Ep. 24 – Black Harassment in the Post-Civil Rights Era: A Conversation with Dr. George Musgrove

[0:00:07 Peniel] Welcome to Race and Democracy, a podcast on the intersection between race, democracy, public policy, social justice and citizenship. Welcome to race in democracy. Our guest today is Professor George Derek Must Grove, who is associate professor of history at the University of Maryland, Baltimore County and the author of Rumor, Repression and Racial Politics. How the Harassment of Black Elected Officials Shaped Post Civil Rights America, which came out in 2012 and which is a book that I teach and co author, along with Chris Myers Ash of Chocolate City. Ah, History of Race and Democracy in the nation’s Capital, which just came out at the end of last year. Yeah, and and uh is published by University of North Carolina Press and is really a massive book, 608 pages and sort of ah, really a definitive history of race and democracy in the nation’s capital. And Derek, who I’ve known for many years very happy to have you here. I want to have a really a wide ranging conversation with you about your work because your work really entre versus civil rights, black power, race, democracy, the black freedom struggle. Um, and it’s really I think evolved very, very nicely because in a way, your first book is really the first history of looking at this idea of black harassment in in the post civil rights era of elected officials. The way in which we think about after the passage of the Voting Rights Act, you have a whole group of black elected officials, from Adam Clayton Powell to Julian Bond and then, when you think about in the 19 seventies eighties nineties, another group or being initially under the target of FBI encounter in counter surveillance en counter intelligence but then being investigated by the Department of Justice. And so, in a lot of ways, the way I read your book, your first book is that it really cast a strobe light on the fact that right after the passage of the Voting Rights Act, it’s not like everything was great and black people just were ableto elect a whole new generation of elected officials. And that was that was fine. What what you see here in this, your first book is really the seeds of what we’re eventually going to sea with. Shelby v. Holder decision that there’s voter suppression at every single moment that black people are trying to get access to citizenship. There’s really push back,

[0:02:45 George] Yes, absolutely s. So I I should say initially that you know, that book really starts off with me looking at, ah, Baltimore, I’d planned to write my dissertation on the transition from protest of politics in Baltimore and one of the central figures in that transition. Clarence Mitchell, the third son of the famed end of CP Ah, 101st Senator Clarence Mitchell senior. Um, you know, essentially says, that’s not the story. Don’t talk about Baltimore. That’s an interesting. But what I really got for you is that the Reagan administration put me in jail for being a black politician. Um, and it was It was really quite helpful. I think that he was a person that brought me to the subject because, you know, I I knew that he had done some things that were legally questionable in his political career. And if you look at, for instance, the wire Ah, there’s a figure on there that’s actually modeled on Clarence Mitchell, and he is a dirty politician, you know? He’s quite Davis. Yes, Clay Davis, uh, is crazy. You know that, Uh And so I said, Okay, you know, I need a bit more information, right? I can’t just take this single sources word for And of course, that would be bad history anyway, So I go into the records and I just find all of these people from, you know, William Clay in ST Louis to Adam Clayton Powell in New York to Richard Arrington, the mayor of Birmingham. And this is across time and space that I’m finding these claims where they’re saying that the federal government is out to get us as black leadership. And so it created this sort of this, this odd riddle for me, right? Which is that I had some subjects who I thought maybe deserve some government scrutiny. It might have done things that were, you know, not quite on top of the table, right? Other people who I had a pretty solid understanding, you know, And that’s people like Adam Clayton Powell who really reveled in sort of violating the norms of Congress, for instance. And then I have people who seemed far more innocent, who appeared to really have not deserved government scrutiny. And they’re all getting lumped into this this group of people who were investigated by by the federal government but also some state governments, and I wanted to understand what was going going on there and what problem it presented for African Americans in the post civil rights period. And the book is my, I think, somewhat tortured. Ah, you know, response to the question is what was going on? And how do you know? What problem did that pose for African Americans? A zey transition into the political realm? Well,

[0:05:24 Peniel] the way in which I read, especially when I think about this story. Ah, Griffey of the civil rights black power era when you’re looking at the mayor of Tchula, Mississippi, who gets indicted and gets sent to jail because of political enemies, people at the local level, local political level in Black Belt counties in Alabama and Mississippi. Andi, where there’s really this white supremacist pushback. I think it’s extraordinary and really hugely important. One of things in my and I’ve read this book several times, but in my latest reading of it, I was really struck by how a lot of what was known as harassment and this this really I would say ah, politics of racial de legitimation. Of these, these political officials. They did that playbook against Barack Obama with the Republican Party, the GOP as soon as he got into office. They tried it during the election, but I think it would been interesting, and I don’t know if you know Obama had a chance to read this book, but I think he would find riel similarities between riel aspects of how the right wing and whether this was through the FBI, at times whether it’s through the Department of Justice. At other times, different nonprofit groups think tanks really de legitimated and spread rumors and innuendos. You think about the idea of Obama and the Birther movement. Birther Movement is a racist rumor that caught fire with constituents, white constituents in the Republican Party. But even there were white Democrats who also believed it that the president, United States was not born in Hawaii on August 4th, 1961 but he had actually been born in Kenya, have been born in Kenya, and obviously Donald Trump became the main articulator of this birther rumor and really use that to build and consolidate this white nationalist white supremacist base and be elected the 45th president. United States. So I want to get into that even away from because your book definitely gets into the weeds of harassment, ideology, conspiracy theory, all these different things. Lyndon LaRue show all this, but I want to get into right now. Um, really, these these structures this this way in which, because it reminded me we’ve read Ron Walters and we read the biography of Robert Smith of Ronald Walters. And what’s interesting is Ronald Walters. Ron Walters in his book or white nationalism and White Power really makes an argument that one of the things that Ronald Reagan was successful in doing was d legitimating the morality of the black freedom struggle with the idea that we think about There’s a time by 63 64 65 it’s a short lived time, but there’s a moment where John F. Kennedy, Lyndon Johnson are saying that this is a political and moral good, this idea of black freedom, this idea of black citizenship and that the assaults on affirmative action but also these attacks on these officials to just made this idea of black morality is something that was passed say, And really, they elevate this idea of reverse racism. This idea that the struggle for black citizenship is not this moral project.

[0:08:45 George] Yes. So, you know, Ron Walters has this wonderful line that he would repeat it a great deal before he passed long before his time a couple of years ago. Ah, and that is that, you know, at the center of the struggle for black equality, particularly the post civil rights period, is this this constant effort on the part of these two warring factions to define the black freedom struggle as either is either legitimate and therefore deserving of some some sort of corrective action on the part of the state or as illegitimate and potentially criminal? Right? Ah, And so what you see, particularly in the sixties and seventies, which is sort of the first half of the book, is this presumption on the part of many law enforcement in that goes for a ball state and federal, um, that independent black politics is sort of on its face, illegitimate, potentially criminal suspect worthy of investigation. Um And so, for instance, there’s a moment in the early 19 seventies where everybody in the CBC literally everybody in the CBC is under investigation,

[0:09:47 Peniel] and the CBC is a congressional black caucus. Yes,

[0:09:50 George] correct. Uh, and you know, one or two those people deserved it. Like, let’s let’s be fair, right? I’m not I’m not trying to start with the presumption that black elected officials investigation of black elected official is on its face. Um, illegitimate. But in many of the cases that this sort of the animating reason for the investigation was that this person is engaged in, you know, sort of black nationalist politics in that city, right? But that’s how they all got their right. Um, and the fact that the matter is that much of their opposition was engaged in sort of popular front white politics in a lot of the cities where they were coming from. And so the FBI in particular, had it had a real double standard there. Um, many local police departments had a riel double standard there. Um, what we see is we transition into the eighties, though, is what I would argue is so the weaponization of the Department of Justice

[0:10:44 Peniel] and Rudy Giuliani is big here,

[0:10:46 George] and that’s, you know, the remarkable part of this book for me is that a lot of these people sort of come back. And Bob Mueller’s here. Yes. Um, Mueller, Giuliani, Bob Barr, Who’s I think now retired. But in Jefferson sessions. Yeah, Jeff sessions over here, too, and one of the through lines that you can see here, I think, and what I like about what I liked about this story when I first picked it up is that it gives us a nice narrative through line for the post civil rights period. And so if you look at Jefferson sessions, you know Jeff Sessions is, ah, low level prosecutor in the Justice Department. When Reagan is elected in 1980 he’s elevated to U. S attorney, I think, for the Middle District of Alabama and when the first things that he hears from the people that he considers his constituents who are white Alabama Democrats and Republicans ah, is that they believe that black folks in the Black Belt counties, which are, ah, Belt of counties, to go right across the middle of the state that air roughly 40 to 80% black. Um, the activists of black activists in those counties had 15 years after the voting Rights Act finally sort of cracked the code, right? Um, five years after Voting Rights Act, 10 years after the Voting Rights Act, what essentially is happening is that whites in those counties using all of these tricks to keep blacks from actually gaining office. So in some counties they be solid majority population. But what local white registrars would do was send absentee ballots toe like Detroit, where white folks had moved and they knew they had moved. And they knew that they no longer lived in the county. But they would literally write letters to them and say, Hey, I know you don’t live here anymore. This is in print. You could find this in the archives and Dick Carrington’s archives in Birmingham, right? I know that you don’t live here anymore, but we’re a little worried that a faction is going to take over the county. So we need you to send your absentee ballot vote back,

[0:12:35 Peniel] which is E. Leo,

[0:12:36 George] which is stone cold. Illegal voter fraud, Right? So these air, these air white registrars and residents, those same people are turning around after they’ve committed the this voter fraud. They’re saying to Jeff Sessions, we think that black people in these counties air committing voter fraud. Now, what are these black people doing that they believe is is untoward. They’re walking around with absentee ballots because they know white residents air using them and using them illegally. And they’re saying, Look, we’re going to use those same absentee ballots to just increase legitimate black turnout And so they literally get in a car big old box, absentee ballots and walk from door to door, sit in the next room while a person fills him out and then go mail him. And in Alabama at that time, that was legal. I’m sure everyone’s heard of the case in North Carolina where that was done in the last election. I think it’s the ninth Congressional District that is no longer that is not legal there, but in Alabama at that time, it was legal, and some of these counties they got black turnout up to 80% and black folks started winning control of these counties for first time since Reconstruction and all the local D. A’s file cases against these black voting rights organizer saying they’re committing voting fraud.

[0:13:47 Peniel] And though there’s voting fraud that white folks and editing in Alabama.

[0:13:51 George] And that is and they lose the cases because in many cases they would have black folks on these grand Juries that they impaneled to investigate. So they appeal to Jeff Sessions and to his two other U S attorneys, his colleagues in the Reagan Justice Department, and they bring the cases. And so here you have all three U. S. Attorneys in Alabama trying to make sure that these voting rights activists, most of whom, by the way, were part of the campaigns that give us the Voting Rights Act all right, some of whom actually were in the mule train that delivered Martin Luther King’s casket to his grave. Right. And these people are 15 years out from the Voting Rights Act finally actually getting the fruits of that legislation. And the first thing that happens to them is the U. S attorney comes in and tries to put them in jail for doing that. Um, and it’s Jeff Sessions, another guy named Donaldson and one other in the Southern district. Um, and they fight him tooth and nail. Take it all the way to Washington, D. C. I mean, you know, Alabama is ablaze with civil rights activity in the in the early 19 eighties because of these cases. In fact, the longest civil rights march in the history of the country happens in 1982 from the Alabama Black Belt Washington D. C. It starts off as a campaign to free two women from Pickens County, Alabama, who have been accused accused of voter fraud. But then, once they get to Montgomery from Pickens County, they just decide We’re gonna keep going and we’re gonna go to D. C. To lobby for extension of the Voting Rights Act because it’s the same struggle, right? So all of these people essentially make sure that Jefferson Sessions doesn’t get a federal judgeship, right? But what happens? And then he is the first Reagan judicial nominee to be rejected by the Senate

[0:15:39 Peniel] and eventually becomes U. S attorney general.

[0:15:41 George] But the trick is he goes back to Alabama, build himself a career and then ends up becoming attorney general. But But that shows I think, um, that we can’t talk about this is a is a progress narrative we can’t talk about. This is a seamless transition from protest to politics. What you see is the transition from protests of politics in the sixties and seventies, a movement back to protest in the eighties in response to this Reagan Justice Department repression. And even though those folks were momentarily beaten back and I’m talking about the Reagan folks, they eventually come back in the world wind in 2016 in this case with Jefferson sessions through Trump’s and what such What’s so shameful is that, you know, for much of his time in the Senate, Jefferson sessions to see there’s this sort of kooky races from Alabama, right? Um, who’s constantly talking about how we keep black and brown people out of the country, but because we get a cookie races from New York to be president? Ah, he then taps his kooky races from Alabama to be our chief law enforcement officer. And there you go.

[0:16:39 Peniel] I want to talk about the new book, Um, Chocolate City, a history of race and democracy in the nation’s capital. And of course, this year to 2019 is the 4/100 anniversary of 16 19 and Jamestown Yeah, and 20 enslaved Africans coming, coming Teoh, the shores of what’s going to become the United States of America. Uh, Washington, D C. Is undergoing tremendous transformations right now. It’s being gentrified. There’s all this investment happening in the city. One. What was your interest in in writing co writing such a book in such a massive history? Yes, Band centuries. So

[0:17:17 George] first off, let me say happy Emancipation Day, April 16th 18 62 was the day that President Abraham Lincoln signed and it went into effect the D C Emancipation Act of 18. 62. It was the first time that the federal government put its weight behind emancipation. And it was the only time that forever put his weight behind compensated emancipation us during the Civil War. And that happened eight months before the Emancipation Proclamation took hold on. And so today is that day s O there partying back in D. C. Now we decided to do the book for many of the reasons that you state When we sat down to do this book in 2000 and 11 D. C. Had just for the first time in two generations, slipped below 50% black population. And for Chris Myers, Ash and I, my co author and Chris is actually a d c. Native. I grew up in Baltimore. We had no nothing but the chocolate city, right? This majority black, a metropolis that was not just didn’t, you know, sort of distinguished by being majority black, but was distinguished by bleeding a center of black political power in the region and as a central black black political culture, black culture in the region. Right? So it was really those three things that made it a chocolate city. Um and, you know, with with the end of the black majority, you didn’t have that creative tension between those three things in the city really has changed quite dramatically. Now, out on the streets of the city in 2011 everyone was talking about that. New residents were talking about it, and they really didn’t understand why everyone was so up in arms. Older residents were talking about it and were really up in arms because they thought that new residents didn’t understand the history that they were. They were stepping into Ah, and so we said, Look, everybody out there is talking about this. They don’t have a good book that will allow them to answer these questions Let’s go ahead and give it to him. So we did.

[0:19:19 Peniel] I want to talk about, you know, in your previous book, Marion Barry is a part of this in the sting against Marion Barry. And we think about D. C. I think about black political power. I think about Howard University in the 20th century. Um, what is this history of race of democracy in the nation’s capital? And you know how it does. It shaped the contemporary debate right now over, you know, black equality, the black freedom struggle. Uh, and really, this whole idea of sort of resegregation that Jeff Chang and other people talk about because on some levels, D. C. Has been a urban ghetto and now is being re segregated. But in another way, you know, being in terms of white, it’s gonna be It’s turning into this predominantly white, very wealthy, very elite status symbol of a city with the baseball team. And with 16th in U Street transformed for the very first time since the 1968 urban rebellion where Stokely Carmichael and people, So I want to

[0:20:21 George] Yeah, I mean, so the figures have just come out this year. They’re stunning D. C has if you if you compare it to other states, it has the highest black unemployment of any state. Right? Um, it has the highest level of gentrification again, if you compare it to major American cities of any city right higher than Brooklyn, anyplace else? Um, it also has a black mayor. Ah, and it has one of most affluent black populations in the country. Right? And so one of the things that we wanted to do, particularly the later chapters of the book, is is you you sort of intimate. Is is to understand how in God’s name that occurred, right. Um, and what we found was that there’s a really great sort of post civil rights era story that you can tell very seamlessly in Washington, D. C. D. C is remarkable in that, you know, for much of its history, it actually had no voting at all. After the fall of reconstruction in 18 74 the city is stripped of the franchise completely black and white residents. Nobody votes, right. Um and the idea is was one that really appealed to sort of conservative Republicans, which is that you have governance by managers. It appealed to conservative Democrats because you wouldn’t have black people voting. They were 30% of population. And once it gets set in the 18 seventies, the city has no local governance at all until roughly the 19 sixties. But then, in a burst of Cold War liberal reform, we get a vote in presidential elections. Are first time is in 1964. We get school board elections. Oddly enough, two weeks after the April 1968 riots, Um, we get a nonvoting delegate in Congress in 1971.

[0:22:02 Peniel] Is Walter Fontana right?

[0:22:03 George] Walter Fauntroy, a critical figure in post civil rights era black politics, Out argue, were the more remarkable strategists that people have not written about in any substantive way of the 19 eighties. And then, of course, we get a home rule government in actual City council, the mayor in 1974 and with all these positions, and this is a really interesting part. They’re all staffed, literally, all staffed by civil rights, black power, anti poverty activists. I mean, if you look at our first City Council in 1975 11 of the 13 members on that council are one of those groups. Civil rights, black power, anti poverty, including the white members, Right? It’s two of the black members that they’re more conservative, right? Um, but here’s the problem. Because, you know, you think that they like, we’re done. There’s a keys to the kingdom, right? We’ve got a city government. But when Congress cedes control of Washington D. C, it does a couple of things that make it almost guaranteed to fail. It settles it with a pension obligation to mostly white retired workers who live outside the city cause they moved to the suburbs or moved away. But it never invested money in its pension. So they’re guaranteed to go broke over the pensions from Jump Street, right? It doesn’t allow the city to tax commuters right and way we’re getting, you know, doubling our population every single work day through commuters, right? Um, and about half of the land roughly 40%. 43% of the land in the city was nontaxable because it was universities, embassies in the federal government. Right? So it had an economic structure that was almost guaranteed to go into the red right. At the same time of course that the city gets home rule. Ah, the suburbs open up to African Americans. And so middle class African Americans begin to move out into Prince George’s County in the 19 seventies, about 70,000 over the course of a decade. So that means that the population you ken taxes, getting pore over time. Um, and what’s remarkable is that Marion Barry, who we know of as someone who is really Miss Manager, was actually an amazing manager early on. Right? Um, straightened out the books, audited the city’s governments, uh, books for the first time ever in the city’s history, Um, and through really aggressive affirmative action programs, transfers millions of dollars in wealth, toe African American businesses and uses the city governments of jobs program to build the black middle class. Right? Um, but the bills come due. There’s a real estate recession in the early nineties, and on the back end of that, because real estate is our major industry outside the federal government, city goes bankrupt, and when it goes bankrupt, Congress and the Council and the City Council adopted neo liberal governance model, and they focus on bringing well to do people back to the city. That’s the only way you can get, um, the city’s books back in the black. And that means that gentrification becomes our financial policy, right? You have to get high income people back to the city. And in a region where white wealth is 10 times black wealth, that meant white people. Ah, so the city government, a black city government, is pulling large numbers of white residents back into the city, And over the last 20 years, they’ve displaced huge numbers of poor African Americans. And so the black out migration of the last couple of years is poor African Americans. I

[0:25:15 Peniel] want you to talk about Barry and the fact that our narrative is Marion Barry, whose former chairman of Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee big time civil rights activists, you know, found a Pride Inc. You know, colleague of Stokely Carmichael in these different black power activist, many people who I’ve interviewed as well, who say If you were going into the den of Racism and Mississippi, Alabama,

[0:25:39 George] that cat with the

[0:25:40 Peniel] person who you want with you and get think our listeners don’t understand the level of fear and the level of physical violence and death that was shadowing civil rights activists In the context in the 19 fifties and 19 sixties, where you went to these small towns and you could literally be killed, you could literally be killed. And so Marion Barry, in that way, was a hugely heroic figure with his own flaws, with his own demons, contradictions, all these different things. But I want you to talk about why is the narrative of Marion Barry, the black mayor who smoked crack? And certainly, you know, there’s been books Dream City, these books that really sort of exploit Barry’s legacy? Certainly there was wrongdoing and malfeasance in the administration, but at the same time, um, there was also a lot of positive done for the city. Eso Can you talk about Marion Barry Washington, D. C.

[0:26:37 George] You’re so you know, there were three big books that come out and bury, and they all come out on in the nineties, and that’s really key, right? So the ones that you mentioned Dream City there’s marrying, burying the politics of race. Ah, and then there’s another one called marrying, burying the last of black emperors. They all come out in the mid 19 nineties and that that moment is important because all of them are trying to explain how things got so bad that that’s literally what they’ve set out to do. You remember when these people are writing their books, come out right after cities, the murder capital of the United States? Um, you can buy houses for taxes in most areas. Uh, that air now the center of gentrification because they’re so dangerous on the drug trade, is so, so flagrant. Um, and the city’s broke. And I think a lot of folks right there in the moment in all the folks who wrote those books were journalists, literally all of them. Um, I wanted to give folks unanswered to that question. How did things get so bad? Um, and their through line in a lot of cases was buried. Um, you know, and, you know, marrying very played a large role in the managerial problems that the city government had, and I think that’s a legitimate sort of description of his failures. Right. Um, with time, though, I think people have tried to step back and look at the structural environment in which he was operating. Um, and there’s no question that the city was set up to fail financially in the way that home rule was handed over to the government. It’s a lot like Puerto Rico. I mean, there was just sort of, ah, no matter who you were as a governor, if you were going to take care of your constituents, there’s no way you could balance the books right now, I think halfway through his maybe second term, Marion, Barry, um, just got lazy. You know, he really allowed his appetites for women and for drugs in particular, to overcome his sense of duty to the city into his constituents. And he did have significant personal failings in that regard. But it didn’t matter who was gonna be in that position. The city was gonna have serious problems, right? Um, and halfway through his four terms in office and all his his personal failings appeared on heebie, you know, was addicted to cocaine for, um, at least since the early 19 eighties. Um, and he began to just check out, um, and that hurt the city tremendously. But but I think the important thing is that when you step back and you look at him in his totality. Um, he was absolutely instrumental in building black political power in Washington, D. C. I’ll give you a quick example. So you know where we’re at? The Lyndon Baines Johnson Center. Lyndon Johnson. It really wants home rule for Washington, D. C. In 1965 you can’t get a bill through Congress. So in 1967 he reorganizes the city government. At the time, the city has three commissioners that run the city. He says, OK, look, they’re all appointed by the president. I have the prerogative to reorganize the government that I’m appointing here. And so I’m on a point what looks like a council, and I’m going to appoint what looks like a mayor commissioner. All right, Um, and Marion Barry and other black power activists in the city said, That’s great, Mr President, but you have no mechanism for getting in point input from us, so they organize a freedom vote. They literally outfit station wagons as mobile polling stations and drive around the city that you know, they put together polling stations and local elk center in the locals masons, and they have 100. They have, you know, tens of thousands of D C residents voting for who they want to be on this appointed counsel, right? And so they’re taking the very specific types of politics from the Mississippi Delta, for instance, bringing them to Washington, D C and building sort of, you know, sort of Democratic muscles that have atrophy it among the entire population. Right? Um uh, into the nation’s capital. And they would just keep doing that year after year. And so set 67 68 there the first school board elections. Marion Berry becomes remember the school board two years after that. Right? Um, then he runs for the council in 74. And so, you see, you see, you know, sort of him there at every step of the building of a democratic infrastructure of the city, and he has to get a lot of credit for shaping that infrastructure and for making sure that poor D C residents have access to that infrastructure. He then also comes in his mayor and cleans up the city government, which had just been left him a mess by Congress. Um, it’s only later on that he’s just not able to do what? What? Um, you know, he needed to do to keep the city from falling apart.

[0:31:27 Peniel] My final My final question is Washington, D. C. Now in 2019 and racial justice, racial equality, economic justice, What’s gonna happen?

[0:31:41 George] So, you know, Marion Berry makes a big comeback in 1994. Uh, and what you see is a year on year and 1/2 out of jail and has his last term 94 94 to 98. And every mayor since has really been something of a technocrat. They’ve They’ve really downplayed issues of race and in sort of transferring real resource is from one community to another and really just focused on making sure the trains run on time. Right? Um, and as part of that process, they’ve given a lot of money to businesses to move back into the city. They have subsidized ah, lot of efforts to make sure that high income people move back into the city and the city is economically booming. I mean, we’ve had balanced budgets every single year since 2000 and one, um, the city looks better. The city has more people are population’s growing for the first time, I think since the fifties and it is one of the most racially unequal places in the country. And, you know, I think that one of the things that that we we try to get across in the last chapter, and that the city has to face in 2019 is that we have thrown out the baby with the bathwater. There was a really serious management problem within City Hall, Um, when Marion Barry was there and the folks who have come in after him have tried to correct that. And they’ve done, I think, a good job overall. What they got rid of his well, when it, you know, along with bad management, was a serious effort to move. Resource is from the halves into the have nots. And absent that serious effort, inequality has ballooned in the nation’s capital. And that is probably the saddest commentary on their leadership.

[0:33:29 Peniel] All right, thank you. Um, it’s been great talking to you, Professor. Uh, Derek Musk wrote George Derek Must Grove, who’s associate professor of history at the University of Maryland, Baltimore County, about really both of his books rumor, repression and racial politics. How the harassment of black elected officials shaped post Civil Rights America and also the latest book, which is a really massive tome. Chocolate City. A History of Race and Democracy in the nation’s capital. Co authored with Chris Myers Ash. It’s really a brilliant book that I would recommend everyone seeking out to purchase. Thank you for joining us.

[0:34:06 George] Thanks Peniel

[0:34:07 Peniel] Thanks for listening to this episode and you can check out related content on Twitter at Peniel Joseph. That’s P-e-n-i-e-l  J-o-s-e-p-h and our Web site, CSRD.LBJ.utexas.edu and the Center for Study of Race and Democracy is on Facebook as well. This podcast was recorded at the Liberal Arts Development Studio at the College of Liberal Arts at the University of Texas at Austin. Thank you.