On March 7, 2018, Gene Dattel and Otis L. Sanford presented "Reckoning with Race: The Perspective of Two Native Mississippians" as part of the History Is Lunch series. Gene Dattel grew up in Sunflower County, Mississippi, and went on to a career as a cultural and economic historian. Panola County native Otis Sanford is an author and political commentator who teaches at the University of Memphis.
“Otis and I have had numerous conversations over the course of a decade, and our program is based on these extensive discussions—and on a friendship,” said Dattel. “We trace what we refer to as our ‘parallel lives' in Mississippi, then move then move to the economics, opportunities, and issues facing African Americans.”
Part of that examination of history is a reassessment of Reconstruction and the role played by white northerners during that era.
Gene Dattel was educated at Yale University and the Vanderbilt University Law School. He is the former managing director of Salomon Brothers and Morgan Stanley. His book Cotton and Race in the Making of America (2009) described the fateful intersection of the power of cotton to the African American experience. Dattel’s book Reckoning with Race: America’s Failure (2018) is a frank appraisal of America’s racial issues with the past tied to the present and the future. His forthcoming personal family essay, “Jewish Immigrants: From Eastern Europe to the Yazoo-Mississippi Delta” (2018) will be published by the New York Historical Society.
Otis Sanford is the author of the new book From Boss Crump to King Willie: How Race Changed Memphis Politics. He is the political commentator for WREG-TV Channel 3 and a panelist for Informed Sources, a weekly public affairs program. Sanford writes a weekly Viewpoint column for the Memphis Commercial Appeal. Before joining the University of Memphis in 2011, where he holds the Hardin Chair of Excellence in Economic and Managerial Journalism, Sanford served as the Commercial Appeal’s editorial page editor and managing editor, the first African-American to hold those positions.
History Is Lunch is a weekly lecture series of the Mississippi Department of Archives and History that explores different aspects of the state's past. The hour-long programs are held in the Craig H. Neilsen Auditorium of the Museum of Mississippi History and Mississippi Civil Rights Museum building in Jackson. MDAH livestreams videos of the program at noon on Wednesdays on their Facebook page.
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