The Chavis Chronicles

>> I'm Dr.

Benjamin F. Chavis Jr., and this is "The Chavis Chronicles."

>> History is cyclical, just like everything else.

It's not that so much that the history that we've been told is untrue.

It's that it is incomplete.

>> Major funding for "The Chavis Chronicles" is provided by the following.

At Wells Fargo, we continue to look for ways to empower our customers.

We seek broad impact in our communities, and we're proud of the role we play for our customers and the U.S.

economy.

As a company, we are focused on supporting our customers and communities through housing access, small-business growth, financial health, and other community needs.

Together, we want to make a tangible difference in people's lives.

Wells Fargo -- the bank of doing.

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Reynolds stands against discrimination in all forms and is committed to building a more diverse and inclusive workplace.

At AARP, we are committed to ensuring your money, health, and happiness live as long as you do.

>> We're very honored to have on "The Chavis Chronicles," one of the nation's leading archaeologists, historians, researcher -- Dr.

Cheryl Janifer LaRoche.

Thank you, and welcome to "The Chavis Chronicles."

>> Thank you for having me here.

I'm really excited to be here.

>> This is gonna take longer than one interview, but we're gonna get right into it.

>> Yes.

>> Where were you born?

>> I was born in New York City, in Manhattan.

>> A New Yorker.

>> I'm a New Yorker.

You can tell sometimes.

My patience >> But you also come from a military family.

>> Come from a military family, and I also come from Washington, D.C., and the Maryland area.

My father's people are from here, my mother's people are from here.

And I've lived around the world as a child because we are a military family.

Yeah.

>> You've been around the world, but you have deep roots in the Washington, D.C., area.

>> Very deep roots.

I'm from the Janifer family.

Most people know one Janifer at least.

If you look in the phone book, they're all relatives.

And it comes from an old name of Jenifer -- J-E-N-I-F-E-R -- a signer of the Constitution.

So we have deep roots in D.C., but we also have deep roots in this country.

And I think that that is something that really needs to be emphasized, that, you know, we are the first Americans.

And so lots of times when you sort of listen to the rhetoric, you don't realize that many of the African-Americans that you meet have been there from the beginning.

>> Tell me, as you look at the landscape today in America, what are the voids that you see in how history is taught, how history is transmitted, or, I would say, how history is denied?

>> That's a big question.

Let's start with how history is gathered, number one.

I think it's still, even after all this time, quite superficial, that the easiest things, where the record has been left, where you can do the research, those are the things that have been handled and researched over and over again.

I think that often, particularly in the past, people who did not believe in our own power, people who thought we were inferior, wrote from that perspective, even people who were allies.

You can sort of look in the text and sort of feel that they're saying, "Well, you know, you're doing the best you can.

We're gonna talk about this history."

And that was a history that stood for a really long time.

I think that the subject matter also was something that was -- People are -- I don't want to call them -- People follow the lead.

It's very hard to lay down So if you raise a topic, then other people will follow.

But I had a history professor, Ira Berlin, who was -- He's gone now, but he was a noted historian at the University of Maryland.

He was my history professor.

And he used to say that the life of an idea is 100 years.

Think about that.

The first 25 years, it's a new idea, and people are either pushing against it or don't accept it.

The second 25 years, it gets adopted.

The third 25 years, it's on its way out.

And the fourth 25 years are new ideas coming in to supplant that.

So it's 100 years for an idea.

And we can see this over and -- And if we look back 100 years and what happened 100 years ago, you can see sort of the life cycle of an idea.

All of those things impact how history is taught.

>> We will be engaging the 250th anniversary of the United States of America.

>> Absolutely.

>> And your position is, >> We were here at the beginning.

My position is also that after 250 years, I'm shocked to see where we are now.

I'm shocked to see what's happening to the history.

I'm shocked to look at the kind of retreat that is happening around black history.

I'm shocked to see that this country has come so far and is retreating as fast as it came forward.

This is at the 250th mark.

So that when it's time to celebrate, we have to step forward, really, for the 250th anniversary of this country and declare that this history is the history of the United States, that it is not something that's an afterthought, a sound bite, a text box in the corner of a textbook, that this is a history that is imperative, that is powerful, and that is very necessary.

>> Do you see a body of historians that are willing and able to do what you just said?

In other words, if there ever was a time where the history of America should be authenticated, should be, uh, well told, well researched, it should be at the 250 mark.

But you say there's a history of not telling the truth.

And it seems to me that the reverse cycle, you know, where people are trying to ban books, change curriculums -- And the question is, why?

Why are we going through this, uh, at this point in America's history -- historical development?

Rather than go forward, we appear to be going backward.

>> So you've asked a bunch of questions there.

First of all, I think we have to understand that history is cyclical, just like everything else.

It's not so much that the history that we've been told is untrue.

It's that it is incomplete and that it's easy to surface -- to research on the surface, and that historians and the books inside of history can be quite thorough, but getting outside.

What I'm learning is, what we might know inside of history, the general public never knows about.

And it's mediums like the television and TV and streaming.

It has to come to the populace.

It has to come to the public.

They don't read these thick, dense, jargonistic books that we often produce inside of anthropology and history.

They don't read that.

And we often don't write for the public.

So the academics write for other academics and the history that is inside of the books that are presented don't always make it down to -- or out to the people that we need to have access it.

That's just one thing.

But the other thing is the topics, the themes, and I think that this is probably the crux of my work.

When you are inside of and spend a lot of time really looking and going off the path that has been laid down historically and start to think new ideas, you have to be able to substantiate that.

The research takes forever.

The access to the materials is slim.

And you have to cross so many barriers to get to these new ideas and support them that, you know, people are running after tenure, they're trying to get the book out.

They don't always have the time or the resources to do the level of research that is required to lay down these new ideas.

>> I want to go back to the first point you made about >> Yes.

>> Is that by accident?

>> Someone once said to me, "You do enough research to know you don't want to look anymore."

I think that several things happen.

I think that -- I can remember once being told not to do something because it was just too -- I wanted to talk about children at the breast because I'm looking at women.

And I was told, "Well, you can only use that term one time.

It's so powerful."

So there are a lot of reasons why it's incomplete.

One is, people are uncomfortable.

Two, they don't go deep enough to get to the crux of what's happening.

Three, the thinking.

We have a very complex history.

We have a history that is confusing.

On the one hand, you might see people that look like they're cooperating.

And on the other hand, they're being coerced and they're resisting at the same time.

So you have cooperation, resistance, and coercion all in the same space.

People don't think in these nuanced, multiple levels that you need to think about to really do justice to black history.

And because people think we're superficial, because people think we are less than, they take that thinking over to the history and leave it uncomplicated, when it is, above all, one of the most complicated endeavors that there is, that, you know -- that really stands inside of the research community.

That in and of itself renders it incomplete.

When I was taught history, it was the happy singing darky.

That's how old I am.

I remember that.

And that my teacher rushed through it as fast as he could to just get it over with.

But when you see singing... ...they interpreted singing as happiness.

Now, we know that the singing did a lot of things.

But when I advocate for this understanding of complexity, that we can have hardship in our lives and joy in the moment, that is something that people don't quite understand, that we can live -- We're living these complex lives in a state of enslavement.

And so enslavement has taken away from the popular imagination of people who are writing about our history the fact that it can be -- you can be enslaved and nuanced, that you can be enslaved and there's still a very complicated reality that's before you.

And that renders a history quite superficial when you start to read how people write about it.

>> Let's talk about Bishop Paul Quinn of the African Methodist Episcopal Church.

You've written a book on Bishop Quinn.

Tell us what led you to make this decision to write a substantive book about this AME bishop.

>> So my first book is called "Free Black Communities in the Underground Railroad: The Geography of Resistance."

And in that book -- It's my dissertation adapted for a book.

I was out in the West.

And when I got out to Illinois to Rocky Fork, someone said to me, "Well, Paul Quinn started our church."

I didn't think much of it.

Well, by the third time and three states away, someone said this to me, I'm thinking to myself, "How could someone with this much influence be someone I didn't know about?"

And when I came back to Maryland, my dissertation adviser, when I told him about Quinn, walked me around the corner to Quinn Chapel in Frederick, Maryland.

I was hooked at that point.

So he's in the first book.

I talk about him for a couple of pages, mostly in Ohio, where he started a lot of churches.

But the reach, the magnitude of this man, and his intersection with the Underground Railroad never left me.

And so I think I would have been a great mystery writer, because the Underground Railroad is a mystery.

And it's a problem to be solved.

And Quinn was prominent in that problem and so masterful at what he did that I couldn't find him.

I couldn't quite -- I couldn't quite grasp him.

And that is what led me to write about him.

And the longer I researched, the bigger the -- It just exploded out from underneath me.

And so 17 states, he covered.

If I hadn't been able to turn to the Internet, I would have never been able to cover that much ground.

>> In the 1800s?

>> Paul Quinn went to 17 states establishing churches?

>> Establishing churches, planting AME churches across the country.

If he didn't plant them themselves, he caused them to be planted.

He sent someone else.

He's in 17 states.

He's always looking for a place for blacks to settle.

He's looking in Wisconsin and Iowa, places where land is cheap.

Places where the best land hasn't been snapped up already.

He's constantly thinking I found him to be extremely compelling.

I found him to be uplifting, but I also found him to be very obscure and obscured.

He was -- He was hard.

It was a hard research task.

>> Well, when it comes to the abolitionists... >> Yes.

>> ...there are volumes and volumes written about, uh, white abolitionists.

>> And Frederick Douglass.

You know -- You know, volumes about him, too.

Yes.

>> Well, Frederick did a lot of his own writing to make sure that... >> Exactly.

>> ...his narrative would not be distorted.

>> Exactly.

>> But the reason I'm bringing this up is that... if you would give most Americans a test today, uh, whether they're in high school or college or even postdoctorate... >> Yes.

>> ...and ask them to list five abolitionists... >> Yes.

>> ...Paul Quinn would not be in that list.

>> He wouldn't be in the -- You know, somebody pointed out to me Molefi Asante's 100 most famous African-American leaders of all time -- Quinn is nowhere on the list.

He's nowhere on anybody's list.

And when I see him on a list, I'm always surprised.

>> The question is, why?

>> It's what you said One, Quinn did not leave behind a biography.

Daniel Payne, who came after him, he left one.

And Richard Allen, who came before him, he also wrote his autobiography.

So that's one.

Quinn does not -- He's -- You know, I really relate to him 'cause Quinn is busy doing the work.

And, you know, that's kind of how I feel about myself.

I'm out there.

I'm busy doing the work.

>> So you're doing his autobiography for him.

>> Yes.

[ Laughs ] And you know what?

There's many a day when I thought, "Why didn't just write this yourself?

It would have been a lot easier."

So that's one.

But there were some problems along the way -- I think because he's a brawler, he's opening up the West.

I don't usually call him a brawler.

I think I'm a little too comfortable here.

He fights.

And he is on horseback.

He's riding, he's larger than life.

He's a big, big guy.

He's 6'2", he weighs 250 pounds, as they say, before breakfast.

He's a big man.

But the brawn, the heft, the willingness to fight, the legend that he carried a gun -- He will defend himself.

And he needed to because he's in this kind of unlawful, unruled space of what the West was in the early period.

We're not talking about the 1870s or '80s or '90s.

We're talking about the West in the 1830s, '40s, and '50s, when it... >> Before the Civil War.

>> Before the Civil War.

And the West that began in Pittsburgh.

We don't understand that Pittsburgh was considered the "Gateway to the West."

By the time you get into Ohio, by the time you get into Indiana and Illinois, you are in the far West because the country hadn't progressed beyond the Mississippi River in many instances.

So he -- I think there's so many reasons why his story didn't come forward.

He also had a falling-out with Richard Allen.

>> The founder of the AME?

>> The found-- And Allen was -- He ruled with a tight fist.

And when that happened -- >> Philadelphia.

>> Philadelphia.

And when Quinn -- You got these two big egos bumping up against each other, is how I like to describe it.

I think -- >> But they both were bishops.

>> They both were bishops.

But Allen didn't make him a bishop.

Morris Brown made him a bishop.

Allen put him out.

So Richard Allen put Paul Quinn out of the AME Church.

And I think that's one of the reasons why you -- I don't think there's ever been a reconciliation with Paul Quinn -- the bishop with Paul Quinn, the early aspirant, because he was powerful.

He had his own ideas.

And he -- Think about this.

Richard Allen set the example for the independent black church.

He pulled all those denominations together, those early black denominations together, and formed the AME Church out of them.

He hammered them all together.

But when other people tried to form an independent church in his likeness, in his own path, Allen said, "No, don't do that."

You know, "Do as I say.

Don't do what I did."

And so when Quinn decided that he could go it alone and start an independent church -- that's when Allen put him out of the church.

It's Morris Brown, after Allen dies, right immediately after Allen dies... >> Another famous AME bishop.

>> Most people don't know that.

Most people don't understand who Morris Brown is.

>> You need to have a book about Morris Brown.

>> Well, yeah.

Everybody says that to me.

But you know what?

I write a lot about Morris Brown in the book.

And so I'm done with Morris Brown.

I'm done with all of this.

I got other things I want... >> So today there's an AME college in Dallas, Texas... >> Yes.

>> ...named after Bishop Paul Quinn.

>> That's true.

>> And there's a college struggling in Atlanta... >> Yes.

Morris Brown.

>> ...named after Morris Brown.

>> True.

>> I want to go back to something you made reference to earlier.

And that is, um, it was not only the complexity of history, but as the United States grew, uh, people wanted to be comfortable... >> Yes.

>> ...with the narrative, with the historical narrative.

>> Yes.

>> And today we find that that is being pushed even more because in the state of Florida and other places, they're saying, "We don't want you to teach that even to pre-K through 12 if it makes students uncomfortable."

>> If you don't want us to teach it, then don't do it.

That this is the solution.

You want to do all these heinous things and have us not talk about it.

Why don't you just not do it?

And then we can teach the history that you advocate.

But at this point, we have to really face the fact that this is the history and this is what people do.

And you want to be uncomfortable about teaching this to children and yet children are involved.

We've got pictures of children at lynchings.

So what, you can take them to a lynching, you can show it to them, but they can't read about it?

That you can do all the things -- You can put children in chains in slavery.

You can do all these things to them in real life.

And then it's too powerful >> Most Americans have no idea of what you just said.

Have no idea that children were taken to lynchings.

>> Oh, my goodness, there's pictures of them.

Pictures of these little white children sitting at the burnt, charred, mutilated, mangled, castrated bodies.

And they're sitting there at their feet in these pictures.

You can take a child to see that.

There are lynchings of people hanging in front of churches while they're going to church, and they don't cut these lynched bodies down.

They leave them there for hours, just like we leave people like Michael Brown shot in the street for hours.

The mutilated black body is a spectacle of terror, and lynchings are no different and children are present.

>> Mike Brown in St.

Louis.

>> Yes.

>> And this is one of the places that, uh, Paul Quinn, also was.

>> He was in St.

Louis, and at a very rough time, but he was there.

And when you -- One of the things I think in terms of the complexity of black history is that we think there's this totality of slavery.

We think that slavery is so overpowering that people are cowered, that they don't -- they don't ever respond.

And yet what we see is that, again, there's this complexity where St.

Louis, Missouri, is a state that advocates for slavery, and yet you have free blacks, you have the AME Church.

You have an element, an aspect of the black community that is free inside of enslavement.

Now, normally people are so surprised.

Even Maryland.

Maryland -- we have to keep reminding everybody because they don't remember this -- was a state that advocated for slavery.

>> Yes.

So... >> Harriet Tubman was from there.

>> Harriet Tubman's from Maryland.

But we also know that the AME Church in some parts of Maryland, not in the parts where -- the Eastern Shore and the areas where slavery is really taking hold, but that freedom -- Baltimore has the largest free black community in the country before the Civil War.

People used to say that to me all the time, and I never believed them.

I went through the census records and looked.

We had the largest free black community in the country, in Baltimore, in a state that advocates slavery before the Civil War.

That kind of complexity has to be dealt with because people are escaping from Maryland, but they're also escaping to Maryland.

>> I think one of the untold stories of the journey and of the accurate narrative of people of African descent in the United States is the fact that African-Americans were here during the Revolutionary War... >> Of course.

>> ...fought in the Revolutionary War, were landowners, were free blacks before the Civil War.

>> Yes.

>> And, um, of course, that part of history has been suppressed.

>> But it should come back for the 250.

We are there in the American Revolution.

And what happens?

>> Well, you're talking about starting a new revolution.

>> I didn't say that.

That's you.

You said that.

>> Yeah, I have to, because... >> I didn't say it.

>> Well, I'll say it.

>> Yes.

>> Because to me, the truth is therapeutic.

>> It's healing.

>> Yes.

It's therapeutic.

>> Yes.

>> But you have to receive it.

You have to get it.

You have to, uh... let it affect your consciousness.

>> Yes.

And you have to believe it, because so many times, people -- One of the things that happens inside of history is that because you can't often prove everything that you're saying with the kinds of facts and documents that historians demand, it's not true, it didn't happen.

So, yes, I think that there are all of these things that we have to think about.

And I do advocate -- I just advocate for a deeper, more thorough, direct, honest, accurate history.

If that's revolutionary -- It doesn't seem so -- It doesn't seem so radical to me.

>> Dr.

Cheryl Janifer LaRoche, thank you so much for bringing your wisdom and your truth and your history to "The Chavis Chronicles."

It was a delight.

It was really -- It was great.

Thank you.

>> For more information about "The Chavis Chronicles" and our guests, visit our website at TheChavisChronicles.com.

Also, follow us on Facebook, X, LinkedIn, YouTube, Instagram, and TikTok.

Major funding for "The Chavis Chronicles" is provided by the following.

At Wells Fargo, we continue to look for ways to empower our customers.

We seek broad impact in our communities, and we're proud of the role we play for our customers and the U.S.

economy.

As a company, we are focused on supporting our customers and communities through housing access, small-business growth, financial health, and other community needs.

Together, we want to make a tangible difference in people's lives.

Wells Fargo -- the bank of doing.

American Petroleum Institute -- our members are committed to accelerating safety, environmental, and sustainability progress throughout the natural gas and oil industry.

Learn more -- api.org/apienergyexcellence.

Reynolds American -- dedicated to building a better tomorrow for our employees and communities.

Reynolds stands against discrimination in all forms and is committed to building a more diverse and inclusive workplace.

At AARP, we are committed health, and happiness live as long as you do.