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Brian Lehrer: It's the Brian Lehrer Show on WNYC. Good morning again, everyone. Now we continue our WNYC centennial series, 100 Years of 100 Things. Now, mostly for these February episodes, we're exploring 100 years of Black history topics. Today, it's a topic where Black history meets what you might call a darker side of white history. 100 years and more of white resistance to federal power, like after the Civil War and during the civil rights movement. 100 years ago, mid-1920s was a heyday of the Ku Klux Klan and the successful white backlash against Reconstruction. We'll draw a timeline as we do in these segments. It's 100 Years of 100 Things, number 68.

We didn't expect this kind of news hook for this history conversation, but here in Black History Month, we have the news. Have you heard this yet of the cancellation, not only of DEI policies by the government that was elected in part as a backlash to diversity programs on the premise that white people and straight cisgender men are the main victims of discrimination these days, but we even have the cancellation of Black History Month observances in the military by the new Defense secretary, Pete Hegseth, and the Pentagon deciding to skip this year's Black Engineers of the Year awards as a recruitment opportunity.

As military.com reports the army and other service branches are abandoning recruiting efforts at a prestigious Black engineering event this week, turning down access to a key pool of highly qualified potential applicants amid President Donald Trump's purge of diversity initiatives in the military.

The article on military.com adds, last week, the same army recruiting unit that would have attended the BEYA instead participated in a National Rifle Association-sponsored event in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, a predominantly white gathering that recruiters acknowledge is less likely to yield high quality applicants.

With that as a spoiler alert for where this particular 100 years ago history or 100-year history leaves us with white backlash to federal power becoming federal power. We welcome Jefferson Cowie, historian at Vanderbilt University, and author of the Pulitzer Prize winning book, Freedom's Dominion: A Saga of White Resistance to Federal Power, which came out in 2022 and had its paperback release last year. Prof. Cowie, thanks for joining us. Welcome to WNYC.

Prof. Jefferson Cowie: Thanks for having me, Brian. It's good to be here.

Brian: Your book is focused on Alabama specifically, even one county in Alabama, but with national implications. It begins more than 100 years ago. What's the beginning of the timeline in your book as you tell it?

Prof. Cowie: The beginning of the story is one that's quite familiar with people today, which is white people resisting the incursion of federal power, but this time under the Andrew Jackson administration in the 1820s and 1830s, when Jackson tried to stop white people from stealing Native American lands, that is after Andrew Jackson had stolen many states worth of Native American lands.

There was this one part he wanted to preserve for the Muscogee Creek people. He tried to kick white people out of there. White people got very, very upset and declared their freedom from the federal government to occupy native lands.

Brian: One main thesis of the book, I should tell people up front, is about the word freedom, which means one thing in the civil rights era context or anti slavery context, but another when used by those on the other sides of those movements. Can you describe the battle over the word freedom in America [crosstalk]

Prof. Cowie: That's at the core of the book. We see that right in that very story I just told, that freedom, as you say, has many versions, valences, ideas behind it. The one I explore is a particularly a white or dominant power idea of freedom. That is the freedom from federal authority, the freedom to control the land, the labor and the political power of other people.

We usually still think of freedom as the struggle of oppressed people to liberate themselves, but what about the freedom of the powerful to control the lives of other people? The freedom to dominate, the freedom to oppress. That's the freedom that I'm interested in in this book.

Brian: When you say in the subtitle, white resistance to federal power, slavery was enshrined in the original constitution. To the subtitle of your book, how early does federal power and white resistance to it come into the picture? Because the federal power would have been to uphold slavery, which was in the constitution.

Prof. Cowie: It pops up almost immediately. Essentially you can see the essence of American history in the fight over what Madison called the compound republic, or what we tend to call today federalism, which is where does power rest and where does democracy rest? Is it on the local level, the state level, the federal level?

His hope was that if we spread it out enough, that it won't get concentrated in any one place. Throughout history, what we see is local people, local white power structures wanting to keep it local so that they control and dominate and resisting federal authority, which they see as the enemy of their version of freedom. Now we can talk a little bit about how that's flipped in the last couple of months, but the longer history is essentially one of white resistance on the local level to what they fear to be a federal tyranny on the national level.

That's built right into the constitution. When we got rid of the Articles of Confederation, that was very decentralized in some ways more democratic, but also very, very chaotic. Then the Constitution comes in and establishes much greater top-down order, but not compared to most other countries. It was seen as a bit of a coup at the time of federal power. That fear of federal from the constitutional era, from the resistance to monarchy continue to infect the body politic for the coming 250 years.

Brian: Listeners, as many of you know, in these 100 Years of 100 Things segments, we invite your oral history calls, anything from your own family's history, in this case, if you're white or if you're Black or if you're anything else that relates. I don't know if anybody has anything on this, but as we talk about 100 years and more of white resistance to federal power with the Pulitzer Prize winning author Jefferson Cowie, he won it for his book Freedom's Dominion: A Saga of White Resistance to Federal Power.

Anybody have an oral history? 212-433-WNYC, 212-433-9692, call or text. Moving up in the timeline after the Civil War there was of course Reconstruction and ultimately the successful in many ways white resistance to that. How would you as a history professor describe Reconstruction briefly to a college freshman unfamiliar with the term?

Prof. Cowie: I love that question. Reconstruction after the Civil War, the federal government comes in and tries to rebuild the southern political economy on a more progressive format. For a little while, because there is this federal establishment that comes in really through the military and the Freedmen's Bureau and enforces a successful biracial democracy in the South.

We forget about this, we think it went Civil War to Jim Crow. Really there's this moment where the federal government is very active. In the case of this county I'm studying, Barbara County, Alabama, in this book, it worked for quite a while. There's Black people on juries. Black people have elected to the state House, and the only Black person from this area elected to the US Congress. It's working.

Then in 1874, when African American people went to the voting booths which were outside, they were essentially mowed down in the street, at least 80 people were shot in the street by white mobs to reclaim their "freedom from federal power." Because it was really the federal government that was there enforcing those rights.

Brian: By the time you get to the official start of our timeline, the 1920s, is Reconstruction dead? Is there any federal enforcement of the post Civil War constitutional amendments for [crosstalk] to be resistant to? Go ahead.

Prof. Cowie: I call this period the era of federal government and repose. In this time period, after the collapse of Reconstruction in the 1870s, all the way up through to the New Deal period in the 1930s and '40s, the federal government has given up on the South and backed away. They said, "Forget about it." They've given up on race relations.

What we see then is the most vicious versions of this white freedom to dominate flourish in the deep south. I'm thinking of convict leasing, where people are taken out of the jails and thrown into the coal mines. I'm thinking about lynching, that is white mobs killing Black people. I'm talking about Jim Crow constitutions that officially kicked Black people out of any citizenship role.

Without the fear of that federal government, essentially these local white dominant structures are allowed to flourish under what they call freedom from federal tyranny.

Brian: Then we get to the civil rights era. You cite the inaugural address by Alabama Governor George Wallace in 1963. For a lot of younger listeners who've never heard this, here's the most famous one minute excerpt.

George Wallace: Today I have stood where once Jefferson Davis stood and took an oath to my people. It is very appropriate that from this cradle of the confederacy, this very heart of the great Anglo-Saxon Southland, that today we sound the drum for freedom, as have our generation of forebears before us done time and again down through history.

Let us rise to the call of freedom loving blood that is in us and send our answer to the tyranny that clanks its chains upon the South. In the name of the greatest people that have ever trod this earth, I draw the line in the dust and toss the gauntlet before the feet of tyranny. I say, segregation now, segregation tomorrow, and segregation forever.

Brian: Shocking to today's sensibility, in a way it wasn't that long ago, 60 years ago. Put Governor George Wallace 1963 into historical context for us.

Prof. Cowie: George Wallace, that line, "Segregation now, segregation tomorrow, segregation forever," is in just about every textbook in America. That is the classic line of massive white resistance to the federal rights struggle. That's the same year that the march on Washington will happen in August where King gives his, "I have a dream speech."

What's interesting about that speech, and what I like about that clip you selected for that is that he mentioned segregation only four times in the entire speech, including that famous line, but he mentions freedom like 24 times. That speech, it is about segregation, but it's really about freedom from what they call federal tyranny, federal control, federal domination.

The difficult thing I think for us to do is to begin to think of George Wallace as a freedom fighter, not the freedom fighter a lot of us want, but certainly in his own mind he was. He went on to take that message into American politics, running for president in 1964, '68, '72, and again in '76, and in rejiggered, really, the entire party system along the way by changing the political dynamics in this much more right wing populist way that we live in today.

Brian: Here's a question from a listener in a text message. It's really a statement, but we'll get your take on it. Listener writes, during and after Reconstruction, the KKK and other armed white supremacist groups with ties to the Democratic Party waged violent terror campaigns across the South, assassinating Black and Republican politicians, burning Black homes, businesses and churches, committing election fraud, and threatening, beating and killing Black citizens who attempted to vote.

This wave of terror, which helped establish nearly a century of single party rule across the South was made possible by the collusion of state and local law enforcement authorities. Your reaction?

Prof. Cowie: That's 100% correct. We have to rethink our sense of the party dynamics at this moment, because it is the Democratic Party that is in charge of the system of racial domination in the South up until post-World War II era. Their entire political ideology is fighting that federal power there. For instance, your listener mentions the Klan.

The federal government came in and passed what's called the Klan Acts, which were anti terrorist acts. The federal government said, "You can't do this, this, and this." In fact, there were a number of us who believe that Trump should have been brought up under the Klan Acts for insurrection and riot, which were illegal under the Klan Acts.

The enemy of those very people that your listener is writing about at this time is the federal government. The federal government is controlled by the Republican Party, the party of Lincoln, which of course changes quite a bit in the ensuing 150 years.

Brian: Here's another history note in another text. Listener writes, the election of Rutherford B. Hayes was an act of white resistance. South Carolina, Florida, Louisiana and Oregon withheld their electoral votes until he agreed to remove the federal enforcers of the 13th, 14th and 15th amendments, the post slavery amendment from the South without the popular vote, but with this agreement and the electoral votes, he became president. True?

Prof. Cowie: That's absolutely correct. What's interesting about that-- That's the Tilden Hayes compromise. It leads to coming out of the 1876 election. Wat I show, and I think what we're seeing a lot of in the local and social history of the question of Reconstruction is long before that federal capitulation.

Before that national capitulation on the presidential level, we're seeing a lot of violence on the local level, a lot of little, what I call a coup d'etat on the county and community levels where white people are seizing power long before the changes on the federal level.

That's why the presence of federal troops in the South at this time on the ground were so important. It reframes our question away from presidential elections and towards really, who's protecting civil rights on the local level, political rights on the local level? I can give you another example if we have a minute.

Brian: Briefly.

Prof. Cowie: Which is, after the Voting Rights Act of 1965, Martin Luther King's, one of his key organizers, helped launch this massive voter registration drive in anticipation of the 1966 elections, which would be the first elections to take place after the Voting Rights Act.

At the end of this, he's going through all the voting registration materials, and he can't figure out why some counties have such good numbers and other counties don't. It finally dawns on him. He's like, "Is it because more radical groups are organizing these towns or charismatic groups, or is it something about the county itself?"

It turns out there was only one variable that explained why some counties had high voter registration numbers. That variable was the presence of federal registrars in the county. If there were federal registrars, there were high numbers. If there were no federal registrar, there were low numbers. Even in that romantic period, that wonderful civil rights era, what really mattered was the Civil Rights Act, the Voting Rights Act-

Brian: And the Federal presence.

Prof. Cowie: -and the troops on the ground.

Brian: In our last three minutes or so, let's talk about today. Some people saw January 6th in white backlash to federal power terms, do you? Turning to the immediate present, all this anti-DEI, and banning Black history month observances in the military, we heard the George Wallace clip, "Segregation today, segregation forever." The Trump administration and its supporters around the country claim to be against the idea of separatism, but it's still white backlash. How do you connect them?

Prof. Cowie: Absolutely, it's white backlash. I also want to point out that white backlash takes the form as one of the core values of American history. That's even more problematic. We can call it white backlash, but they're calling it freedom and now we have a much more complicated question.

I definitely see January 6th as a neo confederate uprising against the government, but that now what we're seeing is those guys won and the tables are now turned. This was the dream of a lot of Southern leaders from John Calhoun, to George Wallace, that they would not have to secede from the union, but they could actually take it over.

That's where we are now, I think, is with this oppressive idea of freedom. This freedom to dominate is now firmly ensconced in the executive office. I think this is brand new terrain, and anybody who thinks they know where this is going, doesn't. This is a new age.

Brian: Is it possible that the whole premise of your book, which is to say all of American history gets flipped on its head and now the resistance to the white backlash, which is enshrined in the federal government becomes at the state level, such as the lawsuit against a doctor in New York for providing abortion pills to somebody in Texas or other things that are going on like that.

Prof. Cowie: That's exactly right. The game for progressives or liberals or the center left or whatever we want to call them, shifts now from, let's set up laws and rules on the federal government to enforce those on the local level. Now, exactly as you said, Brian, we are going to have to begin to fight on the local level against federal incursions against things, whether it's the reproductive choice or diversity issues, or voting rights, or wherever the fight will end up.

Brian: That, folks, is our 100 Years of 100 things, thing number 68 with Jefferson Cowie, historian at Vanderbilt University and author of the Pulitzer Prize winning book Freedom's Dominion: A Saga of White Resistance to Federal Power. Thank you so much for joining us and our 100 Years of 100 Things series.

Prof. Cowie: Thanks for having me.

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