 Greetings from the National Archives. I'm David Ferriero, Archivist of the United States, and it's my pleasure to welcome you to today's virtual book talk with Alex Tresniowski, author of The Rope. Before we begin, though, I'd like to tell you about two upcoming programs you can view on our YouTube channel. On Thursday, February 11th at 5 p.m., Paul and Stephen Kendrick will be here to tell us about their new book, Nine Days, which chronicles the arrest of Martin Luther King, in Georgia, just weeks before the 1960 presidential election, and how the Kennedy and Nixon campaigns dealt with it. And on Tuesday, February 16th at noon, Robert Watson will be here to discuss his new book, George Washington's Final Battle, which describes Washington's active role in choosing the location of the new capital on the shores of the Potomac. In recounting the true crime story of the investigation into a 1910 murder of a child in Asbury Park, New Jersey, Alex Tresniowski also introduces the reader to the tireless work of anti-lynching crusader, Ida B. Wells Barnett. She began her campaign in the early 1890s, writing articles, pamphlets, letters, and petitions to bring attention to this horrific practice and lobbying for its end. In the National Archives, her words are preserved in writing sent to Congress and the president calling for anti-lynching laws and aid for the families of victims. At the end of the first decade of the 20th century, lynching was still a real threat for African Americans, especially those suspected of crimes like the accused man in the Asbury Park murder. But at the same time, Wells Barnett and other black leaders founded the NAACP to advance justice for African Americans. Today, Alex Tresniowski will share with us the parallel stories of the historical murder investigation and the activism of Ida B. Wells Barnett and the NAACP. Alex Tresniowski is the author or co-author of more than 20 books, including six New York Times bestsellers. His 2011 book An Invisible Thread spent more than 40 weeks on the Times bestseller list and won a prestigious Christopher Award for works that affirm the highest values of the human spirit. In 2005, Alex co-authored The Vendetta, the story of the FBI Special Agent Melvin Purvis, the G-Man who caught John Dillinger, Pretty Boy Floyd and Babyface Nelson. One of his most recent books, 2017's The Founding, is the basis of a CNN films documentary called The Lost Sons, which is currently in production. Now let's hear from Alex Tresniowski. Thank you for joining us today. This is Alex. Thank you, sir, for hosting me today. I appreciate that. My name is Alex Tresniowski, and I'm the author of The Rope, and I'm very pleased to be able to share a couple of stories from it with you today. It's a book that I really care about and a book that, while I was working on it, became even more relevant than when I started. Just to fill you in on what it is a little bit, it takes place in Asbury Park, New Jersey in 1910, and Asbury Park was a little resort town built from scrubgrass as a haven for very godly white people, essentially, where they could go and engage in pure activities and things like even kissing on the board weren't allowed, certainly no liquor or anything like that. And as the turn of the century rolled by, Asbury Park began to get more attractions, more people, more hotels, and then, of course, the idea of this pure city, this angelic godly city sort of started to fall apart because human nature is what it is and everybody gathered there and things happened that were beyond the control of James Bradley, who was the founder of the town. So the story starts with a murder. It's the murder of a young child, a young girl named Marie Smith. She got up at 8 o'clock one morning and went to school with her younger brother, got to school, and was supposed to come home at 12.30 for lunch and never made it home. And that resulted in a five-day manhunt with hundreds and hundreds of people scouring every square inch of Asbury Park for any sign of her, and nothing turned up until five days later. In the dark woods, somebody did find a body, and this was Marie Smith's body. She had been beaten, she had been abused, and was just left there of a florist from a local town founder, and of course that sets off a murder investigation that is sort of the propellant of this book. Right after the murder, the first thing that happened was that a black handyman named Tom Williams, he was an Xboxer who fought under the name Black Diamond, was rounded up, and he had painted a house near where the girl lived, and he sort of vaguely knew the parents, and very quickly they were able to put him in jail and sort of set him up as the likely killer of Marie Smith, without any really process or anything. In fact, his second day in jail, white mob stormed the jail and did their best to break him out and lynch him, and he narrowly escaped that by car with the help of a sergeant at the station. So Tom Williams was in a position that a lot of black Americans found themselves in back at the turn of the century, and that sort of becomes the backdrop of my story, which is lynching. It was a scourge in the country, a five year study published in 2015 by the Equal Justice Initiative found that almost 4,000 black women men and children were lynched in the 12 southern states in just 70 years. And the thing with lynching was we were in a part of the our history where the civil war was over and black people were trying to integrate into society. And what happened was every step of progress that they made was met by resistance. People who wanted the old order, and one of the tools that they used was lynching, extrajudicial killing. They would find black people who were prominent and basically eliminate them and destroy them. And under the pretense of what was believed to be they are savages and they can only be dealt with this way. When in fact the real reason behind a lot of the lynchings was economic suppression. But that wasn't really accepted in the country at that time. So lynchings were perfectly acceptable in a way. They were never prosecuted. They might have an inquest but usually the decision would be that the black person was killed by persons unknown even though most people in white mobs were known to everyone. They were fathers, judges, lawyers, barbers, people from the town. But it was seen as a way of policing society. So it was okay that they didn't get their due process but this was just the way it was handled at the turn of the century. And that's one of the parts of our history that we've never really confronted fully. I found as I did this book that there's a lot of parts of our history that we've never really sat down and looked at in a sufficient way so that we all agree on what happened. For instance even civil war there's not really an agreement on what really caused the war and not a national agreement. So there's issues in our history that sort of haunt us. And I'm lynching as one of them. As I was working on this book George Freud was killed by a police officer. And we all saw that and that led to outrage and black lives matter movement. And I was reminded how relevant this story is that I'm working on. It's not old history. It's current history. You know the events of 110 years ago are the same as the events now. Extra judicial killings. Black rights. The search for justice. Giving voice to the voiceless. And that's what I was writing about back then and it sort of came to life in a way where it just made it more imminent and urgent that we remember our past so that we can deal with the present and the future. And hopefully this book plays any part in that dialogue. But getting back to the story now that we have Tom Williams in trouble and in a real threat of being lynched for a murder which he may or may not have committed a second story comes into play. And this involves Ida B. Wells and she is a well known journalist, activist public speaker and at one point the most famous black woman in the world basically. And her story appealed to me because the Tom Williams case was the third legal case ever handled by the NLBACP the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People. That was a brand new organization started in 1909 that was still trying to get its footing at the time that the murder happened in Asbury Park and this became their third legal case ever. And I wanted to sort of see how that happened and how the NLBACP played a part in this case while at the same time looking at the case and the incredible efforts that were made to solve the case. That's a whole other story. But on the Ida Wells side I really wanted to sort of look at her life and take five or six moments and events from her life that led her to become Moshe became a pioneer and crusader against lynching for civil rights for black rights and possibly the most courageous woman I've ever read about or written about. She was a solitary force at her time. She fell into situations and rose to them. She didn't want to be a public speaker. She became a public speaker. She didn't necessarily want to be an outspoken journalist but she became one because she was forced to. She didn't always want to leave her home and for children to go out and defend somebody who was under the threat of lynching but she did and often saved them and made a huge difference on a granular level but also in a way that moved history. She is one of the founders of the NLBACP so I really wanted to chart how she got there and then how the NLBACP was able to step in the Tom Williams case. I'll go back to the detective story in a bit. It's really a detective story and then the story of the NLBACP and how they converge in 1910 but I also wanted to just tell one little story now about how to be well strong in the book that I felt really showed how individuals are moved and into action and how you face a moment where you have to make a decision of what kind of America you want to live in and what role you want to play in that America and Ida Wells faced such a moment in her life at the age of 30 by then she'd been born into slavery she'd been born during civil war her parents died when she was very young from Yellow Fever she had to stay with her young family and siblings to keep them together she had a very hard life she took a job as a teacher she was a hero for several miles back and forth she'd been kicked off trains and stood up to the train companies she'd had her share of of activism that just came naturally to her and defiance but at 30 she was a journalist she was working and writing about the black issues of the day but under a pen name and not quite as forcefully as history would require her to do at some point so then an event happened and that's the event I'd like to tell you a little bit about so Ida Wells at that time had an office where she worked at the Free Speech Newspaper in Memphis, Tennessee in a neighborhood called The Curve which was named after a railroad track that sort of went through the town it was a mixed neighborhood, whites, blacks and the mail carrier in that neighborhood was a man named Thomas Moss young man ambitious guy he knew everybody in town because he was a mail carrier and he also knew all the good gossip in town so when he would stop by the office of the Free Press Free Speech inside the newspaper on Beale Street he would spend time with Ida and they became really good friends and Ida even became a godmother to his young daughter Maureen who was one year old and they became just friendly they called him a finer cleaner man never walked the streets of Memphis she was incredibly impressed by him because he was future oriented he got together with 10 other prominent African Americans and they started something called the People's Grocery and this was a collective owned by 11 black people which became a very competitive grocery in The Curve they actually presented a very strong competition to a grocery store nearby that was light owned which was called Barrett's Grocery and it was owned by William Russell Barrett a white man in town so this was an example of black progress in a rough neighborhood but a progressing neighborhood and Thomas Moss was right at the heart of that he was trying to make a better life for himself for his family, for his wife Patty for his daughter and for every other black in The Curve and Ida Wells was a part of that she was part of that group and then came a terrible event it began with two children playing marbles on a front lawn and a fight happened and an argument happened and then a scrabble happened and suddenly the kids were fighting suddenly adults joined in and the parents took sides and before long there was a full blown melee in the town whites against blacks and it went on for more than a day it lingered for days after the fight itself and there were some injuries during the fight one of the people injured was Barrett the grocery store owner who said he was clubbed in the head by one of the black workers a man named Will Stewart so we have an angry grocery store owner who wants to prosecute Will Stewart we have black people in town who are hearing rumors of white mobs coming to get them and arrest them and in fact 100 white citizens do get deputized overnight and armed and do confront the workers at the people's grocery and then they shoot out there and some officers are injured and that results in the arrest of three people including Tommy Moss and Will Stewart and one other man they are arrested and taken to a jail and Patty immediately tried Thomas says we'll have to bring some food over they told her to go away it's too dangerous come back in a couple of days white mob is just constantly gathered around the prison comes and goes it's a very sort of fluid active event that these people are in jail now and it's sort of a great fear for everybody in the town and of course I didn't know about this and it's hoping it comes out okay so what happens is at 2 a.m. one morning 75 men in black masks surrounded the jail they broke out Tommy Moss and Will Stewart and the third man they dragged them about a mile to an empty railroad yard and then they shot them the newspapers called it a wholesale lynching the curse of the Southland the next day white looters went into the people's grocery and stripped the shelves of all the food what remained of the inventory which was very little was sold to William Russell Barrett for 18 cents on the dollar and so Thomas was gone the people's grocery was gone in an instant in a couple of days and there was nothing anybody can do about it there was an inquest and it was found to be persons unknown who committed this extra judicial killing and that's just the way things went there so when I found that out she was crushed she decided she had to leave the south leave Memphis her homeland she was born in Mississippi and find another place to live and urged other blacks to leave Memphis as well so they could find a place where they could find peace and justice and they decided it couldn't be in the south and that's how hostile they found it there and then she had to make another decision because as soon as she left the offices of the Free Speech were burned down she was threatened with lynching should she ever come back she had to set foot in Memphis she had to buy a gun for the first time to protect herself and she left for Brooklyn and there she got another job as a newspaper writer but had to decide what kind of writer what kind of reaction she would have to this existential threat of lynching in America and she chose to become a full blown activist and really make a difference and so between 1982 and the 1892 and 1895 just one year after the killing of Tommy Moss she put all her efforts into producing two incredible pamphlets, Southern Hars and a red record which were meticulously recorded recordings of all the lynchings in the south at the time including the grisly details of the lynchings and the reasons for the lynchings and through that reportage this incredible reportage this weight of her reportage she was able to prove in her way that these people were not lynched because they were savages who attacked white women or whistled at white women or any other offense like that most of the time it was economic suppression it was a way to eliminate competition like a grocery store or clear out of town the motives behind the lynchings were much more complicated, much more devious than just simply reacting to some kind of crime and of course that caused an outrage that was not what was accepted to be true about lynching at the time but Ida had chosen her path and she was on her way and she went around and started giving speeches about lynching and one of her first speeches at the Lyric Hall in 42nd Street, New York City the heart of New York City she talked about Thomas Laws and it was obvious that she was doing something else she was not only talking about lynching but she was humanizing the people who were gone she was giving them a humanity that had never been given she was giving them a name, a voice describing what they did describing their families and standing up for them and saying they shouldn't be forgotten and there should be justice for them and in her first speech which she didn't want to give but gave anyway through tears she remembered Thomas Laws and she recounted the story of going to the widow's house Betty Laws and seeing two young children Maureen and then also Thomas Laws Jr who had been born just a few weeks after his father was killed and Ida wrote about seeing the young daughter go over to the closet she wrote daughter of Thomas Laws too young to express how she misses her father toddlers over to the wardrobe seizes the legs of her father's letter carrier uniform and hugs and kisses them with evident delight and then she stretches up her little hands to be taken up in the arms that will never more clasp her this was the kind of story that had never been told about lynching victims the crowd at Liverpool was in tears it was one of the most powerful speeches that were given at the time about lynching and it sort of set Ida on the course that would lead her to be instrumental in the founding of the NAACP at the end of the speech she said do we ask for a remedy for lynching where she had one she said a public sentiment strong against lawlessness must be aroused every individual can contribute to this awakening when a sentiment against lynch law strong deep and mighty as that against slavery prevails I have no fear of the result the voice of the people is the voice of God and in this story which is one of a few about Ida I'm just hoping to convey how individuals like Ida made decisions faced crossroads that ended up playing a huge part in history and always with the motivation of giving voice to the voiceless this is the theme that recurs in the story and of course the other line of the story is this incredible detective thriller where a detective from New York Raymond Schindler is hired to come in and find the actual killer of Marie Smith and I've given short trip to that side of the story today but it really it's a very exciting resolution to that case because this is a first time it's his first murder case he's a very young detective he doesn't have any set ways so he sets an enormous psychological trap for his main suspect in New York City and pursues him for months and uses an infiltrator called The Rope to sort of rope him in and gain his confidence and gain a confession and it's sort of incredible how that case plays out and then in 1911 the two cases sort of converge because the NCAA gets involved with the Tom Williams case as it's third case ever handled so initial time I just hope to convey that The Rope is about individual courage granular courage how it takes individual quiet heroism from people at certain moments in life to advance a cause you know I do well was pushing a big cause but with the other hand she was helping people she was putting people on trains to avoid lynchings she was raising 50 bucks to set up a reward whatever it might be individual heroism quiet heroism conviction perseverance this is what shine through in her story and the story of Raymond Schindler and it's sort of what I hope comes through today if you read it and why it's relevant today because I think we all face that choice we haven't decided yet what America this is and what America we all want to live in as a country that's not been decided I mean certainly now more than ever it's not decided it's something that has to be confronted every day who do we want to be as Americans who do we want to help what matters to us what are our values what is America I had to answer that question in the heat of battle so did Raymond Schindler and what happened with them and the resolution of the murder case I hope is a kind of a thrilling story that also has historical relevance and resonance and I appreciate you just let me tell you this one little story from it and I really hope you enjoy it so thank you so much for listening I should also tell you that just in fact I used to be the true crime writer at People Magazine for a long time and I've always had a fascination with true crime stories and I found that a lot of other people do as well in fact those were always the most popular stories at People Magazine no matter what we had human interest stories, celebrities it was the true crime that sort of compelled readers to sink in and I think we all sort of have that or at least a lot of us do in terms of the dark side of nature and want to see from a distance what it's like to live in that world and these are people in the world that do live in that world certainly the detective and that's one of the reasons I was drawn to the book because it just seemed to me to be a thrilling, thrilling story and that's always what I'm looking for yes, was the murder ever solved it was solved I don't want to give away too much of the book but it is solved by the end of the book by Raymond Schindler in an unusual way and it's fully adjudicated and we take you through the full resolution of that and today Maurice Smith is buried in a little well a big cemetery in Brooklyn which I visited and found her plot which was bare and I went back and put a little plaque there to honor her and sort of remember her so that she had a little place in the world still and that's another reason why I wanted to do this story to sort of give Maurice Smith a moment today in Asbury Park this crime is not really commemorated in any way I've went there it's a ghost of its own self Asbury Park, some of the houses that people lived in like Maurice Haupt is still there the path she walked to school is still there about the place where she was killed is not and most of the city is different from what it was and there's really no commemoration of it other than in historical societies and newspaper accounts certainly no plaque or anything like that like I said that's why I felt like I wanted to put a physical thing at her grave side to sort of commemorate her it's kind of a forgotten case hopefully until now some surviving relatives in terms of getting a proper headstone from Marie I will tell you it's a bureaucratic nightmare if you're not related to her it's almost impossible the family fell out of paying for the plot so there's some back monies owed in terms of keeping up the maintenance of the plot of everything else and I'm trying to get in touch with some surviving family members to see if that's something we could do I think it would be a beautiful thing and market with the ceremony and certainly I'll update readers on my website alextrez.com if that ever happens but it's quite not as easy as it looks certainly if you're not a family member but I think it's a great idea I do want to thank everybody for the opportunity to talk about this story I think it's a great story and meaningful so and I want to thank the administration for hosting this in this virtual time the Americans and pretty soon we'll be out there again having fun enjoying each other so thanks again I really appreciate it