Episode Transcript
Speaker 0 00:00:01 So, uh, good afternoon, Hillary. Good afternoon. How are you doing? Uh, I'm I'm doing pretty well. It's beautiful weather here in sunny, San Diego. It's reminding me of why I love living in Southern California. Um, plus I'm really excited about this little mini series we're doing right now.
Speaker 1 00:00:24 Yeah. I think it's been a good idea. And I think that it's been pretty well received and important. I think it's important to kind of cover each of these topics, right. One right after the other, you know, not waiting several weeks in between each.
Speaker 0 00:00:40 Yeah. I think it gives a good kind of narrative over overview, right? It, it presents it as this there's continuity here, which I really like. Um, how's the weather out there in Oxford
Speaker 1 00:00:56 Weather news, as a matter of fact. Yeah. It's very chilly. Um, last night we had so much thunder and lightening that I couldn't sleep. And then frost came this morning and sleet and ice. So the campus opened late and then over the next several days, we're expecting temperatures in the teens. And on Monday it's supposed to be nine degrees with potentially some snow. So very eventful weather happens.
Speaker 0 00:01:28 Wait, wait, what's the temperature supposed to be nine? I'm assuming that's Fahrenheit. Not Celsius because that's not bad. Oh my God.
Speaker 1 00:01:40 Well, it's the low, so I don't mean to be too dramatic. The high though is going to be 21.
Speaker 0 00:01:47 That's insane. Wow. Well make sure the doggos are comfortable.
Speaker 1 00:01:54 They are, they have a heated, a room that's like heated and beds. Yeah.
Speaker 0 00:01:59 They should be top of your list of things to make sure are comforting.
Speaker 1 00:02:03 Well, of course they always are. And I also, they have jackets, but they can't wear their jackets unless they're supervised because they pull them off of each other. So when we go on walks, they have jackets.
Speaker 0 00:02:15 That sounds like a Dobby thing.
Speaker 1 00:02:17 Uh, any, you know, you'd be surprised he learned it from somewhere.
Speaker 0 00:02:20 Oh, so Jenny's the troublemaker she can be. All right. Well, uh, let's get started then, uh, with, uh, our next episode in our black history month series, welcome to an incomplete history. I'm Hillary and I'm Jeff. And we're your hosts for this weekly history podcast.
Speaker 2 00:02:40 <inaudible>
Speaker 0 00:03:01 So we got all the preliminaries out of the way, so we can just jump right into our topics. So last week, our episode ended before we got to the declaration of independence and the constitution, we kind of wanted to do that purposely because we want to talk about how there's continuity from what's being imagined. But while those two documents are being written throughout the first half of the 19th century, and then there's a big rupture that suddenly happens, um, by 1860. But let's, I mean, let's talk about those founding documents first. What is the declaration of independence? Say about slavery? Very little,
Speaker 1 00:03:45 Very little. Um, and this is kind of one of the things that the 16, 19 project has been, you know, been butting heads with historians about, you know, how, um, intertwined is slavery in the founding of this country. And, um, slaves aren't mentioned in the founding documents too much, right? It's, it's kind of, um, borderline like avoiding the topic. But what I will say is that property is mentioned a lot and the importance of property and the rights to property are mentioned. And at this time I think it's important for us to remember that humans were considered property. And so, you know, when we think about property today, it's very different than what they may have been discussing about property. You know, it's not about, um, you know, what cars do you own, or, um, you know, what television do you own or something, of course not at that time, right? It's like property is about land and it's about humans. Uh, and so I think that that's where we do see this slavery is actually discussed. What would you, what's your take on that?
Speaker 0 00:04:57 So usually when I teach the declaration of independence, um, I have students compare it back with earlier English documents and kind of earlier thinkers like Locke, uh, David Hume. Um, and I tell them, look, second paragraph of the declaration of independence. We hold these truths to be self-evident that all men are created equal and that they are endowed by their creator with certain unalienable rights that among these are life, Liberty, and their pursuit of happiness, that to secure these rights, governments are instituted among men deriving their just powers to the consent of the govern and it goes on and it sets all this out. But what I tell my students is this, everybody who reads this document understands that the pursuit of happiness includes property. There was a conscious decision made to kind of not explicitly put the word property in there. We can talk about that in a minute. It was originally
Speaker 1 00:05:58 There, it was lifeless.
Speaker 0 00:05:59 It was life, Liberty, and property. And even slave owners like Thomas Jefferson, understand the hypocrisy of talking about unalienable rights, but then living in a society that has slavery. So it's not like he's unaware of his Apocrypha. He is completely aware of it. The difference is this is he, doesn't he and the other kind of Forman who write this document. They don't want slavery kind of formerly enshrined in this document because for the most part, all of them agree. Slavery is an institution that's dying out. That is that the utility for it is rapidly disappearing.
Speaker 1 00:06:43 Yeah. That's, what's so interesting about this. This moment in 1776 is there's this idea that slavery no longer has a place or a purpose because it's not, they don't see a use. It's not as profitable as it may have once been. Um, there's not as much of a need for unpaid labor at this moment. And all of this rapidly changes in 1793. I mean, almost overnight. That's that important moment, because I think a lot of people think, Oh, 1776, it was really ingrained. It's like, it was kind of a moment where it could have gone away.
Speaker 0 00:07:24 Yeah. I mean, it, it definitely up until Eli Whitney and the cotton Jan, and kind of the emergence of cotton.
Speaker 1 00:07:34 Yeah. This is a really important moment that shifts the trajectory of 19th century history is the invention of the cotton gin. It made it very relevant again.
Speaker 0 00:07:48 And you know, I'm going to push one of my favorite books, um, spend Becker. Who's a brilliant historian of capitalism at Harvard university. Um, empire of cotton. It is, it's an amazing book. And it's funny cause every non historian I've recommended to this to, and they've read it, they love it. They're like, it's just, they tell me, I never realized this was also connected, but in 1776, when they're writing this declaration of independence, they all are, they are 100%, certain slavery will not be around in two generations. So yeah,
Speaker 1 00:08:34 He has no idea that it could have, you know, not just been around, but amplified to an extreme degree.
Speaker 0 00:08:45 I mean, it's, they were convinced this was going to happen. And just a few decades later, Eli Whitney and Vince, this machine, what the machine does is it actually makes the short staple cotton that can be grown in the American South. And what's the old Southwest you live in the old Southwest.
Speaker 1 00:09:06 That's true. Mississippi was considered the old Southwest and now it's considered the deep South. Um, but,
Speaker 0 00:09:17 But this short staple cotton that grows well there, it, the seeds are really hard to get out and it's so time consuming to get the seeds out that it's almost not worth using it until Eli Whitney develops this device
Speaker 1 00:09:34 That separates. Yeah. And so it doesn't make it so there's no human labor required. It makes it, so it just can go faster. And that cotton becomes a staple, um, that everybody wants. It's a commodity. And there's this intertwined system that emerges where so much as reliant on this production of cotton. But that globally cotton becomes such a commodity that everybody's economy kind of teeters on this really precarious Southern institution. That if it goes away, if, um, you know, slavery ceases to exist, the economy, the global economy would have crumbled, right. Or that's the fear.
Speaker 0 00:10:23 Yeah. It's, you know, the South, the South is producing this commodity and for certain parts of the world, it's this global economy that it's engaging in now what's interesting is that, and we can talk about this form once we get to the civil war, um, next time the South overestimates its own position in this global commodity system and Britain actually stops using Southern cotton and turns to its own source of cotton, which is India
Speaker 1 00:10:54 In India. That's right. That's right. That's a Confederate States, Britain almost allied with the Confederates, but then it was like, Hey, wait a minute. We've got this whole other color. And this other part of the world where cotton grows really well, their rule, just go to India, get our cotton from there on the South. Like, Hey wait. No.
Speaker 0 00:11:14 So I mean, they cannot, when they're writing the declaration of independence and, and when they're writing the constitution, the architects of those documents really don't anticipate what the cotton gin is going to do. They can't even predict something like that. But what's interesting as while the declaration of independence is a little obtuse about slavery, it mentions property or kind of mentions property. The constitution directly addresses slavery at a couple of key points. So the most famous is the three Fisk compromise, which is
Speaker 1 00:11:49 A lot of people. I don't think, I think people know the term, but what does that actually mean? What, because there's trying, the southerners were trying to get representation in government by saying that their entire population should have been counted, including slaves, including enslaved people. And it would have just skyrocketed the level of representation in government. And, um, people in the North were saying, no, you can't count slaves as people because they don't, they're not voting. They're not part of government. And so it's interesting like that dichotomy where the southerners want to, you know, have slaves and not treat them as humans until it comes time to be counted for rep representation in government. So they come up with this compromise, right?
Speaker 0 00:12:40 Yeah. So we get this compromise and this is the Northern States wanting this. The Northern States do not want enslaved people to be counted as full people for representation. In fact, they'd like to, for them not to be counted at all, but the compromise ends up being three fifths. And this is an article one, section two,
Speaker 1 00:13:00 That's where
Speaker 0 00:13:02 That's. I mean, if you go with the idea that things are being presented in the order of importance, this is pretty high on the list. Um, and slave people only count as three fifths and
Speaker 1 00:13:19 A huge representation and tips the balance to the Southern States for years. Right?
Speaker 0 00:13:26 It does. But at the same time, from a judicial point of view, it is saying that these people are not actually equal people, that the constitution has deemed them. Three-fifths of a person
Speaker 1 00:13:42 That's so insane to even think about what mental gymnastics had to be done in order to concoct that it's so crazy,
Speaker 0 00:13:54 The 14th amendment. And does this the 14th amendment on, does the three-fifths compromise because it says
Speaker 1 00:14:00 After the civil war though, right, right,
Speaker 0 00:14:02 Right. But it says that all citizens are equal are granted equal protection under the law. Um, but so that's the first mention of slavery. The next mention of slavery is again in article one, section nine, and this is clause one and action. It does two interesting things. First. It says Congress cannot pass laws, banning enslavement until the year 1808. So it's an interesting thing here, because they're saying, first of all, Congress can't do anything to abolish slavery. However, there is a date after which if they want to abolish slavery after that period, they can actually,
Speaker 1 00:14:43 And they do ban the importation of slaves to the United States.
Speaker 0 00:14:47 Yeah. Right. Um, yeah. Uh, Thomas Jefferson, 1807 signs of bill abolishing, the trade of enslaved people, the transatlantic slave trade, the importation. Um, so I mean, it's interesting. So where is the first one is I would say 100% negative 10 slave people. The second one, I think demonstrates this attitude. They all had that by 1808. Things were going to be different that you just weren't going to need to have slavery anymore.
Speaker 1 00:15:24 It's just so troubling though, that in the process of building this new country with all these, you know, rights and liberties and enlightenment that they kicked the can down the road and the way that they did and kind of allowed for a renewed a Renaissance, if you will, of, you know, renewed interest in enslaving other people, um, with this technological development, it gave a really long period of time, 1776 to 1808. That's a pretty long time to say, well, and it wasn't from 1776 that they did this. It was from the constitution 17. So it's, it's a pretty long time, I think, 20 years,
Speaker 0 00:16:05 21, 21 years. How long
Speaker 1 00:16:08 Time to just allow this to continue. And it's, it's really disappointing. I mean, we can look back on that and say, so many things are disappointing, but that one to me is like, why did you kick that can down the road, like you had so many opportunities in front of you to shift the way that society function and you actively chose not to do that. It's very troubling. And it's just at this point, what we do know is that slavery has been racialized. And so it is, it is a racist practice to deny rights, citizenship, um, and Liberty to an entire race of people.
Speaker 0 00:16:55 So Thomas Jefferson actually famously says, what are both 10, eight Tenao, uh, loop them to have the Wolf by the ears.
Speaker 1 00:17:04 Right. I talked about this in class, on Tuesday.
Speaker 0 00:17:07 I think it's this. I think it helps us get a little more into the head of these kinds of enlightenment thinkers and what this is going on on is Jefferson, a slave owner. Jefferson also has a relationship with Sally Hemings. Now, is it rape? Is it rape? Adjacent? What kind of relationship is it? But he has
Speaker 1 00:17:33 And make it clear it's rape because she can't consent to a rule owner. So that to me is like a really clear case. Any time there's no such thing as a consensual relationship when somebody owns another person. But, but I mean, here's the thing
Speaker 0 00:17:50 That we forget though, relationships between men and women at the beginning of the 18th or 19th century, end of the 18th century consent. Wasn't really a big concern on anybody like nobody talked about
Speaker 1 00:18:02 And women were the property of their husbands.
Speaker 0 00:18:05 Women were the property of their husbands. And if a woman was raped, the crime was considered a crime against the husband's property. It was not considered. And this is for white women, right. It was not considered a crime against the woman
Speaker 1 00:18:20 Boiling right now.
Speaker 0 00:18:24 So, so Jefferson has this very complicated relationship with slavery and enslaved people, because I think he also,
Speaker 1 00:18:33 I hope that you gave, that's a really good example, right? He says, slavery is like having a Wolf by the ears. If you let the Wolf go, it's going to come back and bite you because you've been hurting. It basically is his argument. Right? And that's his argument about we're in this really precarious position, enslaving people, but what's so upsetting about that. Quote is like, he acknowledges outright. What we're doing is wrong and we are hurting people, but I'm too afraid to do the right thing. I'm afraid of my own safety to do the right thing. And it's just like, this is where you kind of have this rooted idea that black Americans are dangerous and it's all rooted in the idea that we'll, we've mistreated them for so long that if we were to give any sort of allowance of Liberty or rights, et cetera, they would immediately hurt us.
Speaker 1 00:19:31 And this is like that racist ideology is steeped in this moment. That quote kind of highlights where these deep seated fears come from. And it comes from knowing that there's going to be maybe some sort of justice. I think he also says, um, I tremble for my country when I reflect that. God is just right. That's, that's one of his quotes. I don't, I'm sorry if I don't have that exactly right. But that's one of the ones that sticks with me because there's an acknowledgement that what's going on is absolutely wrong, but there's too much self-interest in order to change it.
Speaker 0 00:20:11 Yeah. I mean, this is, and what's interesting with that is I think it is a very, it is not a view any of us agrees with, but I understand why he has it. Um, he feels that a system has been constructed in such a way that there is no good solution to it, particularly when you consider it in the context of the French revolution and then the Haitian revolution. And we're going to talk about slavery volts today, somewhat, but the Haitian revolution widely as the most successful slave revolt in world history, um, it scares the crap out of slave holders in the United States.
Speaker 1 00:20:59 Profound difference though, between what happens in Haiti and what's going on in the United States, what it has to do with, uh, absence of, um, you know, overseers in, in the Caribbean. Right? And so, so oftentimes the planter or whatever, they didn't live amongst the S the enslaved people. They lived overseas and the money would come to them and they weren't really there. And they had, you know, some overseers here and there, but they were not living amongst enslaved people in the Caribbean most of the time. And so the population just way, way out, uh, there was just, uh, a huge disparity in the population of enslaved people versus not in the Caribbean. So when there was an uprising, it was a little, I guess, I don't want to say easier. It wasn't easy, but it was a little more, um, doable for enslaved people to revolt in the United States.
Speaker 0 00:21:59 People lived
Speaker 1 00:22:00 On plantations, right? They lived on these labor camps in these labor camps, like the drivers of enslaved people lived right, right. Amongst them. So it was a V it was profoundly different, but there was still the deep seated fear of revolt. Um, and the idea, again, rooted in this, they have a renewal understanding that what they've done is wrong and that they kind of deserve, they know that if there's freedom, granted that they would almost deserve anything that came to them
Speaker 0 00:22:35 From it. Yeah. Well, so I think this there's a paranoia that starts to rise about slave revolts. And a lot of it, I think, is connected to Asia revolution because you actually get people, white people fleeing from Haiti. And a lot of them end up in places like Baltimore, Maryland is on the border between the North and the South. So even once you've got Northern States, abolishing slavery, which happens later than most people imagine. Um, and we're going to talk about New York with our first kind of person we're going to talk about kind of in depth today. I want to talk about Sojourner truth. Um, but that, that fear of slave revolt really guides the way people try to make the law back up their claims to continuing slavery, how the courts rule, um, how black people are viewed
Speaker 1 00:23:36 Fear and everybody too, to not want to stop the system. That's oppressive systems if you subsystem, because they say, if you try to help, or if you try to end it, you and your family are going to be killed.
Speaker 0 00:23:51 So, yeah. And so I want to, you know, we're 23 minutes in, and we have not featured an African-American really yet. I want to talk about Sojourner truth. Cause I think her story is so amazing and, you know, just acts of resistance after acts of resistance. Um,
Speaker 1 00:24:14 He's in New York and even abolition had taken place still in 1827 in New York, she was still enslaved. I think that's something a misconception. A lot of people have about slavery is that, well, it just didn't exist in the North. And it's like, no, it did. And it didn't till quite late, it existed differently and in a different concentration, but she is enslaved in the state of New York until 1827 when she was supposed to be freed upon the death of,
Speaker 0 00:24:51 She was supposed to be manually committed Dumont. Right. Do you might want to Mont died? She was supposed to be manumitted her capture? Well, so 1797, she's born in New York. She's born to slave parents. And at nine years old, she sold for the first time for a hundred dollars to John Neely. Um, she sold along with a flock of sheep, which I think shows you how enslave people are being imagined at this point. Um, Neely was really cruel to her, but she ends up getting sold a couple more times before she ends up with John Dumont and there, uh, and Sojourner truth. Slave name was Isabella. Um, she actually falls in love with a slave, an enslaved man from their joining farm, but they can't get married. And this again shows you the intimate level slave owners were able to control Penn slave people,
Speaker 1 00:25:54 Right? He has a mission in order to marry,
Speaker 0 00:25:57 Right? So instead she is forced to marry another slave. Don't buy Dumont, uh, Thomas, and she has five children by him. And these children are all slaves. The way slavery has been constructed, these children will all be slaves themselves. Now, during this time, New York state starts to legislate emancipation. However, it's not immediate emancipation.
Speaker 1 00:26:26 They call it gradual abolition.
Speaker 0 00:26:29 Um, Dumont promised on 4th of July, 1826, um, that he would grant her freedom if she would do well and be faithful July 4th, 18, six arrives. And Dumont says, yeah, I changed my mind. Um, so she escapes and what I find really interesting here is, uh, Sojourner truth. She's a tall woman, there's a statue of her on our campus and she's a tall woman. It's a life-size statute and you go into it and you're like, she's a tall woman. Um, and she's able to, uh, kind of just walk away. Um, and as she goes, she can only take one of her children. So she takes her youngest child with her. She leaves her other children behind, uh, Dumont, owns them all legally. And she kind of makes her way through New York state. And she actually ends up in a place that is less friendly to slavery than the part she had been in. Um, a white couple bring, take her in and do mock shows up to reclaim his property. Um, and then something happens that I think is an interesting point of conversation. So the van, the van Wagenen, this is the couple that helped Sojourner truth. They offered a buy her services from Dumont for $20. Um, until the, the emancipation law took a place, it took effect in 1827. I mean, how do we feel about that? That they paid to buy her?
Speaker 1 00:28:39 Well, I it's, it's horrible, but it's like, they're working within the system, right? They they're kind of held back by this existing system. And that's the way that they're able to help is by participating in the system. And now someone like William Lloyd Garrison, who comes along as radical abolitionists will say, you don't even participate in the system.
Speaker 0 00:29:07 Right? So Sojourner truth is definitely a different period of abolition, right? She is, she is very much a mind if we work within the system, we use the tools at our disposal
Speaker 1 00:29:17 Comes along at the same time, but he's a radical, he's very radical view, right. That people, most people don't want to even work with. But yeah, I mean, he's around the same time,
Speaker 0 00:29:30 But she, I mean, there are different approaches. Let's put it that way. So she actually, uh, do ma once tr Sojourner truth kind of had been du Monde, illegally sold her son, Peter, after the New York law went into effect and surgery, her truth actually Sue's Dumont. And she wins. She should wear
Speaker 1 00:29:57 Right. The first black American to win a court case against a white man, a white man. Yeah.
Speaker 0 00:30:04 And she a, she gets custody of her son back and it's at this time that she starts to become, uh, to participate in the second grade awakening. And she gets this spiritual calling and she changed her name to surgery and her truth. And she wants to go teach the gospel and speak out against slavery and oppression. And where I think this gets really interesting is by 1851, she criticizes the nascent women's suffrage movement for not including black women because of her famous ain't I a woman speech.
Speaker 1 00:30:50 Yeah. She makes us really famous speech at a women's rights convention in Ohio in 1851. And in it, I encourage everybody to look it up. It's not very long. And I will say that she spoke it and that people tried to transcribe it down. So there's some different people have different transcriptions of it. But the general idea in it is she says, look, women say that they need to be helped out of carriages. They need to be carried across mud. They need to be treated delicately. I've never been treated delicately. I've never been given those privileges. And aren't I a woman. That's what her argument is. And she says, black women are not treated with the same privileges and delicacy that white women are. They say that white, the white women are unable to work because they're women. Well, I worked my butt off my whole life and aren't I a woman. And so she, she makes this really compelling case. I think in this speech to say, there's a real double standard here. Black women are not being treated with the same level of care as white women are when white women are treated with this level of delicacy, simply because they're women. And that's the argument. Well, I'm a woman. I can eat as much as any man. I can work as much as any man, why am I treated differently? And she calls out the women, but she also calls out the system in general society. Right?
Speaker 0 00:32:30 Well, and then she broadens her attack to religion. And what is that religion? That sanctions, even by its silence, all it is, it was embraced in the peculiar institution. If there can be anything more diametrically opposed or legit of Jesus than the working of this soul killing system, which is, is truly sanctioned by the religion of America as are her ministers and churches, we wish to be shown where it can be found.
Speaker 1 00:32:56 So she's using the language of the second grade awakening though, too, and appealing to people based off of that script. You know, how has your religion actually doing anything here to help the situation
Speaker 0 00:33:11 Besides supporting the peculiar institution?
Speaker 1 00:33:14 And this is along the lines of like Angelina Grimke, who was an Arvin abolitionist, uh, part of the Garrisonians abolition movement, that radical wing of abolitionism who use religion to appeal to people at this time, heavily rooted in the second grade awakening, you have to understand the second great awakening to understand abolition really because they take the Bible and they say, look, this is the book everyone's all obsessed with. Let's pull some passages out of here and see if you're actually living a moral life because you have control over your own fate. You get to decide whether or not you go to heaven through your actions on earth, which is a huge divergence from the first grade awakening. And this idea of predestination that will God just decides beforehand. She's like, we get to decide by our actions. Are you acting appropriately? You have Angelina Grimke who says this, you have Sojourner truth who says this using the language and the script of Christianity to dismantle actions, to dismantle the idea that slavery is somehow. Okay.
Speaker 3 00:34:30 Yeah.
Speaker 0 00:34:31 I think it is. You cannot understand how the second grade awake. You cannot overstate how much the second grade awakening shapes the abolition movement. Um,
Speaker 1 00:34:46 So shapes the arguments in favor of slavery, right? That's that's part of it.
Speaker 0 00:34:52 So she talks about the peculiar institution and that's, that's such a peculiar term because it kind of makes slavery not sounds so bad if he used the word peculiar institution,
Speaker 1 00:35:09 Right. It's like a euphemism for it. Right?
Speaker 0 00:35:13 Right. So what are the why senators so southerners at this time who are also involved in the second grade awakening, they actually start to argue that slavery allows enlightened white masters and their families to instill Christian values in enslaved black people who can't perfectly understand these and that
Speaker 1 00:35:38 Somehow spreading the gospel. Do you have the idea that comes about of paternalism, right? Daddy, everybody,
Speaker 0 00:35:49 Because on Sunday, the slave master and his family would go down to the slave quarters or they would have the slaves come up for the slave quarters and they would go out and have a little like mini church service. And there would be some performances that would be done by the slave. So the master, his family, and it was all very kind of genteel. And there was no sign
Speaker 1 00:36:14 Of genteel to that,
Speaker 0 00:36:17 But there was no, there was no slave oversee or there, there was no crack of the web. There was no labor that was going on. It, it all seemed, and this is how it gets portrayed by Southern apologists for slavery. It seems so much better than what's increasingly going on in the North in kind of emerging factories.
Speaker 1 00:36:41 Right. And that's kind of like to use a 21st century term, that's gaslighting them, right? Like, Oh, this is so much better than your life would be. It's just what an abusive person would say. Well, I'm going to have the best possible life you can have because look at what might happen to you. If I weren't taking care of you,
Speaker 0 00:37:02 I mean, I might whip you from time to time, but I also feed you and clothe you and educate you, right. If you were up in the North and that evil wage system, no women would care about you and you would just die. It's so messed up.
Speaker 1 00:37:19 It's it's insanely abusive, physically, et cetera. Right.
Speaker 0 00:37:25 And this is the thing I still today hear people who are apologists for slavery because they S they, they want to make this argument that the situation for black Americans was better under slavery than it is in the years afterwards. And my response would, well, I think we've talked about this briefly before when we talked about Jim Crow, but what I would say is this, yes, the material condition for many black Americans diminishes after the civil war. That's not because it's their fault, right? Food insecurity, housing insecurity, all of these things, their situations get worse at the same time. They now at least theoretically have the ability to determine their own future.
Speaker 1 00:38:17 But the problem was that there was radical reconstruction never happened because what should have happened is there should have been reparations. There should have been property given, uh, you know, at the end of slavery, but there was so much retribution and vengeance and anger on behalf, Southern white people that they completely denied any sort of access to a successful life in the wake of, um, in the wake of emancipation, they made it impossible for life to be successful for newly emancipated slaves. And you know, so there's freedom, but to what, to what extent, because the freedoms are kind of halted. And we talked about that in Jim Crow. It's like, there's not, they're not completely free still. I mean, up until, you know, the civil rights movement tried to tries to address some of these still inequities. And we're still addressing some today, but it's all rooted in this fact that yes, slaves were emancipated, but they were never given people who were emancipated were never given a fair shot to be successful after slavery.
Speaker 1 00:39:32 And it's just, and I do, I hear that argument all the time. And I like that. You said, you know, the material conditions. Yes. But it's, it was by design. It wasn't because they weren't capable of having good life. And white slave owners made them have a good life. And so that was being nice. It was benevolent. That's the paternalism, but they were not, they were not having an okay time of it afterwards by design. They weren't supposed to be successful and they wanted emancipated people to fall on their face and come running back to daddy basically is the it's sick man.
Speaker 0 00:40:18 So let's talk a little bit about this. So these odd Sunday gatherings that are happening on plantations in the South, something does interesting starts to happen though, because remember we talked last time about ByDesign slave traders did not like to bring in slave people who were all from the same place together. They actually wanted there to be an inability of them to communicate with one another, to have common kind of cultural reference points. They wanted that to be the case, but something interesting starts to happen, particularly after 1808, with the banning of the transatlantic slave trade, you start to get a new culture that starts to form
Speaker 1 00:41:06 Well. So we should predicate this though, by saying that it was illegal to teach enslaved people how to read and write. And that was also the idea of trying to stop people from, um, unifying, you know, like, uh, come, you know, coming together and trying to revolt. But when you start to have a common religion, then people do have this common ground and people do have access to the scriptures. And yeah, you start to get these really interesting, um, I guess, organized revolts that are predicated on religious instruction.
Speaker 0 00:41:50 Well, here's the thing. So if you are the slave master and the family, and you're just listening and the story of the Israelites in Exodus is being told you think of it one way, if you're an enslaved person and you hear this story of a group of people who were enslaved being led by God, out of slavery, it rings very differently in your ears. When you listen to messages about Jesus in the new Testament, saying things, it is different to you than how it might kind of land on the ears of the slave master. And there's this amazing series I've talked about a little bit last time. I want to kind of talk about it again. Henry Louis Gates, uh, did this amazing, uh, series a few years ago called, um, the African-Americans many rivers to cross. You can watch it via PBS login through your local PBS station. You can watch it. It is an incredible series, I guess it's from 2013 now. Wow. I just, I thought it was just a couple of years ago. Um, uh, it is a fantastic series. He has a brand new series that's coming out the middle of this month, uh, next week, actually on the black church in America. And I'm very much in agreement with one of his main arguments he's going to make in that series. And he's made some things he's written, the black church becomes the nexus of black culture in America.
Speaker 0 00:43:23 It becomes a place of refuge.
Speaker 1 00:43:26 Yeah. And it it's the unifying underlying cultural, uh, point of connection, right? I mean, if you have stripped everybody of their humanity and you strip them of their culture, their language, their traditions, their families, what else do people have, but religion to come together and it becomes a bedrock of African-American culture. And it's still to this day.
Speaker 0 00:43:53 That's why,
Speaker 1 00:43:56 When we see, I mean, when we see violence happening at Emanuel AME church, right, where there's this white man who goes in and shoots people parishioners at church, this was high. I don't know how many years ago now, two or three years ago,
Speaker 0 00:44:12 I think it was
Speaker 1 00:44:13 For century, right? I mean, you see that. And it's like, that is hitting the very heart of the black community. The very bedrock and foundation of this community is at the church. That's T there was, it was a sad, any shooting is obviously, but that was like a really particularly agregious and racist action.
Speaker 0 00:44:39 Well, during the civil rights movement, when you have the KKK firebombing churches in the South, right on the black churches, this is it's, it's even worse than it seems. Right? Cause it's not just a church. It is, it is the symbol of black community and culture. And it's also sending the message that even in this place of refuge, you are not safe from us. So you mentioned revolts and I want to talk about revolts a little bit, cause I want to talk about Nat Turner. Um, and there was a movie made a couple of years ago about this. Um, here's the thing like there's a paranoia of slave revolts and Jill Lapore writes this wine about New York burning where it's a slave revolt that wasn't even really a slave revolt, but it was the rumors of a slave revolt that ended up cascading into this kind of whole, uh, persecution and, and eventual execution of some people, Nat Turner. It was actually a slave revolt, correct?
Speaker 1 00:45:49 Oh, absolutely. Yeah. And, and it, he organizes around religion, right? Like he's becomes a preacher. He learns to read and write. Um, he has these readings of scripture that are rooted in like yeah. An Exodus sort of, um, understanding. And this is how they organize, right. This is how they organize under Nat Turner.
Speaker 0 00:46:15 Well, what's interesting is again, this is in the second grade awakening and one of the ideas and the second Greek awakening is you could change, you could turn away from sin instantly.
Speaker 1 00:46:27 Right? That's, what's so important about it to me. So important about the second grade awakening
Speaker 0 00:46:33 And one of Turner's followers, Ethel red tea Brantley was a person who had formerly been involved in the slave trade. And he actually said Turner, who he called the prophet, turned him away from that made him cease his wickedness. And I think that's people don't like to talk about near Turner's rebellion because it's very violent.
Speaker 1 00:47:00 Yeah. I mean, I've gone through the, all the records from it when I was working in Virginia archives and they don't call it Nat Turner's rebellion, just FYI. They call it the South Hampton insurrection. So anytime you come across anything about the South Hampton instruction, this is what they're talking about. And later on, it's turned to rebellion, but this, you know, um, enslaved Virginians led by this man, Nat Turner ended up slaughtering, uh, upwards of 60 people, white people,
Speaker 0 00:47:37 White people, men, women, and older women,
Speaker 1 00:47:41 Women and children. Yes.
Speaker 0 00:47:44 Um, the, the re the rebellion is eventually put down and Turner himself is executed the hanging, drawing, and quartering. And you ask yourself why. And the explanation is this is to send a message. And I think what's more interesting about Nat Turner's rebellion is what happens in response to it. Um, States start to really clamp down on laws, prohibiting the education of, uh, both enslaved black people and free black people. They also restrict the ability of free bag people to assemble. And there require that every worship service must have a white minister present.
Speaker 1 00:48:40 They start to notice that that is exactly where, uh, ideas of rebellion would come from, right, is that you realize that they kind of offered enslaved people, the tools, um, to organize into free themselves. And, uh, Frederick Douglas is a really important part of this conversation. I think because Frederick Douglas was really, um, emphatic about the importance of education. And he understood that knowledge was the pathway from slavery to freedom, that it was keeping enslaved people illiterate and in the dark and unknowing that ensured their subservience or obedience, or, you know, uh, docility really is it's the, is the word it's like, well, if people aren't educated and they don't have access to these, um, you know, these tools, then the you'll have a docile population that, you know, if, if you keep people in the dark, they will continue to be subservient. And so Frederick Douglas understood that knowledge was that pathway. And so did Nat Turner.
Speaker 0 00:49:54 Now what's interesting is this, um, that Turner had a kind of by any means necessary approach. Whereas Douglas is a very con reconciliatory tone, and this gets Douglas in trouble with a lot of more radical abolitionists is Douglas actually says, look, we have to convince people involved in slavery. It's not the right thing to do. And Douglas really well. He really values the declaration of independence in the constitution. It says, look, these documents set these high ideals for us, and we need to try to reach them. We need to live up to those high ideals of equality for every point. And at various points in his life. Douglas also makes comments about equality for women equality, for Indians equality, for Chinese immigrants. Um, but this does not go well with some more radical abolitionist. They don't want any dialogue with slave owners. And Douglas is like, we cannot move forward until we have that. Because again, unless there's a product of the second grade awakening and he too believes in this kind of, you can have a moment of clarity where you can cease to be as cease being a center, and you become a Saint. He thinks it can happen.
Speaker 1 00:51:25 Yeah. And that's the moral suasion aspect of it. The idea that you can convince people, and you do have to have a discussion in an open dialogue. You can't just shut people out. You have to continue the dialogue. And, you know, I see that issue crop up multiple times and still right now, I mean, and this was the argument between say, uh, Martin Luther King and Malcolm X. And, you know, some, some would say, no, we have to justify force, fight for our rights. And we have to not even talk to these people. We're not going to change their minds. And we're going to do you know, what needs to be done forcefully and quickly and others like, well, no, we need to compromise and talk about it. We will be able to bring them to our side of the argument. We just need time.
Speaker 1 00:52:20 And for people who are enslaved people who are disenfranchised people who are being discriminated against people who are suffering through Jim Crow, who are unable to vote, there's no time. And that's William Lloyd Garrison, his argument, radical abolitionists. He has a paper called the liberator. He's a young man when he creates this newspaper. Um, I think he starts his, uh, Garrisonians abolition would start somewhere in 1825, by the 1830s. He's responding to things like the Southampton massacre, the insurrection. And he's saying in his liberator's newspaper, we must sound the alarm. There's no room for compromise here. I will not budge an inch. Um, he makes this great quote. He says something like, would you tell a man whose house is on fire to have a moderate alarm? Would you tell a woman whose baby has been thrown into a fire to slowly remove it? Our house is on fire and we're going to scream it from the rooftops. Our children are in danger. Our wives are in danger, right? I mean, he's saying all these really crucial things of like slavery is a moral issue. Yes. But we don't have time to explain that to you and to bring you to our side, it must stop now. And so you went back and forth, right? Yeah. Sorry.
Speaker 0 00:53:55 Well, so what's interesting is this is kind of characterized by this odd friendship that Douglas has with one of my heroes of history, John Brown.
Speaker 1 00:54:07 Yeah. She wasn't raging a moderate alarm. Was he not at all?
Speaker 0 00:54:13 So John Brown is the bow is a radical, radical abolitionist, um, and believes in just using violence to bring this whole thing down, including the U S government.
Speaker 1 00:54:26 Yeah. And that's Garrison was that way too. I mean, John, a step further, but,
Speaker 0 00:54:31 But what's interesting is Douglas and this is why Douglas God Douglas has patients that I just fit seems superhuman. Um, Douglas and Brown are friends and Brown visits Douglas quite a few times and Douglas visits Brown. And they evidently had a lot of heated discussions about Brown's radical ideas about using violence to put, to, to kind of end slavery so much so that they have their final meeting in August of 1859. And Brown tells Douglas his plan to raid the federal armory at Harper's ferry and arm enslaved peoples for an AMZ direction. Um, that would make Nat Turner's rebellion look minor. And the two talked at length about this, and finally Douglas told him I'm not going to join you in this. Um, and Brown actually ends up getting caught in this. Most of the people who were in it got killed or captured Brown himself is captured, tried, and hung or herring. Um, but Douglas is so, I mean, let me ask you, this is Gandhi a 20th century version of Frederick Douglas.
Speaker 1 00:56:08 Yeah. I have a lot to say about Gandhi guy was, had a lot of messed up things about him. Um, but yeah, yeah. I mean, yes. And you know, one of the reasons that I would say is very similar to, we haven't even touched this, but it's like approach to women and women's rights. Gandhi was not so nice to his wife. That's true. He did not get her medical care when she was dying. And then when he was dying was like, I'll take some medical care. Anyway, again, we can have a whole thing about my issues with Gandhi. Um, but yeah, I mean, very similar. Just we need to be, we need to be conciliatory. Um, this needs to be done in a pacifist manner. Um, we need to have a slow progress. Uh, we need to get everybody on board with it. Uh, yeah, I mean, I would say yes.
Speaker 1 00:56:59 And, and I think Martin Luther King Jr. Is a little bit that way too. You know, so BDS route is far better, but you know, you have somebody like Frederick Douglas, who's telling everybody again, you know, the William Lloyd Garrison argument that like, Hey, the house is on fire. We need to bring the fire department. Um, that argument of like sound the alarm and people like, Hey, you know, we've got time, you know, maybe just let's, let's calm down. He did the same thing with women and women's rights. Women worked tirelessly in abolition. And when it came time for, you know, um, voting and for women's right to vote after women had fought so passionately to toward the abolition movement, Frederick Douglas said, wait, your turn. It's the black man's turn now. Um, and women ended up having to wait, you know, uh, beyond that 50, 60, more years. So he could, he could be conciliatory to a fault. And it kind of goes back to our conversation about, do you work within the system or do you work completely against the system? And I'm feeling real fiery today. Let's just burn the shit to the ground. It sucks. And he's like, no, let's work within it. And I mean, I understand, I do understand both sides, but I think Garrisonians abolitionist in 18.
Speaker 0 00:58:28 I mean, would you have been like that Turner or John Brown? Would you have been that radical?
Speaker 1 00:58:34 It's hard to say as a woman. Probably not. Cause I probably wouldn't be, have been allowed to. Um,
Speaker 0 00:58:41 I mean, but here's the thing is Nat Turner and John Brown both believed that a better, more godly society would emerge from the ashes of the one they destroyed
Speaker 1 00:58:56 Cool abolitionists, but also a radical reconstructionist after the civil war. So I will readily admit when I would have been on a different side of history and I've said this in past episodes, like I would have been a loyalist. I would not have fought in the revolutionary war, but I really do think I would have been pretty ardent women's rights abolitionist in the 1830s, forties, fifties. And I do think that a better society could have sprung up in the wake of the civil war had radical reconstruction, taken place, had a full occupation of the Southern States taking place. I'm still calling for that.
Speaker 0 00:59:37 So let's, we don't have too much time. Let let's, let's turn to one last person I want to talk about during this time period. And I realized we haven't talked about things like the Dred Scott decision, the fugitive slave act, Kansas and Nebraska and Missouri compromise. We're not we're we haven't talked about any of that. Cause I really wanted us to talk about people as much as possible today because I think that's, you've got to focus on the people of this. And the one I want to talk about here at the end is Harriet Tubman. Because as student it's funny, a couple of weeks ago, a student asked me, um, now that we've changed presidents, do you think Harriet Tubman is gonna end up on the $20 bill? I was like, yes, like they are, they're already moving to make that happen. How do you feel about that? I feel that's, I think it is perfectly acceptable and actually necessary. Um, I, you know, Andrew Jackson is a complicated guy, but I would say face on money though. He would have, I think that's so that the lingering Federalist of Alexander Hamilton that's Emmy loves the sweet, sweet irony of Andrew Jackson's face being on.
Speaker 1 01:00:56 Absolutely hated it. It would have been a punishment to him
Speaker 0 01:00:59 Because it's such an F you to him.
Speaker 1 01:01:01 It is. Yeah. A lot of people don't get that. It's overdue that we have a woman on money. And I think that it's overdue. Susan B. Anthony was Jeffrey, it's a coin. It was also a dollar coin that was the same size as a quarter and confuse the hell out of all of them. It's very confusing, but they have Sakakawea on the $1 coin and Susan B. Anthony on the $1 coin, but their coins, there are no women on paper money, but what I have an issue with here, it's like putting her face on currency when she was bought and sold with American currency. It's a little, I don't know. I mean, I think it's a little messed up. I think there are different ways to honor women. I think there are different ways to honor black women, but I just think putting faces on currency. Um, I think we just need to eliminate the faces on currency in general. I don't know. I'll put a fricking tree on there or something, you know, like let's make it kind of innocuous. I don't think the faces on the money is very odd,
Speaker 0 01:02:06 But then every song that references Benjamins is not going to make any sense.
Speaker 1 01:02:10 It would have a historical reference and then you could play it in class and be like, so on a time
Speaker 0 01:02:15 Money used to have people's faces on. Okay. I mean, Harriet Tubman amazing
Speaker 1 01:02:21 She's yes, she
Speaker 0 01:02:24 Is involved again, contact with John Brown. And what people don't realize is Tubman actually helps recruit people to help John Brown's attack on Harpers.
Speaker 1 01:02:36 Yeah, she does. She, she led in the battle during the social media.
Speaker 0 01:02:41 Yeah, it is. I mean, people associate her with the underground railroad. That's fairing, enslave people out of the United States, basically because with the fugitive slave act, even flame to the North was not an escape and it wasn't enough. Um, and so she's involved in that and most people see that and they don't really go beyond that, but she's radical. I mean, she is, she helps John Brown. She helps other people in trouble with the law move around. She's heavily involved with recruiting supporters for John Brown's attack, um, during the war itself, um, she works as a cook and a nurse with soldiers. Um, she and Sojourner truth are heavily involved in recruiting of former enslaved men to serve to enlist and become soldiers
Speaker 1 01:03:39 Serves as a spy for the union
Speaker 0 01:03:42 Spy. Right? Um,
Speaker 1 01:03:46 All of this, all of this, she does all of this with a debilitating, lifelong head injury that she sustained as a young child or as an adolescent. Um, when she was young, an overseer through a heavy like metal weight at someone who was trying to escape another enslaved person, who's trying to run away or escape the overseer through this really heavy metal object. And it struck her in the head and she was passed out for two weeks. And so she ended up going the rest of her life with the debilitating headaches, um, you know, just brain trauma and injury. And even with all of that, she still led efforts on the underground railroad recruited men to battle recruited men for radical movements. Like John Brown was the spy was a nurse. I mean just an incredible person. And like you said, just very radical. I think a lot of people don't realize that about her. They think like, Oh, she was so sweet and helped people, you know, like go to Canada, but it's like she was hardcore.
Speaker 0 01:04:50 Yeah. She's great. Um, so next time we're going to talk about civil war and kind of, I think we're going to have a bigger discussion about the emergence of African-American culture or black culture. And we can talk about what's the distinction between those two terms and why would we use one? Why should we use the other, um, kind of in the wake of the civil war, how that culture kind of changes and, and evolves. But you know, we end here right before the civil war starts. And one thing I think is really important to point out is Abraham Lincoln is longer remembered for doing things like signing the emancipation proclamation, um, uh, fighting the South and the civil war and slavery and all these things. When he is elected president in 1860, it's on a very reconciliatory platform. He does not want to abolish slavery. He actually explicitly says he is not going to abolish slavery. All he wants to do is prevent it from being spread to new States.
Speaker 1 01:05:58 Yeah. This whole, this notion of reconciliation being conciliatory, I feel there are so many examples throughout history. And we've talked about several today where that gets you nowhere. It helps people at the moment feel good about themselves. I'm talking Thomas Jefferson, right. Frederick Douglas, right. Whoever it is, it's like, well, let's just all get along and let's just agree to disagree. And we'll, it kicks the can down the road, time after time. And I think the idea that Lincoln was like some sort of radical abolitionists, like that's absolutely untrue. Never becomes radical. Never, never. And yes, Lincoln does sign the emancipation proclamation 1862 Douglas. It was exactly exactly any, you know, this whole idea about being so quick to forgive and let's just move on and it doesn't get you anywhere. I've been watching the impeachment trial last couple of days if you may or not. So yeah. So
Speaker 0 01:07:13 Kind of wrapping up today, um, and pointed to where we're going next time, obviously we're going to talk about the civil war a little bit. It is not going to be an in-depth discussion of the civil war. That's not the point here,
Speaker 1 01:07:25 But what I want to get, what I want to get to
Speaker 0 01:07:28 Is I also want to, oftentimes in discussions of black history, slavery cannot be understated as this point of reference. At the same time. I want us to kind of try to push ourselves and show how either formerly enslaved people or people who were born free actually redefine themselves in those decades after the civil war. Um, and how that's successful sometimes. How is it successful other times what's kind of stacked against them. Um, I mean, we can even talk about some stuff that figures prominently in your own work, Hillary, the emergence of the carceral that does slavery really go away or is it just replaced by something else? Right. Um, but I do want to, uh, really recommend if you can watch it this week. I think the 15th is when it starts. So it'll be Monday, um, that new church do series on the black shirts. Watch it. Um, I love Ken burns documentaries. I loved Ken burns civil war documentary, but even when I watched it for the first time when I was much younger, I felt there was something missing. And it turns out the thing that's kind of missing from that is he doesn't really talk about black people.
Speaker 1 01:08:54 That seems like a pretty egregious oversight, but yeah,
Speaker 0 01:08:57 It does. It does. Um, it might be a function of when it's made, um, in the late eighties
Speaker 1 01:09:04 You made it too. I mean, and the intended audience,
Speaker 0 01:09:09 But I th honestly like watch this miniseries on the black church also go back and watch Henry Louis Gates. The African-Americans many rivers to cross, uh, pick up, uh, a book about Harriet Tubman or Sojourner truth or Frederick Douglas read that reads fin Becker's, uh, empire of cotton. I mean, these are critical moments that in many ways define the future of black Americans in the country.
Speaker 1 01:09:39 I also want to encourage everybody to unapologetically discuss these issues. Don't shy away from it. If it makes you feel uncomfortable, it should make you feel uncomfortable. And I think we do need to confront it and discuss it. And we need to be at the forefront of making sure that this history is not lost and that we can make these connections to our modern era. You know, this is not a 19th century issue. This is very much present right here right now. Um, and avoiding the subject because you feel uncomfortable is no longer an excuse, um, freely talk about it with your children. Um, if you know, block children are able to experience discrimination, then most certainly your white children are able to talk about it and figure out how to move past it and not perpetuate that. So I do just want to plug that, you know, in black history month, this is not something that is a part of our past. It's very much a part of who we are right now. And so I think that to open the doors for conversation, despite your discomfort, I want to challenge everybody to do that this month and for all of the months to come. Right. Let's
Speaker 0 01:10:48 Yeah. Well, well said, well, thanks for joining us this week. We look forward to joining you again next week as we continue our mini series on black history. I'm Jeff,
Speaker 1 01:11:01 Hillary. Thanks for joining
Speaker 2 01:11:04 <inaudible>.
