Speaker 1: That is amazing. It's like three D. I'm at the
Speaker 1: Houghton Rare Books Library at Harvard University with Professor Henry
Speaker 1: Lewis Gates Jr. You may recognize him as the host
Speaker 1: of the PBS show Finding Your Roots. Who are looking
Speaker 1: at a print an original lithograph from the nineteenth century.
Speaker 1: Pictured in it are seven men. The depth of field
Speaker 1: is so striking. I've never seen the original. The men
Speaker 1: are all distinguished looking, dressed in three piece suits, some
Speaker 1: in bow ties. They're elegant. It's not surprising. The print
Speaker 1: says they're congressman from the eighteen seventies. But there's something
Speaker 1: else about the scene that seems out of time and place.
Speaker 1: All of these congressmen are African American. When you see
Speaker 1: the copies, that looks essentially like newspaper print. But when
Speaker 1: you look at it here like look at the hair texture.
Speaker 1: See the hair texture. The caption reads the first colored
Speaker 1: Senator and Representatives in the forty one and forty two Congress.
Speaker 1: It was created by the famed printing company Courier and Ives,
Speaker 1: and it really is a powerful image. You should stop
Speaker 1: what you're doing right now and google it. These men
Speaker 1: Hiram Rhodes Revels, Joseph Rainey, Benjamin Turner, Josiah Walls, Jefferson Long,
Speaker 1: Robert de Large, Robert Brown, Elliott don't just have great names,
Speaker 1: they've got absolutely fierce facial hair. But to me, it's
Speaker 1: that year that really sticks out. Entered according to Act
Speaker 1: of Congress, in the year eighteen seventy two. So some
Speaker 1: of these men seven years before are slaves, that's right. Absolutely,
Speaker 1: There are only two of these men who were born free. Now,
Speaker 1: I have to confess something. If you'd asked me when
Speaker 1: the first African Americans to serving Congress were I would
Speaker 1: have said the nineteen fifties or nineteen sixties, maybe the
Speaker 1: nineteen seventies, but not the eighteen seventies. The men in
Speaker 1: this image all Republicans, all representing Southern states, served in
Speaker 1: Congress during the period right after the Civil War known
Speaker 1: as Reconstruction. That's when the formerly rebel states were re
Speaker 1: absorbed into the Union and four million newly freed slaves
Speaker 1: were made citizens. So it was a time of unparalleled hope.
Speaker 1: Black man could vote and they were about to elect
Speaker 1: congressmen to represent them throughout the South. Look at Hiram Revels,
Speaker 1: there now he looks like a senator. Senator Revels from
Speaker 1: Mississippi was the very first African American to serving Congress.
Speaker 1: In the print, he seated majestically all the way to
Speaker 1: the left. When Frederick Douglas saw the portrait of Hiram Revels,
Speaker 1: he said, last, the black man that's represented something other
Speaker 1: than a monkey. Are they hopeful here? Oh? Yeah, they're hopeful.
Speaker 1: They're exemplars of the race, you know, the best and
Speaker 1: the brightest. And I'm sure that they believe that they're
Speaker 1: the vanguard of legions to come. They have no idea.
Speaker 1: What's about the hither From CBS Sunday Morning and Simon
Speaker 1: and Schuster, I'm Morocca and this is mobituaries. This mobid
Speaker 1: the pioneering black Congressman of Reconstruction January death of representation. Now,
Speaker 1: if you blinked during high school history class, you might
Speaker 1: have missed Reconstruction. There's a movie about it, though. It
Speaker 1: was a really big movie, and that movie, whether you've
Speaker 1: seen it or not, has a lot to do with
Speaker 1: what you don't know about this story. The Birth of
Speaker 1: a Nation was that film, and it was a sensation
Speaker 1: when it premiered. In nineteen fifteen. A sweeping epoch. It
Speaker 1: told the story of the Civil War and its aftermath
Speaker 1: from a distinctly Southern point of view. The Confederacy may
Speaker 1: have gone down in defeat, but it did so nobly.
Speaker 1: The ku Klux Klan who rise up afterward are valiant
Speaker 1: defenders of Southern virtue, and in a notorious scene midway
Speaker 1: through the film, the eighteen seventy one South Carolina Statehouse
Speaker 1: is depicted. The lawmakers are mostly black, and they're a disgrace,
Speaker 1: drinking whiskey, eating chicken bare feet on their desks. The message,
Speaker 1: fifty years after the end of the Civil War was
Speaker 1: clear Reconstruction was a failure and the election of black
Speaker 1: officeholders a desecration. But the lives of the actual black
Speaker 1: congressman of Reconstruction tell a story that's very different from
Speaker 1: the birth of a nation and no less epic. In
Speaker 1: this episode, I'm going to tell you about three of
Speaker 1: those men. We start with a great escape. When you're
Speaker 1: hearing do you imagine what it was like back in
Speaker 1: every time? That's Michael Bullware Moore and we're on a
Speaker 1: boat in South Carolina's Charleston Harbor. Oh my god, look
Speaker 1: at that all of them. We're not far from Fort Sumter,
Speaker 1: where the of the war's first shots were fired. Michael's
Speaker 1: great great grandfather was an enslaved man from Beaufort, South Carolina,
Speaker 1: named Robert Smalls. Robert was still owned by his master
Speaker 1: and Beaufort, but at the age of twelve had been
Speaker 1: sent to Charleston to work and to send his wages back.
Speaker 1: And very quickly Robert was drawn to the docks where
Speaker 1: for different jobs and ended up on this boat, the Planter, which,
Speaker 1: once the Civil War broke out, was taken by the
Speaker 1: Confederacy and configured into a military vessel, and so he
Speaker 1: effectively was the pilot of the ship. He knew all
Speaker 1: of the waterways and was an expert seaman. Maybe because
Speaker 1: of his expertise, maybe it was because he was believed
Speaker 1: to be the son of his owner, Smalls was treated
Speaker 1: more leniently than other slaves. He had negotiated with his
Speaker 1: master and with his wife's mask or for them to
Speaker 1: be able to live independently in an apartment, but he
Speaker 1: knew that his family, his wife and children, could be
Speaker 1: sold away in an instant and the prospect of that,
Speaker 1: as it would for anybody, was just a very difficult
Speaker 1: thing to deal with, and so he had freedom on
Speaker 1: his mind. The crew members of the Planter used to
Speaker 1: joke with Smalls, who was mixed race, about his resemblance
Speaker 1: to the ship's white captain, and those jokes inspired an
Speaker 1: audacious plan. In the early morning hours of May thirteenth,
Speaker 1: eighteen sixty two, Robert Small's set that plan into motion.
Speaker 1: So he saw that the Confederate crew had left, and
Speaker 1: he knew that oftentimes they left for the evening, not
Speaker 1: to come back until the next day, where they offered
Speaker 1: them drinking, they carousing, just having a good time in
Speaker 1: the big city. And you know, certainly there was a
Speaker 1: lot about this endeavor that was a calculated risk. I mean,
Speaker 1: he and Hannah, my great great and mother, his wife.
Speaker 1: His wife had basically said this was a do or
Speaker 1: die proposition that they knew that if they got caught
Speaker 1: that they would be not just killed, but probably tortured
Speaker 1: in a particularly egregious and public manner as an example
Speaker 1: for others. So they lined the bottom of the boat
Speaker 1: with dynamite, and they knew that, you know, if they
Speaker 1: got caught or something went wrong, and there were a
Speaker 1: myriad of things that could have gone wrong, but that
Speaker 1: they were going to blow themselves up. And how many
Speaker 1: children do they have? Two at the time, and come
Speaker 1: with them, absolutely, absolutely, including my great grandmother Elizabeth, who
Speaker 1: at the time was maybe four years old. Smalls disguised
Speaker 1: himself in a straw hat and long overcoat similar to
Speaker 1: what the ship's captain wore. With more than a dozen
Speaker 1: black passengers on board, most of them hiding below. He
Speaker 1: set sail towards the Union blockade and freedom, but the
Speaker 1: harbor was heavily fortified with Confederate sentries chained closely, and
Speaker 1: he knew all the pass codes because he was the
Speaker 1: pilot of the boat. And so every time he passed by,
Speaker 1: they were about five or six forts along the way
Speaker 1: here that he would have to blow the appropriate pass
Speaker 1: going on the whistle one by one. Smalls, playing it cool,
Speaker 1: gave the right pass codes and so so yeah, so
Speaker 1: they let him pass. And the last big obstacle is
Speaker 1: which fort is Fort Sumter, which is the largest and
Speaker 1: most dangerous fort in the harbor, and you know, the
Speaker 1: place where the Civil War began and just a place
Speaker 1: of enormous historical sort of gravity and wait, it was
Speaker 1: captured that point by the Confederacy, and there were enormous
Speaker 1: guns on Fort Sumter. When Smalls got to the point
Speaker 1: where he believed he was safely beyond the range of cannons,
Speaker 1: he fired up the engine and it was full steam ahead.
Speaker 1: But while Smalls and his crew had otherwise meticulously planned
Speaker 1: this escape, they'd overlooked one key detail. Their ship, speeding
Speaker 1: straight toward the Union blockade, was still flying a giant
Speaker 1: Confederate flag. Luckily, his wife Hannah, my great great grandmother,
Speaker 1: so together some white bedsheets, and so they quickly lowered
Speaker 1: the Confederate flag, raised the flag of surrender the white sheets,
Speaker 1: and they were greeted at the Union blockade of the
Speaker 1: USS onward, the Union forces had suddenly gained a heavily
Speaker 1: armed ship ideal for navigating Charleston's Harbor. Even more valuable
Speaker 1: than the ship, though, was the pilot's expert knowledge of
Speaker 1: the harbor, and the fledgling Northern War effort suddenly gained
Speaker 1: an honest to goodness war hero. I mean, there are
Speaker 1: all kinds of articles about how what Robert did was
Speaker 1: just sort of mind boggling. Of course, Robert was persona
Speaker 1: on grata in the South. There was a bounty on
Speaker 1: his head, but in the North he was received as
Speaker 1: a as a hero. You read these contemporaneous accounts, this
Speaker 1: is not a modern day sort of inflation of what
Speaker 1: happened at the time, and it was a really big deal.
Speaker 1: It's interesting to remember that at that point in time
Speaker 1: people thought of of enslaved people as African Americans, really
Speaker 1: as beasts of burden, but really blew people's minds because
Speaker 1: it just was beyond what people thought an enslaved person
Speaker 1: could do. Robert Smalls received fifteen hundred dollars as a
Speaker 1: reward for delivering the Planter, enough for him to hire
Speaker 1: private tutors and sent his children to the best schools
Speaker 1: that would accept African Americans at that time. And just
Speaker 1: three months after stepping aboard the US is onward, Robert
Speaker 1: Smalls met with President Abraham Lincoln himself. Lincoln had been
Speaker 1: cautious about employing runaway slaves in the Union military, but
Speaker 1: Smalls helped to make the case to the Great Bearded
Speaker 1: One that black men should be allowed to serve in
Speaker 1: the Union ranks. Lincoln eventually relented, clearing the way for
Speaker 1: some two hundred thousand African Americans to serve, including Robert Smalls,
Speaker 1: who went on to fight in seventeen naval battles, rising
Speaker 1: to the rank of captain. Why didn't he just take
Speaker 1: his winnings and settle into a comfortable life up north.
Speaker 1: I think he could have it. It would. He earned
Speaker 1: his freedom, he earned the future of just relaxing and
Speaker 1: living the life of a Civil War hero. But it
Speaker 1: wasn't enough for him, and he he came back, and
Speaker 1: he fought for others to gain them the same freedom
Speaker 1: that he had already won for himself. After the war,
Speaker 1: Smalls returned to Beauford, South Carolina, and, in a sign
Speaker 1: of how radically things had shifted in such a short time,
Speaker 1: he purchased the home of his former master. In eighteen
Speaker 1: sixty eight, as a delegate to South Carolina's Constitutional Convention,
Speaker 1: he helped to ratify an amendment that banned discrimination quote
Speaker 1: on account of race or color in any case. He
Speaker 1: then won a seat in the South Carolina State Legislature.
Speaker 1: That same state house depicted in such a demeaning way
Speaker 1: in the Birth of a Nation, but in the real
Speaker 1: world version of events, small spot for compulsory public schooling
Speaker 1: for all children black and white, and in eighteen seventy four,
Speaker 1: Robert Smalls was elected to the U. S. House of Representatives.
Speaker 1: Once black people get the right to vote in the South,
Speaker 1: they start electing people to office, which is one of
Speaker 1: the most remarkable changes in this whole period. That's Columbia
Speaker 1: University history professor Eric Foner, his landmark book on Reconstruction
Speaker 1: inspired a modern day reevaluation of the period. His latest
Speaker 1: book is about fourteenth and fifteenth amendments to the U. S. Constitution.
Speaker 1: Those are the ones ratified in the years after the
Speaker 1: Civil War that banned slavery, extended citizenship to all people
Speaker 1: born in the US, and effectively gave the vote to
Speaker 1: African American men the last most women of any race
Speaker 1: would have to wait another half century to vote. Well,
Speaker 1: when I look back at Reconstruction, I think of it
Speaker 1: as a pivotal moment in the history of American democracy.
Speaker 1: It's the first time in this country or really anywhere,
Speaker 1: that an interracial democracy was created. That's a really big deal,
Speaker 1: by the way, to say that the first time in history. Yes, yes,
Speaker 1: you don't have any examples of this in other countries. Really.
Speaker 1: Of course, slavery is abolished in many plots of the
Speaker 1: Western hemisphere in the nineteenth century. But a functioning interracial
Speaker 1: democracy is not really created in any of those places.
Speaker 1: And here you have it. You have people who a
Speaker 1: few years before with slaves now holding political office. My
Speaker 1: estimate is that about two thousand African American men held
Speaker 1: some kind of public office. I'm talking about from Congress
Speaker 1: down to members of the legislature, down to sheriff and
Speaker 1: school board official and Justice of the Piece. I think
Speaker 1: Robert Smalls was the type of individual who rolled up
Speaker 1: his sleeves and stuck his neck out to make things happen.
Speaker 1: Robert Smalls's tenure in Congress coincided with the rise of
Speaker 1: a black political elite in the nation's capital and in
Speaker 1: emerging social one too. Next the story of the black
Speaker 1: senator from Mississippi and his socialite wife. There was a
Speaker 1: time where like all I did was think, eat and sleep.
Speaker 1: Josephine Bruce Alison Hobbs is a director of African American
Speaker 1: Studies at Stanford University. A few years back, she wrote
Speaker 1: about the June eight wedding of Mississippi Senator Blanche K.
Speaker 1: Bruce to the former Josephine Wilson. This would have been
Speaker 1: the wedding of the century. We can imagine this very
Speaker 1: well appointed, gorgeous home where this very fancy wedding is
Speaker 1: taking place. Crowds gathered outside that home, hoping for a glimpse.
Speaker 1: But the house belonged not to the senator, but to
Speaker 1: the bride's father, a wealthy African American dentist in Cleveland.
Speaker 1: The beautiful Josephine was a socialite in a burgeoning black
Speaker 1: upper class, So it was the senator who was marrying up.
Speaker 1: Blanche Bruce is going to look out on the family
Speaker 1: and friends that have gathered and not see one person
Speaker 1: from his own family, and perhaps not even see one
Speaker 1: familiar face. And this is a sitting US senator right right.
Speaker 1: Perhaps Josephine's family did not want any kind of reminders
Speaker 1: of the slave past at this wedding. That most of
Speaker 1: Blanche Bruce's family members had been enslaved, while Josephine's family
Speaker 1: were born free. Bruce had been enslaved for more than
Speaker 1: half of his life, and so that automatically places him
Speaker 1: in a very different kind of category than Josephine Bruce
Speaker 1: and her circle and her parents circle. Blanche Bruce was
Speaker 1: living in Missouri at the start of the Civil War,
Speaker 1: he led to the Free State of Kansas, and after
Speaker 1: the war studied at Oberlin College in Ohio before making
Speaker 1: his way to Mississippi. There he bought a plantation, got
Speaker 1: involved in local politics, and in eighteen seventy five was
Speaker 1: sworn in as the state's junior U. S. Senator, occupying
Speaker 1: the very same seat once held by Jefferson Davis, the
Speaker 1: former President of the Confederacy. This was not a man
Speaker 1: who was not ready for prime time. Is that someone
Speaker 1: who was in over there had. This was someone who,
Speaker 1: despite all the odds against him, succeeded enormously. Lawrence Otis
Speaker 1: Graham is the author of a history of the Bruce
Speaker 1: family called The Senator and the Socialite. You write that
Speaker 1: he had the manners of a Chesterfield. What does that mean?
Speaker 1: He was sort of an upper class gentleman who, you know,
Speaker 1: carried the walking stick and was finally groomed and almost
Speaker 1: British in his carriage and behavior. He knew that even
Speaker 1: though he at this slave heritage and people were always
Speaker 1: going to know that he needs to present himself as
Speaker 1: a sophisticated Washington political leader. Sophistication came more naturally to Josephine.
Speaker 1: She grew up ensconced in a world of privilege unattainable
Speaker 1: for all but the wealthiest Americans at the time, black
Speaker 1: or white. After the couple's wedding, they set sail on
Speaker 1: a four month European honeymoon, which stops in Germany, Holland,
Speaker 1: and Switzerland. The newly weds attended the theater in London
Speaker 1: and shopped in Paris. If half is true, that is
Speaker 1: told of her beauty and accomplishments, The Washington Post gushed
Speaker 1: just before their wedding, her entry here as a senator's
Speaker 1: wife is likely to create a sensation for this is phenomenal.
Speaker 1: Graham and I visited the five story read Rick Washington,
Speaker 1: d c. Townhouse the Bruces called home, and some of
Speaker 1: these windows are almost Florida ceiling. You must have been
Speaker 1: so happy to find out that the house is still here. Oh, absolutely,
Speaker 1: just a mile from the White House. This was an
Speaker 1: integrated neighborhood in the eighteen seventies. To be able to
Speaker 1: walk down the steps and feel like I would understand
Speaker 1: the life of this wealthy, black, powerful couple at a
Speaker 1: time when you didn't even think blacks existed in a
Speaker 1: lifestyle like this. That house became an important stop on
Speaker 1: the Washington social circuit. If Bravo had been around back
Speaker 1: then would Blanche and Josephine have been on it. They
Speaker 1: would have come after them for a TV show. Oh
Speaker 1: my gosh, they would be the great reality show. Can
Speaker 1: you imagine this living in a home like this and
Speaker 1: you know, socializing in because they're moving from the black world.
Speaker 1: There's their black world and then there's their white world.
Speaker 1: And she's terrific looking. Oh, she's of and she knows
Speaker 1: how that. She knows how to pull it off. She
Speaker 1: knew how to enter a room, she knew how to
Speaker 1: make people want to know her. But she was not
Speaker 1: doing it for herself. She was doing it for her husband,
Speaker 1: and she was doing it for his career. So she
Speaker 1: would invite and host the wives of senators, on the
Speaker 1: wives of Supreme Court justices, and these women would come,
Speaker 1: they would come, they would come, and because of their presence,
Speaker 1: the society columns would cover them. But news accounts also
Speaker 1: made constant, unsettling reference to Josephine's light complexion. It requires
Speaker 1: much more than usual attention to notice that she has
Speaker 1: any African blood in her veins. Read one dispatch on
Speaker 1: the front page of the New York Times. Her looks,
Speaker 1: along with her wealth and bearing, made Josephine particularly vexing
Speaker 1: to many in the Washington political establishment, And in some
Speaker 1: ways that was exactly what was so disturbing to many
Speaker 1: of the members of the Senate and their wives, was
Speaker 1: that she just acted like a white woman to them.
Speaker 1: And in many cases, she's more refined, she's more well
Speaker 1: educated than any of the white senators wives. One paper
Speaker 1: went so far as to run an article titled ought
Speaker 1: we to visit Her, describing the dilemma many white senators
Speaker 1: wives faced. I mean, you could imagine that these white
Speaker 1: women who are in Washington, who are married to senators,
Speaker 1: they perceived themselves as being at the very top of
Speaker 1: the social ladder, and then a black woman comes, and
Speaker 1: all of the sudden, she is the topic that everyone
Speaker 1: can't stop talking about, and she's the one that the
Speaker 1: newspapers want to write about. There was no rule book
Speaker 1: for how to receive the wife of an African American senator,
Speaker 1: and so all of these white women are sort of
Speaker 1: making it up as they go along, and some seem
Speaker 1: to do it with some grace, and others don't now.
Speaker 1: It probably won't surprise you that some politicians and their
Speaker 1: wives did snub the Bruces. But what's interesting to me
Speaker 1: is the disapproval those politicians were met with. For example,
Speaker 1: there's this eight seventy nine editorial from a Wisconsin newspaper
Speaker 1: that scolds the politicians who have quote studiously ignored Josephine
Speaker 1: Bruce's existence. The editorial concludes, they have allowed themselves to
Speaker 1: be controlled by that old race prejudice. To me, it's
Speaker 1: so striking that this editorial is not making any excuses
Speaker 1: for the white editors and their wives who have not
Speaker 1: received the Bruces right, which is so interesting. It seems
Speaker 1: surprising that anyone would be surprised that there were white
Speaker 1: wives who did not visit the Bruces. I mean, it
Speaker 1: seems like that would have been what people would have
Speaker 1: expected at the time. And so that's where I think
Speaker 1: we do have to kind of think, well, maybe there
Speaker 1: were people who really did believe that a social revolution
Speaker 1: had happened and that people needed to accept that and
Speaker 1: move on and move ahead. As Senator Blanche Cave, Bruce
Speaker 1: advocated not only for the rights of black people, but
Speaker 1: also Native Americans and Chinese immigrant laborers. He was the
Speaker 1: first African American to preside over the Senate. He even
Speaker 1: chaired a Republican national Convention. For many Americans, the Bruce's
Speaker 1: wealth and status must have embodied the heights to which
Speaker 1: African Americans could aspire in a reconstructed America. But the
Speaker 1: uneasiness some felt about them being part of the Washington
Speaker 1: establishment would be a sign of things to come back.
Speaker 1: In eighteen sixty one, on the eve of the Civil War,
Speaker 1: Alexander Stephens, the vice president of the newly formed Confederate
Speaker 1: States of America, delivered a speech laying out the reasoning
Speaker 1: behind the nascent rebellion. The great truth, he proclaimed, was
Speaker 1: that the negro is not equal to the white man,
Speaker 1: that slavery, subordination to the superior race is his natural
Speaker 1: and normal condition. But by eighteen seventy four a lot
Speaker 1: had changed. Over six hundred thousand Americans had died in
Speaker 1: the war that followed that speech, four million slaves were freed,
Speaker 1: and many of them now held public office throughout the South,
Speaker 1: and the US Congress was fiercely debating a Republican backed
Speaker 1: civil rights bill that would outlaw discrimination based on race.
Speaker 1: In hotels, theaters, and railway cars. The Democratic opposition to
Speaker 1: the law was being led by none other than former
Speaker 1: Vice President of the Confederacy Alexander Stevens. He was now
Speaker 1: back in Congress from Georgia again, Professor Eric Fohner, and
Speaker 1: he'd given a speech denouncing the civil Rights law and
Speaker 1: really defending slavery and saying the Civil War had nothing
Speaker 1: to do with slavery. It was all local rights. Remember
Speaker 1: when the South seceded, Stevens gave a speech saying slavery
Speaker 1: is the cornerstone of the Confederacy. Fast forward fifteen years
Speaker 1: and he's, oh, no, no, it wasn't about slavery. And anyway,
Speaker 1: black people don't deserve these rights anyway. We don't want
Speaker 1: to be in a hotel with a black person, or
Speaker 1: a railroad with a black person, or anything like that.
Speaker 1: And the Republican floor leader, when Stevens was finished, said,
Speaker 1: you know, it's kind of late. Now. We're gonna adjourn
Speaker 1: until tomorrow morning when Robert B. Elliott will give the
Speaker 1: Republican response. South Carolina Congressman Robert Brown. Elliott was famous
Speaker 1: for his sterling oratory, his effortless display of classical learning,
Speaker 1: and his eloquence in debate. He was also black, but
Speaker 1: among his African American colleagues, most of whom were mixed race,
Speaker 1: Elliott stood out for his darker skin, A living, breathing
Speaker 1: rebuttal to racist ideology of the time. If you were
Speaker 1: an intelligent black person and you were mixed, like Frederick Douglas,
Speaker 1: of course racists would say, yes, of course, your braun
Speaker 1: comes from your freaking heritage. Your brain comes from your
Speaker 1: European heritings. So I think he must have caused quite
Speaker 1: as their Elliott was also more radical in his politics
Speaker 1: than his black colleagues were. He had opposed granting amnesty
Speaker 1: to former Confederates, so when word got out that he
Speaker 1: would give the response to Steven's, African Americans filled the
Speaker 1: house galleries. They came to see what one paper dubbed
Speaker 1: as quote the African take on the quote brain of
Speaker 1: the Confederacy. Elliott began his response to Stevens by insisting
Speaker 1: that the rights guaranteed by this bill were quite simply inalienable.
Speaker 1: Here are Elliot's words, read by actor Delroy Lindo. While
Speaker 1: I am sincerely grateful for this high mark of courtesy
Speaker 1: that has been accorded to me by this House. It
Speaker 1: is a matter of regret to me that it is
Speaker 1: necessary at this that I should rise in the presence
Speaker 1: of an American Congress to advocate a bill which simply
Speaker 1: asserts equal rights and equal public privileges for all classes
Speaker 1: of American citizens. I regret, sir, that the dark hue
Speaker 1: of my skin may lend the color to the imputation
Speaker 1: that I am controlled by motives personal to myself in
Speaker 1: my advocacy of this great measure of national justice. Elliott
Speaker 1: then faced down the aged, stooped and Billius Stevens and
Speaker 1: his colleagues, calling them out for their Confederate past. It
Speaker 1: is scarcely twelve years since that gentleman shocked the civilized
Speaker 1: world by announcing the birth of a government which rested
Speaker 1: on human slavery as its cornerstone. The progress of events
Speaker 1: has swept away that pseudo government, which rested on greed, pride,
Speaker 1: and tyranny, and the race whom he then ruthlessly spurned
Speaker 1: and trampled on are here to meet him in debate. Sir,
Speaker 1: the gentleman from Georgia has not much since eighteen sixty one,
Speaker 1: but he is still a laggered now that he's addressing
Speaker 1: the vice President of the Confederacy, you know, who wasn't
Speaker 1: used to black people talking about him that way, And
Speaker 1: I wonder what the protocol was. Did people cheer? I mean,
Speaker 1: I mean, well, they weren't supposed to cheer, but they did.
Speaker 1: Elliott concluded the speech by citing biblical precedent and making
Speaker 1: the case that this bill would serve as the capstone
Speaker 1: to Reconstruction itself. The results of the war, as seen
Speaker 1: in Reconstruction, have settled forever the political status of my race.
Speaker 1: The passage of this bill will determine the civil status
Speaker 1: not only of the Negro, but if any other class
Speaker 1: of citizens who may feel themselves discriminated against. It will
Speaker 1: form the capstone of that temple of liberty begun on
Speaker 1: this continent under discouraging circumstances, carried on in spite of
Speaker 1: the sneers of monarchists and the cavils of pretended friends
Speaker 1: of freedom, until the last it stands, in all its
Speaker 1: beautiful symmetry and proportions, a building the grandest of which
Speaker 1: the world has ever seen. And the speech was widely
Speaker 1: reported in the press. It was widely hailed. One Kentucky
Speaker 1: newspaper said, this was the most impressive speech by a
Speaker 1: black man in American history. Now that's saying something when
Speaker 1: you had Frederick Douglas out there getting brilliant speeches. But
Speaker 1: it made an impact. Elliot became a nationally known figure
Speaker 1: because of his speech on the Civil Rights Bill. With
Speaker 1: the votes of African American cong Risman Joseph Rainey, Richard Kane,
Speaker 1: James t Rapier, and John Roy Lynch, that Civil Rights
Speaker 1: Bill passed, and on March one, eight President Ulysses S.
Speaker 1: Grant signed it into law. Discrimination in restaurants, theaters, and
Speaker 1: street cars was now illegal in the United States, at
Speaker 1: least it was on paper. The slave went free stood
Speaker 1: a brief moment in the sun. That's how the great
Speaker 1: writer and civil rights activist W. E. B. Du Bois
Speaker 1: described Reconstruction. Sadly, that moment in the sun wouldn't last. All.
Speaker 1: Throughout Reconstruction, white supremacist groups terrorized black voters and office
Speaker 1: holders in the South with violence and intimidation, slowly eroding
Speaker 1: their power. And then in eighteen seventy six, a dispute
Speaker 1: over who won the presidential election I think Bush v. Gore,
Speaker 1: but without the hanging chads, led to a deal, Republicans
Speaker 1: could have the White House as long as they agreed
Speaker 1: to the demands of the Southern Democrats also known as
Speaker 1: the former Confederates, to withdraw federal troops from the South.
Speaker 1: Those federal troops were essential to protecting the rights of
Speaker 1: the newly emancipated black population, rights that included voting. Just
Speaker 1: a few years later, the Civil Rights Bill of eighteen
Speaker 1: seventy five, which had never really been enforced, was struck
Speaker 1: down by the Supreme Court. Reconstruction doesn't end immediately. It
Speaker 1: loses impetus, it loses power. But like in the eighteen eighties,
Speaker 1: black people are still voting in many parts of the South.
Speaker 1: There was still black congressman in the eighties, still black
Speaker 1: office holders, less political power than they had had during Reconstruction.
Speaker 1: But it's not until really the turn of the century
Speaker 1: that a whole new system of racial equality is put
Speaker 1: into place, what we call Jim Crow as a shorthand.
Speaker 1: By the year nineteen hundred, there was just one African
Speaker 1: American in Congress, George White. He chose not to run
Speaker 1: for re election that year after his home state of
Speaker 1: North Carolina passed laws restricting black voting in his farewell
Speaker 1: Address of January one, White addressed the US House in
Speaker 1: words that managed to capture both the deep disappointment of
Speaker 1: reconstruction and the fierce determination for a better future that
Speaker 1: it had inspired. I asked Henry Lewis Gates to read
Speaker 1: white speech. This Mr. Chairman is perhaps the nig temporary
Speaker 1: farewell to the American Congress. But let me say phoenix
Speaker 1: like he will rise up someday and come again. These
Speaker 1: parting words are in behalf of an outraged, heartbroken, bruised
Speaker 1: and bleeding, but God fearing people. After that speech, it
Speaker 1: took twenty seven years before another African American would be
Speaker 1: elected to the US House. Over on the Senate side,
Speaker 1: Blanche K. Bruce left office in He and Josephine remained
Speaker 1: for much of their lives in Washington, d C. Where
Speaker 1: she founded the National Association of Colored Women. Bruce's Senate
Speaker 1: seat went to a former Confederate general. Five years went
Speaker 1: by before another Frican American was elected to the U.
Speaker 1: S Senate. Not long after his famous speech on the
Speaker 1: floor of the House, Robert Brown Elliott resigned his House
Speaker 1: seat and returned to South Carolina. He started a law practice,
Speaker 1: but it attracted few clients, and Elliott died in poverty
Speaker 1: in four As for naval hero turned congressman Robert Smalls,
Speaker 1: he served five terms in the House. After losing his
Speaker 1: last election, he returned to Beauford, South Carolina, and died
Speaker 1: in ninetift That same year, the Birth of a Nation
Speaker 1: was released. You remember the Birth of a Nation. That
Speaker 1: was the movie I told you about at the start
Speaker 1: of this episode, with that disgraceful scene depicting black lawmaker
Speaker 1: as a drinking eating chicken, their bare feet up on
Speaker 1: desks in the South Carolina State House. Now remember, by
Speaker 1: that time, blacks had lost the right to vote throughout
Speaker 1: the South, and Birth of a Nation is telling you
Speaker 1: that is justifiable. Why because look what happened when black
Speaker 1: people held office. It was a travesty of government. This
Speaker 1: is a complete fabrication. It's what you would call today
Speaker 1: fake history. But it had a powerful impact on public
Speaker 1: sentiment in the early twentieth century. Now, the Birth of
Speaker 1: a Nation wasn't just some indie flick playing down at
Speaker 1: the one art house in town. Director D. W. Griffith's
Speaker 1: epic was one of the highest grossing films of the
Speaker 1: Silent era. It's star Lillian Gish was known as the
Speaker 1: first Lady of American cinema, and despite protests from the
Speaker 1: n double A c P. And there were protests, President
Speaker 1: Woodrow Wilson hosted a screening of the movie at the
Speaker 1: White House. That image, that scene was that than and
Speaker 1: the dominant view of how blacks had held office and
Speaker 1: how they had comported themselves during Reconstruction. By the time
Speaker 1: Birth of a Nation came out, you already had scholars,
Speaker 1: my predecessors at Columbia University among them, who had, in
Speaker 1: a more academic way, written that black suffrage was a
Speaker 1: terrible mistake, that black people are incapable of holding political
Speaker 1: office or taking part in democracy. So those ideas were
Speaker 1: out there, But a film like Birth of a Nation
Speaker 1: conveys those ideas to far more people than an academic
Speaker 1: treatise is ever going to do. The North and may
Speaker 1: have won the war, but the South won the movie
Speaker 1: houses and the text books. Henry Lewis Gates remembers how
Speaker 1: he was taught about Reconstruction in his West Virginia High
Speaker 1: school history class. Was it really embarrassing? It was? You
Speaker 1: can't imagine how embarrassing it was. We with the few
Speaker 1: black people to claim we had hold her books in
Speaker 1: her face and sort of slide down because Abraham Lincoln,
Speaker 1: the greatest American since George Washington, had given his life
Speaker 1: for you people, and when you people were freed, he
Speaker 1: squandered the opportunity in this embarrassing period called Reconstruction. That's personally.
Speaker 1: I grew up in Long Island, near New York City suburb.
Speaker 1: That's what I was taught in high school in the
Speaker 1: nineteen fifties. Reconstruction was the worst period in American history.
Speaker 1: It was a travesty of democracy. Black people misused the
Speaker 1: right to vote, were not capable of serving in public office.
Speaker 1: You know that that was toward everywhere, and it's still
Speaker 1: has a hold on an older generation of people who
Speaker 1: learned this in school. So you know, it's a very
Speaker 1: pernicious set of myths. But it shows you that history matters.
Speaker 1: What people think about history matters. But what if the
Speaker 1: story way of Reconstruction had been told differently? What if
Speaker 1: instead of the birth of a nation, people thought of
Speaker 1: that beautiful eight seventy two courier and ives lithograph, the
Speaker 1: one of the Black Congressman of Reconstruction. When Henry Lewis
Speaker 1: Gates and I were admiring it. I asked him if
Speaker 1: maybe it was time that Hollywood reconsider Reconstruction. I hate
Speaker 1: to produce everything to casting, but I do think that
Speaker 1: John Amos could play Hiram Revels. I love Johnny. So
Speaker 1: you have Billy Dee Williams. Billy Billy d Williams is
Speaker 1: just u Mersila Ali Ali as would be Robert Brown Elliott.
Speaker 1: One last thing. When I started this story, I thought
Speaker 1: of the black Congressman of Reconstruction as forgotten forerunners, and
Speaker 1: they were forgotten by Hollywood, by high school history books,
Speaker 1: by most of us. But it turns out they weren't
Speaker 1: forgotten by everyone. During the Great Depression in the late
Speaker 1: nineteen thirties, President Franklin Delano Roosevelt's Works Progress Administration sent
Speaker 1: out of work writers into the South to document the
Speaker 1: lives of now elderly former slaves. And one of the
Speaker 1: coolest things is that when w p A workers would
Speaker 1: go into sharecroppers homes in the South and they find
Speaker 1: faded copies of the lithograp still on the wall, people
Speaker 1: keeping in line the memory of the apex of black achievement.
Speaker 1: Immediately following the Civil War, so when I was growing up,
Speaker 1: it's a picture. There was Jesus and John Kennedy and
Speaker 1: Martin Lure the King, but at that time there was
Speaker 1: this lithograph. Next time on Mobituaries, we take the show
Speaker 1: on the road, Seth Paul Prudeome is not altogether now,
Speaker 1: Oh my god, I just got a whole audience to say,
Speaker 1: Don Deloise and Unison, I certainly hope you enjoyed this moment.
Speaker 1: May I ask you to please rate and review the podcast.
Speaker 1: You can also follow Mobituaries on Facebook and Instagram, and
Speaker 1: you can follow me on Twitter at Morocca. For more
Speaker 1: great content, go to mobituaries dot com. You can subscribe
Speaker 1: to Mobituaries wherever you get your podcasts. This episode of
Speaker 1: Mobituaries was produced by Kate mccauliffe and Mark Hudspeth. It
Speaker 1: was edited by Michael Levine. Our team of producers also
Speaker 1: includes Megan Marcus, Harry Wood, and me Morocca. It was
Speaker 1: engineered by Dan Gazula special thanks to Harvard University's Hoton Library.
Speaker 1: Charleston Harbord tours everyone in Beaufort, South Carolina, home of
Speaker 1: the Reconstruction Era National Historic Park and my friend the
Speaker 1: Great del Roy Lindo, who you can see on The
Speaker 1: Good Fight streaming on CBS All Access. To learn more
Speaker 1: about reconstruction, be sure to check out Henry Lewis Gates's
Speaker 1: latest book, Dark Sky Rising, and Philip Dre's Gripping Capital Men.
Speaker 1: Indispensable support from Genius Donski, Richard Rorer and everyone at
Speaker 1: CBS News Radio. Our theme music is written by Daniel
Speaker 1: Hart and as always, undying thanks to Rand Morrison and
Speaker 1: John Carp without whom Mobituaries couldn't live. Hi, It's mo.
Speaker 1: If you're enjoying Mobituaries the podcast, may I invite you
Speaker 1: to check out Mobituaries the book. It's chock full of
Speaker 1: stories not in the podcast. Celebrities who put their butts
Speaker 1: on the line, sports teams that threw in the towel
Speaker 1: for good, for fashions, defunct diagnoses presidential candidacies that cratered
Speaker 1: whole countries that went to put and dragons, Yes, dragons,
Speaker 1: you see. People used to believe the dragons will real
Speaker 1: until just get the book. You can order Mobituaries the
Speaker 1: Book from any online bookseller, or stop by your local
Speaker 1: bookstore and look for me when I come to your city.
Speaker 1: Tour information and lots more at mobituaries dot com.