably headed towards bridgetown. and that was it. also, she had some distant wishing marks -- some distinguishing marks. entire chapter based on that one runaway ad. what she did is she went back to bridgetown, and she got all the old maps of bridgetown.

so, you know, knowing that she would be coming -- barbados is not a really very large island. so knowing knowing where she would enter the city, what she did was to put herself in the shoes of this runaway person, and then, through those old maps, re-created what this woman was seeing. that's just really, incredibly butous hard work, nevertheless, we got a sense of what this woman was going to possibly feel, for example, as somebody who is running away from a rural plantation and is going to an urban center. she passes a whipping post. it does not take too much imagination. but basically what she calls it biasading against the grain. i think that is what we have to

do. we have to take what is there, turn it inside out, and look at it from the perspective of the black person. and read very differently than in many ways we have been taught to read. but it can be done. say thatss i want to i think you also have to be willing to leave questions that you can't answer, but leave the questions out there, as opposed to wiping them out because i do not know what the answer is to that. runne other thing is i into silences all the time in other projects which is on legacies of slavery in ghana. when i run into those, i often will treat them, or begin to think of them as expressions of power, the residues of power. a chief is called to testify in a land case. ignores thehing or

summons. that is an expression of power, an assertion of his, what he sees as his right to define his boundaries. when someone brings up slave ancestry, that is an expression of power. when someone does not, that tells a lot. i can sort of follow the silences to figure out some things i want to know. >> just one other thing. as historians, that we need to be more interdisciplinary than we are. and that there are ways to borrow some of the skills and techniques and methods of political scientists or literary people, cultural theorists, anthropologists, as ways to read our documents.

hello. i'm here wearing three hats. a coordinator of the midwest african-american genealogy institute. and this is, we're going into our fourth year. it will be at the allen county public library july 11-13. member of thea afro-american historical and genealogical society. the third, i'm the host and producer of research at the national archives and beyond blog talk radio. what i want to hear more about are the stories. and one of the things that we as genealogists so, we are trying to connect to the dots and tell the stories we find in our family tree or maybe missing from our family trees. so that when someone has to

compose, or put together a family tree, and they find -- what's the story behind finding your family member listed as a convict. let me tiny one of my stories. tell you onet me of my stories. in my family tree i discovered a great great uncle listed in the newspaper as killing his brother. and there was a governor's order in louisiana for him, and the question i had was, what is the story? there was a long story, but he was a part of my family tree. did i dismiss that? mode,go into a silcenent not share what i needed to know and share that with our family? so, when we talk about the thosees, do we keep secret scandals away from the rest of the family members, or

do we share them? >> the film i was talking about the begins with the tree of a convict, the film is the young girl learning the full histories of these women. they are, why they killed the people that they did, but also removed from that, what their histories were with their families, what they did, what their occupations were, etc. so, it's learning that. and when i'm using that with my class, i actually want my class not to run away from the word convict, but i won't -- want them to think of all of the

people that we are looking at as multidimensional human beings, that there's a lot of different things we can find out about them. and i'm hoping that in asking questions, about what they want to be their family history or what they want c.,be black history, et.c, i'm encouraging them to ask those questions in their own family, not necessarily they are doing it my class but one of the things they are taken from my class is to want to know more fully about their own families as well. >> we have -- 15 minutes. i will ask everybody to be efficient with their questions and short with their comments. garden collection

at howard university there is a collection of family histories that professor fraser had his students collect. you would be surprise or maybe not surprised at the number of silences the students encountered in the 1930's when they were asking their parents and pa grandparents. not new. >> thank you, panel. this question is probably in professor brown's purview but i mean it for the entire panel. we've talked about the wrongful price of unity being silences. when people are caught in the k,rly-burly of realpoliti rigidly in the drivers of mainstream media attention, we lose our grip on history and operating with historical agency. and particularly with intergenerational work, i am very concerned with this sense of displacement that we have as

individual groups and the collectives. and i really -- what i hold in high regard, the academy, and i think your works present us with moving beyond the parameters of the academy. i'm interested in what the panel thinks about what more is to be done. it is one thing to be a lively reader and then practice and observation and evidence or theory. it is another to deal with young people at all people and bring together community members to aggressively attack this wrongful price of unity. prof. brown: i think there are practices for how to think about workingtogether, using together as opposed to unity.

practices for how to think about working together without requiring or assuming uniformity, commonality, etc. we can see some of those practices in, i don't know, early mutual benefit societies that made very specific kind of rules about where they m et and about inclusion of wide ranges of people in their spaces in which they would meet for the exact purpose of making sure that everyone's voice would be there, would be able to speak. i'm not mistaking everybody being able to speak for not saying some people, some people clearly have more power than other people to make decisions. that.t suggesting

i think there are practices in euyp100. i have been really impressed. barbara is sitting right there. i think i'm right. i have been impressed with the way byp100 has decided to deal with men in the group who have, allegedly have sexually assaulted women in their group. impressed by the way they developed a practice that holds the men accountable and does not put them out of the group. and they really worked on what the practice is and how that's going to work. very public about that. i think there are practices people can develop that don't, that aren't assuming unity, but that are assuming we can find ways to work together to a particular political end.

>> hello. i'm a genealogist for the national museum of african american history. comment i wanted to make regarding to her question about mythnce -- there's this that we are missing or lacking an abundance of records on african-americans. it's actually the opposite. it takes quite a bit of time to do the research, but i think every historian up there on the thel has evidence to contrary of thate myth. reading ther of records different way. instead of just looking of african-americans records, you're looking for evidence of african-americans in those records. that is the beginning of the country when we were recording records until now.

there were silences that about with every group, not just african-americans. what i think we need to do is have some sort of middle ground for genealogists and historians thecome together to find methodologies that use and combine them to tell a better story. i've had an experience when i was looking for evidence of african-americans in the colonial period. book took men's five attempt to get through, " slaves without masters." what happened for me, this telling moment was when i realized you have to understand the psychology of the record keepers to understand how they are recording the information in order to understand how to search through that information to find the people who we think, they have silences. they may not speak themselves but the record keepers are speaking for them. navigate through that

process, through the records, one must understand the other side of it, both sides of the coin. that is just my comment. brown: the late tom meetings, sit at people down and say what is it you want to know and let's think about who needed and wanted that information. if we can figure out who needed and wanted that information we can start thinking about how to find it. my research in which focuses on enslaved afro-americans in the cherokee nation, i have really benefited and the smarts and savvy knowledgeable assistance of genealogists. i cannot do half of what i did

without a genealogists who know how to find things that were really puzzling for me as someone coming into those records anew. say to thewant to point about do we have the material, to we not have the material? americane native history and studies of black people and native communities, there actually is a lot of material. i always figured there is not one i write. it is not the same as writing about thomas jefferson. native people were surveilled to such a high extent by the u.s. government and by colonial powers that there is records there. it is deep. it does not want to think about black people. even when there is a lot of material we have to use some practices -- >> we're down to five more minutes. why don't we say three more questions? >> a comment and question.

published by the san francisco history museum and more important to the issue of silence and of records, i'm a sound consulting with the library of congress on a division that just completed this wonderful project which will launch in 2017 called # black voices matter, race, image and message. in sound and film. there is nothing silent and all about blackness, about race consciousness in recorded sound and film. it is amazing. it is a hugely repressed and significant body of dark material that i fortunately have is an archivist this incredible connection -- collection of. if anyone is interested in this this materialear, is amazing. i mean, absolutely extraordinary

in terms of the non-silence of what record companies, sheet music companies were putting out and what was mass produced for consumption for americans across the country between 1880 to 1910 . unbelievable. if anyone is interested, see me afterward. >> good morning. founders of the african-american historical genealogical society, i was young. very young. i'd like to invite people if arere looking at, there questions about how do you address the silences in the records? i think probably three of the most important articles, or series of articles that were written, were written in the early years of the journal. an extensivedid

series on utilizing military records and how you read them, as the panel has said, develop marcia eisenberg talked about whole series, she did three articles on understanding how to use records. an understanding african american history. and she used extensively the records of comparing north carolina, new york and georgia. and it is a brilliant way of looking at the local records different. and lastly, paul -- using cemetery records. ooks but inin his b that first series of articles that talk about how cemeteries really do speak volumes to historians and genealogists. i think as the panel has said brilliantly, there are so many existing records that when a different way, that they really do help you understand how history resonates, not just in the past but today. thank you.

i'm benjamin lawrence. rochesterrian at institute of technology. my question is based on yesterday's comment about mythology. a lot of good historical writing is building up or breaking down myths. i met gordon reed as one of the great slayers of sacred cows. there others in the room. i'm wondering what are the next sacred cows that are going to be slaughtered? and or who are they? and when you slaughter a sacred cow it can be very provocative and very unsettling to certain communities. when i publish i got into a public spat with some people who didn't like the idea that i felt thete strongly that --

return to sierra leone and was involved in slave trading. to be a slave trader was the norm at the time. i'm wondering who is going to be slaughtered next and what will be the consequence of that? prof. berlin: the volunteers for the slaughter can -- line up. rear.p in the i think our session has pretty well -- [laughter] pretty well come to an end. we will have a break. and we will reassemble at 10:35. we'll talk about slavery and freedom. [applause] [captions copyright national cable satellite corp. 2016] [captioning performed by the national captioning institute, which is responsible for its caption content and accuracy. visit ncicap.org]

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