WEBVTT

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And this is another
New Orleans poem.

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It has to do with a
little-known history.

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And it has to do with
voices that are channeled.

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There was the rage of
spiritualism in the middle

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of the 19th century.

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And in New Orleans,
the form that took

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were abolitionists of color
who practiced spiritualism.

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And then, after-- that
was before the Civil War--

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after the Civil War, they
were Reconstructionists,

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the governing
class of color, who

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continued the
spiritualist movement

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during that great experiment
that was reconstruction for 10

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years after the Civil War.

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There's a little bit of
Creole French in this.

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I was asked by a
historian if I thought

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the French Enlightenment
philosophers had influenced

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the emancipation movements
and the revolutionary slave

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uprisings in this country.

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And I was not an expert but
once I looked at the archives,

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they were channeling
Voltaire, they

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were channeling Robespierre,
they were channeling Saints--

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even the Messiahs.

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So yeah.

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Maybe, Yeah.

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Enlightenment philosophy
of individual rights.

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"The Treasurer's Daughter,
New Orleans 1867-1997."

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The epigraph is from
Jacques Derrida.

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And it is a nod to the
incredible archives

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across the way.

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"The archive is never closed.

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It opens out of the future."

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But when you're researching
in the archives in--

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at the University of New
Orleans and the history

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of Louisiana archives
on the fourth floor,

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you've got Lake
Pontchartrain that stretches

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right out to the horizon.

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"The archive's an
ocean that has horizon

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for the far shore of the past.

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Pages crenellate like waves
at sunset, creamblue ripples

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with bird-like readers diving
delicately for gnatfacts.

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I sit in a boat
others call a chair.

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The Archivist emeritus crinkles
his eyes when he recounts how

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he heard tell there
was a treasure chest

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of 'exceedingly rare
Reconstruction documents' kept

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by the first Black
State Treasurer--

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which is to say,
creole of color--

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post-bellum Louisiana
at his daughter's

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falling-down mid-city cottage
where the widowed son-in-law

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still lived.

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This was some years ago.

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The Widower wasn't sure
what was in the chest.

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Or wasn't saying.

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And wouldn't sell.

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The Archivist visited
eight times in two years

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to wheedle the Widower,
each time picking

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his way through tens,
hundreds, of cats

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meowing along the balcony
and around his feet.

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The pungency gagged
the Archivist,

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but at last the Widower
sold so all effort

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paid off for the library housing
the Marcus C. Christian history

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of the Free People
of Color Archive.

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On the chest, mold and dust.

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The key long lost.

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Back with his books,
the Archivist jimmied

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open the trove--

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La plus grande des révolutions,
c'est celle qui donnera la liberté.

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Un révolutionnaire,
c'est un homme de progrès.

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C'est se rendre libre.

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Votre frère, Voltaire.

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Séance on the 6th of February,
1867 house of Valmour.

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By P. Dubucler.

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Handwritten.

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Ink blotted.

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Underscored.

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'Liberté' overwritten in large
letters as if at first unclear.

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The whole chest, pages and pages
of nothing but transcriptions

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of the Treasurer's daughter's
Spiritualist sessions

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channeling change.

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The secret circle broken
off before complete--

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Il faut que la vérité triomphe enfin,

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que la fraternité
puisse régner sur la Terre.

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Jésus.

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The anniversary of the death
of Valmour, 6 of February 1869.

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Truth.

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Brotherhood.

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Rain.

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Had the Widower who was white
Creole forgotten or never known

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spirits spoke through
his wife whose visions he

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safeguarded without question?

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Reconstruction reigned 10 years,
after which and a long time

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that change took 'Liberté'
written over and over in larger

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and larger letters at
first unclear, or--

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