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Speaker 1: Welcomed Unobscured, a production of I Heart Radio and Aaron Minky.

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Speaker 1: Historian Emily Clark is Associate professor of Religious Studies at

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Speaker 1: Gonzaga University. She's our guest for this episode. Her scholarship

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Speaker 1: focuses on African American religions, American Catholic history, colonialism, religious

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Speaker 1: material culture, and finally something that we're big fans of

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Speaker 1: around here, hauntings. Dr Clark's first book, A Luminous Brotherhood,

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Speaker 1: won multiple awards for its exploration of the sir harmonique

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Speaker 1: in New Orleans. She sat down to talk with researcher

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Speaker 1: Carl Nellis about this fascinating circle of spiritualists and what

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Speaker 1: their story tells us about spiritualism in America. But their

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Speaker 1: conversation didn't stop there. Her deep understanding of spiritualism was

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Speaker 1: invaluable for putting our story together, and we're so glad

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Speaker 1: she could join us. We begin with her perspective on

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Speaker 1: what it meant to be a spiritualist in nineteenth century America.

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Speaker 1: This is the Unobscured interview series for season two. I'm

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Speaker 1: Aaron Manky. To be a spiritualist meant that you one

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Speaker 1: of the central things guiding your understanding of the religious

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Speaker 1: and spiritual world was a belief in a spirit world

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Speaker 1: beyond this material, earthly one. Uh. And additionally that communication

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Speaker 1: with spirits in that world was possible um, and not

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Speaker 1: just possible, but was something that you know, if you

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Speaker 1: could do, you should do. Um. Spiritualism was completely compatible

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Speaker 1: with various forms of Christianity, especially liberal Protestantism. You'd find

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Speaker 1: in lots of Unitarians, Anglicans, Congregationalists who were also spiritualists.

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Speaker 1: And for many spiritualists, God and Jesus resided in the

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Speaker 1: spirit world. Um. In fact, the group I study they

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Speaker 1: received messages from Jesus. Um. The spirit world. It could

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Speaker 1: have heaven, it could have um sort of an understanding

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Speaker 1: of hell for some. For some spiritualists the spirit world

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Speaker 1: had multiple heavens or multiple hells. Um. But I think

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Speaker 1: the thing that really unites a lot of them together

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Speaker 1: is this belief in a spirit world beyond this one,

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Speaker 1: and that we can communicate with those who were in

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Speaker 1: the spirit world. So there were people from all kinds

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Speaker 1: of especially Christian traditions, who were involved in the practice

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Speaker 1: of spiritualism. Um. What kinds of things were people looking

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Speaker 1: for when they attended a spiritualist seyance beyond what they

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Speaker 1: were getting from their religious traditions already answers. People went

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Speaker 1: to a seance for answers um. For many of them,

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Speaker 1: it was answers about the nature of reality um, the

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Speaker 1: nature of the material world, the spirit world, the relationship

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Speaker 1: between the material world and the world beyond this one. Um.

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Speaker 1: You know, answers for answers for questions that Christianity sort

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Speaker 1: of answered, but also for many answered in a way

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Speaker 1: that didn't feel complete. Um. So an understanding of the

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Speaker 1: world beyond this one. In many cases, people went to

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Speaker 1: sciences for closure. You know, maybe it was shortly after

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Speaker 1: a family member or a friend had died and you know,

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Speaker 1: you wanted to hear from them one last time, or

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Speaker 1: you wanted assurance that wherever you know their entity now

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Speaker 1: was was okay. UM. So seiunds could provide closure. And

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Speaker 1: in a lot of cases, people wanted to say their

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Speaker 1: curiosity UM. For those more casual science goers, spiritualism offered

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Speaker 1: a really interesting form of leisure activity. You know, how

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Speaker 1: better to spice up a Thursday evening than going to

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Speaker 1: a seance UM. And you know, maybe something really interesting

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Speaker 1: and exciting will happen. So for some people it was

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Speaker 1: about curiosity, um, and for some people it was to

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Speaker 1: try to debunk supposed Charlatan's. So it could be entertainment,

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Speaker 1: but it could also be, you know, a really deep

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Speaker 1: spiritual experience. And in that variety of reasons and motivations

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Speaker 1: that someone might come to a science um in conversation

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Speaker 1: with the idea of people who are a part of

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Speaker 1: a religious traation coming. There's also all kinds of people

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Speaker 1: who were involved in scientific investigation or the horizons of

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Speaker 1: scientific knowledge, UM, who were involved at the beginning with spiritualism.

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Speaker 1: Can you talk a little bit about how in the

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Speaker 1: early eight hundreds mesmerism and related pact this is that

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Speaker 1: we're considered kind of new horizons of applied science of

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Speaker 1: a human mind, of a human person trying to observe

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Speaker 1: and measure what was going on with our bodies and

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Speaker 1: our minds. How did those new horizons of science lay

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Speaker 1: the groundwork for what became spiritualism. So mesmerism um is

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Speaker 1: a great sort of religious spiritual movement idea to put

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Speaker 1: in conversation with spiritualism. So mesmerism was developed by a

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Speaker 1: German physician, Frand's Antoine mesmer UM. And he writes this

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Speaker 1: absolutely fabulous doctoral dissertation. UM that's throwing around terms like

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Speaker 1: animal magnetism and animal gravity and planetary gravity, and it's

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Speaker 1: just it's an absolutely fabulous read for anyone who has

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Speaker 1: spare time. UM. And what he ends up coming through

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Speaker 1: is is you know this thing that we call mesmerism,

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Speaker 1: which more or less argues that there were invisible fluids

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Speaker 1: coursing through the bodies of humans, connecting them to a

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Speaker 1: larger world around them. UM. And that good health, you know,

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Speaker 1: physical health, mental health, emotional health, spiritual health. Good health

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Speaker 1: was the result of keeping those fluids in harmony. UM.

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Speaker 1: So accessing and manipulating these fluids UM, both mesmerists but

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Speaker 1: also spirits could affect and influence people's bodies UM. And

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Speaker 1: magnetizers that's what mesmerists would call those who could manipulate

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Speaker 1: the fluids. Magnetizers could use the powers of their minds

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Speaker 1: to harmonize the fluids and others. UH. A number of

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Speaker 1: spiritualists would first go into a mesmeric trance before communicating

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Speaker 1: with spirits. A number of spiritualists done it UM. But

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Speaker 1: either way, mesmerism really paved the way for spiritualism by

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Speaker 1: offering this understanding of invisible spiritual forces that connected us

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Speaker 1: to the world around us, and more importantly, that we

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Speaker 1: could tap into those spiritual for says, and there were

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Speaker 1: other invisible forces being harnessed and tapped in, controlled and manipulated.

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Speaker 1: Uh in the mid nineteenth century, right with things like

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Speaker 1: the telegraph and with new applications of electricity. Can you

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Speaker 1: talk a little bit about the way that in early

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Speaker 1: spiritualism there was kind of this conversation between religious discourses

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Speaker 1: and science and technologies like the telegraph that all fed

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Speaker 1: into what it meant to be a medium. Oh yeah,

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Speaker 1: so spiritualists were incredibly interested in technology. UM. Technology was

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Speaker 1: a way of showing legitimacy. Many spirituals understood the communication

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Speaker 1: process with the spirit world to be akin to electricity

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Speaker 1: or the telegraph UM. The beloved spiritualist theologian Andrew Jackson Davis,

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Speaker 1: nicknamed the Poughkeepsie Seer because he's from Poughkeepsie, UM and

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Speaker 1: upstate New York, regularly talked about the spiritual telegraph um

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Speaker 1: and used use the the understanding of the telegraph to

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Speaker 1: explain either, you know, it's totally possible that messages can

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Speaker 1: be communicated without us seeing it happening. Um. You know,

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Speaker 1: when a message is going through a telegraph wire, you

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Speaker 1: don't necessarily know that you know it's it's it's happening

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Speaker 1: without you being aware or being able to notice that

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Speaker 1: something's happening. And spiritualism can be the same way. Messages

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Speaker 1: can be communicated through these unseen but very powerful forces

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Speaker 1: that you know, scientifically we can measure and spiritually we

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Speaker 1: can measure. Um. It wasn't just things like the telegraph

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Speaker 1: and electricity. There is this absolutely fabulous chemist uh turned spiritualist,

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Speaker 1: Robert Hare, who invented these fantastic um machines that he

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Speaker 1: called spiritoscopes, which would be used by a medium and

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Speaker 1: they would have all of these dials UM, and wheels

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Speaker 1: and pulleys and some names on the dials would letters

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Speaker 1: and numbers, and through the communication of a spirit, a

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Speaker 1: medium would manipulate this machine and they wouldn't be able

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Speaker 1: to see what the message was saying, which was proof

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Speaker 1: because the messages being not only mediated through the medium

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Speaker 1: but also through the machine. Like it's this is a

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Speaker 1: way of saying, there's no fraud here. They're just doing

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Speaker 1: as the spirit wills them. UM. And so you know,

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Speaker 1: machines like that could help UM show the legitimacy of

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Speaker 1: spiritualism photography too. As photography really takes off in the

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Speaker 1: eighteen fifties, you've got the development of what gets photography,

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Speaker 1: which is UM people taking photographs during seances or um

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Speaker 1: after trying to call forth a spirit, and you would

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Speaker 1: get these really eerie photographs with sort of these disembodied

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Speaker 1: very UM kind of light figures in photographs UM that

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Speaker 1: many people get exposed as fraud in what they're doing

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Speaker 1: is double exposure to some film. Uh, there's the whole

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Speaker 1: scandal of William Mummler who's making tons of money off

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Speaker 1: of fake spirit photography. And then you've got planned shots

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Speaker 1: and Weuiji boards coming later. So there's always this interest

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Speaker 1: in UM the way in which technology where whether it's

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Speaker 1: simple machines or something more complicated like how electricity works.

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Speaker 1: Spiritualists are engaging with that world and you know, using

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Speaker 1: it to help facilitate conversation with the spirit world. And

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Speaker 1: those are some of the high tech kind of solutions

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Speaker 1: of the day. UM. There are some other aspects of

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Speaker 1: spiritualist material culture that play large roles in some turning

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Speaker 1: points in spiritualist history. Can you talk a little bit

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Speaker 1: about the spirit cabinet and how that functioned in seances.

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Speaker 1: Spirit cabinets were fascinating. Um. They could be these fantastic

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Speaker 1: pieces of equipment or really really simple. Um. So some

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Speaker 1: spirit cabinets, especially the ones that you would see in

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Speaker 1: public seances, were like these edited furniture wardrobes um that

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Speaker 1: might have a seat or a bench inside for the

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Speaker 1: medium to sit. UM. So imagine you know a wardrobe

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Speaker 1: that's sort of empty on the inside, with the exception

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Speaker 1: of this little seat for the medium to sit. Often

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Speaker 1: the medium would be tied up um to prove that,

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Speaker 1: you know, sounds or manifested spirits were clearly not them

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Speaker 1: duping the people because they were tied up um. For example,

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Speaker 1: the Davenport brothers, the famous Davenport brothers, William and Ira,

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Speaker 1: had this large cabinet in which both of them would

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Speaker 1: be bound, and then the audience would hear musical instruments

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Speaker 1: being played um after they were closed in the cabinets.

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Speaker 1: They're even tests to prove that they weren't playing the

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Speaker 1: instruments themselves. One one of their tours, I think it

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Speaker 1: was in Ireland, someone put blue paint on their hands

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Speaker 1: um and then expected, you know, to find all these

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Speaker 1: blue handprints all over the trumpets and the trombones um,

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Speaker 1: and there was nothing. Or other people would sprinkle flower

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Speaker 1: on their laps um and so you know, the idea was,

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Speaker 1: you know, it would be very obvious if they had moved,

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Speaker 1: because there would be flower everywhere. UM. And at the

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Speaker 1: end of the seance, you know, they would open the

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Speaker 1: cabinet and they're still they're all tied up UM with

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Speaker 1: the flower being intact, or you know, the blue paint

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Speaker 1: isn't everywhere. In other cases, spirit cabinets were really simple UM.

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Speaker 1: In homes. Sometimes people would refer to their spirit cabinet

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Speaker 1: when really it was just a curtain pulled across the

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Speaker 1: dead corner of a parlor UM. And so sometimes these

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Speaker 1: would be called spirit curtains, but they would frequently get

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Speaker 1: referred to a spirit cabinets, and they were super common.

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Speaker 1: Materialization seances UM, which were increasingly in the nineteenth century

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Speaker 1: quite popular UM. At the at home seance, where a

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Speaker 1: materialization spirit or a materialization seance, you would have people

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Speaker 1: interact in some cases with the material body of a

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Speaker 1: spirit that would emerge. So you'd find these descriptions um,

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Speaker 1: from people who are at a materialization seance, and they

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Speaker 1: might notice by their feet what looks like a small

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Speaker 1: white handkerchief has appeared, and very slowly the handkerchief grows

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Speaker 1: and it turns into something bigger and bigger and bigger.

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Speaker 1: And the next thing you know, the spirit of your

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Speaker 1: deceased wife has materialized right next to you. UM. And

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Speaker 1: then she hugs you, or she kisses you, she grabs you.

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Speaker 1: You can feel her material body. There's so many reports

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Speaker 1: of these recently, UM, these widowers whose wives had recently died,

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Speaker 1: and they interact with their wife at a materialization seance

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Speaker 1: at someone's spirit cabinet in their home. You would also

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Speaker 1: have a materialization seance is sometimes the spirit giving gifts. UM.

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Speaker 1: There was this one, this one medium who frequently would

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Speaker 1: call forth this spirit that she called Katie, and Katie

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Speaker 1: would give plants and flowers to people, UM that they

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Speaker 1: could then take home. M hm. And so let's with

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Speaker 1: all these kind of pieces in place, some religion, some technology,

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Speaker 1: some science. Uh, some of the practices of what happened

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Speaker 1: in the science. UM, let's start talking a little bit

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Speaker 1: about some social context. UM. Spiritualism became a global movement

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Speaker 1: fairly quickly, and the Catholic Church in France and Spain

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Speaker 1: cracked down on spiritualism. Uh. There even uh some some

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Speaker 1: accounts of spiritualist books being burned and that kind of thing. Um,

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Speaker 1: do you have any comments on what made spiritualism is

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Speaker 1: kind of distinctive set of beliefs and practices attractive outside

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Speaker 1: of America where it began, for instance, in France or

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Speaker 1: in the Caribbean, some of those cultures that were interacting

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Speaker 1: with the people that you write about in your book. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: so there was something very countercultural about spiritualism, especially in

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Speaker 1: any place that had a history of church and state

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Speaker 1: being connected. Um. So, you know, spiritual them really issues

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Speaker 1: denominational institutional structure. While there were some attempts in places

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Speaker 1: to make you know, churches of spiritualism or a denomination

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Speaker 1: of spiritualism, it really sort of, um, it's practiced in

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Speaker 1: a way that works against that that kind of formalization.

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Speaker 1: So especially in a place like um, Great Britain, where

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Speaker 1: there's a lot of spiritualists, or even in France, these

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Speaker 1: countries that have a much longer history of church and

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Speaker 1: state being connected. Here you've got this this new countercultural

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Speaker 1: religious movement that doesn't seem to fit in any neat

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Speaker 1: little container or church. You know, it's hard to categorize

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Speaker 1: exactly what's being um done and what's going on because

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Speaker 1: there's not a formal hierarchy. There's not a formal structure

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Speaker 1: that you can interrogate. Um. So in that way, spiritualism

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Speaker 1: really democratized religious authority in a completely new way. So

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Speaker 1: many women were mediums, and you know, God for a

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Speaker 1: big women have religious authority. UM. People who weren't white, uh,

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Speaker 1: could become mediums, and so you've got spiritual power in

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Speaker 1: the hands of the bodies of marginalized identities. This made

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Speaker 1: incredibly powerful for the people and thus pretty dangerous for

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Speaker 1: the state. Mm hmm. And that was not at all

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Speaker 1: lost on early spiritualists or observers of spiritualism. UM. From

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Speaker 1: very early on, spirits like Benjamin Franklin and George Washington,

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Speaker 1: William Penn another American states when we're appearing at say

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Speaker 1: on circles in America and you know, speaking through translectors

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Speaker 1: and sometimes uh, maybe just addressing one or two people

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Speaker 1: in a home. Science UM. The Fox sisters in the

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Speaker 1: posts spread at the beginning, we're talking with you know,

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Speaker 1: the founding fathers. Um, can you talk about a little

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Speaker 1: bit about how those kinds of engagements with political ideas

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Speaker 1: and in particular statesmen and historical figure years, what they

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Speaker 1: say about spiritualism's relationship to history. So, I think, for one,

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Speaker 1: it tells us that spiritualists had a very keen sense

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Speaker 1: of history. You know. Obviously they were very well educated.

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Speaker 1: They had read about these figures, they had read the

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Speaker 1: writings of these figures. But I think the thing that

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Speaker 1: really strikes me about the appearance of people like Benjamin Franklin,

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Speaker 1: George Washington, William Penn, all these other important political figures,

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Speaker 1: it stands is what really strikes me is that by

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Speaker 1: communicating with famous spirits, spiritualists inserted themselves into history. You know,

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Speaker 1: they were in conversation then with Franklin, with Washington, with Penn,

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Speaker 1: they were in conversation with their ideas. Um. They were

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Speaker 1: receiving information direct from the source, even if that source

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Speaker 1: had died decades centuries before Um. So spiritualists could become

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Speaker 1: part of that story. They could become part of that

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Speaker 1: story of human progress, even if it was just a

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Speaker 1: small group that maybe no one would ever hear of them.

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Speaker 1: You know, Benjamin Franklin knew who they were, or the

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Speaker 1: spirit of Benjamin Franklin knew who they were, and so

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Speaker 1: they got to feel like they were part of something

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Speaker 1: so much bigger than themselves. M and as spiritualists right

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Speaker 1: from the get go late fourteen, late eighteen forties, early

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Speaker 1: eighteen fifties, as they did insert themselves into these histories

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Speaker 1: and into conversations and discourses in the church, in science, Um,

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Speaker 1: what were some of the early responses to spiritualism? How

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Speaker 1: did how did historians? How did politicians? How did churchmen

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Speaker 1: or other believers respond to these insertions of spiritualisms and

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Speaker 1: spiritualists into their stories? So I guess the easy the

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Speaker 1: easy answers. It varied UM with its association with things

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Speaker 1: like liberal politics. You know, so many a lot of

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Speaker 1: the mediums, especially in the US on the East Coast,

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Speaker 1: were women, who received a lot of messages that had

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Speaker 1: to do with UM, women's rights, received a lot of

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Speaker 1: messages that had to do with abolition. So, with its

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Speaker 1: association with liberal politics, spiritualism was banned in some places. UH.

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Speaker 1: Southern states like Alabama actually tried to make spiritualism illegal

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Speaker 1: UM by taking religious authority away from formal church structures,

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Speaker 1: and you know, the the traditional purveyors of religious authority,

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Speaker 1: you know, more or less white educated men, white educated

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Speaker 1: um in seminaries men. By taking religious authority away from

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Speaker 1: UM these more formal structures and placing it in the

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Speaker 1: bodies the hands of mediums themselves. I mean, there were

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Speaker 1: a lot of churches really didn't like about spiritualism. They

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Speaker 1: could see it as a dangerous threat. There were a

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Speaker 1: number of ministers who worried that spiritualism was dangerous because

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Speaker 1: perhaps it was encouraging interaction with demonic spirits. UM. There

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Speaker 1: was some liberal Protestant communities and liberal political communities, UM,

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Speaker 1: especially in the Northeast, that found that spiritualism could be

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Speaker 1: compatible with their politics, UM, with their theology. That you know,

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Speaker 1: why not have spirits like Jesus also up there. Why

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Speaker 1: why wouldn't the spirit of you know, assassinated President Abraham

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Speaker 1: Lincoln continue to share his political ideas with us. UM.

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Speaker 1: But then you also have those who saw it as

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Speaker 1: just so so dangerous. UM. So there's this great article

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Speaker 1: in America, a Catholic Jesuit publication that's still around today,

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Speaker 1: that came out and I think it was the early

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Speaker 1: nineteen hundreds and it it said that spiritualism and weuiji

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Speaker 1: boards were dangerous because spirits in heaven would have so

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Speaker 1: many other things to do then communicate with people through

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Speaker 1: a board game. You know this, this priest is writing like,

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Speaker 1: come on, I mean, spirits in heaven, they they got

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Speaker 1: so many other things to do, dancing around on clouds.

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Speaker 1: They're not going to commune keeps people through a board game.

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Speaker 1: And so the only spirits that are probably interacting with

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Speaker 1: people through these boards are hellish spirits. Um. And what

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Speaker 1: I just think is funny, as I imagined the priest

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Speaker 1: who wrote that article would be so pleased with the

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Speaker 1: movie The Exorcist, which you know auiji board invites the

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Speaker 1: demonic possession and then a priest saves the day. Um. So,

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Speaker 1: even in there there were exceptions to this. Um. So,

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Speaker 1: the Catholic Church in New Orleans in the eighteen forties

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Speaker 1: UM for a little while was actually totally okay with

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Speaker 1: the development of this mesmerist society. There's this mesmerism idea

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Speaker 1: that begins in New Orleans and a couple of local

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Speaker 1: priests were actually members, and they would sometimes recommend mesmeric

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Speaker 1: healings to some of their personers who weren't doing well

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Speaker 1: the leader get told that they need to stop doing that.

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Speaker 1: And they were a small minority anyways. But even in

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Speaker 1: a setting like the Catholic Church, which is seeing spiritualism,

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Speaker 1: seeing mesmerism as a credibly dangerous there are actual Catholics

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Speaker 1: in some cases even Catholic clerics who are like, I

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Speaker 1: don't know, there might actually be something to this. H

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Speaker 1: And it wasn't just the church responding, like you said,

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Speaker 1: the state of Alabama at one point banded spiritualism. What

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Speaker 1: are the kinds of responses were spiritualists getting, maybe like

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Speaker 1: in the southern press or you know, kind of in

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Speaker 1: general discourses through the South around New Orleans, But in

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00:22:24,240 --> 00:22:28,800
Speaker 1: the other states, what were people saying about spiritualism. So

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Speaker 1: one of the really interesting places, um where spiritualism gets

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Speaker 1: talked about in Louisiana and the broader Gulf region is

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Speaker 1: the the secular New Orleans papers. UM. So, papers like

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Speaker 1: the Daily Pickyune and the Daily Pickyune regularly advertised spiritualist

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Speaker 1: lectures UM. You would find all the time in the

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Speaker 1: you know, the calendar provided by the paper upcoming lectures um,

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Speaker 1: which were actually pretty common in eighteen fifties through the

347
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Speaker 1: eighteen fifties, tons of people are coming to New Orleans

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Speaker 1: to talk about spiritualism. You also find articles in the

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Speaker 1: secular papers about the alleged medicinal value of mesmerism and spiritualism.

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Speaker 1: But you can also find a lot of stories that

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Speaker 1: are trying to expose um mesmerism or spiritualism. UM. There's

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Speaker 1: a number of stories that are trying to expose it

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Speaker 1: as a wag which is just a nineteenth century term

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Speaker 1: for fraud. That you know, spiritualism is a total wag UM.

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Speaker 1: And so you have a variety of responses just coming

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Speaker 1: in people's newspapers which sort of left it up to

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Speaker 1: the reader what they wanted to conclude about spiritualism. Now,

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Speaker 1: if all you read was the UM official Catholic newspaper,

359
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Speaker 1: you would think spiritualism was, you know, basically the devil

360
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Speaker 1: on earth UM. But if you were just reading the

361
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Speaker 1: secular paper, you would see a variety of responses about

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Speaker 1: it MHM. What led to something like a whole state

363
00:24:03,720 --> 00:24:10,359
Speaker 1: outlying the practice. What that ends up coming down to

364
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Speaker 1: is the association of spiritualism with liberal politics. So, especially

365
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Speaker 1: since so many spiritualists coming out of the East Coast,

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Speaker 1: are pretty outspoken about abolition, are pretty outspoken about women's rights. Um.

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Speaker 1: You even have a number of spiritualists who are communicating

368
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Speaker 1: with the spirits of deceased Native Americans and the receiving

369
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Speaker 1: messages that acknowledge the fact that we white Americans have

370
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Speaker 1: stolen land and we have dispossessed them of not just

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Speaker 1: their land but also their culture. UM. Now it's important

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Speaker 1: to note that a lot of those messages are also

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Speaker 1: pretty tinged with racism, because the medium is talking in

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Speaker 1: at times guttural sounds. Um. But there's this very interesting

375
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Speaker 1: acknowledgement of the fact that America is not fair when

376
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Speaker 1: it comes to all of the inhabitants of the country.

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Speaker 1: And so, if you've got a religious practice that is

378
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Speaker 1: frequently identifying injustices, and you're in a state that is

379
00:25:33,320 --> 00:25:36,520
Speaker 1: making a lot of money off of injustice, namely slavery,

380
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Speaker 1: spiritual um is going to be persona non grata there.

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Speaker 1: So let's move to the community that you focus your

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Speaker 1: book on and go to New Orleans in the forties

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Speaker 1: and the fifties. Can you tell us about the Afro

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Speaker 1: Creole community and the spiritualist group that grew up in

385
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Speaker 1: that community in those early years of spiritualism. Yeah, so

386
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Speaker 1: New Orleans in the eighteen fifties was full of life.

387
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Speaker 1: I mean, this is a place that is racially an ethnical,

388
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Speaker 1: ethnically diverse, with its history as a French colony, than

389
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Speaker 1: a Spanish colony, than briefly a French colony again before

390
00:26:18,160 --> 00:26:20,879
Speaker 1: being purchased by the United States. It is a center

391
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Speaker 1: of cultural exchange. It's a place of cultural innovation. Just

392
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Speaker 1: look at the food traditions, UM, with all the cultural

393
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Speaker 1: blending and the significant influence of African diasporic culture and

394
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Speaker 1: things like gumbo. UM. It was a progressive place with

395
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Speaker 1: a very large free black population. Under Spanish rule. UM,

396
00:26:41,160 --> 00:26:45,159
Speaker 1: there were very lax manumission laws, and so the population

397
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Speaker 1: of free black men and women in New Orleans grows

398
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Speaker 1: incredibly fast and quickly, and it is one of the

399
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Speaker 1: um the sites of one of the biggest populations of

400
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Speaker 1: UM free black men and women in North America. UM.

401
00:27:02,800 --> 00:27:05,000
Speaker 1: But also with that, it's a very violent place. It

402
00:27:05,040 --> 00:27:07,919
Speaker 1: had been home to the Deep South's largest slave market.

403
00:27:08,760 --> 00:27:10,760
Speaker 1: So the city has a lot of tensions because of

404
00:27:10,760 --> 00:27:14,359
Speaker 1: all of that diversity. UM. In some cases, certain streets

405
00:27:14,359 --> 00:27:19,440
Speaker 1: were basically dividing lines between different ethnic populations in the

406
00:27:19,600 --> 00:27:23,520
Speaker 1: nineteenth century. So you'll hear New Orleanans or two Lane

407
00:27:23,560 --> 00:27:26,560
Speaker 1: talking about things like the neutral ground, which typically just

408
00:27:26,600 --> 00:27:29,919
Speaker 1: refers to the grassy median on the city's boulevards, especially

409
00:27:29,960 --> 00:27:33,879
Speaker 1: along street car lines, But originally the term neutral ground

410
00:27:33,960 --> 00:27:37,920
Speaker 1: referred to the medium of Canal Street that was basically

411
00:27:37,960 --> 00:27:41,600
Speaker 1: the dividing line between what was known as the American

412
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Speaker 1: District of the city where a lot of the new

413
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Speaker 1: Um Anglo American arrivals to the city we're living. It's

414
00:27:49,880 --> 00:27:53,000
Speaker 1: now the Central Business District, an old Creole part of town,

415
00:27:53,760 --> 00:27:57,320
Speaker 1: what we now call the French Quarters. You've got you've

416
00:27:57,359 --> 00:28:00,760
Speaker 1: got a lot of tension going on with all of

417
00:28:00,760 --> 00:28:04,479
Speaker 1: this racial and ethnic diversity, and so kind of in

418
00:28:04,520 --> 00:28:06,320
Speaker 1: the heart of all of that, you've got the city's

419
00:28:06,320 --> 00:28:11,040
Speaker 1: Afro Creol community, which was it is a vibrant one

420
00:28:11,320 --> 00:28:14,120
Speaker 1: in large part because of all this history. Uh. These

421
00:28:14,160 --> 00:28:19,240
Speaker 1: were families that typically had a mixed background African, French, Spanish, Haitian,

422
00:28:19,760 --> 00:28:23,680
Speaker 1: Native American UM. They were often educated in large part

423
00:28:23,760 --> 00:28:32,119
Speaker 1: because of that longer history of freedom UM. But at

424
00:28:32,160 --> 00:28:34,800
Speaker 1: the same time you would have some Afro Creol families

425
00:28:34,840 --> 00:28:37,600
Speaker 1: who would still have some members who were enslaved that

426
00:28:37,680 --> 00:28:40,120
Speaker 1: they might be trying to, you know, save up the

427
00:28:40,160 --> 00:28:43,640
Speaker 1: money to purchase that family member's freedom. H There were

428
00:28:43,640 --> 00:28:48,000
Speaker 1: a few members of the Sir Harmonique whose fathers owned slaves.

429
00:28:48,040 --> 00:28:50,920
Speaker 1: No members of the group I looked at UM owned slaves,

430
00:28:50,920 --> 00:28:54,280
Speaker 1: but they had fathers and grandfathers who owned slaves, sometimes

431
00:28:54,680 --> 00:29:00,320
Speaker 1: extended family members. UM. The Afro Creol community was aflic

432
00:29:00,400 --> 00:29:06,160
Speaker 1: They were incredibly Catholic. The Catholic Church offered a a

433
00:29:06,200 --> 00:29:10,480
Speaker 1: sense of home and family UM for New Orleans black

434
00:29:10,520 --> 00:29:15,400
Speaker 1: and mixed race population starting in the eighteenth century UM,

435
00:29:15,480 --> 00:29:17,520
Speaker 1: back when the church was a little more liberal. There

436
00:29:17,560 --> 00:29:20,480
Speaker 1: in its earlier days, there were all these rules about

437
00:29:20,520 --> 00:29:25,400
Speaker 1: how priests were not supposed to baptize UM children born

438
00:29:25,400 --> 00:29:28,680
Speaker 1: out of wedlock. Well, when you think about slavery, one

439
00:29:28,720 --> 00:29:31,440
Speaker 1: of slavery's goals is to tear down families and make

440
00:29:31,440 --> 00:29:36,880
Speaker 1: it impossible to have a family. UM. These priests would

441
00:29:36,920 --> 00:29:41,840
Speaker 1: often baptize kids that they technically weren't supposed to because

442
00:29:41,840 --> 00:29:45,120
Speaker 1: they were trying to help rebuild a sense of family. UM.

443
00:29:45,520 --> 00:29:48,600
Speaker 1: So many an Afro Creole community were very very Catholic,

444
00:29:49,000 --> 00:29:51,040
Speaker 1: and so there's this way in which they very much

445
00:29:51,080 --> 00:29:56,320
Speaker 1: belonged to New Orleans. They reflect and represent so much

446
00:29:56,360 --> 00:29:59,600
Speaker 1: of all of that racial and ethnic diversity, but they

447
00:29:59,600 --> 00:30:03,400
Speaker 1: also didn't belong. Um. Many historians talk of the Afro

448
00:30:03,440 --> 00:30:07,680
Speaker 1: Creol community as one that was between the racialized categories

449
00:30:07,720 --> 00:30:11,480
Speaker 1: of white and slave. Neither of those categories really described them,

450
00:30:11,880 --> 00:30:17,760
Speaker 1: though elements of each category might mhm in in this

451
00:30:17,840 --> 00:30:24,240
Speaker 1: city so rich with life, but riven with these conflicts. Um,

452
00:30:24,320 --> 00:30:28,680
Speaker 1: you talk about the circle Manique rising up, and you

453
00:30:28,800 --> 00:30:32,200
Speaker 1: describe how it comes together around the work of a

454
00:30:32,240 --> 00:30:36,280
Speaker 1: medium named JB. Valmore and a man named Henri Ray

455
00:30:36,320 --> 00:30:39,120
Speaker 1: who becomes a medium in his own right. Who were

456
00:30:39,560 --> 00:30:45,320
Speaker 1: Valmore and Henri Ray? So? JB. Valmore and Rie Louis

457
00:30:45,400 --> 00:30:48,920
Speaker 1: Ray were two members of the Afro Creole community with

458
00:30:49,400 --> 00:30:53,080
Speaker 1: a pretty extensive network within the Afro Creol community. So

459
00:30:53,200 --> 00:30:57,160
Speaker 1: Valmore was a blacksmith and a well known healer. His

460
00:30:57,280 --> 00:31:00,000
Speaker 1: home was also his blacksmith shop was also his say

461
00:31:00,000 --> 00:31:04,040
Speaker 1: on meeting location. UM. He kept his seances public too,

462
00:31:04,160 --> 00:31:06,760
Speaker 1: which made him a bit of a target. The police

463
00:31:06,880 --> 00:31:09,880
Speaker 1: rated at least one of his seances on charge that

464
00:31:09,960 --> 00:31:13,040
Speaker 1: he was practicing voodoo. But he also made friends in

465
00:31:13,160 --> 00:31:17,680
Speaker 1: high places. He UM. In the eighteen fifties, he heals

466
00:31:17,760 --> 00:31:21,200
Speaker 1: this Italian bishop who was traveling through the city. This

467
00:31:21,280 --> 00:31:24,560
Speaker 1: bishop had seen the finest doctors in Europe and none

468
00:31:24,560 --> 00:31:27,600
Speaker 1: of them could cure him. This bishop had completely lost

469
00:31:27,640 --> 00:31:31,080
Speaker 1: his voice, and through just simple laying on of hands,

470
00:31:31,680 --> 00:31:36,640
Speaker 1: Balmore cured him. UM. So Baltmore is kind of the

471
00:31:36,720 --> 00:31:41,680
Speaker 1: center of for the Afro Creole practice of spiritualism. He's

472
00:31:41,720 --> 00:31:44,480
Speaker 1: at the center of it for the earlier part of

473
00:31:44,480 --> 00:31:48,840
Speaker 1: its history. UM. He died in nineteen sixty nine before

474
00:31:48,880 --> 00:31:53,080
Speaker 1: the Sir Carmonique, the group I look at reached their heyday. UM.

475
00:31:53,160 --> 00:31:55,400
Speaker 1: In fact, about a month before he died, the group

476
00:31:55,440 --> 00:31:58,880
Speaker 1: received a message which Valmore took to be a prophecy

477
00:31:58,920 --> 00:32:02,560
Speaker 1: about his death UM. And after he died, his spirit

478
00:32:02,600 --> 00:32:05,160
Speaker 1: began to communicate with the group. So he remains a

479
00:32:05,240 --> 00:32:09,720
Speaker 1: leader from the other side, and his leadership from the

480
00:32:09,800 --> 00:32:12,680
Speaker 1: spirit world actually reveals a lot of really interesting social

481
00:32:12,680 --> 00:32:18,200
Speaker 1: things about the Sir Carminique. Apparently, Valmore and Henri disagreed

482
00:32:18,920 --> 00:32:22,320
Speaker 1: on whether or not the seances should be public. Valmore's

483
00:32:22,360 --> 00:32:29,520
Speaker 1: republic um and Henri apparently didn't agree with that. After

484
00:32:29,680 --> 00:32:35,480
Speaker 1: Valmore dies his spirit delivers messages that more or less say, yeah,

485
00:32:35,560 --> 00:32:38,640
Speaker 1: I think you're right, we should probably keep these private. UM.

486
00:32:38,720 --> 00:32:41,440
Speaker 1: And I just find it really interesting how after Valmore

487
00:32:41,520 --> 00:32:44,640
Speaker 1: dies he now agrees with those who are still alive. UM.

488
00:32:44,680 --> 00:32:46,920
Speaker 1: So the man he's agreeing with is Henri louis Ri.

489
00:32:47,800 --> 00:32:53,520
Speaker 1: Uh on Re is the son of Haitian refugees. He's educated.

490
00:32:54,240 --> 00:32:57,920
Speaker 1: He serves a term in the Louisiana Legislature during the

491
00:32:58,000 --> 00:33:01,800
Speaker 1: tenure of the Sir Carminique Um. He's a husband, he's

492
00:33:01,840 --> 00:33:04,320
Speaker 1: a father. He was a soldier during the Civil War,

493
00:33:05,280 --> 00:33:10,200
Speaker 1: and his parents are really well connected in the city's

494
00:33:10,280 --> 00:33:15,680
Speaker 1: Afro Creol community. Um. His father, bartholomy Um is a

495
00:33:15,680 --> 00:33:19,200
Speaker 1: pretty important guy. He serves on a really important school board,

496
00:33:19,200 --> 00:33:21,320
Speaker 1: which may not sound like a big deal, but the

497
00:33:21,400 --> 00:33:23,880
Speaker 1: school board was for the first free school for the

498
00:33:23,920 --> 00:33:28,520
Speaker 1: city's black population. It was supported by an Afro Creol

499
00:33:28,600 --> 00:33:33,920
Speaker 1: Catholic board. Um and some of the city's most beloved

500
00:33:34,200 --> 00:33:38,200
Speaker 1: writers thinkers served on the school Boarder taught in the school.

501
00:33:39,680 --> 00:33:44,000
Speaker 1: Unlike his father, though on Re would leave Catholicism behind. Um.

502
00:33:44,080 --> 00:33:46,959
Speaker 1: His seance records reveal so many messages about the greed

503
00:33:47,000 --> 00:33:50,800
Speaker 1: and the vanity of Catholicism and its priests. Uh. In fact,

504
00:33:50,800 --> 00:33:53,560
Speaker 1: he gets this really at least me funny message this

505
00:33:53,600 --> 00:33:57,560
Speaker 1: one day from the spirit of a French revolutionary priest,

506
00:33:58,320 --> 00:34:03,800
Speaker 1: Hugh Felicity, the laman A who tells Henri, Yeah, I

507
00:34:03,880 --> 00:34:06,400
Speaker 1: know your wife, Adele is wanting your son to be

508
00:34:06,480 --> 00:34:09,600
Speaker 1: raised in the Catholic Church. And I know you're concerned

509
00:34:09,640 --> 00:34:12,120
Speaker 1: about that, but don't worry. Your son is going to

510
00:34:12,320 --> 00:34:15,160
Speaker 1: laugh at the absurdities of the church and it's gonna

511
00:34:15,200 --> 00:34:18,640
Speaker 1: be fine, and he's going to follow your path. So

512
00:34:20,280 --> 00:34:24,560
Speaker 1: both of Almore and Henri are well known in the

513
00:34:24,560 --> 00:34:27,880
Speaker 1: Afro Creole community, either because of their own status as

514
00:34:27,920 --> 00:34:32,640
Speaker 1: a healer or because of their familial connections. Um and

515
00:34:32,840 --> 00:34:36,600
Speaker 1: so they they're really good guides for us working through

516
00:34:37,520 --> 00:34:43,120
Speaker 1: you know, this very tumultualist, tumultualist time of reconstruction New Orleans.

517
00:34:44,440 --> 00:34:46,720
Speaker 1: And you mentioned that one of the grounds for rating

518
00:34:46,800 --> 00:34:51,640
Speaker 1: about Marseillance was a charge of practicing voodoo. Can can

519
00:34:51,640 --> 00:34:54,400
Speaker 1: you talk a little bit about the religious life of

520
00:34:54,400 --> 00:34:57,279
Speaker 1: New Orleans and the Antebello years, what aspects of it

521
00:34:57,360 --> 00:35:00,879
Speaker 1: were maybe racialized or criminalized. When we when we think

522
00:35:00,920 --> 00:35:03,560
Speaker 1: about kind of occult New Orleans. Maybe we do think

523
00:35:03,560 --> 00:35:05,680
Speaker 1: of Voodoo and Marie Va Vow and some of those

524
00:35:05,719 --> 00:35:09,920
Speaker 1: figures who've stuck around in our public consciousness. UM. Can

525
00:35:09,920 --> 00:35:13,080
Speaker 1: you describe that kind of religious life of New Orleans

526
00:35:13,120 --> 00:35:18,160
Speaker 1: maybe through ray H and his his connection to sisters

527
00:35:18,160 --> 00:35:22,000
Speaker 1: of the Holy Family, and what the social status of

528
00:35:22,040 --> 00:35:25,080
Speaker 1: these groups that his family was a part of. Um.

529
00:35:25,120 --> 00:35:28,400
Speaker 1: What it was like for for for Black, for Afro Creole,

530
00:35:28,440 --> 00:35:32,720
Speaker 1: for white New Orleanians. So the religious world of nineteenth

531
00:35:32,760 --> 00:35:37,920
Speaker 1: century New Orleans is a diverse one. UM. So obviously

532
00:35:37,960 --> 00:35:41,160
Speaker 1: you've got Voodoo and Marina and Marie Levo who are

533
00:35:41,239 --> 00:35:44,680
Speaker 1: a huge part of the occulton nineteenth century New Orleans. UM.

534
00:35:44,760 --> 00:35:47,120
Speaker 1: The woman known as Marie Levo was actually two women,

535
00:35:47,719 --> 00:35:50,840
Speaker 1: mother and a daughter, which is why she, you know,

536
00:35:51,520 --> 00:35:54,440
Speaker 1: shockingly lives for almost a hundred years, because it's actually

537
00:35:54,480 --> 00:35:59,239
Speaker 1: two women. UM. Voodoo wise, it is a religion with

538
00:35:59,320 --> 00:36:03,319
Speaker 1: really old the roots leading to Africa. It's similar but

539
00:36:03,440 --> 00:36:06,759
Speaker 1: different from the voodoo practice in Haiti and in the

540
00:36:06,840 --> 00:36:09,799
Speaker 1: nineteenth century, it was different from what most people think

541
00:36:09,800 --> 00:36:12,440
Speaker 1: of when they hear the term voodoo today. When you

542
00:36:12,440 --> 00:36:15,000
Speaker 1: hear the term voodoo today, people think of just nothing

543
00:36:15,000 --> 00:36:18,120
Speaker 1: but voodoo dolls, which actually, we're not really much of

544
00:36:18,120 --> 00:36:21,920
Speaker 1: a thing. Um in nineteenth century voodoo. Voodoo had a

545
00:36:21,920 --> 00:36:25,600
Speaker 1: cosmology and a pantheon of spirits with both African and

546
00:36:25,640 --> 00:36:30,080
Speaker 1: Catholic influence, UM, but it wasn't an institutionalized religion. It

547
00:36:30,120 --> 00:36:33,719
Speaker 1: didn't have you know, a formal institution, hierarchy, whatnot. So

548
00:36:33,760 --> 00:36:37,880
Speaker 1: it holds that in common with spiritualism, and it's actually,

549
00:36:37,920 --> 00:36:41,480
Speaker 1: it's me really interesting that voodoo develops. But it's also

550
00:36:41,520 --> 00:36:45,600
Speaker 1: not surprising that voodoo develops um in part because it

551
00:36:45,680 --> 00:36:49,960
Speaker 1: was illegal for so much of its history. UM. Under

552
00:36:50,239 --> 00:36:54,960
Speaker 1: French colonial rule, Catholicism was the only legally allowed religion.

553
00:36:56,560 --> 00:36:59,479
Speaker 1: But you also had the development of voodoo. You also

554
00:36:59,520 --> 00:37:04,080
Speaker 1: had a piety of African religious traditions being practiced throughout

555
00:37:04,160 --> 00:37:09,000
Speaker 1: the Gulf. Throughout Louisiana. Uh Congo Square now Louis Armstrong

556
00:37:09,120 --> 00:37:14,000
Speaker 1: Park was well known for its weekend African music and dancing.

557
00:37:15,239 --> 00:37:18,200
Speaker 1: So even with you know this law that states that

558
00:37:18,280 --> 00:37:21,319
Speaker 1: everyone needs to be converted to Catholicism, the religious world

559
00:37:21,360 --> 00:37:23,960
Speaker 1: of Black New Orleanans is a diverse one with a

560
00:37:23,960 --> 00:37:29,319
Speaker 1: lot of spiritual alternatives. And even within Catholicism, Black New

561
00:37:29,440 --> 00:37:33,440
Speaker 1: Orleanians didn't always find a welcoming home. Um. Some priests

562
00:37:33,480 --> 00:37:37,920
Speaker 1: were more politically and socially progressive than others. Um. Most

563
00:37:38,160 --> 00:37:45,040
Speaker 1: white Catholics were fine worshiping alongside Black Catholics. There's a

564
00:37:45,040 --> 00:37:48,920
Speaker 1: lot of tourists and visitors to New Orleans and the

565
00:37:48,960 --> 00:37:53,400
Speaker 1: Antebellum period who write a lot about how surprised they

566
00:37:53,400 --> 00:37:58,400
Speaker 1: were to see, you know, places like St. Louis Cathedral

567
00:37:59,080 --> 00:38:01,759
Speaker 1: being completely into grated and you've got white personers sitting

568
00:38:01,800 --> 00:38:06,640
Speaker 1: next to black parishioners. So it's a Catholicism is integrated.

569
00:38:06,640 --> 00:38:10,560
Speaker 1: But that doesn't mean that it was always welcoming. Um.

570
00:38:10,600 --> 00:38:14,000
Speaker 1: So like you weren't supposed to baptize children born outside

571
00:38:14,000 --> 00:38:17,120
Speaker 1: of marriage, um, but some priests did, which would endear

572
00:38:17,160 --> 00:38:21,440
Speaker 1: them to the black Catholic population. Um. But you know,

573
00:38:22,200 --> 00:38:25,520
Speaker 1: there were a lot of places in the Catholic Church

574
00:38:25,520 --> 00:38:29,400
Speaker 1: that were closed off to black Catholics. So, for example,

575
00:38:29,520 --> 00:38:32,760
Speaker 1: mixed race women were not allowed to join the local

576
00:38:32,840 --> 00:38:37,160
Speaker 1: orders of women religious nuns or sisters. UM. So actually

577
00:38:37,200 --> 00:38:41,239
Speaker 1: a group of Catholic women founded their own order. UM.

578
00:38:41,400 --> 00:38:43,920
Speaker 1: This was the Sisters of the Holy Family, an active

579
00:38:43,920 --> 00:38:47,160
Speaker 1: community of women religious still today. The group took their

580
00:38:47,200 --> 00:38:50,360
Speaker 1: initial vows in the Antebellum period, but they were denied

581
00:38:50,400 --> 00:38:53,799
Speaker 1: the right to wear a habit for thirty years. And

582
00:38:53,840 --> 00:38:55,839
Speaker 1: that might sound like a small thing, not being able

583
00:38:55,920 --> 00:38:58,440
Speaker 1: to wear a habit, But by wearing a habit, you know,

584
00:38:59,520 --> 00:39:02,200
Speaker 1: America and culture had long denied black women the right

585
00:39:02,239 --> 00:39:06,600
Speaker 1: to respectability, and by wearing a habit, it marked the

586
00:39:06,719 --> 00:39:10,279
Speaker 1: wearer as a good woman of God and was a

587
00:39:10,320 --> 00:39:15,120
Speaker 1: good critique to that denial of respectability. Now the bishop

588
00:39:15,560 --> 00:39:19,279
Speaker 1: who didn't let the Sisters of the Holy Family wear

589
00:39:19,320 --> 00:39:24,120
Speaker 1: a habit for thirty years, um was this this bishop

590
00:39:24,239 --> 00:39:32,440
Speaker 1: named Napoleon Parchet. And Parche didn't only have some issues

591
00:39:32,440 --> 00:39:34,920
Speaker 1: some runnings with the Sisters of the Holy Family. He

592
00:39:35,000 --> 00:39:39,359
Speaker 1: also hated spiritualism. Uh. He wrote a number of editorials

593
00:39:39,400 --> 00:39:43,520
Speaker 1: in the New Orleans Catholic paper that were all about

594
00:39:43,640 --> 00:39:47,200
Speaker 1: the dangers of spiritualism. And so there's this interesting way

595
00:39:47,239 --> 00:39:50,880
Speaker 1: in which Bishop Parche wanted to be the sole religious

596
00:39:50,880 --> 00:39:54,320
Speaker 1: authority in town. He was wary of any black citizens

597
00:39:54,400 --> 00:39:57,840
Speaker 1: gaining spiritual power, be it through his own church with

598
00:39:57,880 --> 00:40:01,200
Speaker 1: the Sisters of the Holy Family, or be it through

599
00:40:01,880 --> 00:40:05,920
Speaker 1: communication with the spirits through spiritualism. So let's jump to um.

600
00:40:05,960 --> 00:40:10,759
Speaker 1: When Bartholom May dies. Can you describe the encounter that

601
00:40:12,480 --> 00:40:16,200
Speaker 1: that Ari has with his father's spirit that kind of

602
00:40:16,200 --> 00:40:20,919
Speaker 1: shocked him out of his previous opinion of spiritualism, which

603
00:40:21,000 --> 00:40:23,960
Speaker 1: was a little bit, a little bit of mockery, a

604
00:40:23,960 --> 00:40:26,800
Speaker 1: little bit of dismissal. But then he has this encounter

605
00:40:26,960 --> 00:40:29,920
Speaker 1: that makes him want to seek out a spiritualist medium.

606
00:40:29,960 --> 00:40:33,920
Speaker 1: Can you describe that for us? Yeah? So, um on Re,

607
00:40:34,280 --> 00:40:37,320
Speaker 1: I find it hilarious that on Ri was originally really

608
00:40:37,320 --> 00:40:40,520
Speaker 1: skeptical of spiritualism. Um. And he writes about this in

609
00:40:40,600 --> 00:40:45,880
Speaker 1: this really long, like twenty page long autobiographical essay that

610
00:40:46,000 --> 00:40:49,640
Speaker 1: he put in one of the seance record books, where

611
00:40:49,680 --> 00:40:53,040
Speaker 1: he talks about his own history with spiritualism. He talks

612
00:40:53,040 --> 00:40:56,120
Speaker 1: about a couple of his siblings also dabbling in a

613
00:40:56,160 --> 00:41:01,920
Speaker 1: little bit, and sort of the prolog before that powerful

614
00:41:02,000 --> 00:41:08,400
Speaker 1: experience is in eighteen fifty two, his father dies. Here's

615
00:41:08,480 --> 00:41:11,440
Speaker 1: just twenty one or two years old, and just an

616
00:41:11,560 --> 00:41:16,200
Speaker 1: hour after Bartholomy's death, and re sees his father's spirit

617
00:41:17,040 --> 00:41:19,800
Speaker 1: and he goes to embrace him, and just as that happens,

618
00:41:19,800 --> 00:41:24,960
Speaker 1: the spirit disappears, and Henri chocks this up to grief. Um.

619
00:41:25,040 --> 00:41:28,520
Speaker 1: Later on, his father's spirit would reference this experience at

620
00:41:28,520 --> 00:41:31,200
Speaker 1: the seance table to sort of remind on re you've

621
00:41:31,239 --> 00:41:34,200
Speaker 1: known for a long time about the presence of spirits.

622
00:41:34,719 --> 00:41:36,640
Speaker 1: So he has that experience when he's twenty one. He

623
00:41:36,719 --> 00:41:42,000
Speaker 1: kind of chalks it up to grieving and remains skeptical

624
00:41:42,000 --> 00:41:45,960
Speaker 1: of spiritualism despite that, and despite apparently in his essay

625
00:41:46,000 --> 00:41:48,440
Speaker 1: he talks about how he successfully levitated a table one

626
00:41:48,520 --> 00:41:53,120
Speaker 1: day and he's like, I don't know, I'm still not convinced. Um.

627
00:41:53,120 --> 00:41:59,000
Speaker 1: He goes to a seance and he mocks it, but

628
00:41:59,120 --> 00:42:02,440
Speaker 1: the spirits have a sense of humor. UM. So Henri

629
00:42:03,080 --> 00:42:05,560
Speaker 1: puts his hand down on the table and he says

630
00:42:05,640 --> 00:42:09,000
Speaker 1: in a mocking way, I'm a medium, and a spirit

631
00:42:09,080 --> 00:42:15,839
Speaker 1: shakes him and that sort of wakes him up. He

632
00:42:15,960 --> 00:42:19,920
Speaker 1: later identifies the spirit as um, the spirit of his

633
00:42:20,000 --> 00:42:26,480
Speaker 1: deceased father in law, UM, and he's like, WHOA. So

634
00:42:26,560 --> 00:42:30,480
Speaker 1: he seeks out a local um spiritualists woman by the

635
00:42:30,560 --> 00:42:36,319
Speaker 1: name of Sister Louise and attends some training with her,

636
00:42:36,520 --> 00:42:39,160
Speaker 1: gets some guidance with her, and at his first meeting

637
00:42:39,239 --> 00:42:43,160
Speaker 1: with Louise, he just writes and writes and writes and

638
00:42:43,200 --> 00:42:46,839
Speaker 1: writes and rites, all under the powerful influence of spirits.

639
00:42:46,920 --> 00:42:49,080
Speaker 1: And as he starts to get tired, I mean, we

640
00:42:49,120 --> 00:42:51,160
Speaker 1: don't do a lot of handwriting anymore. We're always on

641
00:42:51,160 --> 00:42:54,799
Speaker 1: our computers. But handwriting pages and pages and pages, you know,

642
00:42:54,880 --> 00:42:58,360
Speaker 1: your your arm gets tired. Um, he gets begins, he

643
00:42:58,400 --> 00:43:00,320
Speaker 1: begins to get tired. In the spirit of his father,

644
00:43:00,400 --> 00:43:05,200
Speaker 1: Bartholomy comes to him and assures him, you know, you

645
00:43:05,239 --> 00:43:08,560
Speaker 1: can keep writing. You're not really tired. Me and the

646
00:43:08,600 --> 00:43:12,000
Speaker 1: other spirits will sustain you. And so it's sort of

647
00:43:12,000 --> 00:43:16,800
Speaker 1: this progression of experiences that convinced him. And then the

648
00:43:16,880 --> 00:43:19,600
Speaker 1: really funny thing is his wife goes through the exact

649
00:43:19,640 --> 00:43:23,600
Speaker 1: same experience. She's pretty skeptical at first. Um Adele Rose

650
00:43:24,280 --> 00:43:27,480
Speaker 1: um three. She was from the Crocker family, which is

651
00:43:27,480 --> 00:43:32,200
Speaker 1: also pretty well connected in religious life. It's possible that

652
00:43:32,600 --> 00:43:36,959
Speaker 1: her father was um. It's possible that her father kept

653
00:43:37,040 --> 00:43:42,400
Speaker 1: a mistress, that mistress being Marie Levo Um. But Adele

654
00:43:42,600 --> 00:43:46,399
Speaker 1: Rose so she's you know, seeing her husband develop all

655
00:43:46,400 --> 00:43:50,520
Speaker 1: of these um abilities of a medium. He's a clairvoyant,

656
00:43:50,640 --> 00:43:52,880
Speaker 1: you know, he sees spirits all the time, including on

657
00:43:52,920 --> 00:43:56,319
Speaker 1: their you know, uh, their front porch. But she's still

658
00:43:56,320 --> 00:43:59,360
Speaker 1: not convinced herself. And then this one evening they're laying

659
00:43:59,400 --> 00:44:03,080
Speaker 1: in bed and you know, he's trying to talk to

660
00:44:03,080 --> 00:44:06,240
Speaker 1: her about spiritualism and convince her, and he says, okay,

661
00:44:06,280 --> 00:44:10,560
Speaker 1: you know, if there's a spirit in the room, knock somewhere,

662
00:44:11,480 --> 00:44:14,480
Speaker 1: and shortly after that they feel this loud thump on

663
00:44:14,520 --> 00:44:19,120
Speaker 1: their headboard, and on returns to Adele and says, do

664
00:44:19,160 --> 00:44:23,600
Speaker 1: you believe in spiritualism now? And all of this is

665
00:44:23,640 --> 00:44:27,360
Speaker 1: cataloged in this long autobiographical essay that he wrote um

666
00:44:27,400 --> 00:44:30,839
Speaker 1: and so you get this like it wasn't an easy

667
00:44:30,880 --> 00:44:33,560
Speaker 1: conversion to spiritualism for him, you know, he had to

668
00:44:33,600 --> 00:44:40,880
Speaker 1: be convinced. M On JB. Valdor's side, there is a

669
00:44:40,920 --> 00:44:44,279
Speaker 1: really dramatic story that you tell in the book when

670
00:44:44,880 --> 00:44:48,520
Speaker 1: the spiritualist who's becoming better and better known originally from

671
00:44:48,560 --> 00:44:51,360
Speaker 1: London and then came to New York as an actress

672
00:44:51,480 --> 00:44:54,760
Speaker 1: and then became active in spiritualist circles and started touring

673
00:44:55,520 --> 00:44:59,279
Speaker 1: Emma Harding who would later be Ema Harding Britain. She

674
00:44:59,480 --> 00:45:02,239
Speaker 1: comes on the Southern tour and arrives in New Orleans

675
00:45:02,440 --> 00:45:04,480
Speaker 1: and gives a salience and has an encounter with J.

676
00:45:04,600 --> 00:45:08,160
Speaker 1: B Abolt Moore. Can you describe that encounter for us? Oh? Yeah,

677
00:45:08,200 --> 00:45:11,880
Speaker 1: that encounters great. Um. So in the late Antebellum period,

678
00:45:12,560 --> 00:45:16,160
Speaker 1: famous spiritualist Emma Harding Britain, she's delivering a lecture in

679
00:45:16,160 --> 00:45:19,400
Speaker 1: New Orleans at one of the Fraternal Lodges. She's one

680
00:45:19,440 --> 00:45:22,399
Speaker 1: of the most well known spiritualists of the nineteenth century. Um.

681
00:45:22,440 --> 00:45:24,840
Speaker 1: Her name pops up quite a bit in the local

682
00:45:24,880 --> 00:45:28,320
Speaker 1: paper advertising some of the other lectures that she's given.

683
00:45:28,520 --> 00:45:30,600
Speaker 1: I can't remember this is her first lecture in town

684
00:45:31,120 --> 00:45:33,359
Speaker 1: or one of the later ones. Um. But she comes

685
00:45:33,360 --> 00:45:35,759
Speaker 1: to New Orleans more than a few times. She writes

686
00:45:35,840 --> 00:45:39,440
Speaker 1: this huge encyclopedic book on spiritualism in the eighteen seventies,

687
00:45:39,480 --> 00:45:41,640
Speaker 1: which is honestly one of our best resources on the

688
00:45:41,640 --> 00:45:44,960
Speaker 1: practice because it contains all these letters and reports from

689
00:45:45,040 --> 00:45:48,800
Speaker 1: all around the country. So anyway, she's delivering this lecture

690
00:45:48,800 --> 00:45:50,960
Speaker 1: in eighteen fifty nine or so, and she begins to

691
00:45:51,000 --> 00:45:55,000
Speaker 1: get tired. Um. Now, she'd been lecturing on spiritualism and

692
00:45:55,040 --> 00:45:58,920
Speaker 1: demonstrating for a while now, and UM, you know, I

693
00:45:58,920 --> 00:46:01,040
Speaker 1: can tell you, as a college for fessor, lecturing is

694
00:46:01,040 --> 00:46:04,200
Speaker 1: more tiring than people might think, especially if you've got

695
00:46:04,280 --> 00:46:07,319
Speaker 1: a performative element to it. So she's tiring and her

696
00:46:07,360 --> 00:46:12,200
Speaker 1: spiritualist demonstrations are suffering. As this is going on, a

697
00:46:12,239 --> 00:46:17,680
Speaker 1: black creole man was walking by and he's supposedly seized

698
00:46:18,040 --> 00:46:23,640
Speaker 1: by a spiritual force that pulls him into the auditorium. Uh.

699
00:46:23,680 --> 00:46:27,160
Speaker 1: Emma invites him to come up on the stage, as

700
00:46:27,200 --> 00:46:31,440
Speaker 1: she says, because he is full of electricity. Um. And

701
00:46:31,480 --> 00:46:34,960
Speaker 1: this black creole man is Valmore and he and Emma

702
00:46:35,200 --> 00:46:39,760
Speaker 1: Harding have the spiritual affinity, it seemed. So he remains

703
00:46:39,800 --> 00:46:42,880
Speaker 1: with her on stage and she uses that connection between

704
00:46:42,920 --> 00:46:46,040
Speaker 1: them to draw power and she continues these demonstrations for

705
00:46:46,080 --> 00:46:50,600
Speaker 1: a couple more hours, just leaving the audience enthralled. So

706
00:46:51,680 --> 00:46:53,160
Speaker 1: for a lot of people like this isn't a big

707
00:46:53,200 --> 00:46:55,759
Speaker 1: surprise for them. Um. You know, this was a guy

708
00:46:55,840 --> 00:46:59,080
Speaker 1: who was a pretty well known healer, who was known

709
00:46:59,320 --> 00:47:02,560
Speaker 1: for being a bit of an expert in these alternative

710
00:47:02,560 --> 00:47:10,040
Speaker 1: religious practices. Um. And you know it certainly isn't surprising

711
00:47:10,080 --> 00:47:13,360
Speaker 1: those who end up becoming involved with the Sir Carminique.

712
00:47:13,719 --> 00:47:18,480
Speaker 1: In one of their sands record books, there is this

713
00:47:19,000 --> 00:47:22,520
Speaker 1: little not really a notepad, but it's a couple of

714
00:47:22,520 --> 00:47:27,600
Speaker 1: pieces of scrap paper that describes some of the curative

715
00:47:27,600 --> 00:47:31,000
Speaker 1: practices of Balmore, um, some of the cures that he

716
00:47:31,040 --> 00:47:35,479
Speaker 1: would use. So for many it was just sort of like, well,

717
00:47:35,520 --> 00:47:40,440
Speaker 1: obviously he could do that, Obviously he could be her battery.

718
00:47:42,719 --> 00:47:45,239
Speaker 1: And so what are the events that lead up to

719
00:47:45,400 --> 00:47:49,080
Speaker 1: the formation of the Circumbinique with Valmore and with Ree

720
00:47:49,239 --> 00:47:51,120
Speaker 1: and with the other people that they brought together to

721
00:47:51,200 --> 00:47:57,160
Speaker 1: form this group. So there were some other spiritualists in

722
00:47:57,200 --> 00:48:00,160
Speaker 1: New Orleans at the time. There were white Creole who

723
00:48:00,200 --> 00:48:04,120
Speaker 1: are practicing spiritualism, who are doing their own thing that

724
00:48:04,360 --> 00:48:08,840
Speaker 1: are pretty separate from the Sir Carminique, the Afro Creal spiritualists.

725
00:48:09,040 --> 00:48:14,440
Speaker 1: Valmore sort of goes between the two groups a little bit. Um.

726
00:48:14,480 --> 00:48:18,960
Speaker 1: It seems like what brings the Sir Carminique originally together

727
00:48:19,520 --> 00:48:21,920
Speaker 1: and it's kind of not clear who all is a

728
00:48:21,960 --> 00:48:27,080
Speaker 1: member at what time, UM, but it seems like on

729
00:48:27,239 --> 00:48:34,560
Speaker 1: reason conversion and sort of this famous interaction between Valmore

730
00:48:34,840 --> 00:48:38,960
Speaker 1: and Emma Harding sort of galvanized a small group of

731
00:48:39,000 --> 00:48:44,480
Speaker 1: Afro Creole men to start practicing, um to getting to

732
00:48:44,560 --> 00:48:51,920
Speaker 1: get together, hold seances and have through that process. Um,

733
00:48:52,000 --> 00:49:00,239
Speaker 1: these really rich, politically infused conversations about the world. And

734
00:49:00,320 --> 00:49:04,920
Speaker 1: you mentioned that in that early Sunds with Sister Louise

735
00:49:05,640 --> 00:49:09,040
Speaker 1: or really starts writing and writing and writing. Can you

736
00:49:09,120 --> 00:49:12,160
Speaker 1: talk about the way that receiving those messages through writing

737
00:49:13,520 --> 00:49:19,880
Speaker 1: was really significant for the circumnique. So the Sir Carminique,

738
00:49:19,960 --> 00:49:23,320
Speaker 1: over the course of their roughly twenty years of practice,

739
00:49:24,520 --> 00:49:33,960
Speaker 1: bill something like thirty five or thirty seven books with messages. Um.

740
00:49:34,000 --> 00:49:38,680
Speaker 1: If you stack all of the Sciunce record books up, um,

741
00:49:38,719 --> 00:49:43,879
Speaker 1: it reaches around my rib cage. And I'm not overly short.

742
00:49:43,880 --> 00:49:46,920
Speaker 1: I'm not super tall, but I'm not that short. Um.

743
00:49:46,960 --> 00:49:50,800
Speaker 1: So we're talking thousands and thousands and thousands and thousands

744
00:49:50,800 --> 00:49:55,120
Speaker 1: of pages of messages from the world beyond this one,

745
00:49:55,760 --> 00:49:59,840
Speaker 1: and writing all of that out takes time, and so

746
00:50:00,280 --> 00:50:03,160
Speaker 1: the process of writing all of that out is clearly

747
00:50:03,280 --> 00:50:08,960
Speaker 1: very important. Um, there's a way in which the spirits

748
00:50:09,120 --> 00:50:15,400
Speaker 1: messages don't become really real and tell they're written down

749
00:50:15,960 --> 00:50:19,160
Speaker 1: and tell there's a material record of them that can

750
00:50:19,200 --> 00:50:22,640
Speaker 1: then later be consulted and referred to. But there's something

751
00:50:22,760 --> 00:50:27,720
Speaker 1: very important about that process of cataloging what the spirits

752
00:50:27,719 --> 00:50:30,279
Speaker 1: had to say, And in part, the spirits tell them

753
00:50:30,320 --> 00:50:32,640
Speaker 1: that there are a number of messages where the spirits say,

754
00:50:32,640 --> 00:50:35,720
Speaker 1: write all of this down. Uh, so you know, okay, Chief,

755
00:50:35,840 --> 00:50:40,279
Speaker 1: we will. And in terms of the message that was

756
00:50:40,320 --> 00:50:43,440
Speaker 1: being communicated, one of the things that you emphasize in

757
00:50:43,440 --> 00:50:46,880
Speaker 1: your book is that so many of these figures were

758
00:50:47,239 --> 00:50:53,480
Speaker 1: the spirits that we're appearing. We're giving the messages about

759
00:50:53,520 --> 00:50:57,120
Speaker 1: what they came to call the idea, which was politically

760
00:50:57,239 --> 00:51:03,520
Speaker 1: charged and inspiration motivate shan really addressing the social and

761
00:51:03,560 --> 00:51:08,680
Speaker 1: political world of the carmonique. What was the idea to

762
00:51:09,400 --> 00:51:13,560
Speaker 1: this group of spiritualists. So what they would call the

763
00:51:13,640 --> 00:51:19,320
Speaker 1: idea was a concept that their messages never straightforwardly defined,

764
00:51:19,560 --> 00:51:23,920
Speaker 1: but it's referenced frequently, and that element alone is really significant.

765
00:51:23,920 --> 00:51:26,560
Speaker 1: The fact that they didn't need to ever define it

766
00:51:26,920 --> 00:51:29,719
Speaker 1: meant that it was very clear to everybody involved what

767
00:51:29,760 --> 00:51:33,360
Speaker 1: the idea was. So they received so many messages that

768
00:51:33,440 --> 00:51:36,640
Speaker 1: made mention of the idea, and when you put all

769
00:51:36,680 --> 00:51:39,680
Speaker 1: these together, it becomes clear that this was a concept

770
00:51:39,800 --> 00:51:49,480
Speaker 1: that meant humanitarian progress, brotherhood, egalitarianism, equality, harmony, UM. It

771
00:51:49,560 --> 00:51:52,000
Speaker 1: was similar to some other ideas that are going around

772
00:51:52,120 --> 00:51:56,920
Speaker 1: nineteenth century America, UM ideas of millennial progress, This desire

773
00:51:56,960 --> 00:51:59,200
Speaker 1: to build the Kingdom of God here on earth in

774
00:51:59,239 --> 00:52:05,600
Speaker 1: the US. Um, the idea, the idea would require work, um,

775
00:52:05,640 --> 00:52:08,600
Speaker 1: you know, to make the idea of reality on earth

776
00:52:09,880 --> 00:52:14,960
Speaker 1: would would not just happen. Um. The triumph of the

777
00:52:15,000 --> 00:52:21,200
Speaker 1: idea would require free thought, democracy, equality, um. You know,

778
00:52:21,239 --> 00:52:23,600
Speaker 1: the progressive march of humanity is not going to happen

779
00:52:23,640 --> 00:52:29,040
Speaker 1: on its own. And the idea, the idea could be trusted.

780
00:52:29,360 --> 00:52:32,480
Speaker 1: The idea was what structured the spirit world and thus

781
00:52:32,480 --> 00:52:35,319
Speaker 1: should be the foundation of our own. It was, as

782
00:52:35,400 --> 00:52:38,960
Speaker 1: one spirit called it, a blazing torch um. You know,

783
00:52:39,000 --> 00:52:43,360
Speaker 1: it's light, it's luminous um. For example, a few spirits

784
00:52:43,400 --> 00:52:47,360
Speaker 1: describe the Emancipation Proclamation as a manifestation of the idea

785
00:52:47,520 --> 00:52:52,200
Speaker 1: on earth. Um. And so it's it's an idea that

786
00:52:52,400 --> 00:52:56,000
Speaker 1: comes from the spirit world, and it's an idea that

787
00:52:56,200 --> 00:53:01,440
Speaker 1: needs to become manifest here in our world. Yeah, so

788
00:53:02,280 --> 00:53:05,279
Speaker 1: through something like the idea, And you talked about how

789
00:53:05,360 --> 00:53:11,160
Speaker 1: this was similar to other concepts or movements in progressive discourse.

790
00:53:13,080 --> 00:53:18,279
Speaker 1: We end up with the debates over the expansion of

791
00:53:18,320 --> 00:53:22,520
Speaker 1: slave power and the conflict leading up to the Civil War.

792
00:53:23,680 --> 00:53:27,640
Speaker 1: When when the Civil War breaks out, you talk about

793
00:53:27,680 --> 00:53:31,120
Speaker 1: how the sir Carminique broke up for a time kind

794
00:53:31,120 --> 00:53:38,040
Speaker 1: of Uh, what was a redoing during the war and

795
00:53:38,080 --> 00:53:43,600
Speaker 1: what was it that convinced them that they couldn't keep meeting. Yeah,

796
00:53:43,680 --> 00:53:49,360
Speaker 1: So the very first book of the Sir Carmonique Science

797
00:53:49,440 --> 00:53:56,640
Speaker 1: Records covers four years UM and actually no, it covers

798
00:53:56,719 --> 00:53:59,400
Speaker 1: like five years in part because you've got on res

799
00:53:59,480 --> 00:54:03,560
Speaker 1: service the Civil War UM breaking it up. So Ri

800
00:54:03,920 --> 00:54:07,279
Speaker 1: and his brother Octave Uh and others many other Afro

801
00:54:07,360 --> 00:54:10,280
Speaker 1: Creole men in the city joined the war effort UM,

802
00:54:10,320 --> 00:54:12,799
Speaker 1: but Untel New Orleans was seized by the Union in

803
00:54:12,880 --> 00:54:16,880
Speaker 1: eighteen sixty two. When they joined the Louisiana Native Guards

804
00:54:17,040 --> 00:54:19,280
Speaker 1: the Black regimen for the city, they had to muster

805
00:54:19,440 --> 00:54:22,879
Speaker 1: for the Confederacy, which was not what they wanted. They

806
00:54:22,960 --> 00:54:25,760
Speaker 1: joined the war effort because they felt strongly about defending

807
00:54:25,800 --> 00:54:30,319
Speaker 1: their home UM, but they disobeyed the Confederacy's orders. As

808
00:54:30,360 --> 00:54:33,480
Speaker 1: the Union was approaching the city UM in eighteen sixty two,

809
00:54:33,520 --> 00:54:36,920
Speaker 1: the Confederacy orders all of the troops out and the

810
00:54:36,920 --> 00:54:40,759
Speaker 1: Black troops stay. Uh. They disobey, and they want to

811
00:54:40,760 --> 00:54:42,720
Speaker 1: stay with their homes and protect their homes and protect

812
00:54:42,760 --> 00:54:47,080
Speaker 1: their families. UM. A committee of four in the Louisiana

813
00:54:47,160 --> 00:54:51,239
Speaker 1: Native Guards, including on Ri and his brother Octave, were

814
00:54:51,280 --> 00:54:55,000
Speaker 1: the group that surrendered their weapons to the Union when

815
00:54:55,040 --> 00:54:57,560
Speaker 1: the Union comes into New Orleans. But then they quickly

816
00:54:57,560 --> 00:54:59,480
Speaker 1: got them back because now they were able to serve

817
00:54:59,520 --> 00:55:02,879
Speaker 1: on the side. Wanted to unreserved in the Union Army

818
00:55:02,920 --> 00:55:07,040
Speaker 1: until he was discharged due to illness in eighteen sixty three.

819
00:55:07,440 --> 00:55:11,400
Speaker 1: He's discharged before one of the big battles um in

820
00:55:11,520 --> 00:55:14,040
Speaker 1: terms of the action that the Louisiana Native Guards saw,

821
00:55:14,719 --> 00:55:19,200
Speaker 1: which was the battle at Port Hudson Um. While he

822
00:55:19,239 --> 00:55:22,560
Speaker 1: was serving in the army, on RhE and others didn't

823
00:55:22,880 --> 00:55:27,160
Speaker 1: seem to keep much in terms of spiritualist records, but

824
00:55:27,560 --> 00:55:29,960
Speaker 1: it seems pretty clear that on Re at least practice

825
00:55:30,080 --> 00:55:34,800
Speaker 1: some AH. He received a message while at Camp Strong

826
00:55:35,040 --> 00:55:38,280
Speaker 1: that he later transcribed in his records. It's a message

827
00:55:38,320 --> 00:55:42,240
Speaker 1: that he gets in eighteen sixty two from the spirit

828
00:55:42,400 --> 00:55:46,839
Speaker 1: of French revolutionary priest Hugh Felicite de Laminae, who more

829
00:55:46,920 --> 00:55:51,600
Speaker 1: or less tells them, you know, like keeping the struggle AH.

830
00:55:51,719 --> 00:55:56,839
Speaker 1: He also publishes a poem in the local liberal newspaper

831
00:55:57,239 --> 00:56:00,520
Speaker 1: in sixty two while he's serving in the army, and

832
00:56:00,600 --> 00:56:04,640
Speaker 1: this poem sounds so so so much like the science

833
00:56:04,680 --> 00:56:07,680
Speaker 1: records Um and the poem he commends a number of

834
00:56:07,719 --> 00:56:13,040
Speaker 1: figures Jesus, Um, the theologian, Emmanuel Swedenborg, Joan of Arc.

835
00:56:13,480 --> 00:56:15,840
Speaker 1: These are all figures that come up in the Science records,

836
00:56:15,880 --> 00:56:19,080
Speaker 1: either as spirit to appear or figures to admire. And

837
00:56:19,160 --> 00:56:22,520
Speaker 1: the poem heralded all the ideals that the sort of

838
00:56:22,520 --> 00:56:27,600
Speaker 1: carmenique in the spirits held, dear liberty, peace, progress, fraternity.

839
00:56:27,680 --> 00:56:31,400
Speaker 1: So while there's not a lot of formal messages being received,

840
00:56:31,680 --> 00:56:36,560
Speaker 1: there's these couple little things going on and on Ree's world, um,

841
00:56:36,640 --> 00:56:40,120
Speaker 1: his immediate world, during his time in the Union Army,

842
00:56:40,440 --> 00:56:43,760
Speaker 1: that would indicate that spiritualism is never out of his mind.

843
00:56:45,239 --> 00:56:48,000
Speaker 1: And I read that Colonel Daniels, who was a white

844
00:56:48,040 --> 00:56:51,719
Speaker 1: officer put in charge of the Native Guards, in his

845
00:56:51,880 --> 00:56:58,000
Speaker 1: reports and in his diary, he talks about as a spiritualist,

846
00:56:58,040 --> 00:57:01,759
Speaker 1: as a great medium Um, And I was fascinated when

847
00:57:01,760 --> 00:57:04,400
Speaker 1: I found that too, meaning he was practicing. And and

848
00:57:04,400 --> 00:57:06,759
Speaker 1: there are a couple of times when Colonel Daniels in

849
00:57:06,840 --> 00:57:10,360
Speaker 1: his diary notes that he sat for a science with Are,

850
00:57:11,200 --> 00:57:14,320
Speaker 1: which is awesome. So he wasn't meeting with the Sir Carminique.

851
00:57:14,400 --> 00:57:17,720
Speaker 1: But clearly he was, as you say, still practicing as

852
00:57:17,720 --> 00:57:20,680
Speaker 1: a medium and following these spirits and listening to their

853
00:57:20,680 --> 00:57:23,080
Speaker 1: messages and those kinds of things. That was that was

854
00:57:23,160 --> 00:57:27,360
Speaker 1: really fascinating to learn. Yeah, I mean there's when you're

855
00:57:27,360 --> 00:57:30,920
Speaker 1: a spiritualist. You're a spiritualist. You're not only doing this,

856
00:57:30,960 --> 00:57:32,720
Speaker 1: you know, one or two days a week. This is

857
00:57:33,080 --> 00:57:37,720
Speaker 1: this is the way you understand the world. Yeah. Um,

858
00:57:37,840 --> 00:57:41,360
Speaker 1: So you you talked about the Union Army taking New Orleans.

859
00:57:41,720 --> 00:57:45,479
Speaker 1: That was under the direction of General Benjamin Butler, and

860
00:57:45,600 --> 00:57:49,280
Speaker 1: he becomes a major figure for the life in New

861
00:57:49,440 --> 00:57:53,480
Speaker 1: Orleans under Union Army rule because he's the commanding officer

862
00:57:53,600 --> 00:57:57,200
Speaker 1: and sets all kinds of policies. Can you talk about

863
00:57:57,560 --> 00:58:02,080
Speaker 1: who Benjamin Butler was and he did handle the administration

864
00:58:02,120 --> 00:58:05,240
Speaker 1: of New Orleans. I'm interested in this in part become

865
00:58:05,480 --> 00:58:08,760
Speaker 1: because he becomes uh it comes back into the story

866
00:58:08,760 --> 00:58:11,840
Speaker 1: of spiritualism. Later as a political advisor for Victoria wood

867
00:58:11,840 --> 00:58:16,040
Speaker 1: Hall in New York. So who he was, what his

868
00:58:16,080 --> 00:58:19,560
Speaker 1: political thinking was like really influence his spiritualism and a

869
00:58:19,640 --> 00:58:21,720
Speaker 1: couple of key points here for the strike Harminique and

870
00:58:21,800 --> 00:58:25,880
Speaker 1: later for Victoria Woodhall. So who was Benjamin Butler and

871
00:58:26,640 --> 00:58:30,240
Speaker 1: what was life in New Orleans like under his governorship.

872
00:58:31,200 --> 00:58:35,400
Speaker 1: So General Benjamin Butler is the Union general who oversees

873
00:58:35,520 --> 00:58:39,840
Speaker 1: New Orleans while it is being um occupied by the

874
00:58:39,960 --> 00:58:43,240
Speaker 1: Union as the Civil Wars going on. He serves later

875
00:58:43,320 --> 00:58:49,120
Speaker 1: in the US Congress, And one's opinion of Butler was

876
00:58:49,240 --> 00:58:51,960
Speaker 1: very much influenced by one's opinion of the Civil War.

877
00:58:52,560 --> 00:58:54,400
Speaker 1: And he also made a lot of decisions in New

878
00:58:54,480 --> 00:58:56,800
Speaker 1: Orleans that also just made him a little unpopular to

879
00:58:56,840 --> 00:59:00,760
Speaker 1: the locals. Um. Honestly, it kind of seems like he

880
00:59:00,800 --> 00:59:05,280
Speaker 1: wasn't really cut out for military rule. UM. So his

881
00:59:05,440 --> 00:59:07,720
Speaker 1: order to enlist black men in the Union army is

882
00:59:07,800 --> 00:59:11,320
Speaker 1: met with much acclaim. Um. You know, he's seen as

883
00:59:11,360 --> 00:59:17,120
Speaker 1: then a friend of the southern black population. But then

884
00:59:17,320 --> 00:59:20,600
Speaker 1: he didn't really know what to do with escaped enslaved

885
00:59:21,200 --> 00:59:24,720
Speaker 1: still enslaved men and women who left Louisiana plantations and

886
00:59:24,760 --> 00:59:28,520
Speaker 1: sought refuge in the Union occupied city. UM. And he

887
00:59:28,720 --> 00:59:32,280
Speaker 1: describes them as contraband, not people, and so many of

888
00:59:32,320 --> 00:59:36,560
Speaker 1: them back to where they had just escaped. Um. And

889
00:59:36,760 --> 00:59:39,360
Speaker 1: his his occupation of the city was described as a

890
00:59:39,440 --> 00:59:45,000
Speaker 1: scourge uh for white Confederate leaning Uh. Confederate supporting New Orleanans,

891
00:59:45,520 --> 00:59:48,120
Speaker 1: they give him the nickname of Beast. He was known

892
00:59:48,120 --> 00:59:51,160
Speaker 1: as Beast Butler. One of the decisions that made him

893
00:59:51,160 --> 00:59:56,800
Speaker 1: really unpopular UM with the Confederate loyalist in UM New

894
00:59:56,960 --> 01:00:03,720
Speaker 1: Orleans was he pas us is this um, this rule

895
01:00:04,400 --> 01:00:09,800
Speaker 1: that allows him and others in charge to treat any

896
01:00:09,880 --> 01:00:14,680
Speaker 1: woman who insults a Union soldier as a prostitute. So

897
01:00:14,800 --> 01:00:20,919
Speaker 1: any woman, any Confederate UM woman who says something disparaging

898
01:00:20,960 --> 01:00:23,680
Speaker 1: to a Union soldier will now be treated as a

899
01:00:23,680 --> 01:00:27,240
Speaker 1: woman of loose morals. Um. He also said some really

900
01:00:27,360 --> 01:00:30,720
Speaker 1: terrible anti Semitic things about the city's Jewish population. UM.

901
01:00:30,760 --> 01:00:32,840
Speaker 1: So we should always keep that in mind when thinking

902
01:00:32,880 --> 01:00:36,280
Speaker 1: about Butler, especially with his later work in the U. S.

903
01:00:36,320 --> 01:00:39,760
Speaker 1: Congress to pass legislation like the ku Klux Klanak which

904
01:00:39,800 --> 01:00:46,200
Speaker 1: outlawed the group. So he's he's a complicated figure, UM,

905
01:00:46,240 --> 01:00:49,480
Speaker 1: and I feel like anyone's opinion of him would change

906
01:00:49,520 --> 01:00:54,880
Speaker 1: with every decision that man made. And he was followed

907
01:00:55,360 --> 01:01:01,480
Speaker 1: in the administration over New Orleans by General Banks. UM.

908
01:01:01,600 --> 01:01:06,240
Speaker 1: Can you mention or or maybe describe the influence that

909
01:01:06,360 --> 01:01:13,280
Speaker 1: Banks had on the sixty four Constitutional Convention When Ah

910
01:01:13,400 --> 01:01:16,160
Speaker 1: they were trying to figure out under what laws and

911
01:01:16,320 --> 01:01:20,760
Speaker 1: under what policies New Orleans would be governed going forward.

912
01:01:22,240 --> 01:01:26,680
Speaker 1: So the Constitutional Convention of eighteen sixty four was, you know,

913
01:01:26,800 --> 01:01:29,760
Speaker 1: something that brought a lot of people hope and something

914
01:01:29,800 --> 01:01:31,800
Speaker 1: that brought a lot of people disappointment. I mean, it's

915
01:01:31,880 --> 01:01:36,080
Speaker 1: just in many ways, the constitutional conventions of the eighteen

916
01:01:36,160 --> 01:01:41,280
Speaker 1: sixties in Louisiana are a hot mess. UM. You've got

917
01:01:42,960 --> 01:01:47,920
Speaker 1: you've got people obviously hoping for things like, um, the

918
01:01:48,000 --> 01:01:52,400
Speaker 1: outlawing of slavery to be put into the constitution. UM.

919
01:01:52,440 --> 01:01:55,240
Speaker 1: And you've got people who are serving that are pretty

920
01:01:58,160 --> 01:02:03,680
Speaker 1: pretty staunch in support of slavery continuing. UM. You've got

921
01:02:04,520 --> 01:02:08,120
Speaker 1: throughout the eighteen sixties and seventies dual governments at times

922
01:02:08,120 --> 01:02:11,880
Speaker 1: working in the state. UM. So in eighteen sixty four,

923
01:02:12,000 --> 01:02:14,600
Speaker 1: there's a lot of questions about what exactly is going

924
01:02:14,640 --> 01:02:17,680
Speaker 1: to be made law, UM, which then impacts who is

925
01:02:17,680 --> 01:02:21,840
Speaker 1: allowed to vote, who is allowed to serve in UM,

926
01:02:21,960 --> 01:02:27,120
Speaker 1: the state and in local political governing bodies. UM. You've

927
01:02:27,120 --> 01:02:32,520
Speaker 1: got people hooting and hollering during the constitutional convention. UM.

928
01:02:32,560 --> 01:02:36,360
Speaker 1: And it's not really until the Constitutional Convention of eighteen

929
01:02:36,400 --> 01:02:39,000
Speaker 1: sixty six that things start to become a little more

930
01:02:40,280 --> 01:02:45,840
Speaker 1: clear about where the state's constitution is going to end up.

931
01:02:48,600 --> 01:02:51,840
Speaker 1: And it's it's in the spring of eighteen sixty five

932
01:02:52,880 --> 01:03:00,120
Speaker 1: that the Confederate Army surrenders at Appomatics and we can

933
01:03:00,200 --> 01:03:06,600
Speaker 1: his assassinated. Can you talk about the science where the

934
01:03:06,640 --> 01:03:12,880
Speaker 1: spirit of Abraham Lincoln first appears to the Sard Carminique. Yeah, so,

935
01:03:13,800 --> 01:03:17,920
Speaker 1: Abraham Lincoln's first appearance to the Sara Carminique is on

936
01:03:17,960 --> 01:03:24,840
Speaker 1: December seven, about seven months after his assassination. It wasn't

937
01:03:24,840 --> 01:03:27,800
Speaker 1: a particularly busy science. Uh, He's not the only spirit

938
01:03:27,800 --> 01:03:30,200
Speaker 1: who delivers a message. That day. St. Vincent de Paul

939
01:03:30,240 --> 01:03:33,480
Speaker 1: and a few others also appeared, and he delivers the

940
01:03:33,560 --> 01:03:37,640
Speaker 1: kind of message that you would expect. He identified that

941
01:03:37,680 --> 01:03:42,400
Speaker 1: particular day as one of fasting, prayer, and thanksgiving for

942
01:03:42,520 --> 01:03:45,280
Speaker 1: post war peace and freedom. He would do stuff like

943
01:03:45,320 --> 01:03:48,520
Speaker 1: that during his term as president as well, declaring, you know,

944
01:03:48,600 --> 01:03:52,360
Speaker 1: days of fasting and thanksgiving. His spirit noted how he

945
01:03:52,440 --> 01:03:55,920
Speaker 1: was glad that they had broken the chains of slavery,

946
01:03:56,200 --> 01:03:58,280
Speaker 1: but he also recognized that there was a lot of

947
01:03:58,280 --> 01:04:00,840
Speaker 1: work still to be done. Um, you know, we shouldn't

948
01:04:00,840 --> 01:04:05,200
Speaker 1: start patting ourselves on the back just yet. He also

949
01:04:05,800 --> 01:04:09,840
Speaker 1: talks about how those who tried to stop the progress

950
01:04:09,840 --> 01:04:15,480
Speaker 1: of freedom would regret those decisions after death, where you know,

951
01:04:15,520 --> 01:04:18,560
Speaker 1: those who had suffered for righteous causes would be blessed

952
01:04:18,600 --> 01:04:21,120
Speaker 1: by God and happy in the spirit world. You know,

953
01:04:21,200 --> 01:04:24,160
Speaker 1: freedom was something that was created and ordained by God.

954
01:04:25,120 --> 01:04:29,080
Speaker 1: And while freedom originated in heaven, his spirit talks about

955
01:04:29,120 --> 01:04:33,200
Speaker 1: how it's intended to reign on earth to UM and

956
01:04:33,240 --> 01:04:36,040
Speaker 1: then he signs off the message like he does many

957
01:04:36,080 --> 01:04:41,400
Speaker 1: of them with your brother and friend Abraham Lincoln. M

958
01:04:43,280 --> 01:04:48,280
Speaker 1: And that idea that there are people opposing because of

959
01:04:48,320 --> 01:04:53,160
Speaker 1: freedom is not abstract to the companique and two Afro

960
01:04:53,200 --> 01:04:57,160
Speaker 1: creoles in the black community New Orleans, UM. You describe

961
01:04:57,160 --> 01:05:01,720
Speaker 1: in your book the Mechanics Institute riot in sixty six.

962
01:05:03,080 --> 01:05:06,600
Speaker 1: Can you relay those events to us now and talk

963
01:05:06,640 --> 01:05:10,320
Speaker 1: a little bit about how that's tied into sixty four

964
01:05:10,480 --> 01:05:16,040
Speaker 1: Constitutional Convention, but then also how it became kind of

965
01:05:16,040 --> 01:05:22,120
Speaker 1: a touchstone for the Star Carmonique in the following years. Yeah. So,

966
01:05:22,120 --> 01:05:26,560
Speaker 1: so the Civil War and reconstruction changes a lot about

967
01:05:26,600 --> 01:05:32,400
Speaker 1: life in New Orleans, UM. You know, as with the

968
01:05:32,720 --> 01:05:36,040
Speaker 1: end of the Civil War. UM, you've got a very

969
01:05:36,080 --> 01:05:39,880
Speaker 1: interesting thing that starts happening in the South, and that

970
01:05:40,120 --> 01:05:45,680
Speaker 1: is you have black local and state politicians. Um. You

971
01:05:45,760 --> 01:05:49,560
Speaker 1: had the long vote over whether or not black men

972
01:05:49,640 --> 01:05:54,040
Speaker 1: could vote. Um. Which there's this really interesting moment. I

973
01:05:54,040 --> 01:05:57,240
Speaker 1: think it's in the I can't remember which constitutional convention

974
01:05:57,240 --> 01:06:01,440
Speaker 1: it's in, but um, black repert senatives who were elected

975
01:06:01,480 --> 01:06:04,000
Speaker 1: are in the chamber and they're not allowed to vote

976
01:06:04,040 --> 01:06:09,480
Speaker 1: because the neo Confederate white politicians aren't letting them vote. Um.

977
01:06:09,560 --> 01:06:11,760
Speaker 1: And so you've got a little bit of a hullabaloo

978
01:06:11,840 --> 01:06:14,600
Speaker 1: going on there in the Constitutional convention because you have

979
01:06:14,600 --> 01:06:16,600
Speaker 1: people who are not being allowed to sit down and

980
01:06:16,680 --> 01:06:20,320
Speaker 1: you know, do their jobs. Um. But you know, this

981
01:06:20,400 --> 01:06:23,120
Speaker 1: starts to get settled a little bit. So you've got

982
01:06:24,760 --> 01:06:32,160
Speaker 1: black men in the legislative chambers making important decisions. Um.

983
01:06:32,200 --> 01:06:34,160
Speaker 1: In fact, Louisiana would be the first state to have

984
01:06:34,200 --> 01:06:38,680
Speaker 1: a black governor when PBS Pinchback took over after Henry

985
01:06:38,680 --> 01:06:42,680
Speaker 1: Clay Warmuth's impeachment. Henry Clay Warmath is an interesting political

986
01:06:42,760 --> 01:06:45,360
Speaker 1: figure in New Orleans history. He presents himself as a

987
01:06:45,360 --> 01:06:49,200
Speaker 1: friend to the New Orleans black population, and then after

988
01:06:49,240 --> 01:06:52,120
Speaker 1: he's elected, he begins to court favor with former Confederates

989
01:06:52,680 --> 01:06:54,240
Speaker 1: to try to keep in power. He was just a

990
01:06:54,320 --> 01:07:02,480
Speaker 1: really power hungry dude. Um. And so you've got this interesting, hopeful,

991
01:07:03,040 --> 01:07:09,520
Speaker 1: auspicious feel um of you know, we might actually get

992
01:07:10,000 --> 01:07:14,240
Speaker 1: get some rights. Um. But with this new political power,

993
01:07:15,280 --> 01:07:18,840
Speaker 1: white supremacy doesn't go away. It continues really strong, and

994
01:07:18,880 --> 01:07:22,200
Speaker 1: it continues with violence. UM. In the eighteen sixty six

995
01:07:22,200 --> 01:07:26,280
Speaker 1: Mechanics Institute riot, which really, historians, we need to just

996
01:07:26,360 --> 01:07:29,760
Speaker 1: rename this thing a massacre um, is a horrible example

997
01:07:29,840 --> 01:07:35,280
Speaker 1: of this. So on July sixty six, a group of

998
01:07:35,400 --> 01:07:39,600
Speaker 1: primarily black delegates meet to revise the state constitution um

999
01:07:39,640 --> 01:07:42,200
Speaker 1: because they want to make sure that it definitely includes

1000
01:07:42,280 --> 01:07:45,800
Speaker 1: black male suffrage um. And so this is intended to

1001
01:07:45,800 --> 01:07:51,560
Speaker 1: be a constitutional convention session at the Mechanics Institute. And

1002
01:07:51,600 --> 01:07:55,320
Speaker 1: the day begins with, you know, some fanfare. There's like

1003
01:07:55,320 --> 01:07:59,280
Speaker 1: a little parade um of black New Orleanans marching to

1004
01:07:59,320 --> 01:08:01,680
Speaker 1: the Mechanics and Institute to celebrate this. This is gonna

1005
01:08:01,680 --> 01:08:06,120
Speaker 1: be a great day, but it's not. It ends up

1006
01:08:06,120 --> 01:08:09,680
Speaker 1: being an absolutely horrid, horrid day because a white mob,

1007
01:08:10,120 --> 01:08:15,160
Speaker 1: aided by local police and firefighters, storm the building and

1008
01:08:15,320 --> 01:08:19,000
Speaker 1: massacre many of the delegates inside UM. Most of the

1009
01:08:19,040 --> 01:08:22,680
Speaker 1: delegates were were unarmed, but that white supremacist mob was

1010
01:08:22,720 --> 01:08:26,559
Speaker 1: heavily armed. Over forty people died that day, almost all

1011
01:08:26,600 --> 01:08:30,080
Speaker 1: of them black. Three local white allies at the meeting

1012
01:08:30,160 --> 01:08:35,639
Speaker 1: also died that day, including a minister and a local dentist, Dr. A. P. Doasty,

1013
01:08:35,760 --> 01:08:40,400
Speaker 1: who is a well known UM thinker of liberal politics

1014
01:08:41,760 --> 01:08:44,479
Speaker 1: and in violence. That, like the Mechanics Institute right, was

1015
01:08:44,520 --> 01:08:46,519
Speaker 1: not alone. You know, in eighteen seventy four of the

1016
01:08:46,560 --> 01:08:50,360
Speaker 1: Battle of Liberty Place, during which the White League UM,

1017
01:08:50,520 --> 01:08:55,120
Speaker 1: a white supremacist organization takes control of New Orleans and

1018
01:08:55,240 --> 01:08:58,360
Speaker 1: is like cutting telegraph wires and so that messages can't

1019
01:08:58,360 --> 01:09:03,160
Speaker 1: get out. UM, they slaughter the At that point, integrated

1020
01:09:03,200 --> 01:09:06,200
Speaker 1: police UM kill some people who are just walking by.

1021
01:09:06,280 --> 01:09:08,880
Speaker 1: There's a black carpenter who's killed with his own hatchet

1022
01:09:09,400 --> 01:09:11,920
Speaker 1: UM by white leaguers who are just like marauding through

1023
01:09:11,920 --> 01:09:16,000
Speaker 1: the city. UM. And so the Mechanics Institute violence is

1024
01:09:16,000 --> 01:09:18,320
Speaker 1: not alone. Also, in the summer of eighteen sixty six,

1025
01:09:18,400 --> 01:09:21,560
Speaker 1: you have the Memphis Massacre, which is just this horrendous

1026
01:09:21,600 --> 01:09:24,680
Speaker 1: white supremacist slaughter of black Memphis citizens and destruction of

1027
01:09:24,720 --> 01:09:29,599
Speaker 1: black owned property UM and violence like this in eighteen

1028
01:09:29,640 --> 01:09:33,040
Speaker 1: sixty six ended up galvanizing a new brand of reconstruction

1029
01:09:33,040 --> 01:09:38,040
Speaker 1: politics nationally, which then worked harder to promote black civil rights.

1030
01:09:38,479 --> 01:09:40,920
Speaker 1: But even those politics are short lived and end in

1031
01:09:41,080 --> 01:09:45,080
Speaker 1: eighteen seventy seven with the close of reconstruction for the

1032
01:09:45,240 --> 01:09:50,360
Speaker 1: ark Harmonique. The Mechanics Institute riot became an incredibly important event.

1033
01:09:51,200 --> 01:09:55,640
Speaker 1: The martyrs of that day's violence often delivered messages the

1034
01:09:55,680 --> 01:09:59,200
Speaker 1: spirit of one martyr, Victor, and they call themselves martyrs,

1035
01:09:59,240 --> 01:10:02,599
Speaker 1: and other spirits refer to these men who died at

1036
01:10:02,600 --> 01:10:08,440
Speaker 1: the Mechanics Institute martyrs, their martyrs for the idea um.

1037
01:10:08,600 --> 01:10:13,200
Speaker 1: One of these spirits, Victor Lacroix Um, a very well

1038
01:10:13,200 --> 01:10:18,800
Speaker 1: connected Afro Creole man, whose body was mutilated by some

1039
01:10:18,880 --> 01:10:21,840
Speaker 1: of the white mob, and his and his valuables were

1040
01:10:21,840 --> 01:10:26,639
Speaker 1: stolen watch that he had inherited with stolen. His spirit

1041
01:10:27,600 --> 01:10:32,879
Speaker 1: afterwards noted how their blood, the blood of the martyrs,

1042
01:10:33,560 --> 01:10:37,120
Speaker 1: flooded the streets of New Orleans that day, but that

1043
01:10:37,160 --> 01:10:39,680
Speaker 1: their suffering was not in vain because it prompted a

1044
01:10:39,720 --> 01:10:45,280
Speaker 1: response from the US Congress. Um Another one, Dr A. P. Dosty,

1045
01:10:45,439 --> 01:10:48,560
Speaker 1: that white dentist who supported black suffrage. He delivers a

1046
01:10:48,640 --> 01:10:52,519
Speaker 1: number of messages over the years, many of which recall

1047
01:10:52,600 --> 01:10:55,080
Speaker 1: how he was killed like an animal. His death was

1048
01:10:55,120 --> 01:10:59,599
Speaker 1: particularly gruesome. The white mob was particularly not happy seeing

1049
01:11:00,080 --> 01:11:06,240
Speaker 1: UM fellow white men supporting black liberty. UM ghosties body

1050
01:11:06,400 --> 01:11:10,479
Speaker 1: is just he's like shot and stabbed, but he doesn't

1051
01:11:10,560 --> 01:11:14,280
Speaker 1: die during the violence. He dies about a week later

1052
01:11:15,280 --> 01:11:19,240
Speaker 1: when they take his um dying body out of the building.

1053
01:11:19,760 --> 01:11:22,920
Speaker 1: UM a police officer sits on his head as his

1054
01:11:23,000 --> 01:11:27,000
Speaker 1: body is taken away, like it's just insult to injury.

1055
01:11:27,000 --> 01:11:29,519
Speaker 1: Doesn't even come close to describing this. So it's not

1056
01:11:29,560 --> 01:11:32,280
Speaker 1: surprising that doost spirit talks about how he was killed

1057
01:11:32,320 --> 01:11:35,760
Speaker 1: like an animal. UM, but also he reports how he

1058
01:11:35,840 --> 01:11:39,200
Speaker 1: was glad to die for such a righteous cause. On

1059
01:11:39,200 --> 01:11:41,920
Speaker 1: one occasion, even his spirit noted how he would grant

1060
01:11:41,960 --> 01:11:46,840
Speaker 1: forgiveness to the spirits of the perpetrators when they joined

1061
01:11:46,880 --> 01:11:49,840
Speaker 1: the spirit world, and like, that's an interesting thing to

1062
01:11:49,840 --> 01:11:52,840
Speaker 1: think about that, you know, he's he dies in such

1063
01:11:52,880 --> 01:11:55,560
Speaker 1: a gruesome, gruesome way. And one of the things that

1064
01:11:55,640 --> 01:11:58,360
Speaker 1: his spirit says is that, you know, when the spirits

1065
01:11:58,400 --> 01:12:00,960
Speaker 1: of those who did this to me come to the

1066
01:12:01,000 --> 01:12:05,519
Speaker 1: spirit world, I well grant them forgiveness and I will

1067
01:12:05,560 --> 01:12:08,040
Speaker 1: ask for them to be you know, treated well in

1068
01:12:08,080 --> 01:12:16,800
Speaker 1: the spirit world, because progress needed to include everybody m in.

1069
01:12:17,320 --> 01:12:22,479
Speaker 1: In the years after that Mechanics Institute massacre, this our

1070
01:12:22,520 --> 01:12:28,320
Speaker 1: carminique h held lots of their silences. You mentioned that

1071
01:12:28,360 --> 01:12:34,280
Speaker 1: it even reaches the group reaches Heyda even after Balmer

1072
01:12:34,400 --> 01:12:39,920
Speaker 1: dies in those years. What what was their corminique science like,

1073
01:12:40,200 --> 01:12:42,519
Speaker 1: what was it like to be there? What do we

1074
01:12:42,560 --> 01:12:47,320
Speaker 1: know about those those seances? Yes, I'll go and warny

1075
01:12:47,360 --> 01:12:50,559
Speaker 1: this is gonna be a long answer. There's a there's

1076
01:12:50,600 --> 01:12:53,320
Speaker 1: a lot to say about trying to figure out a

1077
01:12:53,360 --> 01:12:59,160
Speaker 1: typical sort carmonique science meeting. Um So, as a historian,

1078
01:12:59,200 --> 01:13:02,840
Speaker 1: it's annoying that it's actually impossible to know exactly what

1079
01:13:02,880 --> 01:13:05,320
Speaker 1: a seance was like. Um. I suppose we could hold

1080
01:13:05,320 --> 01:13:08,439
Speaker 1: a seance and ask on re um. But there's a

1081
01:13:08,439 --> 01:13:10,400
Speaker 1: lot of things that we can figure out from their records.

1082
01:13:10,880 --> 01:13:13,960
Speaker 1: Their records, you know, sadly never give a play by

1083
01:13:14,000 --> 01:13:17,400
Speaker 1: play of how a seance happened. Um But it seems like,

1084
01:13:17,640 --> 01:13:21,080
Speaker 1: especially as they got into a groove, the salances were

1085
01:13:21,120 --> 01:13:25,160
Speaker 1: pretty well organized. Um So you can you know, glean

1086
01:13:25,200 --> 01:13:26,880
Speaker 1: a lot of things from just little things that are

1087
01:13:26,960 --> 01:13:31,320
Speaker 1: noted in the margins. UM. They have this one um

1088
01:13:31,760 --> 01:13:35,280
Speaker 1: list of rules for the Sir Carmonique UM that give

1089
01:13:35,320 --> 01:13:37,599
Speaker 1: a sense of sort of how these salences are going

1090
01:13:37,640 --> 01:13:41,439
Speaker 1: to go. UM. It seems like they would spend the

1091
01:13:41,479 --> 01:13:45,920
Speaker 1: first part of any meeting preparing for communication with the

1092
01:13:46,439 --> 01:13:49,519
Speaker 1: spirit world. UH. They would read a message or two

1093
01:13:49,560 --> 01:13:52,240
Speaker 1: that they were received at an earlier meeting. UH, they

1094
01:13:52,240 --> 01:13:57,200
Speaker 1: would discuss that message. And this process of reading previous

1095
01:13:57,240 --> 01:14:02,759
Speaker 1: messages discussing previous messages was intended to create harmony amongst

1096
01:14:02,800 --> 01:14:06,320
Speaker 1: the group. And this is a really common spiritualist idea

1097
01:14:06,760 --> 01:14:11,400
Speaker 1: that in order to successfully communicate with the spirit world,

1098
01:14:12,680 --> 01:14:15,719
Speaker 1: those who are trying to communicate first need to get

1099
01:14:15,760 --> 01:14:18,760
Speaker 1: into a harmonious groove. UM. So you know, it's not

1100
01:14:18,800 --> 01:14:21,800
Speaker 1: surprising that the Sir Harmonique calls themselves what they do

1101
01:14:22,080 --> 01:14:28,400
Speaker 1: sir Carminique is French for harmonic circle and so UM.

1102
01:14:28,439 --> 01:14:31,439
Speaker 1: You know, you would create harmony, and it was then

1103
01:14:31,479 --> 01:14:35,520
Speaker 1: important to keep that harmony going UM, and so punctuality

1104
01:14:35,600 --> 01:14:38,840
Speaker 1: was very important. There's actually this fabulous message that I

1105
01:14:38,880 --> 01:14:44,800
Speaker 1: adore from one medium's mother who opens her message with

1106
01:14:44,920 --> 01:14:48,720
Speaker 1: something like I thought we had well established that punctuality

1107
01:14:48,840 --> 01:14:51,840
Speaker 1: was important, and I just love it because it's like

1108
01:14:51,920 --> 01:14:56,360
Speaker 1: mom shames from beyond the grave. UM. The spirit of

1109
01:14:56,360 --> 01:14:59,800
Speaker 1: another member's father admonished him one day because it seemed

1110
01:14:59,800 --> 01:15:02,160
Speaker 1: as he was thinking about ladies during one of the

1111
01:15:02,200 --> 01:15:05,720
Speaker 1: meetings rather than keeping on tasks. So you know, it's

1112
01:15:05,760 --> 01:15:07,640
Speaker 1: not just that you need to establish harmony at the

1113
01:15:07,640 --> 01:15:09,679
Speaker 1: beginning of the meeting, but then you know you've got

1114
01:15:09,680 --> 01:15:14,080
Speaker 1: to keep in tune with each other. UM. The spirits

1115
01:15:14,320 --> 01:15:16,960
Speaker 1: are going to communicate with us best if we're a

1116
01:15:17,080 --> 01:15:24,719
Speaker 1: very receptive um community for them. So once that harmony

1117
01:15:24,760 --> 01:15:28,240
Speaker 1: was established, you could begin to receive messages. Uh. It

1118
01:15:28,320 --> 01:15:31,479
Speaker 1: seems like sometimes the medium might have been the one

1119
01:15:31,520 --> 01:15:34,599
Speaker 1: who recorded the messages in the seiance records. In their cases,

1120
01:15:34,640 --> 01:15:39,160
Speaker 1: it seems like the medium was clearly the person writing

1121
01:15:39,160 --> 01:15:41,360
Speaker 1: the records was not the medium, but the medium was

1122
01:15:41,439 --> 01:15:44,120
Speaker 1: relaying what they were told. But this is part of

1123
01:15:44,120 --> 01:15:48,280
Speaker 1: the stuff that's not ever clearly detailed in their seiance records,

1124
01:15:48,360 --> 01:15:50,559
Speaker 1: like so so and so was getting this message, and

1125
01:15:50,600 --> 01:15:52,680
Speaker 1: so and so wrote this down, but they might like

1126
01:15:52,880 --> 01:15:56,000
Speaker 1: make little notes about how this is um by the

1127
01:15:56,080 --> 01:16:01,080
Speaker 1: hand of honree in terms of like who's writing UM.

1128
01:16:01,120 --> 01:16:05,599
Speaker 1: The records themselves are really neat and tidy. There's not

1129
01:16:05,800 --> 01:16:09,519
Speaker 1: much in the records that looks like automatic writing. There's

1130
01:16:09,560 --> 01:16:12,439
Speaker 1: a couple of pages scattered throughout that look like automatic writing,

1131
01:16:12,439 --> 01:16:14,439
Speaker 1: but I think that's pretty I'm pretty sure that's on

1132
01:16:14,520 --> 01:16:19,280
Speaker 1: Red by himself, not at one of the meetings. UM.

1133
01:16:19,400 --> 01:16:23,000
Speaker 1: The messages are written down on neat and tidy with

1134
01:16:23,160 --> 01:16:26,920
Speaker 1: dates at the top, uh to note what day the

1135
01:16:26,960 --> 01:16:29,120
Speaker 1: message came on, and then at the end of the

1136
01:16:29,200 --> 01:16:32,720
Speaker 1: message it's UM. There's like a sign off from the

1137
01:16:32,760 --> 01:16:34,680
Speaker 1: spirit on the right hand side of the page. They

1138
01:16:34,720 --> 01:16:38,280
Speaker 1: almost look like letters. UM. Some of these meetings were

1139
01:16:38,280 --> 01:16:44,320
Speaker 1: definitely very, very long. You've got in some cases pages

1140
01:16:44,960 --> 01:16:49,920
Speaker 1: UM recording a specific seance, which you know that takes

1141
01:16:49,920 --> 01:16:53,599
Speaker 1: a long time to hand rite out twenty five pages. UM.

1142
01:16:53,640 --> 01:16:56,400
Speaker 1: You know there's some clear sincerity of belief going on here.

1143
01:16:56,400 --> 01:16:58,320
Speaker 1: You're not going to spend hours doing something that you

1144
01:16:58,360 --> 01:17:02,320
Speaker 1: don't think is true. UM. And so these are long meetings,

1145
01:17:02,360 --> 01:17:10,799
Speaker 1: they're organized meetings. The spirits who appear is a huge

1146
01:17:10,920 --> 01:17:17,479
Speaker 1: array of people. It includes religious leaders, Jesus Confucius, Franz

1147
01:17:17,560 --> 01:17:23,479
Speaker 1: Mesmer of Mesmerism, Emmanuel Swedenborg, another visionary writer, all appear.

1148
01:17:24,000 --> 01:17:28,600
Speaker 1: It includes political leaders. Former presidents like Abraham Lincoln, George Washington,

1149
01:17:28,840 --> 01:17:32,240
Speaker 1: Thomas Jefferson appear as well as other political figures like

1150
01:17:32,320 --> 01:17:36,879
Speaker 1: John Brown and Daniel Webster. French revolutionary thinkers and actors

1151
01:17:36,880 --> 01:17:40,400
Speaker 1: appear all the time, such as Ropes, Pierre, Montesquieu, Jean

1152
01:17:40,479 --> 01:17:44,559
Speaker 1: Jacques Rousseau. Figures from the Haitian Revolution to Salt Leopa

1153
01:17:44,560 --> 01:17:49,280
Speaker 1: Tour makes a few appearances. Beloved local Catholic clerics appeared,

1154
01:17:49,600 --> 01:17:52,639
Speaker 1: as well as Saint Vincent de Paul. Spirits who needed

1155
01:17:52,680 --> 01:17:57,000
Speaker 1: to apologize appeared. John Wilkes Booth gives a very brief

1156
01:17:57,040 --> 01:18:00,960
Speaker 1: message once that's basically like I regret it um. Former

1157
01:18:01,000 --> 01:18:05,479
Speaker 1: Confederate leaders, including Robert E. Lee appear and apologize for

1158
01:18:05,640 --> 01:18:10,040
Speaker 1: their role during the Civil War. The spirit of Napoleon

1159
01:18:10,920 --> 01:18:14,400
Speaker 1: appears a couple of times, and he gives this one

1160
01:18:14,640 --> 01:18:17,920
Speaker 1: great message about how he his spirits not doing that

1161
01:18:17,960 --> 01:18:19,600
Speaker 1: great in the spirit world. He's got a lot to

1162
01:18:19,640 --> 01:18:22,519
Speaker 1: get over before he can progress um. And he talks

1163
01:18:22,520 --> 01:18:25,080
Speaker 1: about how people who thought they were so big on

1164
01:18:25,200 --> 01:18:29,400
Speaker 1: earth find that they are quite small here and considering

1165
01:18:29,400 --> 01:18:32,439
Speaker 1: people love to make jokes about, you know, Napoleon's heightened stature.

1166
01:18:32,600 --> 01:18:34,400
Speaker 1: I just find that really funny that his spirit calls

1167
01:18:34,439 --> 01:18:38,719
Speaker 1: himself small UM. Other notable spirits like Pocahonas and Mrs

1168
01:18:38,720 --> 01:18:42,759
Speaker 1: Washington appear a few times. Local friends and family appear,

1169
01:18:43,360 --> 01:18:48,559
Speaker 1: local politicians appear UM. Local celebrities for lack of a

1170
01:18:48,560 --> 01:18:53,360
Speaker 1: better term, also appear, such as UM Captain Andre Cayu,

1171
01:18:53,720 --> 01:18:57,000
Speaker 1: a formally enslaved man who died fighting in the Union Army.

1172
01:18:57,720 --> 01:19:00,679
Speaker 1: He has this massive funeral that attracted thou sins of people,

1173
01:19:01,120 --> 01:19:04,000
Speaker 1: and his bravery on the battlefield helped convince naysayers the

1174
01:19:04,000 --> 01:19:06,760
Speaker 1: Black soldiers were courageous fighters. So he appears a few

1175
01:19:06,800 --> 01:19:10,960
Speaker 1: times and then. Unnamed spirits were also very common UM

1176
01:19:11,000 --> 01:19:14,600
Speaker 1: those who signed their messages your friend, a brother, or

1177
01:19:14,680 --> 01:19:18,719
Speaker 1: just with the letter X. And with such an array

1178
01:19:18,760 --> 01:19:23,360
Speaker 1: of spirits, the messages broached a variety of topics. There

1179
01:19:23,360 --> 01:19:26,839
Speaker 1: were personal ones from family members. These were quite common.

1180
01:19:27,280 --> 01:19:29,519
Speaker 1: Family members wanted to confirm that they were well in

1181
01:19:29,560 --> 01:19:33,559
Speaker 1: the spirit world. Many spirits developed delivered messages that explain

1182
01:19:33,600 --> 01:19:36,160
Speaker 1: the nature of the spirit world and reality. More generally,

1183
01:19:36,520 --> 01:19:38,960
Speaker 1: they described what happened to a spirit after death, which

1184
01:19:38,960 --> 01:19:41,760
Speaker 1: would help the sur carminique prepare themselves for entering the

1185
01:19:41,800 --> 01:19:48,559
Speaker 1: spirit world, and political messages were very frequent. UM. Messages

1186
01:19:48,600 --> 01:19:51,800
Speaker 1: that discussed the idea and the progress of humanity are

1187
01:19:51,840 --> 01:19:56,080
Speaker 1: all over the records, messages from martyrs, from things like

1188
01:19:56,160 --> 01:20:01,000
Speaker 1: the Mechanics Institute Riot. They almost exclusively delivered political messages.

1189
01:20:01,240 --> 01:20:04,919
Speaker 1: John Brown never says anything that is not about black liberty.

1190
01:20:05,960 --> 01:20:09,440
Speaker 1: The cornerstones of French revolutionary thought, you know, liberty, allote

1191
01:20:09,560 --> 01:20:14,759
Speaker 1: fraternity run throughout the records. So so so many messages

1192
01:20:14,840 --> 01:20:19,320
Speaker 1: denounced materialism, greed, and desire for power, you know, harmonies

1193
01:20:19,360 --> 01:20:23,920
Speaker 1: of very common theme. UM. And so even when it's

1194
01:20:23,960 --> 01:20:29,040
Speaker 1: not overtly political things, these more subtly political ideas, things like,

1195
01:20:29,160 --> 01:20:33,040
Speaker 1: you know, materialism is something to be avoided, harmony is

1196
01:20:33,080 --> 01:20:36,040
Speaker 1: something to aspire to. I would say these are a

1197
01:20:36,080 --> 01:20:40,160
Speaker 1: little more subtly political, um, because they're giving some instruction

1198
01:20:40,200 --> 01:20:45,080
Speaker 1: about how society should be, how people should act with

1199
01:20:45,160 --> 01:20:49,960
Speaker 1: one another. These are all over the records. M hm.

1200
01:20:51,080 --> 01:20:55,800
Speaker 1: How strong you mentioned French revolutionary thought. How strong was

1201
01:20:55,840 --> 01:21:00,800
Speaker 1: the influence of French revolutionary thought on And there were

1202
01:21:00,800 --> 01:21:03,679
Speaker 1: other thinkers and writers at the time, like Frederick Douglas

1203
01:21:03,760 --> 01:21:07,679
Speaker 1: who had a kind of big transnational vision for liberty

1204
01:21:07,680 --> 01:21:10,360
Speaker 1: and freedom, which was evident in The North Star. The

1205
01:21:10,439 --> 01:21:14,479
Speaker 1: kinds of stories he was publishing that we're following radical thought,

1206
01:21:14,640 --> 01:21:18,880
Speaker 1: radical writers at various places around the world. How how

1207
01:21:18,960 --> 01:21:23,040
Speaker 1: kind of global or transnational was the Star Carminique's thinking,

1208
01:21:25,040 --> 01:21:30,600
Speaker 1: The Sir Carminique thinking was incredibly transnational. Um. French revolutionary

1209
01:21:30,640 --> 01:21:37,639
Speaker 1: thought is hugely influential on them, and they're they're receiving

1210
01:21:37,720 --> 01:21:43,040
Speaker 1: messages from French revolutionary thinkers and writers, and they're receiving

1211
01:21:43,080 --> 01:21:47,559
Speaker 1: messages that are clearly influenced by French revolutionary thinkers and writers.

1212
01:21:48,400 --> 01:21:52,000
Speaker 1: And it makes sense. Um. You know, the kinds of

1213
01:21:52,960 --> 01:21:55,120
Speaker 1: some of the books that were very popular in New

1214
01:21:55,200 --> 01:22:00,519
Speaker 1: Orleans in the late Antebellum period were books about the

1215
01:22:00,560 --> 01:22:05,599
Speaker 1: French Revolution, were histories of Haiti that included descriptions of

1216
01:22:05,640 --> 01:22:09,360
Speaker 1: the Haitian revolution. Henri himself, you know, as the son

1217
01:22:09,680 --> 01:22:16,120
Speaker 1: of Haitian refugees. Um. They're they're thinking is always very

1218
01:22:16,240 --> 01:22:26,240
Speaker 1: local but also very global. Um. So there the ideas

1219
01:22:26,560 --> 01:22:30,360
Speaker 1: of the French revolutionaries thinkers are both in their messages

1220
01:22:31,040 --> 01:22:37,720
Speaker 1: and they're visited by spirits of French revolutionaries themselves, like Montesquieu, Rousseau, Robespierre,

1221
01:22:38,560 --> 01:22:43,160
Speaker 1: the Haitian revolutionary leader to sult Labatur, and the idea

1222
01:22:43,200 --> 01:22:46,160
Speaker 1: of these men too, are present in so many of

1223
01:22:46,200 --> 01:22:51,040
Speaker 1: the Spirit's messages. You know, spiritualism has this great ability

1224
01:22:51,080 --> 01:22:55,679
Speaker 1: to mediate the memory of the French Revolution and its

1225
01:22:55,720 --> 01:23:01,879
Speaker 1: promises for republican society, and that act of mediation offers

1226
01:23:02,120 --> 01:23:05,719
Speaker 1: answers to the politics and violence of post war New Orleans.

1227
01:23:06,080 --> 01:23:07,760
Speaker 1: You know, when we think about the French Revolution, this

1228
01:23:07,840 --> 01:23:10,679
Speaker 1: is a revolution to take power from the land owning elite,

1229
01:23:10,800 --> 01:23:15,160
Speaker 1: the Asal regime and put it with the people. Um

1230
01:23:15,240 --> 01:23:17,360
Speaker 1: the French Revolution was so much more than the storming

1231
01:23:17,400 --> 01:23:20,240
Speaker 1: of the Bastille in seventeen eighty nine and the guillotine.

1232
01:23:20,479 --> 01:23:23,360
Speaker 1: It sparked a new way of thinking about political systems

1233
01:23:23,360 --> 01:23:27,720
Speaker 1: in the organization of society. You know, spirits referenced things

1234
01:23:27,880 --> 01:23:31,759
Speaker 1: like the Genius of eighty nine, which is a reference

1235
01:23:31,800 --> 01:23:34,639
Speaker 1: to the storming of the Bastille. Many of them will

1236
01:23:34,720 --> 01:23:38,840
Speaker 1: conclude messages with things like vive la libertay, you know,

1237
01:23:38,880 --> 01:23:42,679
Speaker 1: the very famous battle cry of the French Revolution. And

1238
01:23:43,400 --> 01:23:49,280
Speaker 1: it makes sense that these Francophone ideas would find such

1239
01:23:49,320 --> 01:23:52,559
Speaker 1: resonance with the Sir Harmonique because the cir Harmonique saw

1240
01:23:52,600 --> 01:23:56,599
Speaker 1: themselves as dealing with their own aristocracy. You know, whites

1241
01:23:56,600 --> 01:23:59,479
Speaker 1: who had become powerful from slavery where their own as

1242
01:23:59,560 --> 01:24:02,120
Speaker 1: she all regime to deal with. And as long as

1243
01:24:02,120 --> 01:24:05,720
Speaker 1: that aristocracy ruled, the people couldn't be liberated and no

1244
01:24:05,760 --> 01:24:08,479
Speaker 1: one would have real equality. So, you know, the Spirit's

1245
01:24:08,600 --> 01:24:13,080
Speaker 1: espouse ideals like living by a social contract, divine friendship, brotherhood.

1246
01:24:13,280 --> 01:24:15,800
Speaker 1: These are ideas that come up in the writings of

1247
01:24:15,840 --> 01:24:19,680
Speaker 1: these French revolutionary thinkers. Um. And in a true republic,

1248
01:24:19,720 --> 01:24:25,760
Speaker 1: the people's voice mattered. Um. It's it's important though, to

1249
01:24:25,760 --> 01:24:29,839
Speaker 1: note that there was some regret to Robespierre's Spirit regrets

1250
01:24:29,880 --> 01:24:32,719
Speaker 1: the terror. You know, he's like, yeah, maybe we spilled

1251
01:24:32,760 --> 01:24:35,120
Speaker 1: a little too much blood with the guillotine. But he

1252
01:24:35,160 --> 01:24:37,640
Speaker 1: also saw that violence is necessary for the success of

1253
01:24:37,640 --> 01:24:42,080
Speaker 1: the people. Um. And to your point about Frederick Douglas,

1254
01:24:42,160 --> 01:24:44,120
Speaker 1: you know, Frederick Douglas and the Cirque had a lot

1255
01:24:44,120 --> 01:24:46,720
Speaker 1: of similar views. You know, they both viewed slavery as

1256
01:24:46,720 --> 01:24:52,920
Speaker 1: immoral tyranny. They both believed that real religion endorsed love

1257
01:24:53,080 --> 01:24:57,120
Speaker 1: and equality. But it goes deeper than that too. Um.

1258
01:24:57,160 --> 01:25:00,439
Speaker 1: You know, Douglas, in one of his letters to William

1259
01:25:00,479 --> 01:25:05,280
Speaker 1: Lloyd Garrison. He writes something like, um, as to nation,

1260
01:25:05,479 --> 01:25:08,920
Speaker 1: I belong to none. As to nation, I belong to none,

1261
01:25:09,360 --> 01:25:12,000
Speaker 1: And the circule reminds me of that. You know, because

1262
01:25:12,040 --> 01:25:15,720
Speaker 1: of America's racial hierarchy and relationship to slavery, members of

1263
01:25:15,720 --> 01:25:18,600
Speaker 1: the Cirque had not been allowed to be full citizens,

1264
01:25:19,880 --> 01:25:22,920
Speaker 1: and they received messages that a shoe national identity in

1265
01:25:22,960 --> 01:25:26,719
Speaker 1: favor of humanity in general. Um, there's this great message

1266
01:25:26,720 --> 01:25:29,120
Speaker 1: from the Spirit of George Washington in which he says,

1267
01:25:29,600 --> 01:25:35,000
Speaker 1: I'm not American, I am of humanity. It's flag is mine.

1268
01:25:35,560 --> 01:25:38,280
Speaker 1: And that coming from the US as first president and

1269
01:25:38,400 --> 01:25:41,679
Speaker 1: an owner of slaves people, you know that holds weight.

1270
01:25:42,240 --> 01:25:45,479
Speaker 1: One's main allegiance should be to humanity and the uplift

1271
01:25:45,640 --> 01:25:49,720
Speaker 1: of human equality. Both the Cirque and Douglas thought, you know,

1272
01:25:49,760 --> 01:25:52,559
Speaker 1: America could be a place of progress, but it will

1273
01:25:52,600 --> 01:25:56,799
Speaker 1: never be with slavery. I'm In that same letter to Garrison,

1274
01:25:56,880 --> 01:26:01,320
Speaker 1: Douglas says something like America will not allow her children

1275
01:26:01,400 --> 01:26:06,320
Speaker 1: to love her. But the idea that the spirit's dedication

1276
01:26:06,400 --> 01:26:12,160
Speaker 1: of those French revolutionary ideas um of liberty, egalite fraternity.

1277
01:26:12,200 --> 01:26:15,680
Speaker 1: If the idea could take hold in America, we might

1278
01:26:15,720 --> 01:26:19,040
Speaker 1: be able to change it to where America might let

1279
01:26:19,080 --> 01:26:24,280
Speaker 1: her children love her mhm. And when you're talking about

1280
01:26:24,400 --> 01:26:34,639
Speaker 1: Robespierre believing that violence was necessary to achieve republican democracy, Uh,

1281
01:26:34,840 --> 01:26:38,080
Speaker 1: did the Sir Harmonique kind of share that idea about

1282
01:26:38,120 --> 01:26:39,880
Speaker 1: the Civil War? How did they? How did they think

1283
01:26:39,880 --> 01:26:42,360
Speaker 1: about the Civil War in the in the decades after,

1284
01:26:42,439 --> 01:26:45,320
Speaker 1: when they were going through the throes of reconstruction and

1285
01:26:45,360 --> 01:26:48,240
Speaker 1: the ongoing struggle and violence that kind of continued the

1286
01:26:48,280 --> 01:26:53,840
Speaker 1: war in their local frame? Um, how did they think

1287
01:26:53,880 --> 01:26:58,719
Speaker 1: about the fighting that had been done? So the spirits

1288
01:26:58,720 --> 01:27:01,320
Speaker 1: and the Sir Carminique, they didn't want there to ever

1289
01:27:01,360 --> 01:27:05,040
Speaker 1: be a war. Um. They didn't like violence of any kind.

1290
01:27:05,720 --> 01:27:08,599
Speaker 1: But they also solve the necessity of the Civil war

1291
01:27:09,000 --> 01:27:12,080
Speaker 1: in order to rid the country of slavery. Slavery was

1292
01:27:12,160 --> 01:27:16,639
Speaker 1: horrid um. And the spirits of both formally enslaved persons

1293
01:27:16,800 --> 01:27:20,639
Speaker 1: and the spirits of former slavers told them this. So

1294
01:27:21,120 --> 01:27:24,920
Speaker 1: in order to in order for the idea to take

1295
01:27:25,080 --> 01:27:30,160
Speaker 1: root in the world, slavery would have to be abolished.

1296
01:27:31,000 --> 01:27:38,160
Speaker 1: And if it required war, then it required war. Um.

1297
01:27:38,200 --> 01:27:40,360
Speaker 1: And after the Civil War, spirits of many who were

1298
01:27:40,400 --> 01:27:44,559
Speaker 1: involved appear. So the spirit of Roberty Lee apologizes for

1299
01:27:44,640 --> 01:27:47,720
Speaker 1: his leadership in the war. And he's not the only

1300
01:27:47,760 --> 01:27:50,920
Speaker 1: Confederate soldier to do to to do that. A number

1301
01:27:50,960 --> 01:27:55,960
Speaker 1: of Confederate soldiers apologize. UM. The spirits of Union soldiers

1302
01:27:56,520 --> 01:28:00,479
Speaker 1: delivered messages to about how they were continuing the march

1303
01:28:00,600 --> 01:28:05,719
Speaker 1: forward in the world beyond Um. The spirit of Captain

1304
01:28:05,760 --> 01:28:10,160
Speaker 1: Andre Cayu, that formerly enslave New Orleans man who dies

1305
01:28:10,240 --> 01:28:13,479
Speaker 1: on the battlefield of Port Hudson. He said again and

1306
01:28:13,560 --> 01:28:16,759
Speaker 1: again and again how he was glad to have died

1307
01:28:16,800 --> 01:28:21,759
Speaker 1: for the cause. So, while violence should be avoided, fighting

1308
01:28:21,800 --> 01:28:30,400
Speaker 1: for a just cause was itself justice. M You mentioned

1309
01:28:30,920 --> 01:28:36,120
Speaker 1: kind of at the top of our conversation that there

1310
01:28:36,120 --> 01:28:42,320
Speaker 1: were a number of spiritualist mediums who spoke from you know,

1311
01:28:42,360 --> 01:28:46,200
Speaker 1: claimed to be speaking from Native spirit guides. That there

1312
01:28:46,240 --> 01:28:51,839
Speaker 1: were people from native tribes. Sometimes they were leaders, sometimes

1313
01:28:51,880 --> 01:28:55,639
Speaker 1: they were young girls, you know, and they were saying, Okay,

1314
01:28:55,640 --> 01:28:59,160
Speaker 1: now I'm speaking in the voice of a of a

1315
01:28:59,160 --> 01:29:02,200
Speaker 1: four year old Native girl, and this is what you know,

1316
01:29:02,280 --> 01:29:07,400
Speaker 1: territorial expansion or massacre she suffered. Um. Did the Sir

1317
01:29:07,479 --> 01:29:12,639
Speaker 1: Carmenique ever received messages from Native spirit gigs they did.

1318
01:29:12,680 --> 01:29:18,240
Speaker 1: The Curuk received a couple of messages from Native American spirits.

1319
01:29:18,280 --> 01:29:21,519
Speaker 1: They receive one or two from Pocahonas, they receive one

1320
01:29:21,600 --> 01:29:25,560
Speaker 1: or two from Montezuma, and they receive a couple from

1321
01:29:25,600 --> 01:29:29,439
Speaker 1: a few other spirits that they come right after a

1322
01:29:29,479 --> 01:29:32,959
Speaker 1: message from Pocahonas. And their names are things like Pacoa,

1323
01:29:33,360 --> 01:29:37,360
Speaker 1: which kind of sounds like an attempt at a Native

1324
01:29:37,400 --> 01:29:42,080
Speaker 1: American name. What's really interesting is they'll allude to things

1325
01:29:42,280 --> 01:29:45,960
Speaker 1: like monte Zuma has one where he sort of alludes to,

1326
01:29:47,600 --> 01:29:52,080
Speaker 1: you know, the the old days of um. It's just

1327
01:29:52,200 --> 01:29:58,400
Speaker 1: like Barbary. But their messages are actually kind of bland uh,

1328
01:29:59,560 --> 01:30:02,680
Speaker 1: which when compared with some of the white women on

1329
01:30:02,760 --> 01:30:08,240
Speaker 1: the Northeast coast who are almost doing these performances of

1330
01:30:09,000 --> 01:30:13,360
Speaker 1: uh so called Indian squaws, it sort of makes the

1331
01:30:13,360 --> 01:30:17,759
Speaker 1: Sir Carminique's interaction with Native American spirits seemed kind of boring.

1332
01:30:18,400 --> 01:30:23,760
Speaker 1: M Um. We also talked to the top kind of

1333
01:30:23,800 --> 01:30:29,519
Speaker 1: about in general, what statesmen and political figures appearing in

1334
01:30:29,600 --> 01:30:33,360
Speaker 1: silence is meant for spiritualists and their relationship to the past.

1335
01:30:33,880 --> 01:30:38,439
Speaker 1: But you've mentioned now all kinds of different figures who

1336
01:30:38,600 --> 01:30:41,679
Speaker 1: spoke to the star harmony in particular, Was there anything

1337
01:30:41,680 --> 01:30:46,200
Speaker 1: that was unique about the way they start harmonique related

1338
01:30:46,240 --> 01:30:49,880
Speaker 1: to these historical figures, whether it's George Washington or I mean,

1339
01:30:49,880 --> 01:30:53,679
Speaker 1: in the case of Henrie h getting a message from

1340
01:30:53,760 --> 01:30:59,120
Speaker 1: Toussaint Levature about, you know, about the French Revolution, thinking

1341
01:30:59,120 --> 01:31:01,679
Speaker 1: about his place in the revolution, all of that would

1342
01:31:01,680 --> 01:31:06,920
Speaker 1: have taken on a particular charge, right. Um, Is there

1343
01:31:06,960 --> 01:31:09,439
Speaker 1: anything that distinguishes maybe what was going on with the

1344
01:31:09,479 --> 01:31:14,000
Speaker 1: Sir Carminique from the other kinds of general things we

1345
01:31:14,000 --> 01:31:18,400
Speaker 1: could say about spiritualism and its relationship to the past. Yeah,

1346
01:31:18,439 --> 01:31:22,280
Speaker 1: I think, um, I think so. I think the Sir

1347
01:31:22,360 --> 01:31:29,920
Speaker 1: Carminique's own flavor of spiritualism is deeply influenced by where

1348
01:31:29,960 --> 01:31:35,400
Speaker 1: they are and deeply influenced by the kind of society

1349
01:31:35,439 --> 01:31:41,479
Speaker 1: that they want to build. Um. They're pretty unique in

1350
01:31:41,520 --> 01:31:45,640
Speaker 1: the sense that the spirits taught the Sir Carminique that

1351
01:31:45,920 --> 01:31:52,280
Speaker 1: race didn't exist in the spirit world. Um, one's race

1352
01:31:52,400 --> 01:31:56,000
Speaker 1: only exists with the body. They call the body the

1353
01:31:56,040 --> 01:31:59,320
Speaker 1: material envelope. And this is something you leave behind when

1354
01:31:59,320 --> 01:32:02,120
Speaker 1: you die, you know, It's just something that houses your

1355
01:32:02,120 --> 01:32:05,479
Speaker 1: spirit for its short time on earth. And so when

1356
01:32:05,479 --> 01:32:09,400
Speaker 1: you think about it, then the spirits taught, racial identity

1357
01:32:09,600 --> 01:32:13,639
Speaker 1: isn't what's important. The value that you have, the value

1358
01:32:13,680 --> 01:32:18,280
Speaker 1: that you have as a spirit that continues on um.

1359
01:32:18,320 --> 01:32:21,160
Speaker 1: So the Sir Carminique is pretty unique in this since

1360
01:32:21,240 --> 01:32:25,960
Speaker 1: that they didn't see race as something that structured the

1361
01:32:26,000 --> 01:32:30,120
Speaker 1: world beyond this one. In fact, the spirit world would

1362
01:32:30,120 --> 01:32:34,839
Speaker 1: be a racial utopia in the sense the racial identity

1363
01:32:35,120 --> 01:32:38,200
Speaker 1: and you know, the hierarchy that comes with it doesn't

1364
01:32:38,240 --> 01:32:41,800
Speaker 1: exist there Um and spirits reference this a lot. Uh.

1365
01:32:42,000 --> 01:32:46,919
Speaker 1: Confucius spirit affirmed that there's said something like on one occasion,

1366
01:32:46,920 --> 01:32:50,880
Speaker 1: how there's no different races really because we're all children

1367
01:32:50,920 --> 01:32:54,439
Speaker 1: of the same father. Um. There's another spirit who got

1368
01:32:54,439 --> 01:32:57,640
Speaker 1: pretty theological on this um and he claimed that, you know,

1369
01:32:57,680 --> 01:33:00,080
Speaker 1: if Jesus had been black, or to put it in

1370
01:33:00,120 --> 01:33:04,240
Speaker 1: the spirits um own words, you know, he said that

1371
01:33:04,320 --> 01:33:08,960
Speaker 1: if Jesus had possessed a black envelope meaning body, He

1372
01:33:09,040 --> 01:33:11,920
Speaker 1: said that, you know, Jesus would have been disowned by

1373
01:33:11,960 --> 01:33:15,040
Speaker 1: many people. And what a poignant thing to say. I mean,

1374
01:33:15,120 --> 01:33:17,840
Speaker 1: so many of these white Christians, he was arguing, would

1375
01:33:17,880 --> 01:33:20,680
Speaker 1: deny their own savior if he appeared before them as

1376
01:33:20,680 --> 01:33:23,800
Speaker 1: a black man. And so the spirits taught that race

1377
01:33:23,880 --> 01:33:26,840
Speaker 1: should not matter, but they also recognized that it did

1378
01:33:26,880 --> 01:33:31,080
Speaker 1: here in the material world, and they lamented that fact.

1379
01:33:31,240 --> 01:33:34,320
Speaker 1: It's sad in them that Americans place so much value

1380
01:33:34,680 --> 01:33:38,920
Speaker 1: on racial identity. UM. In Abraham Lincoln's first spirit message,

1381
01:33:38,960 --> 01:33:41,840
Speaker 1: he he asked the rhetorical question at one point, is

1382
01:33:41,880 --> 01:33:45,320
Speaker 1: it your fault if God created his children with different colors?

1383
01:33:46,280 --> 01:33:49,599
Speaker 1: And so the practice of this or Carmenique, the their

1384
01:33:49,760 --> 01:33:59,600
Speaker 1: particular interaction with these major political figures, is deeply influenced

1385
01:33:59,680 --> 01:34:02,400
Speaker 1: by the kind of society that they want to build,

1386
01:34:03,120 --> 01:34:09,080
Speaker 1: and by interacting with you know, spirits like US President

1387
01:34:09,080 --> 01:34:12,720
Speaker 1: George Washington, Haitian revolutionary leader to sult ly of a

1388
01:34:12,800 --> 01:34:17,760
Speaker 1: tour radical abolitionist John Brown. You know, they're able to

1389
01:34:17,840 --> 01:34:21,960
Speaker 1: put themselves in part of a long history of progress.

1390
01:34:22,880 --> 01:34:25,200
Speaker 1: You know, the idea progressed and you could track its

1391
01:34:25,240 --> 01:34:30,559
Speaker 1: progress in history. UM. And the Sir Carminique, I think

1392
01:34:30,760 --> 01:34:33,639
Speaker 1: would have liked to have imagined themselves as a step

1393
01:34:33,680 --> 01:34:37,200
Speaker 1: in that progress. UM. Let me use an idea of

1394
01:34:37,200 --> 01:34:42,360
Speaker 1: the sord harmoniques here. So they understood that spirits UM.

1395
01:34:42,439 --> 01:34:44,880
Speaker 1: After they died, they ascended what they called the ladder

1396
01:34:44,920 --> 01:34:48,120
Speaker 1: of progress Um. The spirit world was organized by the

1397
01:34:48,200 --> 01:34:51,320
Speaker 1: ladder of progress. You continued to learn and become better

1398
01:34:51,360 --> 01:34:54,719
Speaker 1: in the world beyond this one um. So, for example,

1399
01:34:54,800 --> 01:34:57,680
Speaker 1: the spirit of Napoleon shared that he was stuck groaning

1400
01:34:57,720 --> 01:35:00,200
Speaker 1: at the foot of the ladder of progress. Well, other

1401
01:35:00,240 --> 01:35:03,240
Speaker 1: more luminous spirits were moving along, uh. And one of

1402
01:35:03,240 --> 01:35:06,160
Speaker 1: their record books, there's this little drawing of the ladder

1403
01:35:06,160 --> 01:35:09,000
Speaker 1: of progress tucked in the pages. UM. And as you

1404
01:35:09,040 --> 01:35:11,920
Speaker 1: move up the ladder you see good characteristics develop, things

1405
01:35:11,960 --> 01:35:14,720
Speaker 1: like persistence and patients. And at the top of the

1406
01:35:14,800 --> 01:35:17,600
Speaker 1: ladder is this little drawing that looks a lot like

1407
01:35:17,720 --> 01:35:22,479
Speaker 1: contemporary images of Jesus. So to use the circus own

1408
01:35:22,520 --> 01:35:26,880
Speaker 1: concept of the ladder of progress um to explain or

1409
01:35:26,960 --> 01:35:33,439
Speaker 1: to think about the particular weight of people like John

1410
01:35:33,479 --> 01:35:37,880
Speaker 1: Brown Intusultan Overtour appearing to them. You know, they believe

1411
01:35:38,000 --> 01:35:41,920
Speaker 1: that humanity writ large was also on a ladder of progress,

1412
01:35:42,880 --> 01:35:47,880
Speaker 1: and figures like John Brown into Sultan Overtour, they helped

1413
01:35:47,880 --> 01:35:51,479
Speaker 1: push humanity along the ladder of progress. And the Sir

1414
01:35:51,560 --> 01:35:53,880
Speaker 1: Carminique wanted to be a part of that story. They

1415
01:35:53,920 --> 01:35:57,519
Speaker 1: wanted to be one of the wrongs on that big

1416
01:35:57,600 --> 01:36:00,799
Speaker 1: ladder of progress of humanity. That's moved thing us along

1417
01:36:01,240 --> 01:36:05,720
Speaker 1: closer and closer to the idea m the thing that

1418
01:36:05,760 --> 01:36:08,599
Speaker 1: I've been thinking about. You know, we're asking a number

1419
01:36:08,600 --> 01:36:13,960
Speaker 1: of people to talk about spiritualism and gender, gender and power,

1420
01:36:15,400 --> 01:36:20,800
Speaker 1: but I didn't ask you to reflect on gender in

1421
01:36:20,840 --> 01:36:25,640
Speaker 1: the Sircarminique. Um, would you be able to just kind

1422
01:36:25,680 --> 01:36:31,000
Speaker 1: of off the cuff riff on that a little bit? Yeah, totally. Um. So,

1423
01:36:31,040 --> 01:36:32,559
Speaker 1: I think one of the really interesting things when it

1424
01:36:32,560 --> 01:36:36,280
Speaker 1: comes to gender in the Sircarminique is for monique is

1425
01:36:36,560 --> 01:36:44,040
Speaker 1: composed primarily of Afro Creol men. There's occasionally um female guests,

1426
01:36:44,280 --> 01:36:48,519
Speaker 1: you know, maybe someone's wife, a friend's widow, a sister

1427
01:36:49,439 --> 01:36:53,640
Speaker 1: um at the meeting, but the Sircarminique's core membership is

1428
01:36:53,760 --> 01:36:59,640
Speaker 1: all men um. The overwhelming majority of spirits that they

1429
01:36:59,760 --> 01:37:01,840
Speaker 1: are act with, at least those who are gendered, you know,

1430
01:37:01,880 --> 01:37:04,000
Speaker 1: the unknown spirits. I guess we can't know their gender,

1431
01:37:04,400 --> 01:37:07,680
Speaker 1: but the overwhelming majority of spirits they interact with our

1432
01:37:07,760 --> 01:37:11,599
Speaker 1: men um, which you know, they're interacting with public figures

1433
01:37:11,600 --> 01:37:14,040
Speaker 1: that they knew, so I guess that's not a big surprise.

1434
01:37:16,280 --> 01:37:26,240
Speaker 1: But there's then sort of this you know, there's on

1435
01:37:26,360 --> 01:37:32,360
Speaker 1: the few occasions that they received messages that you know,

1436
01:37:32,760 --> 01:37:37,760
Speaker 1: bluntly said something about gender. And this usually had to

1437
01:37:37,800 --> 01:37:43,280
Speaker 1: do with messages that would say something about the proper

1438
01:37:43,360 --> 01:37:48,320
Speaker 1: relationship between men and women, um, which was things like,

1439
01:37:48,400 --> 01:37:51,479
Speaker 1: you know, a couple of messages about how men should

1440
01:37:51,479 --> 01:37:54,000
Speaker 1: take care of women. Uh. They would receive a few

1441
01:37:54,040 --> 01:37:58,360
Speaker 1: messages about how I can't remember who these came from,

1442
01:37:58,360 --> 01:38:00,800
Speaker 1: but they get they get a couple of messages that

1443
01:38:00,920 --> 01:38:04,000
Speaker 1: talk about oh so Jean, the spirit of Jean Jacques

1444
01:38:04,080 --> 01:38:08,479
Speaker 1: Rouche Rousseau tells them that women are not to be

1445
01:38:09,240 --> 01:38:13,320
Speaker 1: treated as play things. Um. The spirit of Thomas Jefferson

1446
01:38:13,439 --> 01:38:18,639
Speaker 1: also says this, which, considering his rape of Sally Hemmings,

1447
01:38:18,720 --> 01:38:23,160
Speaker 1: is always very interesting. Um. They also get a couple

1448
01:38:23,200 --> 01:38:28,080
Speaker 1: of messages from spirits that talk about how women should be,

1449
01:38:28,479 --> 01:38:32,240
Speaker 1: which is interesting considering that the Sir Carmonique is all

1450
01:38:32,280 --> 01:38:35,839
Speaker 1: men and they're getting messages about how women should be. Uh.

1451
01:38:35,920 --> 01:38:38,000
Speaker 1: The spirit of Valmore has this one message where he

1452
01:38:38,040 --> 01:38:40,599
Speaker 1: more or less reiterates what's known as the Madonna Hoore

1453
01:38:40,760 --> 01:38:45,160
Speaker 1: complex that women are either these beautiful, wonderful virginal mothers,

1454
01:38:45,200 --> 01:38:47,800
Speaker 1: which is what they should be or they fall into

1455
01:38:47,920 --> 01:38:51,960
Speaker 1: loose behavior and prostitution, um, which doesn't give you know,

1456
01:38:52,000 --> 01:38:54,200
Speaker 1: a whole lot of agency for women to make their

1457
01:38:54,200 --> 01:39:03,040
Speaker 1: own identity. They've got a few messages from this um

1458
01:39:03,320 --> 01:39:08,200
Speaker 1: French romantic writer. Um she was a noble woman, and

1459
01:39:08,320 --> 01:39:12,240
Speaker 1: I'm blanking on her name. Um. She was a noble

1460
01:39:12,240 --> 01:39:16,599
Speaker 1: woman and always signed off with her her title. And

1461
01:39:17,479 --> 01:39:20,200
Speaker 1: she wrote these letters with her daughter that were later

1462
01:39:20,320 --> 01:39:25,759
Speaker 1: published and sort of held up as this um ideal

1463
01:39:25,840 --> 01:39:30,080
Speaker 1: of what women Romantic era women should be. She delivers

1464
01:39:30,120 --> 01:39:35,200
Speaker 1: a couple of messages to this sir Carmonique which usually

1465
01:39:35,280 --> 01:39:40,280
Speaker 1: kind of told them, hey, don't forget about women. Women

1466
01:39:40,360 --> 01:39:44,519
Speaker 1: have some pretty cool ideas to women should be a

1467
01:39:44,520 --> 01:39:50,559
Speaker 1: part of the conversation. Um, treat women well, don't treat

1468
01:39:50,640 --> 01:39:55,479
Speaker 1: us like material objects and playthings. Um. And the spirit

1469
01:39:55,520 --> 01:39:59,160
Speaker 1: of Mrs Washington. She has this one message. It's one

1470
01:39:59,240 --> 01:40:01,920
Speaker 1: line long, and she more or less just says like

1471
01:40:02,080 --> 01:40:05,840
Speaker 1: remember the ladies, um, which is a famous line of

1472
01:40:05,960 --> 01:40:09,559
Speaker 1: Jane Adams to her husband during the you know, early

1473
01:40:09,600 --> 01:40:13,760
Speaker 1: Constitutional Congresses, where she tells him remember the ladies. And

1474
01:40:13,800 --> 01:40:16,880
Speaker 1: the spirit of Mrs Washington echoes that to the Sarcarmonique

1475
01:40:17,439 --> 01:40:21,280
Speaker 1: though it seems like they don't take those messages necessarily

1476
01:40:21,320 --> 01:40:26,480
Speaker 1: to heart because women occasionally attend meetings of the Sarcarmonique.

1477
01:40:26,479 --> 01:40:31,200
Speaker 1: But um, because when they do have guests there, they'll

1478
01:40:31,320 --> 01:40:33,639
Speaker 1: usually they usually make some sort of mention of it.

1479
01:40:34,360 --> 01:40:37,400
Speaker 1: But it's not all that common. Um. It seems like

1480
01:40:37,439 --> 01:40:41,000
Speaker 1: adele On Reese, why if attends some of them. But

1481
01:40:41,080 --> 01:40:43,280
Speaker 1: you know, she's also wanting her son to be educated

1482
01:40:43,320 --> 01:40:47,200
Speaker 1: in the local Catholic school. So it seems like it's

1483
01:40:47,200 --> 01:40:52,000
Speaker 1: a primarily male enterprise for the SARCARMONIQ. What was a

1484
01:40:52,200 --> 01:40:57,240
Speaker 1: redoing with his life outside the cirque uh in the

1485
01:40:57,360 --> 01:41:02,960
Speaker 1: late sixties, early seventies, so he serves a term in

1486
01:41:03,320 --> 01:41:07,960
Speaker 1: the Louisiana legislature. UH. He serves on a school board,

1487
01:41:08,200 --> 01:41:10,719
Speaker 1: not the school board of his father, but for public schools.

1488
01:41:10,920 --> 01:41:17,120
Speaker 1: Who works at a hardware store. Um. He his house

1489
01:41:17,160 --> 01:41:20,439
Speaker 1: catches on fire in the mid seventies. UM, and it

1490
01:41:20,479 --> 01:41:25,760
Speaker 1: seems like he loses everything. It's not clear if the

1491
01:41:25,840 --> 01:41:28,720
Speaker 1: seiance records were at his home at that point or

1492
01:41:28,760 --> 01:41:31,920
Speaker 1: someone else's home, because I sometimes wonder if he ran

1493
01:41:32,000 --> 01:41:37,720
Speaker 1: back into his burning home to save his silence records. UM.

1494
01:41:37,760 --> 01:41:42,599
Speaker 1: But he's they've got a pretty respectable home UM in

1495
01:41:42,640 --> 01:41:49,880
Speaker 1: the Tremay neighborhood. Uh, kind of living a New Orleans

1496
01:41:50,120 --> 01:41:53,160
Speaker 1: middle class what we might call middle class for the

1497
01:41:53,200 --> 01:42:00,360
Speaker 1: reconstruction period UM life. You mentioned that early on we

1498
01:42:01,760 --> 01:42:06,320
Speaker 1: had his his struggles with the Catholic Church. Did the

1499
01:42:06,479 --> 01:42:09,519
Speaker 1: Cirque in general have an approach to the Catholic Church

1500
01:42:09,520 --> 01:42:12,040
Speaker 1: in New Orleans and did it change at all over

1501
01:42:12,080 --> 01:42:15,880
Speaker 1: the decades when they were meeting together. So most members

1502
01:42:15,920 --> 01:42:18,519
Speaker 1: of the Cirque would have grown up in the Catholic Church.

1503
01:42:18,600 --> 01:42:22,280
Speaker 1: They were baptized, they were married in the Catholic Church. UM.

1504
01:42:22,320 --> 01:42:23,720
Speaker 1: In fact, there's a couple of members of the cir

1505
01:42:23,840 --> 01:42:26,479
Speaker 1: Carmonique that the only places that I've been able to

1506
01:42:26,479 --> 01:42:30,320
Speaker 1: find a mention of their name outside of you know,

1507
01:42:30,360 --> 01:42:33,120
Speaker 1: scribbled in the margins of the science records, is in

1508
01:42:33,320 --> 01:42:38,920
Speaker 1: the UM like baptismal records. So they grow up in

1509
01:42:38,960 --> 01:42:42,760
Speaker 1: the Catholic Church. UM. But they have a very i

1510
01:42:42,760 --> 01:42:45,400
Speaker 1: would say interesting relationship with the Catholic Church. You know,

1511
01:42:45,800 --> 01:42:49,639
Speaker 1: the Catholic Church in New Orleans supports the Confederacy very strongly.

1512
01:42:49,760 --> 01:42:54,560
Speaker 1: During the Civil War. UM, there's this one very outspoken

1513
01:42:54,680 --> 01:42:59,280
Speaker 1: abolitionist priests who's threatened with excommunication UM and has his

1514
01:42:59,400 --> 01:43:04,400
Speaker 1: church shut down. UH priests regularly would refuse to give

1515
01:43:04,439 --> 01:43:11,360
Speaker 1: Eucharist to UM Black Catholic men in Union UH uniforms.

1516
01:43:12,280 --> 01:43:16,400
Speaker 1: There would be ceremonies. The Spirit would refer to these

1517
01:43:16,400 --> 01:43:22,760
Speaker 1: ceremonies blessing Confederate flags UM during the Catholic Mass. So

1518
01:43:22,920 --> 01:43:26,520
Speaker 1: the Catholic Church locally is in support of the Confederacy.

1519
01:43:26,560 --> 01:43:29,800
Speaker 1: Even during the Union occupation of the city UM and

1520
01:43:29,920 --> 01:43:33,920
Speaker 1: the spirits delivered tons of messages about the materialism and

1521
01:43:34,000 --> 01:43:37,040
Speaker 1: greed of the Catholic Church and its priests, that the

1522
01:43:37,080 --> 01:43:40,439
Speaker 1: Catholic Church and wants money and secrets, money and secrets,

1523
01:43:40,479 --> 01:43:43,000
Speaker 1: money and secrets, and that's what priests went to. They

1524
01:43:43,040 --> 01:43:44,559
Speaker 1: come to your door and they want you to tell

1525
01:43:44,640 --> 01:43:47,360
Speaker 1: them all of your family secrets, so then they have

1526
01:43:47,479 --> 01:43:49,519
Speaker 1: all of your personal information and then they want your

1527
01:43:49,560 --> 01:43:55,519
Speaker 1: money to UM. And so the institutionalism of the Catholic Church,

1528
01:43:56,520 --> 01:43:59,960
Speaker 1: you know, which was something that made it politically progress

1529
01:44:00,080 --> 01:44:03,080
Speaker 1: so early on, is sort of offering this place where

1530
01:44:03,080 --> 01:44:09,360
Speaker 1: you could rebuild family despite slavery's attempt to destroy black families.

1531
01:44:10,040 --> 01:44:15,639
Speaker 1: It become the Catholic Church then becomes this power hungry,

1532
01:44:15,680 --> 01:44:22,080
Speaker 1: greedy thing that's trying to destroy um black agency. So

1533
01:44:22,280 --> 01:44:26,160
Speaker 1: they've got this very critical view of the Catholic Church.

1534
01:44:26,560 --> 01:44:30,720
Speaker 1: But then one of the most common spirit guides who

1535
01:44:30,760 --> 01:44:33,240
Speaker 1: appears throughout the tenure of the cur Carmonique is the

1536
01:44:33,280 --> 01:44:37,640
Speaker 1: spirit of St. Vincent but DePaul UM, which when you

1537
01:44:37,640 --> 01:44:39,880
Speaker 1: think about it more, is not all that surprising. You know. St.

1538
01:44:39,960 --> 01:44:42,600
Speaker 1: Vincent DePaul is a champion for the marginalized, He's a

1539
01:44:42,680 --> 01:44:46,720
Speaker 1: champion for charity, so it it's not all that surprising

1540
01:44:46,760 --> 01:44:49,439
Speaker 1: that he would remain a saint for UM the Sura

1541
01:44:49,479 --> 01:44:51,679
Speaker 1: Carminique as well. And there was a pretty active St.

1542
01:44:51,720 --> 01:44:54,519
Speaker 1: Vincent de Paul Society in New Orleans at this time,

1543
01:44:54,560 --> 01:44:56,400
Speaker 1: so you know, it's a name that had cache for

1544
01:44:56,880 --> 01:45:02,280
Speaker 1: progressive Catholic thought. UM. And so you've got Catholic spirits

1545
01:45:02,280 --> 01:45:07,880
Speaker 1: who are appearing French revolutionary priests are appearing UM and

1546
01:45:07,960 --> 01:45:13,800
Speaker 1: being critical of their own institution. UM. So there was

1547
01:45:13,840 --> 01:45:17,040
Speaker 1: this way in which like the institution of Catholicism was

1548
01:45:17,080 --> 01:45:25,200
Speaker 1: severely criticized in the spirits m messages, but radical Catholic

1549
01:45:25,280 --> 01:45:31,719
Speaker 1: figures were celebrated as UM, you know, beloved spirit guides

1550
01:45:32,400 --> 01:45:38,320
Speaker 1: into the seventies as the White League Uh Caesar his

1551
01:45:38,400 --> 01:45:42,920
Speaker 1: power in New Orleans starts to dismantle any kind of

1552
01:45:42,960 --> 01:45:47,040
Speaker 1: gains that had been made under reconstruction in New Orleans.

1553
01:45:48,160 --> 01:45:52,080
Speaker 1: Did that inflect the kinds of spirit messages that the

1554
01:45:52,080 --> 01:46:01,800
Speaker 1: sarkarmunique was getting. It did? Um. So there's the what

1555
01:46:01,880 --> 01:46:04,160
Speaker 1: I would call sort of the heyday of the Sarcarmonique,

1556
01:46:04,160 --> 01:46:07,600
Speaker 1: which is in the early eighteen seventies, where they're receiving

1557
01:46:08,000 --> 01:46:13,439
Speaker 1: political messages frequently after the Battle of Liberty Place, which

1558
01:46:13,479 --> 01:46:17,639
Speaker 1: is in September of eighteen seventy four, this horrible three

1559
01:46:17,720 --> 01:46:23,080
Speaker 1: day rogue rule of New Orleans by a white supremacist

1560
01:46:23,360 --> 01:46:29,800
Speaker 1: terrorist organization. UM. During that the spirits of Mechanics Institute

1561
01:46:29,840 --> 01:46:35,599
Speaker 1: riot martyrs appear to the Sarcarminique and encourage them to

1562
01:46:35,680 --> 01:46:42,120
Speaker 1: keep the faith that their rights will be maintained. Um.

1563
01:46:42,240 --> 01:46:44,880
Speaker 1: But there's a spirit I can't remember who it is now,

1564
01:46:45,320 --> 01:46:49,120
Speaker 1: but there's a spirit that tells them the sort of

1565
01:46:49,160 --> 01:46:54,240
Speaker 1: paraphrise kind of also tells them to be careful, um

1566
01:46:54,280 --> 01:47:00,280
Speaker 1: that looking for retribution is definitely not a good idea.

1567
01:47:00,840 --> 01:47:02,680
Speaker 1: And I think there's sort of a warning in that

1568
01:47:02,920 --> 01:47:07,200
Speaker 1: of we're holding dangerous ideas and it's this is a

1569
01:47:07,240 --> 01:47:11,080
Speaker 1: place that is increasingly becoming more and more dangerous to

1570
01:47:11,800 --> 01:47:17,839
Speaker 1: hold two ideas of equality and so in it seems

1571
01:47:17,880 --> 01:47:23,160
Speaker 1: like actually starting in late eight most of the seance

1572
01:47:23,240 --> 01:47:26,880
Speaker 1: records for the last two years are mainly just on

1573
01:47:27,040 --> 01:47:30,240
Speaker 1: re Um, And that's something that actually makes me really

1574
01:47:30,280 --> 01:47:33,719
Speaker 1: sad to think about. Other members had joined the spirit world,

1575
01:47:33,920 --> 01:47:37,639
Speaker 1: some had moved Um, some fell away from the group,

1576
01:47:38,760 --> 01:47:42,599
Speaker 1: And there's a way in which the spirits promise that

1577
01:47:42,800 --> 01:47:48,320
Speaker 1: the idea could take hold and blossom in our world.

1578
01:47:49,280 --> 01:47:53,280
Speaker 1: That was a dream that was slipping further and further

1579
01:47:53,360 --> 01:47:59,720
Speaker 1: away as Reconstruction began to really demonstrate the failure that

1580
01:47:59,760 --> 01:48:05,560
Speaker 1: it wise. And so as that's happening, there's the messages

1581
01:48:05,960 --> 01:48:10,759
Speaker 1: are less and less politically potent, especially when it seems

1582
01:48:10,800 --> 01:48:15,160
Speaker 1: like it's it's just on re Um sitting there by himself.

1583
01:48:16,320 --> 01:48:20,599
Speaker 1: The messages lack so much of the bite of earlier years. Instead,

1584
01:48:20,680 --> 01:48:23,439
Speaker 1: he receives a lot of messages that reinforce that he's

1585
01:48:23,479 --> 01:48:26,800
Speaker 1: not alone Um, that the spirits are still with him.

1586
01:48:26,920 --> 01:48:30,120
Speaker 1: Some of them might contain these sort of bland calls

1587
01:48:30,120 --> 01:48:33,439
Speaker 1: for progress Um, but actually it's really just sad to

1588
01:48:33,479 --> 01:48:36,519
Speaker 1: me I think about him sometimes just sitting by himself

1589
01:48:36,560 --> 01:48:39,400
Speaker 1: at a table, a table that used to be full

1590
01:48:39,520 --> 01:48:43,200
Speaker 1: of vibrant conversation about the potential of what the spirit

1591
01:48:43,280 --> 01:48:47,679
Speaker 1: spoke of, and now it's just him. Um. I'm sure

1592
01:48:47,680 --> 01:48:52,920
Speaker 1: the science records offered some comfort, um, but in the end,

1593
01:48:52,920 --> 01:48:55,720
Speaker 1: it's just him and the records end in November eight

1594
01:48:57,120 --> 01:49:03,400
Speaker 1: as reconstruction itself comes to a close. Mhm, it's a

1595
01:49:03,439 --> 01:49:11,160
Speaker 1: sobering note. Um. In the following decades, spiritualists were still practicing,

1596
01:49:11,920 --> 01:49:17,040
Speaker 1: and there were attempts to formalize spiritualism across the US,

1597
01:49:17,160 --> 01:49:20,880
Speaker 1: to build institutions. Uh, you know the Morest Pratt Institute

1598
01:49:20,920 --> 01:49:27,519
Speaker 1: in the Midwest, the the National Association of Spiritualists, or

1599
01:49:27,640 --> 01:49:33,759
Speaker 1: maybe got that wrong. I think it's the National Spiritualist Association. Um.

1600
01:49:33,800 --> 01:49:36,120
Speaker 1: What did it look like towards the end of the

1601
01:49:36,160 --> 01:49:41,679
Speaker 1: century from from your perspective studying spiritualism broadly and studying

1602
01:49:41,680 --> 01:49:45,479
Speaker 1: the Star Carmonique Um, in the later years of the

1603
01:49:45,560 --> 01:49:51,599
Speaker 1: nineteenth century, what was spiritualism's significance or or position kind

1604
01:49:51,600 --> 01:49:57,720
Speaker 1: of in the American religious landscape? Two? Around the turn

1605
01:49:57,760 --> 01:50:01,599
Speaker 1: of the century, spiritualism is still pretty strong, but it's

1606
01:50:01,600 --> 01:50:04,760
Speaker 1: in the process of changing. Um, it's taking on a

1607
01:50:04,840 --> 01:50:09,439
Speaker 1: little bit of a different flavor. I think. So you

1608
01:50:09,479 --> 01:50:13,960
Speaker 1: still have people practicing at home, but increasingly I would

1609
01:50:13,960 --> 01:50:20,599
Speaker 1: say spiritualism is sort of leaving the home parlor and more.

1610
01:50:21,640 --> 01:50:24,400
Speaker 1: I mean, it had always had a public element to it,

1611
01:50:24,800 --> 01:50:27,240
Speaker 1: but the public element seemed like it was becoming more

1612
01:50:27,280 --> 01:50:30,320
Speaker 1: and more important. Um. So you've got like the rise

1613
01:50:30,320 --> 01:50:35,200
Speaker 1: of psychical research, including the work of William James, impacting spiritualism.

1614
01:50:35,240 --> 01:50:37,839
Speaker 1: Where you've got some people who are doing psychical research

1615
01:50:38,360 --> 01:50:41,960
Speaker 1: who are identifying spiritualism as a hoax, others who are

1616
01:50:42,000 --> 01:50:45,880
Speaker 1: saying there might be something to this. Um. You've got

1617
01:50:46,520 --> 01:50:50,200
Speaker 1: people reading the work of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, both

1618
01:50:50,280 --> 01:50:52,600
Speaker 1: the Sherlock Holmes books, but then also some of his

1619
01:50:52,640 --> 01:50:59,040
Speaker 1: other writings on spiritualism. The particular sort of taste I

1620
01:50:59,120 --> 01:51:02,040
Speaker 1: think that spiritual some at least leaves in my mouth

1621
01:51:02,280 --> 01:51:05,800
Speaker 1: around on a century is it's much more public and

1622
01:51:05,840 --> 01:51:12,160
Speaker 1: it has less of that sort of private in home

1623
01:51:12,960 --> 01:51:18,040
Speaker 1: feel to its. Um. I think it's a big bump

1624
01:51:18,240 --> 01:51:21,960
Speaker 1: in popularity after World War One. Um. You know, as

1625
01:51:22,840 --> 01:51:26,080
Speaker 1: as with the Civil War, people look for continued relationships

1626
01:51:26,080 --> 01:51:29,680
Speaker 1: with the dead after so much death plagues you. But

1627
01:51:29,680 --> 01:51:32,080
Speaker 1: you've also got the rise of you know, all of

1628
01:51:32,120 --> 01:51:36,439
Speaker 1: the the flurry of patterns that are coming through the U. S.

1629
01:51:36,479 --> 01:51:41,200
Speaker 1: Patent Office for what would become the Luigi Board. So

1630
01:51:41,280 --> 01:51:45,160
Speaker 1: there's this m I don't want to sound like I'm

1631
01:51:45,200 --> 01:51:48,160
Speaker 1: saying there was no sincerity and spiritualism anymore, because I'm

1632
01:51:48,160 --> 01:51:53,960
Speaker 1: certainly not saying that, but it increasingly in what I'm

1633
01:51:54,000 --> 01:52:03,880
Speaker 1: looking at, has a little less of that closed, private

1634
01:52:05,080 --> 01:52:12,320
Speaker 1: quiet feel mhm. And I think there there's been an

1635
01:52:12,320 --> 01:52:17,040
Speaker 1: experience for a lot of religious communities of seeing, whether

1636
01:52:17,120 --> 01:52:24,880
Speaker 1: they would say it's commercialization or co option, seeing something

1637
01:52:24,920 --> 01:52:28,960
Speaker 1: that is earnest and devotional becomes something that is public

1638
01:52:29,000 --> 01:52:35,520
Speaker 1: and marketable, um experienced as a loss, right, a degrading.

1639
01:52:37,000 --> 01:52:39,920
Speaker 1: Is that a dynamic that you see in the later

1640
01:52:39,960 --> 01:52:44,840
Speaker 1: decades of the nineteenth century and spiritualism. I think there,

1641
01:52:44,880 --> 01:52:46,960
Speaker 1: I think there is some of that, But then there's

1642
01:52:47,000 --> 01:52:51,720
Speaker 1: also this really savvy response to that. You have the

1643
01:52:51,760 --> 01:52:56,880
Speaker 1: development of spiritualist communities UM in places like upstate New

1644
01:52:56,960 --> 01:53:03,240
Speaker 1: York or Florida. Yeah, that that take what might sound

1645
01:53:03,320 --> 01:53:06,720
Speaker 1: is like this nostalgic lament for you know, back when

1646
01:53:06,760 --> 01:53:12,240
Speaker 1: spiritualism was you know, not commercialized, and they've actually had

1647
01:53:12,320 --> 01:53:15,960
Speaker 1: some of the their success and maintain the longevity of

1648
01:53:16,000 --> 01:53:20,479
Speaker 1: their communities in part because of that public facing element

1649
01:53:21,120 --> 01:53:24,920
Speaker 1: of their practice. UM So, I think maybe just the

1650
01:53:25,360 --> 01:53:30,759
Speaker 1: main thing to always remembers spiritualists are they're innovative. Um

1651
01:53:30,800 --> 01:53:33,920
Speaker 1: you know, spiritual experimentation is one of the most American

1652
01:53:34,000 --> 01:53:40,960
Speaker 1: things that there is, and spiritualists innovated on that and

1653
01:53:41,040 --> 01:53:47,320
Speaker 1: continue to innovate on that and remain relevant because of it.

1654
01:53:49,040 --> 01:53:59,679
Speaker 1: That's beautiful. Hey, folks, it's Aaron here. I hope today's

1655
01:53:59,680 --> 01:54:02,800
Speaker 1: in your you helped you deepen your understanding of everything

1656
01:54:02,840 --> 01:54:06,320
Speaker 1: involved in the world of spiritualism. But we're not done yet.

1657
01:54:06,720 --> 01:54:09,080
Speaker 1: We have more interviews to share with you, so stick

1658
01:54:09,120 --> 01:54:12,200
Speaker 1: around after this brief sponsor break to hear a preview

1659
01:54:12,320 --> 01:54:25,840
Speaker 1: of next week's interview. Next time on Unobscured, there are

1660
01:54:25,840 --> 01:54:30,599
Speaker 1: many accounts, not just then but later on where you

1661
01:54:30,640 --> 01:54:34,360
Speaker 1: really have to wonder whether they develop a clairvoyance, because

1662
01:54:34,360 --> 01:54:38,000
Speaker 1: some of them are inexplicable, and it's threaded throughout the book,

1663
01:54:38,320 --> 01:54:41,960
Speaker 1: but there are those other incidents. But anyway, it finally

1664
01:54:42,000 --> 01:54:45,320
Speaker 1: gets to be so big, and meanwhile the church is

1665
01:54:45,360 --> 01:54:47,720
Speaker 1: of course a horrified They think these girls are, which

1666
01:54:47,760 --> 01:54:51,280
Speaker 1: is they are communing with something they shouldn't be communing

1667
01:54:51,280 --> 01:54:54,040
Speaker 1: with the dead. Their death threats against them, and they

1668
01:54:54,040 --> 01:54:57,440
Speaker 1: have to be very careful where they go, and some

1669
01:54:57,680 --> 01:55:02,160
Speaker 1: very religious clergy and peep in Rochester threatened to kill

1670
01:55:02,240 --> 01:55:03,880
Speaker 1: them and run them out of town a tar and

1671
01:55:03,920 --> 01:55:23,840
Speaker 1: feather them at the least. Unobscured was created by me

1672
01:55:24,080 --> 01:55:27,400
Speaker 1: Aaron Manky and produced by Matt Frederick, Alex Williams, and

1673
01:55:27,480 --> 01:55:31,200
Speaker 1: Josh Thane in partnership with I Heart Radio. Research and

1674
01:55:31,320 --> 01:55:33,360
Speaker 1: writing for this season is all the work of my

1675
01:55:33,480 --> 01:55:36,440
Speaker 1: right hand man Carl Nellis, and the brilliant Chad Lawson

1676
01:55:36,600 --> 01:55:41,040
Speaker 1: composed the brand new soundtrack. Learn more about our contributing historians,

1677
01:55:41,160 --> 01:55:44,280
Speaker 1: source material and links to our other shows over at

1678
01:55:44,360 --> 01:55:49,280
Speaker 1: history unobscured dot com and until next time, thanks for

1679
01:55:49,360 --> 01:55:59,120
Speaker 1: listening Unobscured as a production of I Heart Radio and

1680
01:55:59,120 --> 01:56:01,680
Speaker 1: Aaron Monkey. For more podcasts from My Heart Radio, visit

1681
01:56:01,680 --> 01:56:04,200
Speaker 1: th Heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen

1682
01:56:04,240 --> 01:56:11,680
Speaker 1: to your favorite shows. H