WEBVTT 00:10.200 --> 00:15.270 "Fellow citizens, pardon me, 00:15.267 --> 00:20.397 and allow me to ask, why am I called upon to speak here 00:20.400 --> 00:24.570 today? What have I or those I represent to do with your 00:24.567 --> 00:28.397 national independence? Are the great principles of 00:28.400 --> 00:30.470 political freedom and of natural justice, 00:30.467 --> 00:33.197 embodied in that Declaration of Independence, 00:33.200 --> 00:36.470 extended to us? And am I, therefore, 00:36.467 --> 00:38.667 called upon to bring our humble offering to the 00:38.667 --> 00:41.297 national altar, and to confess the benefits, 00:41.300 --> 00:44.100 and express devout gratitude for the blessings resulting 00:44.100 --> 00:48.100 from your independence to us? Would to God, 00:48.100 --> 00:49.600 both for your sakes and ours, 00:49.600 --> 00:52.600 that an affirmative answer could be truthfully returned 00:52.600 --> 00:56.000 to these questions. But such is not the state of the 00:56.000 --> 00:59.370 case. I say it with a sad sense of the disparity 00:59.367 --> 01:02.767 between us. I am not included within the pale of 01:02.767 --> 01:07.367 this glorious anniversary! Your high independence only 01:07.367 --> 01:11.097 reveals the immeasurable distance between us. The 01:11.100 --> 01:14.670 blessings in which you this day rejoice are not enjoyed 01:14.667 --> 01:18.467 in common. The rich inheritance of justice, 01:18.467 --> 01:21.767 liberty, prosperity, and independence bequeathed by 01:21.767 --> 01:24.267 your fathers is shared by you, 01:24.267 --> 01:28.397 not by me. The sunlight that brought life and healing to 01:28.400 --> 01:32.870 you has brought stripes and death to me. This Fourth of 01:32.867 --> 01:39.067 July is yours, not mine. You may rejoice, 01:39.067 --> 01:42.597 I must mourn. To drag a man in fetters into the grand 01:42.600 --> 01:44.000 illuminated temple of liberty, 01:44.000 --> 01:46.900 and call upon him to join you in joyous anthems, 01:46.900 --> 01:51.770 were inhuman mockery and sacrilegious irony. Do you 01:51.767 --> 01:57.867 mean, citizens, to mock me, by asking me to speak today? 01:57.867 --> 02:00.997 What to the American slave is your Fourth of July? I 02:01.000 --> 02:03.500 answer, a day that reveals to him more than all other 02:03.500 --> 02:06.300 days of the year, the gross injustice and cruelty to 02:06.300 --> 02:09.800 which he is the constant victim. To him your 02:09.800 --> 02:13.900 celebration is a sham; your boasted liberty an unholy 02:13.900 --> 02:15.700 license; your national greatness, 02:15.700 --> 02:19.200 swelling vanity; your sounds of rejoicing are empty and 02:19.200 --> 02:21.500 heartless; your denunciations of tyrants, 02:21.500 --> 02:24.200 brass-fronted impudence; your shouts of liberty and 02:24.200 --> 02:28.670 equality, hollow mockery; your prayers and hymns, 02:28.667 --> 02:30.067 your sermons and thanksgivings, 02:30.067 --> 02:33.397 with all your religious parade and solemnity, 02:33.400 --> 02:36.470 are to him mere bombast, fraud, 02:36.467 --> 02:40.497 deception, impiety, and hypocrisy, 02:40.500 --> 02:43.300 a thin veil to cover up crimes which would disgrace 02:43.300 --> 02:46.700 a nation of savages. There is not a nation of the earth 02:46.700 --> 02:49.400 guilty of practices more shocking and bloody than are 02:49.400 --> 02:54.000 the people of these United States at this very hour. 02:54.000 --> 02:57.700 Go where you may, search where you will, 02:57.700 --> 02:59.800 roam through all the monarchies and despotisms of 02:59.800 --> 03:02.100 the Old World, travel through South America, 03:02.100 --> 03:04.700 search out every abuse and when you have found the 03:04.700 --> 03:07.800 last, lay your facts by the side of the everyday 03:07.800 --> 03:11.800 practices of this nation, and you will say with me 03:11.800 --> 03:14.270 that, for revolting barbarity and shameless 03:14.267 --> 03:20.667 hypocrisy, America reigns without a rival." Welcome to 03:20.667 --> 03:31.097 class. Many of you will have recognized Frederick 03:31.100 --> 03:34.700 Douglass's speech, delivered in Rochester, 03:34.700 --> 03:37.970 New York to abolitionist friends on July 5th, 03:37.967 --> 03:44.767 1852. Douglass is invited by his friends to come to 03:44.767 --> 03:49.497 Rochester on July 4th to talk about the meaning of 03:49.500 --> 03:51.300 freedom, the meaning of liberty, 03:51.300 --> 03:54.700 the meaning of this great country. These were his 03:54.700 --> 04:00.500 friends. He refused to come on July 4th for the reasons 04:00.500 --> 04:02.270 that you certainly heard in this excerpt--and this is a 04:02.267 --> 04:05.697 three hour long speech, I spared you two hours and 04:05.700 --> 04:09.200 fifty-eight minutes of. It's a brilliant speech. 04:09.200 --> 04:13.000 But he refused to come on July 4th, 04:13.000 --> 04:16.200 because to talk about independence and liberty to 04:16.200 --> 04:23.200 a person who emancipated himself was unkind at best, 04:23.200 --> 04:28.100 certainly blind. But he did come. He came on July 5th, 04:28.100 --> 04:32.600 the next day, and offered and presented one of the 04:32.600 --> 04:36.700 great speeches in American letters. Now this course is 04:36.700 --> 04:40.700 about the African American experience after 04:40.700 --> 04:43.270 emancipation, from emancipation to the 04:43.267 --> 04:47.097 present. Today, however, I'm going to lay the 04:47.100 --> 04:50.670 foundation for the course by discussing events prior to 04:50.667 --> 04:51.927 the emancipatory moment. 04:53.400 --> 04:56.100 This class is about the 04:56.100 --> 05:02.030 post-emancipation African American experience. It is 05:02.033 --> 05:05.833 about American history. And I hope that point is frankly 05:05.833 --> 05:09.573 very obvious, but one never quite understands or can 05:09.567 --> 05:11.997 anticipate all of these things. It is about American 05:12.000 --> 05:15.700 history fundamentally. At its course, 05:15.700 --> 05:19.800 at its core excuse me, the course is about citizenship, 05:19.800 --> 05:22.530 the most important keyword for the entire class. The 05:22.533 --> 05:26.973 course is about citizenship, how one becomes a citizen, 05:26.967 --> 05:31.997 what one does to preserve that citizenship. At its 05:32.000 --> 05:37.730 core then, the class asks the question: what does it 05:37.733 --> 05:43.703 mean to be American? Now I will ask this question 05:43.700 --> 05:46.930 explicitly a few times in the class, 05:46.933 --> 05:49.473 but it implicitly is woven through so much of what I'm 05:49.467 --> 05:52.967 going to be talking about. What does it mean to be 05:52.967 --> 05:59.197 American? Now we started today talking about or 05:59.200 --> 06:03.130 listening to an excerpt of Douglass's famous oration 06:03.133 --> 06:07.833 from 1852. Now I want to move backward even further, 06:07.833 --> 06:12.903 another eighty years or so, going from a rather 06:12.900 --> 06:16.930 well-known document and a quite famous individual to a 06:16.933 --> 06:20.003 rather unknown document and to someone who is 06:20.000 --> 06:24.800 essentially lost to history. I want to talk 06:24.800 --> 06:34.100 about events in the 1770s. One quick tangent though: 06:34.100 --> 06:38.330 when I was about four or five years old, 06:38.333 --> 06:40.333 living near Concord, Massachusetts, 06:40.333 --> 06:42.173 my mother would take me on field trips. She'd try them 06:42.167 --> 06:46.797 out on me before taking her first and second graders. 06:46.800 --> 06:48.730 And one day she took me to Minuteman Park. Has anybody 06:48.733 --> 06:52.003 been to Minuteman Park? It's beautiful, 06:52.000 --> 06:54.770 right? It's gorgeous. Anyway, 06:54.767 --> 06:58.197 the site of the start of the Revolutionary War. So I'm 06:58.200 --> 07:00.770 with my four and five year old attention span listening 07:00.767 --> 07:03.267 to the tour guides walking through these beautiful 07:03.267 --> 07:04.827 fields and meadows. Afterwards, 07:04.833 --> 07:06.233 we were driving around a country road, 07:06.233 --> 07:09.573 and I point to these stone walls and said, 07:09.567 --> 07:12.127 "Mom, those are like the walls the Minutemen hid 07:12.133 --> 07:14.733 behind from those stories." She said, 07:14.733 --> 07:18.903 "Jonathan, those are the walls." Four or five years 07:18.900 --> 07:21.600 old, I mean, I was not really thinking in grand, 07:21.600 --> 07:24.000 historical terms. Life did not exist beyond my four or 07:24.000 --> 07:26.900 five years as far as I understood it. But at that 07:26.900 --> 07:31.130 moment, I sort of was astonished that these 07:31.133 --> 07:33.733 stories, these fun little stories that I'd been 07:33.733 --> 07:35.833 hearing for the past hour or so, 07:35.833 --> 07:36.833 whatever it was, in the tour, 07:36.833 --> 07:41.073 were actually true, that something existed beyond my 07:41.067 --> 07:44.597 own existence on the planet. Looking backwards, 07:44.600 --> 07:46.470 I like to think that that's when I became a historian, 07:46.467 --> 07:48.827 although I would try to be an orthopedic surgeon and 07:48.833 --> 07:49.373 then a lawyer. 07:49.367 --> 07:52.167 That stopped after a couple of weeks of college. 07:52.167 --> 07:55.997 But I can look back and think that I learned 07:56.000 --> 07:58.300 something that day, that there was something 07:58.300 --> 08:06.000 about--something larger than myself around me. Near the 08:06.000 --> 08:10.070 Minuteman Park, there's also a cemetery. At that 08:10.067 --> 08:14.967 cemetery, there's a headstone. My mother didn't 08:14.967 --> 08:16.697 take me on this field trip; went with other people, 08:16.700 --> 08:19.100 and did charcoal rubbings of headstones in Concord 08:19.100 --> 08:25.670 cemeteries. The story behind this headstone is 08:25.667 --> 08:26.997 where I want to start this course, 08:27.000 --> 08:31.000 really. It's a story about a man named John Jack. It's 08:31.000 --> 08:33.370 a story about an individual who certainly understood 08:33.367 --> 08:38.467 very well about a sense, the existence of forces much 08:38.467 --> 08:47.997 larger than himself determining his life. The 08:48.000 --> 08:55.870 epitaph reads, excuse me: "God wills us free. Man 08:55.867 --> 09:01.997 wills us slave. I will as God wills God's will be 09:02.000 --> 09:04.270 done." That's the opening lines. I know it's a little 09:04.267 --> 09:08.497 bit tough to make out. It's on the course website, 09:08.500 --> 09:11.100 by the way, the first week. "God wills us free. Man 09:11.100 --> 09:14.600 wills us slave. I will as God wills God's will be 09:14.600 --> 09:20.070 done. Here lies the body of John Jack, 09:20.067 --> 09:23.397 native of Africa, who died March 1773, 09:23.400 --> 09:27.570 aged about 60 years. Though born in the land of slavery, 09:27.567 --> 09:31.867 he was born free. Though he lived in a land of liberty, 09:31.867 --> 09:35.467 he lived a slave, till by his honest though stolen 09:35.467 --> 09:38.697 labors, he acquired the source of slavery which gave 09:38.700 --> 09:42.200 him his freedom. Though not long before Death, 09:42.200 --> 09:45.700 the grand tyrant, gave him his final emancipation and 09:45.700 --> 09:49.670 set him on a footing with kings. Though a slave to 09:49.667 --> 09:53.497 vice, he practiced those virtues without which kings 09:53.500 --> 09:57.670 are but slaves." It's a remarkable document. My 09:57.667 --> 09:59.197 mother did this head rubbing--this stone 09:59.200 --> 10:02.500 rubbing--a charcoal rubbing of the headstone, 10:02.500 --> 10:05.200 had it framed. It hung in my family's house. I walked 10:05.200 --> 10:11.070 past this image for about fifteen years before I 10:11.067 --> 10:15.197 actually read it. I'm not saying the guy was bright. I 10:15.200 --> 10:17.770 look at the opening lines, about nineteen or twenty 10:17.767 --> 10:20.567 years old, and I'm floored. "God wills us free. Man 10:20.567 --> 10:23.967 wills us slave. I will as God wills God's will be 10:23.967 --> 10:28.367 done." It's astonishing. Couple of years later, 10:28.367 --> 10:31.197 I'm heading to grad school, and I look at the headstone 10:31.200 --> 10:33.370 again, and I'm thinking grand thoughts about going 10:33.367 --> 10:36.097 to study American history. And I start reading the 10:36.100 --> 10:39.900 epitaph all over again, and I start seeing all these 10:39.900 --> 10:42.970 connections, these dualisms, God and man, 10:42.967 --> 10:48.797 freedom and slavery. And so I decided to acquire the 10:48.800 --> 10:51.900 headstone. I took it from my parents' house. I told 10:51.900 --> 10:54.400 them about it once I had it on my wall in my apartment 10:54.400 --> 10:59.300 at grad school. And through my mother's good graces, 10:59.300 --> 11:01.470 I still have it. It hangs above my computer. It's 11:01.467 --> 11:04.297 always, it's always with me. It is something of a 11:04.300 --> 11:09.570 totem. Now the story about John Jack I think is even 11:09.567 --> 11:13.097 more interesting than the headstone. So we know that 11:13.100 --> 11:16.500 John Jack, certainly not his birth name, 11:16.500 --> 11:20.800 a black African, born in the continent somewhere in 11:20.800 --> 11:25.200 Africa, a continent with thousands of years history 11:25.200 --> 11:29.270 of slavery, still present today of course. He 11:29.267 --> 11:31.567 survives the Middle Passage. He comes to--and 11:31.567 --> 11:34.797 he's born free in Africa but is enslaved somehow--he 11:34.800 --> 11:37.600 comes over to what will become the United States. 11:37.600 --> 11:39.570 It's not quite the United States. John Jack would 11:39.567 --> 11:43.097 never see the United States. He comes to 11:43.100 --> 11:46.300 colonial New England. Now this point's just important 11:46.300 --> 11:48.770 on its surface. We're going to hear a lot about the 11:48.767 --> 11:51.967 South in this class. If you think geographically about 11:51.967 --> 11:53.297 so many of the freedom struggles, 11:53.300 --> 11:55.970 the post-emancipation African American experience, 11:55.967 --> 11:58.867 they are southern stories. But don't let yourself be 11:58.867 --> 12:01.197 fooled. Slavery was alive and well in New England, 12:01.200 --> 12:04.100 and a lot of the freedom struggles that have happened 12:04.100 --> 12:06.800 since emancipation certainly happened up in New England 12:06.800 --> 12:11.400 as well. Anyway, John Jack winds up in Concord, 12:11.400 --> 12:14.370 Massachusetts. He has, as the saying would have been 12:14.367 --> 12:18.467 at the time, "a kind master" who teaches him a trade. 12:18.467 --> 12:21.167 He's a cobbler, works on shoes, 12:21.167 --> 12:23.497 and allows him to keep a little bit of every shoe he 12:23.500 --> 12:26.000 cobbles. The amount of money's immaterial. It 12:26.000 --> 12:29.170 wouldn't have been much. Over time, 12:29.167 --> 12:32.897 through his stolen labors, his "honest though stolen 12:32.900 --> 12:36.100 labors" as the epitaph says, he acquired the source of 12:36.100 --> 12:39.700 slavery. He raised enough money to buy himself. He 12:39.700 --> 12:43.100 secured his own emancipation through his hard work. He 12:43.100 --> 12:46.400 acquires some land on the edge of town, 12:46.400 --> 12:50.400 a subsistence farm, nothing much more than that. 12:50.400 --> 12:57.400 And then we discover that he drinks himself to death. 12:57.400 --> 12:59.100 Between the time of his emancipation--his 12:59.100 --> 13:01.570 self-emancipation and his death--he tries to become a 13:01.567 --> 13:05.567 citizen of Concord. He couldn't do it. He was 13:05.567 --> 13:08.297 male, an important criteria. Check that one 13:08.300 --> 13:11.170 off. He owned property. Those were usually the two 13:11.167 --> 13:15.097 most important criteria. But because he had been 13:15.100 --> 13:18.400 enslaved, he couldn't become a citizen. Let's think of 13:18.400 --> 13:22.070 the moment. We are on the cusp of the Revolutionary 13:22.067 --> 13:25.097 War, in Concord, Massachusetts, 13:25.100 --> 13:28.600 the start of the Revolutionary War. You have 13:28.600 --> 13:30.100 the citizens of Concord, the white, 13:30.100 --> 13:32.100 male property owners in Concord, 13:32.100 --> 13:35.700 complaining to the British crown about being treated as 13:35.700 --> 13:38.500 slaves. This is literally their language, 13:38.500 --> 13:40.900 that they were being treated as slaves, 13:40.900 --> 13:46.000 and this wasn't right. Somehow these people 13:46.000 --> 13:51.600 questing for freedom ignored those people they owned. 13:51.600 --> 13:53.100 The black African slaves in their midst, 13:53.100 --> 14:01.070 they were blind to their existence, 14:01.067 --> 14:05.297 apparently. John Jack, though, 14:05.300 --> 14:08.870 understood the situation. He saw what was happening 14:08.867 --> 14:12.167 all around him. He couldn't help but, 14:12.167 --> 14:13.897 and who knows why he became an alcoholic, 14:13.900 --> 14:17.800 but that might be a good reason. Anyway, 14:17.800 --> 14:19.500 he's drinking himself to death and knows it, 14:19.500 --> 14:23.900 and he hires an attorney to put his affairs in order. 14:23.900 --> 14:29.200 It's his attorney who crafts the epitaph here. Here's 14:29.200 --> 14:31.900 where the story gets even more interesting, 14:31.900 --> 14:34.970 I think. The person John Jack hires to put his 14:34.967 --> 14:40.567 affairs in order is a British sympathizer, 14:40.567 --> 14:46.697 a Tory. John Jack got it. He was going to 14:46.700 --> 14:48.500 hire--almost like he's thumbing his nose 14:48.500 --> 14:52.100 postmortem. He wasn't going to be allowed to be a 14:52.100 --> 14:54.500 citizen, despite his freedom, 14:54.500 --> 14:56.300 in an area that's fighting for freedom, 14:56.300 --> 14:57.500 claiming that they weren't citizens, 14:57.500 --> 14:59.500 they were slaves in fact, and they certainly didn't 14:59.500 --> 15:02.800 know slavery like he knew it. John Jack understood 15:02.800 --> 15:05.700 something fundamental about what would become the United 15:05.700 --> 15:10.170 States of America, pretty soon in fact. And the 15:10.167 --> 15:11.597 fundamental thing he understood is that you 15:11.600 --> 15:14.270 cannot understand freedom, that thing that is at the 15:14.267 --> 15:17.297 bedrock of what this country is about, 15:17.300 --> 15:19.000 you cannot understand it without understanding 15:19.000 --> 15:22.700 slavery. Freedom and slavery were intertwined, 15:22.700 --> 15:24.400 intertwined for the citizens on the ground, 15:24.400 --> 15:27.400 intertwined for people like John Jack, 15:27.400 --> 15:28.700 Frederick Douglass, of course, 15:28.700 --> 15:35.000 and others after. You could not separate the denial of 15:35.000 --> 15:37.500 freedom from the quest of freedom. That's why the 15:37.500 --> 15:42.200 citizens of Concord knew it was so important. They may 15:42.200 --> 15:43.900 not have wanted to have John Jack be a citizen, 15:43.900 --> 15:54.170 but they didn't want to be like him. Two hundred years 15:54.167 --> 15:56.797 later, after John Jack's attorney produces this 15:56.800 --> 15:59.300 epitaph--not quite two hundred years, 15:59.300 --> 16:03.700 let's say one hundred and eighty or so--Ralph Ellison, 16:03.700 --> 16:09.000 one of the great writers of the American past, 16:09.000 --> 16:13.170 identifies much of the same phenomenon that John Jack 16:13.167 --> 16:15.497 must have identified and that John Jack's attorney 16:15.500 --> 16:17.970 certainly understood. And he wrote this brilliant 16:17.967 --> 16:20.597 passage. I'll probably use it again later on in the 16:20.600 --> 16:25.770 course. Ellison wrote, "Southern whites cannot 16:25.767 --> 16:28.067 talk, walk, sing, conceive of laws or justice, 16:28.067 --> 16:33.797 think of sex, love, the family, 16:33.800 --> 16:37.270 or freedom, without responding to the presence 16:37.267 --> 16:44.597 of Negroes." They are intertwined, 16:44.600 --> 16:49.470 linked fate, as it were. Now this course is going to 16:49.467 --> 16:52.697 spend a fair amount of time examining this phenomenon, 16:52.700 --> 16:57.800 the linkage between freedom--not so much freedom 16:57.800 --> 16:59.700 and slavery, but citizenship and the denial of 16:59.700 --> 17:03.800 citizenship. And we're going to spend time 17:03.800 --> 17:07.700 investigating how this challenge, 17:07.700 --> 17:11.770 this problem, this tension, can be located in unexpected 17:11.767 --> 17:17.767 places. We'll turn to primary sources of all types 17:17.767 --> 17:23.597 in order to examine this story. One place is a great 17:23.600 --> 17:28.800 example is just in currency, stuff you're carrying--well, 17:28.800 --> 17:31.100 we don't carry much in terms of dollars and change any 17:31.100 --> 17:32.600 more, it's on credit cards, I suppose, 17:32.600 --> 17:35.900 debit cards. But back in the day, 17:35.900 --> 17:40.800 a few years ago, when we all carried cash--the story of a 17:40.800 --> 17:46.900 nation's myth is embodied on its currencies. These are 17:46.900 --> 17:52.900 two examples of Confederate scrip. I wish I could make 17:52.900 --> 17:55.970 them bigger. They're actually JPEG screen 17:55.967 --> 17:58.597 captures. They really aren't--they pixilate pretty 17:58.600 --> 18:06.000 quickly. But you can see on these dollar bills stories 18:06.000 --> 18:07.800 that were important to the Confederate States of 18:07.800 --> 18:11.700 America. A one-dollar bill and a ten-dollar bill. And 18:11.700 --> 18:16.400 the stories that are important are here, 18:16.400 --> 18:22.300 going back one image. Use my mouse here. Here, 18:22.300 --> 18:27.070 then down here. What you see is labor and white 18:27.067 --> 18:34.067 womanhood, and the laborer you see is a slave. And I 18:34.067 --> 18:36.897 know it doesn't show it very clearly in this JPEG, 18:36.900 --> 18:40.700 but the laborer is happy. The slave carrying the 18:40.700 --> 18:45.100 cotton is smiling. On the other bill, 18:45.100 --> 18:50.700 you have white womanhood. You're going to see this is 18:50.700 --> 18:53.370 quite a fascinating trope in American history, 18:53.367 --> 18:57.897 southern American history: the exalted white woman, 18:57.900 --> 19:03.100 especially as it pertains to black men, 19:03.100 --> 19:05.800 with tropes of violence, and danger, 19:05.800 --> 19:12.400 and sexual predation woven throughout that dynamic. So 19:12.400 --> 19:14.470 on the money that Confederates were handing to 19:14.467 --> 19:16.497 one another to exchange goods, 19:16.500 --> 19:19.000 you have happy labor, you have exalted white 19:19.000 --> 19:25.200 womanhood. Notions of who belongs, 19:25.200 --> 19:28.270 the myths that form our nation states, 19:28.267 --> 19:32.097 are all around us. They're on the money that we carry. 19:32.100 --> 19:36.470 We're going to look for stories like this in all 19:36.467 --> 19:38.797 manner of places, and through looking at these 19:38.800 --> 19:41.600 stories, we're going to see that the post-emancipation 19:41.600 --> 19:45.200 African American experience is several different types 19:45.200 --> 19:48.500 of histories. It's a history of political 19:48.500 --> 19:54.100 struggle, no doubt. An image here of black woman 19:54.100 --> 20:02.000 voting, the 1950s I believe, from the same night--and the 20:02.000 --> 20:04.400 history behind an image like that is filled with all 20:04.400 --> 20:06.870 kinds of political struggle that you certainly have at 20:06.867 --> 20:12.197 least a slim awareness of, a glimmer of awareness of. 20:12.200 --> 20:16.600 But on the same night, in the same district, 20:16.600 --> 20:24.070 that struggle is embodied by this. The risk she took in 20:24.067 --> 20:29.567 voting were risks that involved her life. It's a 20:29.567 --> 20:32.897 history of political struggle in this country. 20:32.900 --> 20:37.600 Certainly a history of social protest as well. You 20:37.600 --> 20:39.970 have here an image of women from a group called the 20:39.967 --> 20:42.997 National Association of Colored Women, 20:43.000 --> 20:44.570 the "upstanding women of the race, 20:44.567 --> 20:47.897 and I use that in quotation marks for reasons we'll 20:47.900 --> 20:51.100 understand in a few weeks. Not that they weren't 20:51.100 --> 20:54.400 upstanding, but it's a very loaded phrase on purpose. 20:54.400 --> 20:58.100 Marching at the White House in this case to protest the 20:58.100 --> 21:01.900 lack of an anti lynching law. "Protect life and 21:01.900 --> 21:05.300 liberty!" they're exclaiming. It's a history 21:05.300 --> 21:07.500 of social struggle. It's a history, 21:07.500 --> 21:12.000 certainly, of social control. There are some 21:12.000 --> 21:16.370 images that don't need much in the way of narration. I 21:16.367 --> 21:18.567 will point out though--I mean actually I don't know 21:18.567 --> 21:20.897 the history of the image, but if you look closely, 21:20.900 --> 21:24.770 you'll see Spanish language up here in the archways. I 21:24.767 --> 21:25.897 think this actually happens in Laredo, 21:25.900 --> 21:34.100 Texas, this Klan rally. It is also a history of 21:34.100 --> 21:39.700 cultural celebration. We'll spend a few lectures doing 21:39.700 --> 21:43.770 occasional close readings of important icons, 21:43.767 --> 21:47.367 images, sound clips, movie clips in fact, 21:47.367 --> 21:48.867 from the post-emancipation African American 21:48.867 --> 21:53.697 experience. This is one image of a series of 21:53.700 --> 21:58.100 paintings by the artist Aaron Douglas. I'm not 21:58.100 --> 22:00.500 going to go into it now, because I will go into it in 22:00.500 --> 22:04.170 about a month and a half, I think. But I will tell you 22:04.167 --> 22:05.967 that in this history of cultural celebration, 22:05.967 --> 22:09.797 the images that we'll be seeing are complicated, 22:09.800 --> 22:15.000 deeply loaded with many different stories in the 22:15.000 --> 22:17.970 same spirit of John Jack's epitaph. The stories are in 22:17.967 --> 22:21.667 this image here, and I'll explain it in more detail as 22:21.667 --> 22:30.097 we get to it. It's also a history of powerful 22:30.100 --> 22:35.300 relevance today. We are being trained, 22:35.300 --> 22:38.600 people are trying to train us, 22:38.600 --> 22:41.100 to talk about this moment as being a post-racial moment. 22:41.100 --> 22:46.000 I actually think it couldn't be anything further from the 22:46.000 --> 22:52.570 truth. The election of Barack Obama--now excuse me, 22:52.567 --> 22:55.397 I got ahead of my notes one section here. History of 22:55.400 --> 22:58.100 powerful relevance today for many of its political and 22:58.100 --> 23:02.800 cultural symbols. Prior to the election of Barack 23:02.800 --> 23:06.470 Obama, you have battles over flags, 23:06.467 --> 23:10.367 state flags. This is the state flag of Georgia, 23:10.367 --> 23:12.167 had been the state flag of Georgia, 23:12.167 --> 23:14.497 flying above the Capitol, on license plates, 23:14.500 --> 23:17.270 you name it. The Confederate battle flag, 23:17.267 --> 23:19.897 as many of you know, is a powerful symbol 23:19.900 --> 23:22.000 of--depending on your perspective, 23:22.000 --> 23:28.070 tradition and heritage or violence and degradation. 23:28.067 --> 23:33.897 There's not much gray area when it comes to the battle 23:33.900 --> 23:38.100 flag. As NAACP organized protests about flying 23:38.100 --> 23:41.100 something with the Confederate flag on state 23:41.100 --> 23:45.400 property, and southern legislatures refused to back 23:45.400 --> 23:47.370 down--Interestingly enough, the NFL, 23:47.367 --> 23:51.297 National Football League, has done incredible work in 23:51.300 --> 23:55.770 getting rid of the symbols and markers of a segregated 23:55.767 --> 23:57.967 past, for fear of threatening boycotts, 23:57.967 --> 24:00.597 removing the Super Bowl from say Atlanta, 24:00.600 --> 24:03.300 because of the Confederate battle flag. And, 24:03.300 --> 24:06.570 in fact, doing something like this in Arizona over 24:06.567 --> 24:08.697 the fact that Arizona did not recognize Martin Luther 24:08.700 --> 24:12.870 King Day as a state holiday. The battle ensues over these 24:12.867 --> 24:17.767 flags in Georgia, and one option is going to be this 24:17.767 --> 24:19.767 flag that incorporates all the different flags from 24:19.767 --> 24:24.767 Georgia's past, and this is the final cleaning up as it 24:24.767 --> 24:29.997 were of southern history. Now it's a history of 24:30.000 --> 24:32.300 powerful relevance today. This is a handful of years 24:32.300 --> 24:35.670 ago. Moving to more local events in history, 24:35.667 --> 24:40.697 we can think now about the election of Barack Obama. 24:40.700 --> 24:43.570 Two years ago when I was teaching this class, 24:43.567 --> 24:46.197 Obama and Clinton were heading into the Democratic 24:46.200 --> 24:51.900 primaries, and I'll confess, I thought Hillary Clinton 24:51.900 --> 24:56.970 had this thing locked up. And then this young senator 24:56.967 --> 25:00.697 from Illinois goes on a historic tear. And as I'm 25:00.700 --> 25:01.700 giving the lecture course, I'm like, 25:01.700 --> 25:04.370 "Wow, I've got to rewrite the end of my class." And 25:04.367 --> 25:06.497 then during that election campaign, 25:06.500 --> 25:09.000 there was the Reverend Wright scandal, 25:09.000 --> 25:11.900 and Barack Obama's famous speech in Philadelphia 25:11.900 --> 25:16.100 during spring break, which is when I really had to 25:16.100 --> 25:19.500 rewrite the end of my class. After the class is 25:19.500 --> 25:23.900 over, he goes and gets elected. Some of you were 25:23.900 --> 25:27.300 here from that moment. This is a screen capture from the 25:27.300 --> 25:30.900 Yale Daily the next day, after Obama wins the 25:30.900 --> 25:35.170 election. There's a moment here of the student carrying 25:35.167 --> 25:37.567 one of the iconic images in the Obama campaign about 25:37.567 --> 25:42.997 hope, and a suggestion of a new day. Then again, 25:43.000 --> 25:45.500 the suggestion of a post-racial day. Now I 25:45.500 --> 25:47.500 don't want to deny the fact that this is an historical 25:47.500 --> 25:49.000 election for all manner of reasons, 25:49.000 --> 25:50.770 whether it was Hillary Clinton who won or Barack 25:50.767 --> 25:54.667 Obama who won, if a Democrat was to win, 25:54.667 --> 25:57.397 it was going to be historic. I don't want to 25:57.400 --> 26:03.200 minimize that. But I also don't want to buy into the 26:03.200 --> 26:09.200 fact that simply because the nation has elected a 26:09.200 --> 26:11.070 President who is ostensibly black, 26:11.067 --> 26:15.367 and I say that very purposefully--if you think 26:15.367 --> 26:17.767 about racial coding, as we get later on in this course, 26:17.767 --> 26:20.997 you'll understand better why I say "ostensibly black." I 26:21.000 --> 26:23.070 don't put any political meaning in that phrase, 26:23.067 --> 26:26.067 by the way. I'm not trying to either prop up or push 26:26.067 --> 26:30.397 down Barack Obama's racial affiliations. But electing 26:30.400 --> 26:32.800 a President who's ostensibly black, 26:32.800 --> 26:38.170 the nation healed itself. It found a way to get past 26:38.167 --> 26:41.397 its ugly histories and its scars. It was a better 26:41.400 --> 26:43.900 place. It was a more perfect union. It was 26:43.900 --> 26:50.700 post-racial. But really, was it? Let's think more 26:50.700 --> 26:54.200 locally. Let's go back to Confederate scrip. As it 26:54.200 --> 26:58.000 happens, I've been showing the other Confederate scrip 26:58.000 --> 26:59.970 for years. And about a year ago, 26:59.967 --> 27:02.597 I discovered that, somewhere in the last couple of years, 27:02.600 --> 27:06.000 Yale bought a huge collection of Confederate 27:06.000 --> 27:07.570 scrip. It now has the largest collection in the 27:07.567 --> 27:13.467 world of Confederate scrip. Just one of these things. 27:13.467 --> 27:14.467 [Professor laughs.] Actually, 27:14.467 --> 27:17.397 they are beautiful documents, 27:17.400 --> 27:19.500 I mean, beautifully constructed. So I went up 27:19.500 --> 27:21.100 to the numismatic--numsistatic--it' 27:21.100 --> 27:25.270 s one of the words you don't want to flub, 27:25.267 --> 27:29.897 but I just did--collection at Sterling Library and 27:29.900 --> 27:34.600 looked at the Confederate scrip. And I was floored 27:34.600 --> 27:35.970 when I saw this image. I'm like, 27:35.967 --> 27:37.967 "Can you scan this for my purposes, 27:37.967 --> 27:47.397 please?" You have happy labor. You have Lady 27:47.400 --> 27:53.400 Liberty. This is happy labor. And you have this 27:53.400 --> 27:58.970 man. Those of you who know the residential college 27:58.967 --> 28:02.797 system at Yale, which is all of you, 28:02.800 --> 28:06.800 will know that one of them is named Calhoun College. 28:06.800 --> 28:08.400 You will know I'm the Master of Calhoun College, 28:08.400 --> 28:11.170 which I think is humorous in just its nomenclature, 28:11.167 --> 28:16.297 certainly. This is John C. Calhoun, 28:16.300 --> 28:19.600 one of the great men of Eli, as the Yale Corporation 28:19.600 --> 28:22.700 thought through the naming of the residential colleges, 28:22.700 --> 28:27.800 the first seven back in 1931 and '32. They wanted to 28:27.800 --> 28:30.570 name the colleges after the great--the great sons of 28:30.567 --> 28:32.697 Eli, excuse me. And they wanted, 28:32.700 --> 28:35.270 you know, the greatest Yale alum in the world of arts, 28:35.267 --> 28:37.497 in the world of letters, in the world of politics, 28:37.500 --> 28:40.170 and so on. And they decided that John C. Calhoun, 28:40.167 --> 28:41.897 an important person, there's no doubt about it: 28:41.900 --> 28:44.000 vice-president of the United States, 28:44.000 --> 28:47.170 powerful senator from South Carolina--Still revered in 28:47.167 --> 28:52.767 that state as one of its great heroes. They decided 28:52.767 --> 28:54.767 that John C. Calhoun was their greatest alum. There 28:54.767 --> 28:57.197 is no financial connection from the name or the family 28:57.200 --> 29:02.700 to the college, but this was the logic of 1932, 29:02.700 --> 29:06.600 '33, Yale Corporation. John C. Calhoun was the 29:06.600 --> 29:08.500 architect--although he did not live to see the Civil 29:08.500 --> 29:13.100 War--he was the intellectual architect for secession. He 29:13.100 --> 29:15.600 believed in states' rights, an important theme of this 29:15.600 --> 29:17.470 course that we'll be talking much more in detail about 29:17.467 --> 29:25.367 later on. And he certainly did not believe that slaves 29:25.367 --> 29:28.897 were fully equipped to handle the rigors of 29:28.900 --> 29:32.570 civilization. It may sound like kind of a strange 29:32.567 --> 29:36.867 sentence construction. They weren't ready to handle the 29:36.867 --> 29:39.897 rigors of being civilized, but this is the language of 29:39.900 --> 29:47.070 the day. I wonder, as I look up in the Master's 29:47.067 --> 29:49.597 house living room, or in my office, 29:49.600 --> 29:51.700 or in the courtyard--and there's images of Calhoun 29:51.700 --> 29:54.400 all over the dang place in the college, 29:54.400 --> 29:58.000 I have to wonder what he thinks. History's rather 29:58.000 --> 29:59.900 humorous sometimes, and the ironies can be rather 29:59.900 --> 30:05.970 beautiful. But the phenomenon of thinking about 30:05.967 --> 30:08.267 race, or not thinking about race, 30:08.267 --> 30:13.597 not talking about race, is with us today. It is all 30:13.600 --> 30:19.800 around us. Now thinking about Confederate scrip from 30:19.800 --> 30:22.500 quite some time ago, you know we aren't carrying that 30:22.500 --> 30:25.470 around in our pockets after all. How's that a reminder 30:25.467 --> 30:28.697 of today, thinking about a decision that some people 30:28.700 --> 30:32.200 made in 1933? That's not today's thinking. You know, 30:32.200 --> 30:36.270 how is this with us today? Thinking about race is with 30:36.267 --> 30:43.297 us today in the astonishing ways that people make their 30:43.300 --> 30:49.800 decisions and maintain their blindnesses. Two years ago, 30:49.800 --> 30:53.500 the freshman class at Yale--some of you might be 30:53.500 --> 30:55.500 in this room who were in that decision process. I'm 30:55.500 --> 30:59.300 not going to call you out--decided to have for 30:59.300 --> 31:04.400 their freshman ball the theme called Gone with the 31:04.400 --> 31:07.370 Wind. Student: That was last year. Professor 31:07.367 --> 31:08.797 Jonathan Holloway: Was that last year? Student: Last 31:08.800 --> 31:12.870 year. Professor Jonathan Holloway: Last year. Well, 31:12.867 --> 31:15.397 let's just say when I heard word of this decision, 31:15.400 --> 31:17.700 I thought it was a very curious decision. I 31:17.700 --> 31:19.700 discovered the more sort of immature, 31:19.700 --> 31:21.670 sexually prurient reasons for calling it "Gone with 31:21.667 --> 31:24.597 the Wind." I won't get into those now. But I also know 31:24.600 --> 31:28.900 that people thought it would be nice. They're aware that 31:28.900 --> 31:31.370 the movie Gone with the Wind is complicated. They 31:31.367 --> 31:34.697 thought it would be nice to get dressed up in ball gowns 31:34.700 --> 31:36.800 and the cotillion style and go to Commons and have a 31:36.800 --> 31:41.070 wonderful time. The blindness though astonished 31:41.067 --> 31:45.597 me. Getting dressed up for a cotillion might sound 31:45.600 --> 31:52.000 lovely. People can--Yalies can make amazing costumes, 31:52.000 --> 31:54.200 but was that really Southern history? Was that really 31:54.200 --> 31:58.900 what happened? Was that what it was all about? You need 31:58.900 --> 32:01.070 to understand, as I was telling the students when I 32:01.067 --> 32:02.967 was raising my concerns about this, 32:02.967 --> 32:05.197 that in many places where you had this plantation 32:05.200 --> 32:07.700 society, people dressed up for cotillions, 32:07.700 --> 32:10.970 occupying buildings built by slaves, 32:10.967 --> 32:13.397 in many of these places, most of the people were 32:13.400 --> 32:18.300 black. Gone with the Wind kind of erases this history, 32:18.300 --> 32:21.600 doesn't talk about it. And the notion that some of the 32:21.600 --> 32:24.370 most educated people in the world would fail to 32:24.367 --> 32:29.697 understand the connection, or the lack of connection, 32:29.700 --> 32:33.270 with Gone with the Wind to our lived experience, 32:33.267 --> 32:36.467 is rather breathtaking and rather depressing. So I 32:36.467 --> 32:42.597 decided, in my next lecture, that as a teaching moment, 32:42.600 --> 32:45.600 I'd read a poem called "Southern History" by the 32:45.600 --> 32:46.900 great poet Natasha Trethewey, 32:46.900 --> 32:52.400 who was here last semester actually. Professor 32:52.400 --> 32:56.200 Trethewey says this: "Before the war, 32:56.200 --> 32:59.600 they were happy," he said. quoting our textbook. 32:59.600 --> 33:01.570 (This was senior-year history class.) 33:01.567 --> 33:02.997 "The slaves were clothed, fed, 33:03.000 --> 33:06.370 and better off under a master's care." I watched 33:06.367 --> 33:10.497 the words blur on the page. No one raised a hand, 33:10.500 --> 33:15.070 disagreed. Not even me.nIt was late. 33:15.067 --> 33:16.567 we still had Reconstruction to cover 33:16.567 --> 33:18.967 before the test, and - luckily - three hours of 33:18.967 --> 33:21.697 watching Gone with the Wind. "History, 33:21.700 --> 33:24.970 the teacher said, "of the old South - a true account 33:24.967 --> 33:28.567 of how things were back then." On screen a slave 33:28.567 --> 33:31.567 stood big as life: big mouth, 33:31.567 --> 33:36.997 bucked eyes, our textbook's grinning proof - a lie my 33:37.000 --> 33:44.870 teacher guarded. Silent, so did I." Now the purpose of 33:44.867 --> 33:48.867 my class is not to stand silent, 33:48.867 --> 33:51.497 and I hope you will take with you that same 33:51.500 --> 33:54.270 determination. This is a local history, 33:54.267 --> 33:57.867 after all. You live in it, whether you live in Calhoun, 33:57.867 --> 33:59.767 or whether you happen to live in Davenport or Pierson 33:59.767 --> 34:03.597 Colleges who, or where, two years ago, 34:03.600 --> 34:05.600 this was spray painted on the walls outside the dining 34:05.600 --> 34:09.700 hall: "nigger school." Now I don't think anybody from 34:09.700 --> 34:13.000 Yale spray painted this, or "drama fags" across the way 34:13.000 --> 34:15.770 at the school of drama. I don't think for a second 34:15.767 --> 34:19.497 anybody at Yale spray painted this. But even 34:19.500 --> 34:23.070 though we are at Yale does not mean that we are not in 34:23.067 --> 34:26.597 New Haven. Even though we are at Yale does not mean 34:26.600 --> 34:31.600 that we are being fed by a population that comes from a 34:31.600 --> 34:34.400 dramatically different set of resources than we do, 34:34.400 --> 34:36.800 in a highly segregated, de facto to be sure, 34:36.800 --> 34:41.100 desegregated, workforce. It is around us, 34:41.100 --> 34:44.100 we are subsumed in it, and it is our obligation to 34:44.100 --> 34:48.200 learn this history, lest we repeat it. Thank you very 34:48.200 --> 34:50.200 much, and I'll see you on Wednesday.