the changes in america. making america a better place. and so i think that's important. we're trying to find -- i'm trying to expand that group now so we get more and more reenactors. i don't think they're going to go away either, we're going to change the dialogue and hope we can have re-enactors in every state. with regard to the monument, there is a writer named james -- i can't remember his last name now -- who basically talks about all the monuments saying there's more monuments in the state of illinois than there are to abraham lincoln. and he says some of these monuments need to come down. he said -- >> illinois? >> he said white people need to take down some of these monuments because there's not enough black people to take them all down. that's your homework for -- so let me just make one last observation. we're busy right now working on

the grand victory march down pennsylvania avenue in washington, d.c. that takes place may 23rd, 18 -- well, the end of the civil war the victory martha tac march. they were part of the victory, president lincoln himself said he could not have won the war without them, and yet they ordered the men to the south when the victory march started. we're going to create that great wrong in history and we're going to correct another wrong. regiments that remained loyal during the union army. 36,000 soldiers who remained in uniform. they didn't commit treason and try to rebel against their union. nobody ever says anything about them. and so what we hope is in this grand march down pennsylvania avenue, elements of those

regiments will march with us. so i want all y'all to help us form elements in those states. this was a great period of american history, it made america a good place for everybody to live, and let me just say, congresswoman norton, congresswoman norton, and i sure appreciate this. i was in alabama back in march speaking to a very large integrated group talking about how i thought that the civil rights movement and civil war helped change america and make america a better place including alabama. that's a bit of a stretch, i said you know in alabama, civil rights movement in alabama a better place. if you don't believe me, imagine what would happen if the university of alabama had to get rid of all of the african-american football players. you've got to speak to people where they are. i see some of these people at these reenactments, i know who they are, they also have tickets

to these football games. imagine what would happen if you got rid of the basketball players. and they had cam newton down there, he's now in carolina, but he's the heisman trophy winner down there. one of the ways to look at it is a simple somewhat humorous way, and that is the civil rights movement made america -- civil war had to take place before the civil rights movement. the civil rights movement was based on the 14th amendment, which was one of the amendments that passed after the civil war. there's no martin luther king or march without that. >> frank, the football players at alabama did not write alabama's immigration law. >> they didn't. >> that immigration law is potentially in violation of that 14th amendment. as long as we keep that in mind, we can celebrate a black football team at alabama, but they don't write that immigration law, other people did. and i just want to say quickly, i agree with everything frank just said today except one thing.

i don't think history is on a road of progress. we want to be, of course, who doesn't want to be living on a road of progress? who doesn't want to get up every day and live on a road of progress? who wants to live on a road to hell? nobody does. one of the worst things we can do is to come to actually believe it. reconstruction was a revolution that went backwards. almost every evolution in the world history is a counterrevolution and sent it backwards. and we could be experiencing another one now. history is not going any particular place. you have to make it. >> i'm john franklin for the american history and culture, and very pleased at the job of franklin center in tulsa, oklahoma, as well as the sponsors of this discussion. three points i wanted to make. the first is that it's a national implication of this discussion that we often ignore which was brought to my attention in london last year.

and there was an article in the story about confederate heritage tourism to liverpool, which is the foreign capital of the confederacy and when i was in liverpool that same week, i was shown the capital of the confederacy in liverpool, and must remember that the confederates ships not just the slave ships were built, but the confederate navy was built there and ended up owing the union for the -- for that fund, to the funds. secondly, the native american community is also part of this discussion though rarely mentioned. and i say it again in the oklahoma context because in my family on my father's side were enslaved by chikesaw people and the family name was bernie until my father's grandfather ran away to fight in the union forces and changed his name to franklin and freed himself. so that's another part of the

discussion in addition to hispanic names are mentioned earlier. >> right. >> and at the association of the study of african-american studies this year, the final panel was on african-american women and the civil war. and research is ongoing and i think we should all look to the upcoming book looking at the massacre and exploitation of african-american women during this conflict. this is something we rarely hear about and we have yet to learn. thank you. >> great research being done on contraband camps and the whole emancipation process and a lot of those scholars beginning to show us possibly 1 of 4 fugitive slaves who escaped died in the process, emancipation is a glorious, tremendous story, but

it is not without its own sense of tragedy. >> okay. margaret? >> yes, i'm margaret smith, i teach in the conflict resolution program at american university. i teach on conflicts like northern ireland, sri lanka, et cetera, all civil wars where there has been a contested society where groups rely heavily on the collected memory in order to maintain the cohesion of the group for all kinds of political reasons. of course israel, palestine is another one. and when it comes to trying to address the question of memory in these places, one reality is that history is serving as a way of conducting the conflict by other means. and so until you get a political arrangement that creates a certain amount of stability,

it's actually rather hard to shift the narrative or to find any willingness to shift a narrative. but maybe that's only a problem a degree compared to what you've been talking about here. what i'm trying to get at is the question of the relationship between the history and politics. can you change the historeography until you've changed politics? do you have to have a new configuration before you make progress? or can it work the other way around? you're talking today, i think what we're here trying to say is that by doing things to shift the narrative, you can have an impact on shifting the politics. so i'm trying to raise the question that comes to the heart of why we're here today. is can you do this? or is history only an expression of the political realities?

>> could i take the first shot at that? i think -- if it gets any more complicated, i probably won't be able to do it. but let me just say this in the context of the african-american community. and i told you this, i've been at this all my life. i started as a student at college and i've been involved in this whole effort of civil rights and human rights all my life. and i would like to say two things. first of all, in the african-american community, this is somewhat response to what david blight said earlier about reconstructions. we, african-americans, because of the way we were brought in this country have both a memory of america as a place where we were enslaved, but also a memory of everybody else has a great place where you can express yourself and do great things. and the geopolitical track of

america of -- for african-americans is very different. and we know that the history of black people in the united states, there was never any large movement toward racial integration in the black community until the 1960s. we might have been all right, separate but equal, except it wasn't equal, it was white supremacy. and i point out, the first civil rights demonstration in atlanta, i went to the telephone company to apply for a job climbing a telephone pole. i was a good student too, and black people couldn't even get a job climbing a telephone pole. if i couldn't do that, what good was my education? why was i trying to do all that? that was my first demonstration. and eating at the lunch counter, going into the school, integrating in everybody's church, trying to marry anybody's daughter, had to do with trying to get a job, a

college student wanted to do. you couldn't do that. you had to change the whole society to do that. now -- so you think about that now in the context of somebody just coming out of slavery, now they're starting a new community, a new life. they got something called a newfound freedom and in the context of discrimination, violence, all this. they start churches, schools, colleges, schools and churches. and one writer says schools break out like wildfire, and any place people gather together and one of them can read and write. and by the time we get to the 1960s we have 100 african-american colleges in the united states. we've got tulsa, we've got wilmington, we've got all of these communities become targets for white mobs. because white supremacy says african-americans that no black person can do any better than the poorest white person. that's right. this goes on. now, so our reality in terms of the political and whatever is a

little different. now, we're also -- if we can register people to vote without getting they will killed, we can elect the sheriff and the mayor and the city councilman. so by the time barack obama gets elected, by the time barack obama is elected in 2008, i said it was 19 million african-americans registered to vote, there were 405 black mayors in united states too. and these people helped to provide some kind of defense against the violence of people who not only operated under the cover of law but they formed mobs to help burn your house down at night. and they're going to go to jail and end up in one of these jails. so for the african-american community, the reality is a little bit different.

i think the key for this not only was education, but also the fact that we've been able not only to register people to vote, but the comment i made earlier about president obama, finding whites willing to work with us, and i think -- i respectfully disagree with you, i think the -- the justice. i think that you have seen that coalition in action in this country, you saw it in action at the last election, you're going to see it in action again in the next election. you're going to see it in action in the next election. it's the arc that the country's headed in, the only way it can go in any way and it's the right way to go because this is more like america than america that some people want to realize. and that is that most of the people in this world are colored. india and africa and throw in a few chinese and japanese together, you know, you've got to get along with us. you've got to learn how to get

along with us. and america's the place where we're learning how to get along. >> one last question. >> we didn't answer your question. we're not answering your question. >> i'd like to respond to margaret smith's question. >> let the theologian have a shot at it. >> what i'd like to say is that a healthy democratic culture is one in which people listen to each other's stories and bear those stories in mind when they go to the polling booth. and we welcome different people into it. we welcome into our minds. i have much admiration for the reply -- the acting head of the national african congress of south africa, when his generals came to him in the 1980s and said we have a capacity with our dynamite to blow up the monument.

he said in reply to that, we must not do that because that monument is precious to the memories of the africanas who put that monument up there. and one of these days we are going to have to live with those people and we should not damage that monument. to me that's good democracy. >> -- the question about history, but i think it's important for people to understand. all the conversations that we're having today is a virtuous cycle. the civil rights struggle grew out of brave, almost all african-americans who kept alive the story of the possibility. and the association for african-american lives in history, carter g. woodson and all that. once that began, there's a whole generation, that group and segregated schools, by the time

i went to college, i lived in another world. and african-american history was now a whole new terrain for white scholars to explore. and david was talking about, we're still learning about the contraband camps now. so for 50 years now, one discovery after another, the movie "glory" is a byproduct in some ways, and exhibit gettysburg is a byproduct of academic scholar. the national museum of african-american history -- >> this is progress. >> this is progress and the museum that frank leads. so i think in sometimes that academics forget that what we're doing can actually matter. but when it's manifested back in museums and films and television shows, but also in what our children are learning, it is not without consequence. and i -- you know, i wouldn't want us to forget that without the knowledge that comes from

being lonely scholars studying things like the conduct, we don't have the information that we need to move forward. so i think sometimes we rage at an impotence we don't actually have. >> there are times in the past when the greatest historians serve public policy -- in the so called dunning school and reconstruction, so called u.b. phillips school, you grew up in the united states and learned anything about american slavery circa 1925, you learned it essentially out of u.b. phillips and as many students, most of them train again. >> a school for savages they call it. >> yeah. and so -- but we also know we can't measure this. but the revolution and scholarship about the civil war, about race, about slavery, about women, about all sorts of

elements of our past and past century have clearly changed schooling have brought about an enormous revolution documentary show making, beginning with eyes on the prize and dozens and dozens and dozens of others which are now part of the mental landscape of americans. there's much, much, much to be celebrated. but the worst thing we can ever do is think as historians we had much real impact. honestly, there is far, far, far more public memory out there than there can ever be the history we write. that means the history we write has to get into the museum exhibitions, the films, even presidential rhetoric. because that's where public memories are actually formed. we have to affect the story's -- >> we can't get there if we haven't found it to begin with. >> let me also -- >> the grandmother's story they're telling the children. >> the national park system gets 80 million visitors, d.c. only gets 20 million, and we get more

than any other city in the country. up until a few years ago, park service was part of the problem until jesse jackson got a bill to congress to require the park service to include slavery -- that's how you get the great new exhibit at gettysburg. so what happened, the politics did change, the policies changed as a result of somebody named jesse jackson jr. whose daddy you know standing with martin luther king. and i agree, i think that history is suspect. i mean historians wrote these books for years saying slavery has nothing to do with civil war. they ignored all that we've been talking about, past right over it without being truthful about it because as they say in the civil war field in the south and the people of the south have a different view. if you want to sell stuff down there, you've got to write something sentimental to their point of view.

that meant for black people you had to write it out of our -- out of our, you know, we became the -- the butt of those of tho. but over the last several years, this is one of the last exhibits the african civil war museum, we put an exhibit that goes from $18 billion in 1950 to the $1900 billion in the year 2008. last week the nielsen people said there was over $1.17 billion income, the aggregate income in the african-american community. bigger than the income of canada, than turkey and many other states. it's made a lot of difference in this country. we are headed in the right direction. we've got keep going. >> remember the cnn poll last spring on the anniversary of fort sumter. i think it said about 47 or 48% of americans, i don't know what the poll question was which

matters of course, believe that slavery probably was the principal cause, 52 or 53% don't. i had decide whether that was good news or bad news. i decided that was good news because i bet you if you did that poll 20 years ago, it would be even less. we haven't got a majority yet who believe slavery was the cause of the civil war despite 17,000 books that have argued that since 1950. some day we'll tip over. >> 17,051 books will make the difference. >> i hope it's brief. >> i think this process you're talking about here of healing and so on and reconciliation is desirable. it has a nice warm fond ring to it. on the other hand, it's kind of desperately imperative in a country where it seems to me the public interest in, well, let's not say but grasp of history is

disintegrating. and there are innumerable studies which suggest that americans' historical knowledge is shockingly low. and i propose that the idea of erasing any kind of monument of any sort is a terrifying prospe prospect. we at least need these anchors to work from or else i fear we'll forget everything. i leave it at that. thanks. >> the only mon upts left may be the apple store. >> this is -- there's one point i've been restraining myself, bus it's linked to what katrina brown raised about and also on the treasury of virtue, yankee pride. and i say this is a political

psychologist that in addition to all of the very, very substantial issues on economics, politics, tragic loss, no real healing, no real mourning of southern losses, the battle over the statues, there is a long tradition of insult and disdain from new england particularly towards everything southern. and well before the war, the civic war, thomas jefferson was anxious that his university, the university of virginia charlottesville be completed quickly before the sons of its commonwealth had their minds permanently contaminated in the northern seminaries. jefferson singled out harvard as an institutionally antagonistic to southern principles. nothing new there, is thering? emerson was probably the most distinguished of the massachusetts per have aers of insult and thus the woundston collective self-esteem to the south. in a famous -- not famous

enough, 1837 journal entry he wrote "the young southerner comes here a spoiled child, very good to be spoiled more but good for nothing else. he had conversed so much with rifles, recent horses and dogs that he has become himself a rifle a horse and a dog and -- >> had a way with words. >> he is dumb and unhappy like an indian in church. so a double barrel ethnic insult. yankees aren't aware of this, but southerners are somehow. they may not have that specific but everyone has a story. including the most liberal integrationists southern you might find. the tradition of insult was carried out in the 20th century in the journal yixt of menken.

of mississippi who is reluctantly goes to harvard at his mother's urging and commits suicide by jumping off a bridge into the charles river. lewis j. simpson says that he's a professor of american literature louisiana, university of laz, louisiana state. he has in effect by going to harvard and committing suicide assumed the burden of the whole history of the destroyed world of southern slave holders carrying his burden to the lapsed world of emerson. and as we know, faulkner believed that the past was in the present and i myself believe that the wounds to certain self-esteem inflicted relentlessly by a north almost totally unaware of its history and certainly of the political psychological consequences of the relationship must somehow be acknowledged. after a walk through history to document the facts, symbolic

representatives of new england tradition need to acknowledge its detect trucktive behavior and accept responsibility for it. only this way can the transplanted south unburden itself of its resentments against northern liberalism and join with white america throughout the country in finally facing its responsibility to black america. and i also say native america. this this is the road to national reconciliation. maybe this is the way we should try to address this issue before it gets to the congressional level. but healing history requires healing everybody's hurts. listening, careful listening, respectful listening, not excusing human rights violations, vicious racism, behavior that is clearly immoral, but there are some wonderful people whose feelings were also hurt in the white

south. and yankees are totally oblivious to it. i come from that yankee tradition, and one of the things i hope will come out of this session today is a little bit more, much more examination of the northern contribution to the hurt. because for one thing, the resentment is very much alive in the american congress today and it's paralyzing the ability of our first black president to really govern this country because there's so much unfinished business psycholongcally in the north south relationship. i'm going to end it there. >> joe, could i just add, robert paid us back. he didn't like thorough and owl those abolitionists. he once kawed thorough a big old meatball of a fake with a genius for propose style. >> i love it. >> thank you very much. >> maybe humor will save us.

>> i need, my friends, a new america where freedom is made real for without regard to race or belief or economic condition. i mean a new america which ever lastingly attacks the ancient idea that men can solve their differences by killing each other. as candidates campaign for president this year, we look back at 14 men who ran for the office and lost. go to our website,

c-span.org/the contenders to see contenders who had a lasting impact on american politics. >> the prove fits of the radical liberal left continue to offer only one solution to the problems which confront us. they tell us again and again and again we should spend our way into a better tomorrow. >> c-span.org slasht contenders. >> by 2020 at least half of all energy tharg navy uses afloat and from ashore will come from nonfossil fuel sources. >> the first to use nuclear power for transportation, ray mabus on the reasons for a new energy standard for the fleet. >> we are too dependent on either potentially or volatile plays on earth to get our energy. we're susceptible to supply shocks and even