Los Angeles Times Festival of Books: Writing Epic History Panel

Art at the Festival

As mentioned in my first post on the Los Angeles Times Festival of Books, the 2-day festival ranks as one of my premier Los Angeles events of each year. I just love it.

My second panel discussion was titled "Writing Epic History."

There were three panelists. The following short biographies were taken from the LA Times Festival of Books website:

Jonathan Bryant writes about the 19th-century American South and American legal history. He is the author of “How Curious a Land: Conflict and Change in Greene County, Georgia, 1850-1885“ and “Dark Places of the Earth: The Voyage of the Slave Ship Antelope,” a finalist for the 2015 L.A. Times Book Prize in History. He is currently professor of history at Georgia Southern University.

Dan Ephron was a Newsweek writer for nearly 15 years, serving as national security correspondent, deputy Washington bureau chief and Jerusalem bureau chief. His stories have also appeared in the Boston Globe, Esquire, PoliticO magazine, the Village Voice and The New Republic. “Killing a King: The Assassination of Yitzhak Rabin and the Remaking of Israel” is Ephron’s first book and is a finalist for the 2015 L.A. Times Book Prize in History.

Richard Reeves,  the best-selling author of such books as “President Kennedy: Profile in Power,” is an award-winning journalist who has worked for the New York Times, written for The New Yorker and served as chief correspondent for “Frontline” on PBS. Currently the senior lecturer at the Annenberg School for Communication and Journalism at USC, his latest book is “Infamy: The Shocking Story of the Japanese American Internment in World War II.”

The following are my notes from the panel discussion. There are potential misinterpretations to what I heard so take that into consideration.

Bryant. In 1819, a slave trade ship called The Antelope left Cuba for Africa. The ship was captured and taken to Uruguay. There were 258 slaves on the ship. The average age of the slaves was fourteen. The slaves eventually ended up in Savannah. A US attorney argued that they were free people and should go back to Africa. The Supreme Court ruled that the Africans were property and property rights over-ruled human rights.

John Quincy Adams was involved in the case, arguing that the slaves were property. There was eventual redemption for John Quincy Adams via the Amistad.

Regarding the author's thoughts: Bryant was given over 100 boxes regarding the case that no one had ever looked at. So few people know about the case even though the decision legitimized slaves as property. He was surprised that we lost track of this case.

Reeves. Leaders fanned fear after Pearl Harbor. Japanese Americans were held in relocation centers until ten camps were built. Even orphans were taken from orphanages and sent to camps. When people come to the US for jobs, they are discriminated against until they become us. We only remember what we did well and not when we behaved badly.

Supreme Court Justice Warren may have tried to make amends for his actions towards Japanese Americans in Brown vs Board of Education.

Japanese American internment was not discussed for 30 years. They volunteered to go to camps to prove they were Americans. Young Japanese Americans involved in the Civil Rights movement began to ask their parents. A massive oral history started. There was fear, greed, racism towards Japanese Americans. Bank accounts were frozen. Land and homes were lost.

Some German and Italian Americans were interned, but if the sames rules were applied there would have been 70 million Germans and Italian Americans in camps.

Ephron. The 1995 assassination of Israel's Prime Minister Rabin ended the prospect of peace. It represented a conflict between the quest of peace vs. quest to stop peace. The assassination resulted in a power shift from pragmatism to ideology. This is a story of change that has swept Israel for last twenty years.

People like to talk in Israel. Most speak English -- both Israelis and Palestinians. People will give you their cell phone number. Skepticism among both sides that the Oslo agreement would have succeeded if there was not the assassination. Rabin's legacy was cut short since he didn't get the chance to secure the peace.