had begun a withdrawal and were starting to remove their troops, and they didn't move them quick enough. and by the end of the day on the 12th, the americans reached not only the main objectives for that day but many of the objectives for the following day. so by midmorning of september 13, whole salient had been liberated. watch american artifacts sunday at 6:00 p.m. eastern on american history tv on c-span 3. >> tuesday morning we are live in springfield, illinois, on the c-span 50 capital store. state representative tim butler will be our guest on the buster in washington journal let 9:40 a.m. eastern. was a once thriving community outside lake charles.

byay it is surrounded chemical manufacturing companies. up next, find out why so many residents have left, and what one company is doing to preserve its history. >> this area here at one time or at least 50 or 60 homes better. everywhere you see driveways was homes. the once thriving african american community of mossville is disappearing as big industry moves in and long-term industries move out. a third-generation resident takes us on a tour of his old neighborhood and shares efforts to preserve memories of mossville. our family was a close-knit family. my grandmother lived across the street my brother lived here.

she had a sister who lived next door. my older sister lived around the corner. my next oldest sister lived in the back. this family was here. when i was small, you could come over here and go to the back door, and if no one was home and our needed a cup of sugar, tiny sunflower, quick, go there, walk in the kitchen, get what you had an go back home. andwere taught to trust, not do anything you weren't supposed to. but like i said, one time this was a beautiful, wonderful community. we had everything that there was, and there was family, churches, schools, grocery stores. and people began to get better jobs, so it showed them that it could be better in the future

for the next generation. is a 150 year-old african-american community that was established by freed slaves. the area was formed around 1865 when white settlers, one of them named thomas reed, freed their slaves. about that time the government also start at the homestead act, which would give citizens 160 acres and a mule. and if you improved the land for three or four years, then it and it became farmers and landowners in the community began to grow from there. : up in this area was

and a shope is another meeting for a pig or a hog. and when people first came here there was a lot of wild takes, and they called it shopes country. and once the mosses moved in, people moved in and that's when they changed it to mossfield. and as the community grew, other descendents beyond the original nine began to get more gentrified. a post office was established, there were grocery stores and a movie theater, i believe, and some nightclubs and all the comforts of a community. -- well, over, industrialrea is an

area, so we have phillips 66, a lot of large industries. andhe area began to expand purchase property and as the people began to leave it became more of an industrial area. and some people went to westlake or sulfur or lake charles. ienne: when did people start moving out, or when did the buyouts happen? wash: the first buyout conoco, about 20 years ago or better. .his is part of conoco phillips a lot of the history started in as mossville far and the mossville residents.

many yearsarm, ago before conoco expanded, they actually had homes here. families lived here. this is one of the first buyouts the refineries did. families on both sides of this road, and it was bought to expand for conoco. the development you see recently has happened in the last five years. in 2013, tome in start their buyout. don't wantout, i anyone to misinterpret. it was on a volunteer basis that to leave -- had a choice to either stay or except the buyout they offered.

adrienne: how many companies operate in this area? butch: i would say in a 10 mile radius, there is conoco ppg, i would say at least 15. adrienne: what are those companies making? ppg is paint, city services gas, oil, vinyl, chlorine. >> sasson is a chemical manufacturing company. they were making an $11 billion expansion of the plant -- and $11 million expansion of the plant. products went into

stuff that is ultimately final products of dr. and gamble and people like that. ,hings like liquid tide dishwashing liquids and powders. mossville was a community in the we hadat is one where not had a lot of interaction, so we went to the mossville community leadership, which was the mossville environmental and basicallyup, did a community needs assessment one-on-one with them. and one thing they said was, give us the opportunity to move. butch: i was one of the first to move, because i was never one to

stand in the way of progress and andyured it would be done, would even help generations to would even help generations to come. i was living in a close to 40-year-old home, i knew the value, and what i was getting offers for was much more than what it was worth for me to stay. i would've had to have stayed and then fight progress, and that wasn't me. michael: the property purchase program was a program that basically paid a premium for properties in the mossville area. residents, -- or if you had a residence for example, it would be looked at by trained appraisers that you would take the two appraisals as long as they were in 10%, if they weren't we would

take the third appraisal and average the two highest. after those appraisals were averaged, we would give an offer valueas either the priest plus -- either the appraised value plus a 60% premium. and if the appraised value was less than whenever thousand dollars, we would assign a value of $100,000 plus 60% of the appraised value. so if you had a property that $50,000, youd at would get a value of $100,000 plus 60% of $50,000, which would be $30,000. so your initial offer would be $130,000. the thingso do all we could think of to position the residents of mossville to have a good experience in the

move, if they decided to move. was tryingess sasol to be neighborly, not saying we are going to build on top of you and did not offer you an opportunity to leave. now, some of the property may just stay vacant. they may come back. i'm not sure what they are going to do with it, what they don't use, that my feeling and talking to mr. hayes and different ones, the first of all want to be neighborly. and you can see where their expansion is, within a mile of most people here. they didn't want to just come in and not be neighborly to people who want to get out of harm's way. here, this is what is left. our home had been here for over 80 years. fathersy mothers and that he was my mother's and

father's property. in fact, that was my front porch. i lived behind my mother and father. i walked from here many, many days to school. , under thisrints up asphalt, because i was raised here. this is where i lived most of my life. we are approaching the mount zion baptist church, one of the oldest baptist churches in the parish. this particular church has been years.er 160 of course, this is not the original. but it's the museum you may see actors of the original, small church. this church was rebuilt at least

60 years ago. one thing mount zion has is this graveyard. a parents are buried here, lot of my family, and there are grades here they go way in the in0s, and my family plot is the back, my mother, father, sisters, grandparents. michael: we had a number who didn't want to leave, they love their house, they let their community, they didn't want the hassle of moving, so they said no. so it is individual driven. adrienne: why did some choose to stay? butch: i would guess some people just had the love to stay. and some people that have gone probably would've stayed, if conditions would have allowed them, allowed us.

but like i said, a lot of people had the understanding, you are not sure what is going to happen, was going to go on. this particular corner was one of the old, old fellows by the name of braxton. most of this is braxton land and some are still here. grand oray one of the great granddaughters still lives on the property, and some of the great, great grandsons still live in this area. michael: we had an empowerment process. that empowerment process meant we had to have a lot of conversations with a lot of people that led up to them accepting and moving and so forth. in those conversations, a number of individuals, a number of residents, the first resident to sign up, jackie greene, said you

need to build a museum to capture all the mossville history, it's a unique place and so forth. susan: i was having lunch with my kay's, the plant manager, and the museum's mission is to preserve the unique culture and history of a this area -- history of this area, which certainly included mossville. do you have any plans to preserve the history that is now disappearing? what i would do, and i told him, and i wrote a proposal and here we are. the first thing you would see when you walk in was thomas ates' tombstone. so we anchor it with that and then we go with the names of the nine founding families, and we

have pictures under each name tot the people provided us, show descendents. evene get more every day, though it has been opened the year. people come in and say, i have a picture of this, so of course we happily take anything we can get. this was an over 100-year-old community and for the most part it ceased to exist because of modern expansion. and it is worthwhile to preserve so that people coming later and children coming will know that there was a place one time, where the life was like it was. i would say the thing i want mossville to be remembered as, as a community with

ambitious ancestors that laid the groundwork to be a good rememberedbut to be at one time as being a self-sufficient community with a lot of ambitious, hard-working people. our cities tour staff recently charles -- recently traveled to lake charles, louisiana, to learn its rich history. learn about lake charles and other stops on our to her on c-span.org/citiestour. historyatching american tv, all weekend, every weekend on c-span3. in june 1893 president grover cleveland underwent surgery to remove a cancerous tumor, a secret cap from the american

public for more than 20 years. next on history bookshelf, talks about his book, "the president is a sick david: hi, i'm david cowan, president of the museum of american finance. welcome back to our lunch and learn series. welcome to the university of central oklahoma and professor alan arnold. the okies are in the house. thank you for coming. please join us again, everyone, next week on the 26th we're going to continue the lunch and learn series. the director of the rothchild archive will be here, melanie. this is an historic banking house. again, a week from this thursday.