Mike Roberts, ICANN's first CEO from 1998 to 2001. Mike, thanks for taking the time to talk to us. Peter Dengate Thrush said that ICANN was referred to as the ICANN experiment in the early days. Is that the way you saw it? I think most of us did in some form or another. You have to remember that the model for ICANN didn't exist. The blueprint was in the white paper. And somewhat reluctantly, people all over the world signed up to that, which didn't mean they loved it. So it was really up to the first board, the first nine members that had been recruited from around the globe, and to some extent to the staff, to me and my helpers, to make us credible and make that experiment turn into reality. When you say my helpers, how bad was the staff? You and who else? Well, I was extremely fortunate that our agenda, people ask, well, what were you supposed to do? In some sense, we were supposed to carry out the mandate of the white paper. But more directly, we were supposed to pick up several really nasty, intractable policy issues that the government managers hadn't been able to make any headway on. What am I? The trademark community was in a state of great upset. And as you know, because they're very closely tied to Hollywood and the big time media people, their lobbyists were pounding on the Congress and on the White House all the time about cyber squatting and this awful damage that the internet was doing to their business.  So one of the very first thing we had to do was to take up this thorny issue of the relationship of trademarks to domain names and do something about the cyber squatting. What I'm hearing you say is they simply had a heavy lobbying influence with those governmental entities. Well, they did and there was reality behind that because some of the nastier cyber squatters were really doing damage to legitimate American brands. So how many people did you have working with you at the time? Molly Van Holling, who's gone on to a distinguished legal career and who was in a gap year before she clerked for justice suitor on the Supreme Court, agreed to be my senior policy person. And she was a Harvard Law distinguished Harvard Law graduate who's now a distinguished member of the Berkeley Law Faculty. And by the way, a world champion biker, woman biker. Behind her came Louis Tutan, who at the beginning was at Jones Day but subsequently came to ICANN as general counsel for a dollar a year. And then Andrew McLaughlin, who was another young Harvard Law graduate who had policy written all over him. A dollar a year. At the beginning, that's in addition to the IANA staff who had their own plate full of operational matters, that's all there was. So a very tiny group of people was the foundational structure of ICANN. That's true. What'd you do for money? Money was a persistent issue. I'll give you where we ended up and where we ended up was an annual domain name fee which is assessed by the registrars and remitted to ICANN. But my understanding, and correct me if I'm wrong, my understanding was there was a time lag between the time that you guys started your work and when that actually occurred. It took over a year. So in that year's period of time, what were you doing for money? There was a collection taken up by a group of interested corporations in Washington that had been advisors to magazineer Roger Kuchetti from IBM, who was IBM's chief lobbyist in Washington, was very helpful. Vint Cerf, who was mostly senior technologist for his company. Vint has done everything in the internet, as you know, from your interview with him. But he also helped gather the forces and get some money flowing. And they committed the best part of a million dollars. And after quite a while, we got some of that money. You have to remember that the way that charitable donations work in the United States is that the target organization has to have what's called a 501C3 letter from the government. And you don't get that right away. Ours took nine months. So in the meantime.  Yes, a charitable non-profit. So in the meantime, when the people directly trying to help us went to their corporate people to get a check, they said, what's their 501C3 number? And there wasn't any. So they managed. And IBM helped a lot with $100,000 unrestricted check. And others followed in. So finally by the spring of 99, we had some money. But before that, nobody built us. Everybody put their bills in a accounts receivable basket. And my checking account and my credit card and some other things paid the bills. So, wait a second.  Well, for instance, Molly and Andrew and I never got a paycheck for six months. And you're putting forth money of your own funds to get things going, right? That's right. We believed in it. We believed in the experiment. We believed that you have to remember that the internet bubble, we were right in the trailing edge of the bubble, but everything was in a very go-go atmosphere. And this was an opportunity to put some private-sector public interest stamp on all this commercialization. Did you feel pressure to make it work? Oh, yeah, but I wasn't a newcomer to pressure. You know, I've been a university CIO, which is a very tough job. I've been the designated guy for research university networking for 10 years in Washington. ICANN, my impression is that, and correct me if I'm wrong, my impression is ICANN was very much a sort of the foundation going past the green papers and the white paper. All of that generated with Ira. The way that Vendes called the father of the internet, is it a fair description to say that Ira Magaziner, the Clinton aide, was the father of ICANN? Yes and no. Ira did a great service by being the White House guy who chaired the committee that had all of these rough-edged agency people in it. Most of them from the research side of things, a few lawyers, a few NIST people. Ira essentially forced them to make peace over the green paper and the white paper, which had a lot of things in it that Ira alluded to, that the research agency managers didn't think a lot of. For example? The whole idea of mandating things like competition in a domain name space, bottom-up management. This was not their cup of tea. Let's deal with that for a second, Mike. How do you get by in the typical corporation? Policy is set by the board and it filters down. You've got this funky new concept where you've got a bottom-up policy formation structure. Where the ICANN community is making policy and it's going up to the board. Was it difficult to get acceptance for that model because of its uniqueness? I have to digress a little bit. After the IAHC meeting in Geneva, which is a seminal moment, the white paper was out there. A lot of people who complained bitterly about the green paper stopped complaining and signed on. All the big players were in Geneva, even though it was this sort of ad hoc meeting. I was there, Becky was there, John was there, I was there. People like Larry Landweber from the academic networking community were there. So by the end of that meeting, everybody said, well, we need to do this. And what happened next was people started asking questions saying, well, the white paper doesn't say how to do this. How are we going to do this? And of course, by throwing the ball in the court of a private sector nonprofit organization that crossed up people who thought their private scheme, their own personal favorite scheme, would go somewhere. So one of the key moves was that Joe Sims from Jones Day offered pro bono to help John put it together. He sat down with John.  That's not what this has to be. You know, we have to put articles of incorporation together. We have to have bylaws. We have to find a board of directors of suitably senior people of a global diversity. So July and August of 1998 were really in my world because I was enlisted as a helper. I had, I had just finished being a startup guy for the Internet to consortium, which needed many of the same things. So that's what we, that's how we spent July and August was making the concept in the white paper into a real organization with the unexpected death of John Postell. How did that affect the direction growth and structure of the organization, if at all? Yes. By the beginning of September, one of the other curves that we got thrown, which wasn't in the white paper, was that the government lawyers decided that the agreement with us could not be a sole source agreement. And so. What does that mean exactly? Well, you know, under the code of federal relations of relating to contracts, the normal practice is there has to be demonstrated competition. This is sort of an article of faith. The government deserves a proper competitive bid on, on its work. So the white paper implied that once that the government, meaning NIST and NTIA really came to agreement on the, on the find on the details that the selected organization would be often running. So what the, so what the announcement about no sole source meant is that John's group had to throw a proposal over the transom at NTIA and, and any other interested party that wanted to compete for the business, if you will, the ICANN business had to throw a, their proposal in, in the hopper too. That meant, of course, that everything had to be a lot more definite than was implied by the white paper. So it sounds like what I'm hearing is the white paper was sort of the frame, but you guys had to fill in every, in everything. A lot of blanks, a lot of blanks. And John was, John's role ended up never being defined. I think Joe assumed, a lot of people assumed. I probably, I certainly assumed that John would end up being a CEO. But behind the scenes, it came out later that John had told Joe he didn't want to be the CEO. Joe wasn't very happy about that because he didn't think that the initial board was going to be very equipped to do an executive search. Why didn't John want to be the first CEO? He was, he saw himself as a PhD research guy, not as an executive. And frankly, he didn't have a lot of admiration for the commercial side of the domain name business. Let me ask you this question. Postel is, is kind of universally accepted as a sort of a nonconformist, if you will. Charismatic, long hair, sandals, the whole thing. Which brings to mind the question, at the time that ICANN was born, there was a lot of distrust, it was it was coming on the heels of Watergate, a lot of distrust and authority. Yes. And a lot of you guys were children of the 60s. Yes. You were children of that. How much of that influenced the sort of structure and being that ICANN became? Ultimately, an organization like ICANN, especially technology nonprofit, is built on this.  You know, an interesting statistic was there were 23 million domain names when we started. And today, almost 20 years later, we're headed towards 500 million. So how were you possibly going to write bylaws that scaled to that different world? To leave things as flexible as possible and we did. Someone mentioned to me that ICANN works because people believe it should work. Is that an oversimplification? Yes. Although we took a lot of heat on a lot of different fronts from people that were not inclined to trust us. Because the model, you know, telecommunications worldwide, the divestiture of AT&T was only 12 years old, 82 to 96. And so there was a big hangover of the way you do these things is you pick a chosen corporation and put them under regulation and tell them how to run their business. That was, you know, we were 180 out from that model. But certainly inside the Beltway, there were lots of people that thought that ICANN should be run that way. Here you are, heading of your CEO, the first CEO of this spunky organization. Yes. The likes of which had seldom been seen. You don't have a hell of a lot of money to play with. Definitely. What kept you awake at night? The university community where the internet was incubated, certainly Serf and Kahn and Crocker and the early technical pioneers came up with the protocols on which it's founded. But in terms of making a market and demonstrating that this crazy open source suite of protocols would work, it was done in the university community with NSFNet. The internet went from having fewer than 500 nodes in 1985 at the end of the ARPANET period to more than a thousand by 1989, almost all of them in the university community. So it was that community that really believed in this. To some extent they believed in the initial board and they believed in people like Louis and Andrew and Molly and myself. But what did you fear? Did you fear, again, what kept you awake at night? I was very concerned that our legal vulnerability would lead to some sort of a loss of faith on the government side and it collapsed back into essentially a government run corporation. That was always a possibility. In other words, if the ICANN experiment had failed, it's back to the U.S. government. People might have argued about that, but if you think about it, the Congress and the Bush administration by that time were not about to allow any other outcome. How much of a problem was it with the change in presidential administrations? We were very fortunate that by and large, and especially because of 9-11 and because of Iraq, the attention of the administration, that day to day the White House lived and died over that war and over the steps that were taken to strengthen our own homeland's security. So wait a second, you're saying the plus was that you weren't on the radar? That's right. And we were also fortunate that Becley's successors as the director of NTI, Larry Irving, of course shared a Stanford background with me. We had a lot of good handshakes and he was very supportive of the ICANN model. And Becley was his second in command and really had the ball to work with us to make an ICANN go. But to answer your question, it was her successors that maintained a light touch. As long as we sort of followed the game plan, paid attention to the bottom-up, kept working on molding the support organizations into a wider model.  We didn't talk about multi-stakeholderism in the beginning. It was sort of bottom-up was the byword. But we did this lateral arabesque into a more generalized, supportive multi-stakeholder environment. John had the idea that the initial board would not be able to be trusted to do the right thing. You know, here's this researcher and the guardian of the protocols looking at a recruiting effort that was grabbing evil hither and yarn from around the gourd. So in the bylaws, he made sure that Joe gave a very powerful role to these three support organizations. One for protocols, one for domain names, and one for numbers. It turned out that model didn't work. And in fact, it didn't even last a year before it was being subverted into a more generalized, more broadly supportive participation. And I definitely need to make the point that the reason that evolution worked was because of the willingness of so many people on a global basis to step in and do hundreds, thousands of hours of volunteer work. If you ask what made ICANN model work and an analysis in the latter-day analysis, it was all that volunteer help. Mike Roberts, thank you very much for taking the time to talk to us. You're very welcome.


For the audience who is here and the ones who are still coming in Welcome to the November 20th lecture for the Amherst History Society's noontime lecture series history bites You should know that this lecture is made possible with the help of Amherst Media Who will record the presentation and the recording will be available on Amherst Media's website and The Amherst History Society Society will also link to it on our website So Today we'll learn about June 19th or Juneteenth Many believe that Juneteenth commemorates the end of slavery for all enslaved people in the United States with the signing of the Emancipation Proclamation But in fact The United States was still at war with the Confederacy when the Emancipation Proclamation was signed in 1863 And it took more than two years for the United States to defeat the Confederate States and Forward to reach the enslaved people in isolated parts of Texas Many slave owners there resisted and refused to free their slaves until the US Army general Gordon Granger announced on June 19th 1865 in Galveston that the slaves had been freed and That the former slave owners had better get with the program In Massachusetts the day had been recognized with an annual proclamation, but it was not a legal holiday This year as June 19th drew near our guest. Dr. Amalkar Shabazz decided that this was the good time He said Massachusetts recognized it as a special day, but it was not a true holiday So he contacted Senator Joe Comerford as well as state representatives Bud L. Williams and Mindy Dom and Cut to the chase the Juneteenth amendment passed unanimously on the House floor and was signed into law on July 24th Making Juneteenth Independence Day an official Massachusetts State holiday so our speaker Dr. Shabazz joined UMass in 2007 and has twice served as chair of the Department of Afro-American Studies He continues to teach in that department with an emphasis on the political economy of social and cultural movements education and public policy His book advancing democracy African-Americans and the struggle for access and equity in higher education in Texas was the winner of the TR Ferenbach book award and other skull has other scholarly recognitions Dr. Shabazz has been a Fulbright senior specialist and has done work in Brazil Ghana Japan Cuba and other countries He was selected for the 2014 to 15 class of the American Council on American Fellows Program So please welcome Dr. Shabazz Thank you. So glad to be here for history bites and if I can at this point, I'm going to Go ahead and share screen and the way we go I Title these remarks today after a Actually a book project that I have going called Juneteenth the history of a day and As was already mentioned in the opening we're talking about a day that This next year on the 19th of June the state of Massachusetts the Commonwealth will be celebrating it as a full-blown official state holiday in the past. It actually has been a recognized day that It's an important day, but it will be an official state holiday and so in getting ready for it. We thought we we'd Talk a little bit about it and I'll About this day why its significance extends beyond Texas where Texas and Oklahoma and the West where it is more Associated and we're known and grew up and and and why it is A day of national or even international significance that is very appropriate for us to make an official holiday here in Massachusetts what you see here is the historical marker in That's located in Galveston, Texas where The event we mark as the 19th of June as Juneteenth took place Galveston is an island that is Near the big metropolis of Houston, Texas, but actually in 1865 it was the big metropolis. It was the largest city in in Texas larger than the state capital larger than Dallas Houston San Antonio other El Paso other big cities we know in in Texas today. This was the place It had a had a port that was where a lot of the commerce indeed even the slave trade Came through and this is where cotton most of the cotton of Texas at that time went went out to the world from and and so was a very important place, but the to the whole cotton empire the slave empire as it were and so the we're gonna talk a bit about the Significance of that day and how it's been celebrated and why it's been celebrated. What a first of all say that Okay that the the US military Presence in the West is what ended slavery Congressional abolition of slavery in the capital of Washington, DC back in April of 1862 only freed people in the District of Columbia The preliminary proclamation Emancipation proclamation of September of 1862 did not enslave and not enslavery for anybody the states that were Targeted in that preliminary proclamation were all in rebellion by that point and so The the drafting of it the preliminary word of it affected no one No one whatsoever. You can say it's signal things and historians like to talk about it It signaled certain things, but it had no actual effect on freeing anybody The emancipation proclamation itself of January 1 1863 did not enslave for anybody Once again, it did not enslavery. It did not free anyone Again, it's signaled the resolve of the executive of President Abraham Lincoln It signaled the resolve of the federal government that in the midst of this war that they were prepared to use African-Americans to admit African-Americans into the armed forces for the fight that they were And that freedom would be a reward of those who participated in over African-Americans who participated in the struggle So it had great historical implications For both the war effort for in for African-Americans, but again it actually freed no one No one was affected on January 1 1863 by this proclamation And finally the Treaty of Appomattox in 1865 did not enslave It ended a war, but it did not enslave Okay, no one was Directly affected by that treaty in relation to if they were still being held in slavery They were enslaved. They were not immediately affected by the Treaty of Appomattox Okay, what ended slavery Was when US military forces actually conquered subdued and occupied Areas where slavery was taking place and made it known that if slave holders continued to To deal with and treat African-Americans as their property as shadow property That they would face the consequences of the US military. That's what in this what ends slavery Okay, and so when it so the the arrival of Union troops in Galveston on this day and the reading out of this proclamation on Monday, June the 19th of June That has immediate effect has immediate effect on slave holders right there in Galveston And it begins to have immediate effect as word is telegraphed out and word appears in Newspapers and word begins to spread that the Union army is here and the deal is up this day Marks the beginning of the end of the United States of America as a slave Society and in my humble opinion it is most appropriate to become The day in which we officially mark and officially commemorate the beginning of the end of The United States as a slave society pictured here is one of the champions of the Fight against slavery in the United States. It's a statue right here in in Massachusetts in Newberryport the the birthplace the home boyhood home of Garrison William Lloyd Garrison William Lloyd Garrison Has a very interesting story, but the what I want to particularly share with you and my image here is not showing up quite well, but the article here that appears in the Boston Globe is Commemorating the the beginning of this the placement of this statue of Garrison in Newberryport actually refers to it as reparations That it was reparations that Newberryport was finally paying to Garrison To the memory of Garrison to the legacy of Garrison That was long overdue. What was the crime that what was the harm that was done to Garrison by Newberryport? That old whereby he was old reparations and this Monument to him was the beginning of a of a kind of of of repayment and Repair of the harm that had been done to Garrison Garrison was never enslaved Garrison worked to help free those who were enslaved, but he himself was never enslaved. What was the great harm and The great harm actually didn't even take place in Newberryport per se. It took place in Baltimore, Maryland Garrison in running a move there to As he had developed in the trade of of being a printer and newspaper publisher and editor I had moved there to Publish a Newspaper that was helping to promote the anti-slavery cause in in Maryland a slave a slave state itself as well as you know out to the nation from there and In one of the issues of the paper He was he complained about Newberry's port and about a particular individual there that Had profited from the slave trade and was very profoundly involved in the slave trade and And he was really just trying to be fair to say that you know slavery is not only a Maryland problem it's not only a problem of the South and In terms of the implication though those who are implicated by it or not only those who are the actual Slave holders in the South. It's all the people who work with them. It's all the people who find it in finance and trade Relations and and so on that work with the slave holders that are also equally implicated Well, the individual he he named in that article Resident a very prominent and wealthy resident of Newberry port filed suit and as a result of reliable and The judgment went in his favor and for that Garrison was given a six month sentence In incarceration in jail prison, whatever you call it You have to go to jail for six months Well, one of his comrades one of his colleagues in the evolution movement underground railroad paid Paid the fine against his own wishes, but paid it off so that he could get out in seven weeks, but he did seven weeks Okay, and for that is what this article in the Boston Globe Big full-page almost full-page article heralds the this monument as an act of reparations for for Dero Garrison for the the seven-week bid that that he did in the penitentiary for reliable Here I want to jump to another Story from the gold globe the globe had a little little section That was Entitled Move this this is a structing here on the zoom. Okay And It cites in this daily gossip It cites an article from a newspaper in Mobile, Alabama the Mobile Register and It learned that a white man is swindling the Negroes of Mississippi with the statement that the emancipation proclamation by Lincoln has been burned at Chicago and That it will require a large amount of money to get up another and that unless the thing is done So slavery will be restored and they will all go back into Serpentine now We don't know how much This article is kind of like I used to be an article in some papers called news of the weird and May have been kind of tongue-in-cheek. It may have been actually Deadly serious, but the point that I raise it here is again how in many instances The the immense of proclamation is what is one Symbol is one historical reference point that is that is handed down and Promoted as the as the really significant Reference point for the ending for the freeing of African-Americans and as a reference point for the end of the beginning of the end of the United States as a slave society I really want to challenge that even though that has been a very popular story has been a part of the popular storytelling Part of in my argument for Juneteenth, I really want to to challenge that and in the way it's been it's been deployed To show just over time some of the ways in which Juneteenth has manifest once again this zoom bar is in my way and My cursor is not working so well Well, let me proceed This is again from the Boston Globe and What one of the things just did a basic search on this to look up the word Juneteenth in the historical Boston Globe and One of the sources that comes up in 1986 we see that Out West Juneteenth is the date for Celebrating the the the end of slavery in US is the beginning of the end of slavery as a US society now In this case as the article shows here The celebration had been marred by a an incident with the with the police of which at the very end of the article We thought we we are left with That it is a conundrum. No one knows why there, you know, this broke out why there was these this of fighting and attack and and with bottles being thrown and officers being shot It's left as a mystery in this United president national article, but We we nonetheless find that it all ended well on the on this at the close of it by a nice Gospel music concert and peace and calm being restored to to Denver but you can see that thousands are involved in these Celebrations thousands are involved on Friday night in in battling with the with the police and even more than that had been involved in the more peaceful activities of celebrating Juneteenth in in Denver, but But this is this is back in 1986 so it's moved out of Texas and Oklahoma and is now a Something that becomes very prominent in Western states especially Going into the 70s into the 80s Hasn't moved quite as much east of the Mississippi, but it's but that's but that's coming Here from the globe we see an article from 1958 it involves the Sue Thurman the wife of the the great Educator and theologian and scholar Howard Thurman who at this time is a dean at In Boston at Boston University. He is the dean of Marsh Chapel and And she is busy in her own right as the as an as a scholar and an activist She in the article here tells the story Dorothy Trandall tells the story that Mary beard the great historian and scholar and partner of Charles beard the historian and scholar Together they wrote many many works of history together That at a couple coffee at With Mary McLeod Bethune she looks at her and says set your organization to hunting for Americana Mary McLeod Bethune and in this setting was the founder and Keep person with the Council of Negro women as National Council of Negro women and Beard is giving her some advice Saying you know get that history. This is 58 get that history before before people die and and it's lost and and The and said that we gladly will welcome the treasures you find at the World Center for women's archives in New York So she was prepared to help materially in preservation work If McLeod would get women in the National Council of Negro women to to do this work and And so it was taken up as she says in a palatable approach to history By editing this work that is published this cookbook that is published in title the historical cookbook of the American Negro and And it's organized chronologically so it starts with January one and it begins to give dishes that you could prepare recipes that you could prepare from January one all the way through to to December 31st and And so it starts out there in January one and it moves along and I take it from the article it's not a hundred percent clear, but I take it from the article that I can't see because of this zoom thing, but that For the June 19th The recipe was as provided here in the article was barbecue veiled roast barbecue veiled roast and And so Crandall in writing about this You know is curious. Well, what's this June 19th barbecue recipe? What's this June 19th all about and so? miss Thurman miss Thurman proceeds to educate her that Yes, while We start and they would into interweave history With the recipes so they start with January one Noting that New Year's Day is the date of the Emancipation proclamation Day, and and she notes that it's everywhere except Texas and Oklahoma is they celebrated as Emancipation Day But in those states They celebrate on June 19th and call it June Teen so giving her a little explanation, but but what's really telling here is I Could use some help to get this zoom thing out of my way because it's right in the way of what I'm trying to read I guess you can see it on your end, but the the answer that Crandall is is told that You know it is as miss Thurman explains the The Juneteenth. She says legend says it took that long with a laugh. No, it took that long for the word to get to African-Americans people of African descent in Texas and Oklahoma It took that long to afford to get to them from from 1863 So from January 1 1863 the June 19th 1865 is how long it took for the word to get to those those poor old African-Americans in Oklahoma and Texas, but then she says whatever the reason they're not changing now The recipe for barbecue will Veal is a flavorful way to cook the roll veal shoulder It's the favorite of the Houston Council. So I read from that speaking of the Council of National Council for Negro women in In Houston, Texas must have sent in this historical recipe to Mrs. Thurman For the book they put it in for the June 19th entry and then we have to get this little as Dorothy Crandall interviews her about it. We get this little kind of jokie Jokes, we got jokes for for Juneteenth and for African-Americans in in Texas and In Oklahoma and the West that they're they so stubbornly fix on on this day that was That's so sad that it took that long now mind you Since this is all about history and all about this really kind of bites What's what's going on in that little story with Mrs. Thurman really kind of bites And it bites a couple of different ways So first of all it bites with this notion with notion that I hopefully You know already clarified and and straightened out that there's no problem of African-Americans getting the word in January 1 1863 in in Texas Undoubtedly telegraphs work Word went out People covered it probably the The white press would have covered it in Texas that this that old crazy old Lincoln has done this now News was out African-Americans those literate would have read it Those not would have probably heard some would have been listed out and heard something But Operationally you knew but what what difference does it did it make the slave holders who had the the power To keep you enslaved that had the guns that had the numbers to keep you enslaved You walk up to them and say oh well Lincoln has freed me now. I'm leaving the plantation here You're just going to be a dead African-American So to make these kinds of jokes and they still go on today to make these kinds of jokes about oh look how It took them, you know since from 8 January 1 1863. They don't get the word till till till June 19th Oh, how tragic and how how sad of those those those Negroes in Texas and out West Not realizing why why it's not about not getting the word. It's about the word was meaningless Was meaningless until the armed might of the US military with a half million with nearly a half million African-Americans ultimately in Uniformed in that army is what what makes it a fact what makes it a reality? Not just that somebody wrote something with a pin And and whether the word got to someone about it So it bites that way But then the other way it bites is and then it's like oh these these Negroes out West how how terrible that they're just so stubborn that they cling to the June 19th date and Not get in line with everybody else with June with January 1. It bites again Because the the reality of insisting upon June 9th, January June 19th over January 1 is about the reality Not the rhetoric not the propaganda not the fan the wonderful story of good old Abe Lincoln and what he did But about the material fact of when the chains are fully broken When the last chains are fully broken and that's out in the West Where the word had yet to had yet to really get we could raise about how some of the northern states that were untouched by the Proclamation really didn't end until 1866 and the ratification But in the in the case of of Delaware or whatever, you know, you're talking you're not talking very many people you're not talking very many people that Were really materially Insulin in chains in the way Folks were in Texas and in the rest of the South You're talking about people who were still were still being Referenced and and and used as property and but In effect to go very tiny number But the real material fact of the ending of the institution the beginning of the end of the institution is signaled by the the action by by the 19th of June Finally to Bring this up to the to a little bit of a local turn Because To sketch this out So African Americans are Consistently celebrating the 19th of June. They don't wait for any any any government They don't wait for the US military. They don't wait for anybody to tell them about this date. They take it They take it and claim it and every 19th. It doesn't matter what day of the week it falls on They're not working They're off work that day self-declared That's another powerful thing about this day. This is not a top-down, you know Washington DC down thing. This is bottom-up. This is grassroots People take this day and they use it to reconnect with their families family reunions To party to enjoy to fellowship to commemorate over time The politicians do get involved and they will sometimes pay for the soda pop the red soda pop They will pay for the barbecue. They will pay for for some, you know or make some contribution toward it but the But again the overall Control of it and meaning of it is not the politicians running for office who want to who want to try to get votes or or Signal, you know, they're that they're they're okay with the with the blacks No, this is about people taking that day for what it meant for them and they will do it and you can look at the historical record I've looked in the the black press especially Out of Texas out of other places and you can see it being celebrated the June 19th or and sometimes the entire weekend if it was a Friday and People are partying the whole weekend in the name of Juneteenth It's a Sunday the parties will start like in in in Denver will start on a Friday all the way through to the to the June 19th day on a on a On a Sunday or a Monday, but consistently 1870s 1880s 1890s 1900s 1910 1920 you can see Juneteenth You can run in historical black papers and you can see references to it You need to see references to it outside of the south outside of the West Chicago defender will talk about it people who are from those areas will sometimes take the take the date and the meaning of the date to to Illinois to Midwestern states and and it'll be mentioned sometimes that this is going on and Because people are you know deciding to just do it because in in connection with the What's done out West what's done in Texas, Oklahoma and out West? and And so you consistently see it in trying to look for it specifically here in in Massachusetts particularly here in Western Mass where we are it it takes a it takes a while the beginnings of acknowledging it as a as a date of historical significance Happens Back in the some years ago But but again not as an official state holiday and you start seeing references in in Springfield in in Amherst in the 2000s When I moved here in 2007, I didn't see much going on on that day We did things just as a fan my family and friends would come together, but we really begin to see it take off in Around 2010 here in Amherst And I particularly like to to acknowledge two individuals with backgrounds as as a labor union activists and community activists Vera cage Vera do Amity cage and an Edward cage Had pulled together an event out in graph park a family fun day on Juneteenth and Originally, they were wanting to hold it in in South Point South Point and some of the commons area there in the South Point Apartments, but The as things moved along in the organizing of it and a lot of people worked with them It wasn't just the two of them of any other people worked with them. They They they opted to to go to a graph park instead and when I read that some press release about this was happening Of course, we had to be there. We went out to it and that's actually where I first met the cages. So And then from there, we've been consistently holding Juneteenth observances every 19th of June here in Amherst and what we tried to do and one of the important things as I Close up on on talking about this is to really take it as an opportunity to commemorate those who Fought to to enslave who fought in the war itself As well as the the the underground railroad and the abolitionist anti slavery movement those who fought In in that format, but then those who actually then fought in the In in the in the military itself those are often the ones and many of these celebrations that are are Are recognized things are done to to recognize their songs that come out of juneteenth and often That'll be part of the theme is to recognize the likes of harry at tubman and sojourner truth and old nap turner and and the the fighting 54th and The the soldiers that took part in that So there are many ways and and and so specifically here we raise up In our celebrations. We raise up henry jackson henry jackson No stranger i'm sure to to folks watching history bites, but he was a as it says here in this Drawing that was done was a truckman. He was uh worked in the li at the livery Uh transporting people moving people around was a great horseman and And just known as a really solid person But even prior to his service in the civil war. He was at war with slavery when the young girl angeline palmer Whose own mother when the time she was born was was so destitute that They were were declared paupers. They were declared You know, they take the child from the mother and declare her award of the of the state And of the town and as done in that time I guess it would be equivalent of our foster care system or foster care arrangements They arranged for a family to to take her in And as part of taking her in of course, they'd helped that family out as a as a servant And um, but they would get a place to live and and and something to eat And so angeline palmer grew up With the family out in uh in in belcher town And that was all again Perhaps would not stand out in in history except for at some point this family in belcher town became involved in a business operation in the south and As a part of that business operation they There was communication about them possibly going going down south And if so to take angeline with them Well to to do that in the 1840s and across that line is to cross into an area where she's no longer a foster child but she's she's she's property and uh The the story was even told that There a letter had come and was telling them that you know, you bring her down here. She could fetch 300 dollars and that's the equivalent of uh, You know several thousand in our in our uh dollars today So she could she could fetch quite a bit that then could go into the the help of the business helping their their silkworm or whatever business survive and so um as that word gets out and as the date Approaches for this family to to leave with the plans of taking angeline palmer with them down south An alarm goes out through the community here in amherst Especially the african-american community the young girl angeline had a had a half brother Had a brother that uh was in town and uh, and he's not liking what he's hearing The uh, there's a grandmother works for a prominent Amherst family and and she's she's not too too happy about these plans. Um, and so eventually three individuals including henry jackson Decide that they're going to go to belcher town take angeline before she's taken down south and um And this only after they had exhausted all kinds of legal remedies They went to the select board asked the select board the word went out to town found meeting members And they're trying to say look, we don't like what's going on here Can we we pull her back from this family and figure out something else for her and um And that becomes uh, that's that's rejected, you know Our uh town government's always got got you know takes forever to figure out anything.  They physically Take angeline into their with them over the objections of the of the people there and um and then hide her out Take her into the underground railroad situation And uh, and in fact as we know from historical accounts apparently she was hidden out in colrain massachusetts and this uh The story there is a very tiny write-up in the paper of the day about the trial these these three are later arrested Jackson and frazier and they actually even a white Individual who they they thought was an accomplice But later was was severed from the from the trial and and later just cleared charges dismissed Whatever against that person, but the three african americans are tried They are represented Apparently pro bono without charge by the father of emily dickinson And uh, they will uh, but he loses he loses the case and they are found guilty of kidnapping And And they are then Sentenced to prison Prison was a little bit different apparently they they could work during the day just Their regular work, but then had to had to go into quarters at night into jail jail quarters at night People could bring them food. They could get other food. It was a you know, different kind of arrangement and apparently that the the legal decision was not You know fully popular with with with all of all of america all of white america There was some disagreement about it and and uh, and so eventually what they did You know have to serve serve some time But even afterwards they're reintegrated right back into the community and and in many cases For many people it was a credit to to jackson the way he the way he stood up Particularly in this in this case in this cause But then he further distinguishes himself in the community by answering the call for for for troops Once african americans are being admitted and goes and serves and with the 54th and and returns and continues to be a very stalwart and upright figure in the in the community, so the And from what we have learned what is now railroad street little tiny street from from Rob nine or college On over to it dead ends before it doesn't go all the way to main because of the train tracks So it kind of dead ends that little street called railroad. We understand at one time was named for henry jackson But these are things we're still looking into and and and really looking at The question of renaming a a street or a square or something in in emersed for for henry jackson it's In my survey of of emersed there's the only Historical african-american figures acknowledged anywhere is of course on the umas campus with wv dubois Out at emers college with some of its alums Like charles drew You might have something out there named for him or some marker But but overall in the town itself nothing Just the jeweler's lester trail Out by out by The the mill river Park area that's it No other no other mention no other acknowledgement of the historical presence of african-americans In in this town named for the the the genocidal Jeffrey emers there's absolutely nothing that marks The historical presence of of african-americans on the landscape But that's but things are changing and one of the areas of change is over in the north Square north village area on the barn. There is this Portrait up of josea hasbrook Uh, the historical photograph of him available at the in our special collections at the uh, jones library Is shown here and is then was the the inspiration or what was used for for the uh, the painting That is up on the barn in the north square village Acknowledging josea hasbrook right around the corner on that same building is also a painting of a living historical figure The great dr. Geneta coal who was a faculty member in my department Wb Du Bois uh department of afro-american studies and the anthropology department who also went into administration and served What um with distinction as an administrator here and then went on to serve as the president of two different colleges for women historically for women of african descent Spellman college in atlanta and in vinnett college in greensboro north carolina So there is also a painting on the same barn of the great dr. Geneta coal, but But other than that where it's It's only in our juneteenth celebrations that something you know that that we begin to kind of raise up These historical figures who fought slavery who fought in the civil war who fought in the underground railroad that we begin to try to raise up these figures and and I do encourage more efforts. There have been other things of the the Vance a patient the sesquit was at the recent Mance a patient proclamation was acknowledged some years back in an event at the at the town hall and We do have the flag raising annually and in february in black history month but But again there before this historical this when this presence of african americans Um Historically even while starting uh in slavery here in in western mass here in amherst Um, it seems to me an act of repair in the spirit of uh, the reparations That were paid by newberry port to to garrison How fitting it would be for us to to have some reparations here for henry jackson And for those who who who fought in the civil war those who fought in the underground railroad and and paid the price like henry jackson For those and others like like uh, joseph hasbrook. So with that, I will uh pause and Welcome, uh, some questions and and discussions If I can get my cursor, I will stop the sharing of the screen and Open up for your questions Are there questions? Um, I don't see a lot of pictures for people to raise their hands um He mentioned one other, uh Facet of this that um and it concerns the the marble tablets that with the Inscription with the lettering That honors all of some over 300 Men who served in different units in the civil war and in that fight There were different, uh people from this area um about, uh 300 in total um about 21 or so Uh were african americans and when that Marv when that was done by the uh Back in 1893 it was quite a quite a quite an event and the um Done at a great considerable cost and yet. Um, it's it's rather deplorable that for Based on 20 years now We have not seen fit to to to uh to have those Tablets displayed. This is one at one place where we can see see You know interracial collaboration For for this country in the form of those who fought in the civil war Um doesn't it's not to to to commemorate to celebrate war It's to celebrate the the people who sacrificed for the defense and of the of the of the country for the For the cause that that we Not forget the price that people paid and the people who stepped up in service and yet it continues to languish and Last i've heard now is talk about leaking the fate of its display to Whether we renovate Except the renovation plans of the jones library. I just think this is this is really a Very wrong headed and and and really too long for those tablets to be to be just sitting crated up somewhere So I thought I would throw that in as well. You know where the tablets are now The last we heard they were in a department of public works facility and um and there was some concern because in this same facility the uh the snow plows and the And the salt and and all of these kinds of things that are uh, don't sound very hospitable or very uh favorable for the preservation of the of the marble tablets are all in that same facility and And that's the last we heard we we had an appointment Uh a small committee of us including descendants of of uh of an individual who's on the marble tablet To we had arranged to go to the facility, but at the last minute that that date in august was cancelled because of believing that the the inside of the facility was just too too dangerous to um Good mic on not good for us to come there mic is on but we've still been waiting Okay, um, I think bill gillian has a question. Hi bill Hi hi What happened to evangeline? So, uh angeline palmer Eventually was able to come out of hiding and colrain and um the uh, she's actually uh married God married had a child of her own, but uh, again her Uh her economic situation. It seems was always extraordinarily precarious and so in the same way her own mother was uh, um You know in the alms house and and unable to take care of of herself and of her daughter it seemed she Had a similar fate And uh was Similarly destitute don't know what quite happened. Uh, I think the father was in military service or what have you but She will she's she dies pretty young and is um, um, you know Not a not a good story about the the economics of uh of life for for people And for her certainly in those in those times there all right And the belter town family Um The um, I think you've had as a guest in for the emmer's historical society I don't know if it was taped as a history bites or or or something else, but a um, uh Archivist in belter town at the stone house museum Cliff McCarthy with mccartney. Yes. We we have him We have this lecture on videos on history as part of history bites, too Or just with the historical society So he he tells that story He also has a webpage up if you google angeline palmer It's uh, it's one of the ones that that comes up the rescue of angeline palmer. And so he he speaks of uh You know, he did considerable research on mason's shaw and the shaw family and sort of what what uh, what happens to them Uh, I think their business venture down south did not quite pan out and and uh and and failed but but yeah, they They they not sure whether they came back to this area or or where they ended up living out But but cliff is uh is probably the person who uh has the most uh information on that Cliff is an encyclopedia. Yes. It's worth if you do a web search on um, angeline palmer His page will come up and it has a lot of information Yeah, absolutely. Thank you So many of us think angeline is also a uh a fitting person and that that that whole underground railroad Uh rescue is a fitting story to be uh commemorated in some way here in the town And again, it brings together a lot of the town's history with uh, emily dickinson's father Being the attorney that that represented the the three rescuers the three liberators Did the jackson family? Uh continue enamorist? Oh, yes. Oh, yes, and uh the uh and in fact the person That angeline married Was was a jackson was sanford jackson and um, he um, uh in cliff's Work on this he notes that after angeline's death. He married a second time Uh in 1859 to a uh to a woman in william But then a year later He appeared married a third time to a nancy newport and where this all came out was that In his service in the 54th He's um, he he's wounded at the siege of fort wagner in south carolina and dies from his wounds that he incurred there and so after his death soldiers are Entitled to the families of soldiers are entitled to a little uh something from the from the from the military from the government And so uh, both of the women Approach the you know and bring evidence of their marriage And so little uh little uh story there, but uh, but before that his first wife was was angeline until she until she died Thank you I don't see any other questions so Thank you. Dr. Shabazz. That was um very informative and um Glad to hear it all. Thank you. Thank you. I have up on screen an article from the boston globe from uh, 93 march 8th 1893 and uh This is recording that an article about the town meeting. Uh voting to um Debuting or uh these the um, uh The marvel tablets the memorial tablets and that was the e.m. Stanton post 147 of the grand army of the republic um, that's the the group that uh came forward uh to create these marvel tablets they acknowledge uh 312 amor soldiers and sailors and um In different slabs uh of marvel from I think from vermont This picture, um Is of our town hall of course and right here you see the an area that was built a a uh, uh An encased structure that was built for the display of the tablets This is from a photograph by the amherst photographer lincoln barns Uh of the town hall in september of 1942 And so the the the marvel tablets from reppelin vermont were installed were And this uh, and it was meant and during the time of the second world war So it's meant to to honor the uh the second You know to honor soldiers from a from a from another battle Here is dudley bridges Who is a descendant of uh one of the one of the Persons who fought in from this area And uh, he's here with photographs of the marvel tablets Dudley is Will will step up during this time to demand that the To work for the display of the tablets to get them to Once they have been taken down to be restored and and cleaned He began raising money to establish a site for them to be to be posted back up And um and that goes back to Uh, um 20 over 20 years ago over 20 years ago and uh in 2004 he uh became ill and he passed away at 80 years old um having raised money and uh and done a lot of work to try to get this The display of the tablets back up, but uh, but unfortunately not uh succeeding Here is where a picture of where the the tablets are as we know today. This is in the uh department of public works ruckston storage facility They're here inside these these crates in this uh in this storage facility Uh that we were to visit in august, but again, it was determined that uh, it was too too unsafe To uh for us to even go in there and be able to take a look at the tablets


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Hey there friends, thanks for checking in today. We're looking at the Taurus G2C and the Taurus G3C And we're going to look at some of the changes that Taurus made with the new model Let's start here with the G2C an extremely popular model from Taurus I said many times this was the gun that brought many shooters back to Taurus and it Has to be one of the hottest selling guns in America and don't take my word for it You could ask any gun store worker any holster maker and they will tell you this gun is Extremely popular and in high demand and it is unloaded But now we have the G3C many people were wondering why even change it Well, I said in my range review that all the changes made I think were good changes And you know, they kept the MSRP at 305 now the first change that I don't think anybody's going to argue with Is that Taurus gives you three mags three twelve round mags in the case as opposed to the two that The G2C will give you now it will accept the larger cat mags in the full-size G3 But it will also accept and this is an unloaded gun to here. We have a sig P 226 mag That works no problem All right, and then we have 15-rounder and then we have a canic mag over here and this will lock in there now It will not lock the slide back, but it will charge around so here we have what is this an 18-round mag And that will work with both of these models if we look at the slide We'll see that there are some changes You know front serrations with the G3C that deep indentation right there is not as Pronounced on the G3C. So you look at that little change there on top of the slide We could see that the loaded indicator bar Is gone with the G3C. They have a sight hole indicator And I actually think that's a good move with the sights you can see that you have a standard three-dot sights Taurus went with metal Serrated rear sight drift adjustable and a pinned in metal front dot and they are interchangeable with Glock and other aftermarket options out there whether it's fiber optic or night sights They made them so that they are more standard With other guns in the industry Good good move no doubt now one of the most popular things or greatest questions that people ask is what about the trigger Now if we look at the G2C it has a front or shall I say a trigger safety blade All right that that blade some people have said Pinsches their fingers all right. It doesn't Make its way all the way into the trigger and the trigger is a little bit more round it. It's not a bad trigger We pull the trigger We're looking at a reset right there, but some people said it actually pinches their trigger finger Not so much here this trigger bar is much wider. It feels much better It makes its way all the way into the trigger shoe and The trigger pull I measure at probably a quarter pound difference Reset similar so I don't see a great difference in the trigger weight But the comfort on the trigger Is superior and Taurus says that they made a flat face trigger You know, I don't notice a great difference I suppose a little but I will say it is more comfortable shooting We look at the Bottom of the grip here. We'll see that there's a scallop there. That's what tors is calling it and in the mag There's a skeleton case You need to rip the mag out if something gets stuck if dirt gets in there Whatever the case you'll be able to get a good grip on that and rip it out They don't have that with the G2C The grip itself. I don't see a great difference I thought I did when I first got the G3C, but I'm taking that back. I rethought that I checked them out And the grip feels pretty much the same Taurus has mentioned that the G3C shares holster compatibility with the G2C And that may work for leather holsters, but I'm over here now at multi holsters. I have a kydex holster We all know that kydex is very unforgiving over here We have the G2C in which this holster was made for and if it's Just fine, but if we look at the G3C See their front serrations G3C it does not fit in the kydex holster. So Taurus may have been referring to leather holsters perhaps But they do not share the same specs in terms with kydex holsters If we look at the slides, we will see that the G2C has this indentation here That the G3C Does not at least it's not as pronounced And I think they did that because they added the front serrations And so that is the difference from this part back It looks to me to be the same Specs on the gun But that forehand prevents the G3C from working in a G2C Kydex holster, let's go ahead and get the G3 on the scale We'll see the unloaded weight 21 and 7 8 ounces And let's see we'll put a fully loaded 12 round mag in there And the loaded weight 26 and 3 quarters ounces Let's see what the G2C is weighing in that unloaded 21 and 3 8 ounces so hardly a noticeable Difference one of the things we'll get this mag out of here and check clear That many people want to know is Will the slide work with the G2C and let's check that out right now We already know that the Holsters are not interchangeable in terms of Kydex, but here we have the G2C slide G3C frame and we'll see that It will not work It gets to about right there and I don't want to force that On there All right This will work, but it won't work well So basically it won't work then because you can get it on And you can go to rack it, but it won't it doesn't want to go into battery All right, so you have to kind of work to get this thing off And it's just not something that is recommended when I did my range review a lot of people said hey You didn't shoot hollow points. So I went to the range specifically to shoot hollow points out of the G3C to Put the rest or at least confirm that it will function well So that's what we're going to do today. I've got six or seven rounds loaded up of remington golden sabre black belt And I also have some l-tech and shelf shack technologies Loads that I feature quite often. So we're going to run two separate Loads of hollow points through this now. I don't have thousands of rounds. I just got it. So this is not a longevity test This is this is only a function test to see how well it will run hollow points Let's go ahead and do that now And we're starting out with remington golden sabre black belt. All right. And the one thing that I really enjoy with this is that each Shell ejects Pretty perfectly off to the right. This is l-tech shelf shock technology A combination load 124 grain 9 millimeter hollow point It's a nice load for sure. I've I've featured it quite a bit. I've carried it And It's it's pretty true Shall I say a real nice 9 millimeter hollow point load. Let's go ahead and take a few shots and no problem We'll notice that both guns have the serial number on the dust cover The g3c also has it built into the frame right there. We'll also notice that Over here. It says Bainbridge, georgia torus moved to bainbridge georgia and then on the g2c. It says miami florida So that's a minor difference But a thing that is worth noting is that torus added a tenifer finish on the slide And they said it's a stronger finish that will help Prevent rust in the future. That that's a good thing and then they also added a teflon coating on all of the Controls throughout the gun. It's the thumb safety the the slide stop Along the trigger the takedown levers all that Has a teflon coating and that is there to Create longevity with those controls. I don't know if that's really true or how much it's needed But it's certainly a nice touch From torus so you can see that the improvements made are nothing that would sway anybody away from The g2c or going In the direction of the g3c I am told that the g3c will replace the g2c So if you have a g2c and you love it stick with it because you may not be able to get one anymore But I do believe that if anybody goes for that g3c, they will not be disappointed I think torsted a fine job With this handgun and I think once it gets out and available many shooters are going to love it If you like videos like this, please subscribe and share I always appreciate thumbs up button Thanks for watching and you guys be safe