it without some compromise. i like very much -- the word compromise is in bad repute now in the rhetoric of american politicians. and those of us in religion have some blame to share for making that a bad word. i like the definition of compromise that t.d. smith had. heap said compromise is the process whereby each party to a conflict gives up something dear but not invaluable in order to get something which is truly invaluable. in the conflict between justice and liberty, often peace is what is the invaluable something. whether or not our politicians are architects of the compromises that permit us to live together i think is always somewhat up for grabs. anyway, there is in compromise sometimes a lot of integrity, especially integrity.

finally, i would like to see us derive from history a much richer agenda for both pride and shame. i like very much that richmond, virginia now has its museum, which tries to visualize in its exhibits the african-american presence in the civil war and throughout the conflicts that led up to the civil war. but when it comes to having both pride and shame for one's past, we who are americans have a great deal of difficulty combining the two. i like very much what psalm 15 says, that the righteous are those who are capable of swearing to their own hurt. that is is a difficult maneuver i must say and our politicians are not very good at leading us into something like swearing to our own hurt. one of the hurts that we need to

swear off of is our convenient superficial memory of what followed the civil war immediately in the era of reconstruction and the jim crowe era. it's already been mentioned. i think we american white people, south and north, have a great deal of repentance to undergo in our memory of what happened to african-americans in the years following the civil war. frank smith has been eloquent about that and also president ayers. i think david blight's summary of that era is exactly right and it's exactly what most of us haven't quite remembered. he said, david, the age of jim crowe was not only the creation of aggressive southern legislature but the result of the north's long retreat from the racial legacies of the war. amen to that. perhaps the most disgrace approximately era in american

history that i know anything about is that era post 1865 in which with the connives and, african-americans were subjected once again to something like a slavery. that is seems to me is the kind of memory that needs at least the empirical realism and the repent ent spirit that would become those of us who think history is not only important in theory but is, in effect, practical way by which we would justify our ways of acting toward each other. i'm not sure whether i made it within 15 minutes, joe, but that's my take on it. [ applause ] >>s my pleasure and honor to

introduce honorable eleanor holmes norton, congresswoman now in her 11th term as a congresswoman of the district of columbia, is the ranking member of the house subcommittee on economic development of buildings and emergency management and serves offer the committee of transportation and from a if a. she's a tenured prove of law at georgetown, earned her law degree and a masters degree in american studies from yale. i've been organizing meetings for quite a few years and i have learned to avoid inviting members of congress because congress is a jealous mistress. its schedule dominates but we are very, very fortunate with the help of monica laws to schedule with congresswoman holmes norton's staff the time

and sheep show showed up exactl time. thank you. >> thank you very much. my chief regret, of course, is that, yes, my mistress is in sessi session, and if anything i was concerned that i might not get here on time. but my chief regret is that i wasn't able to hear the panel because when i read of what you were seeking to do here today, i know i would have benefited from being here, especially in making these few remarks. now, i can imagine what my good friend frank smith said because he and i are long-time friends and frank gave me an opportunity to introduce one of my first bills in the congress, a bill that i'm especially proud of that led to the establishment of the first and i suppose still

only memorial to the african-americans who fought in the civil war. frank has been prodigious in the way in which he has expanded learning about the civil war and about african-american participation and the work of -- and the memorial so that it is more than a memorial on u street itself but a museum as well. now, this 150th anniversary of the civil war of course is being observed across the country in many ways. i especially appreciate that the -- that your forum, the conflict, preservation and resolution forum is presenting this opportunity today. it's going to be a four-year commemoration as such, but i can tell you that there has been little note taken of the ses

kwen tenial in the congress. i introduced a resolution early on for the study of african-american life and study indicating that this was the 150th anniversary, and yet congress in many ways of the vortex of the civil war before, during and after. dr. shriver talked about the dinner meeting where it was decided that the trade-off -- i wish we could make more trade-offs in the present congress, but that the trade-off between the north and the south would be -- that's what essentially it was, that the capital of the united states would be located below the mason-dixon line. and i can tell you that the capital of the united states,

the people of the district of columbia were controlled by southern democrats for 150 years and did not get its home rule until 1974 precisely because of that fateful decision. it was not because at that time or at any time until about 1960 the majority of people living here were african-americans. it was because there was a fair number of african-americans so southern democrats, people in my own party, kept the city from getting its home rule, kept is segregat segregated. i went to segregated dunn bar high school, everything was segregated in this city. the district was one of the five brown versus board of education cases. this was the legacy of that fateful decision. it was the capital of the united

states and it was the capital of slavery. slaves were sold in the streets, slaves -- of course slavery thrived here even afterwards until nine months before the civil war when lincoln, as i'm sure someone said, as a war measure liberated the slaves of the district of columbia. my great grandfather, richard holmes was among them. richard holmes walked off a slave plantation in virginia. i do not tell some storied notion of richard holmes. i tell it as it was told to me, that richard holmes looked around, saw no one was looking and left that plantation and that's how he got to the district of columbia. that makes me a third generation

washingtonian. i'm glad he stopped here. his son, my grandfather, richard hol holmes, the first richard came here in the 1850s, the second richard holmes entered the d.c. fire department in 1902. the capital itself was also at the center of the fight. it took a great deal of time and effort to defend the capital. precisely because of its location here at the vortex between the north and the south. and the capital was the center of the recovery of slavery as such, the aftermath of slavery with the friedman's bureau. howard university is a legacy of that aftermath of slavery. but i caution you that in looking at the civil war is very

important to kind of line it against wars we have known because we have known no war like this war. it is very different from wars in the usual sense of the word. we lost more men than in any other war, 2% of the population. but remember most of those were lost from disease. if you compare that to huge wars, wars where we lost less men, the great world wars or the most recent great war, world war ii, you will find that very quickly after that war japan and germany were our allies.

world war ii veterans go to germany and japan now to visit with veterans of that war, without a great deal of bitterness. indeed without bitterness. healing from war, a war among countries appears to take place, at least when men are sane, more easily. healing from civil wars it seems to me occurs only gradually. the enemy does not go home. he lives with you. he is one of you. so to speak. in a real sense if we look at the so-called healing from the civil war, from a black and a white point of view, from looking at it from both points of view, it seems to me fair to say that that healing began only with the passage of the civil rights statutes in the 1960s.

for blacks the war left open wounds for decades, legal segregation and worse, organized violence and terrorism in the south, legal segregation even in the nation's capital, official discrimination by the federal government, societal discrimination condoned everywhere in the united states. for southern whites the war had a similar tragic legacy. it left an economy still dependent on agriculture but without the slave labor on which that economy had grown to depend. it delayed industrialization.

with the civil rights movement not only did blacks move forward in the south and throughout the country but the south began its economic development full throttle. and companies began to move in large numbers to the south with desegregated schools and institutions. the sun belt economy was born in the south. now this healing has indeed occurred with changed attitudes, but those attitudes could not have been changed without the civil rights laws. blacks and whites didn't get together in a room and say it's time now we began to talk to one another. the law was migratee of the 196s

act. the job discrimination act was seminal in getting people to be with one another, to talk with one another, to be supervised by one another. nothing, nothing could have promoted healing like that. the integration of the schools to some extent has been the same. but with the resegregation of the schools, it is not how much of that kind of cross fertilization among the races that many of us had hoped for still takes place. but much of the changed attitudes has been generational. let me read to you a short few

paragraphs from a middle-aged woman, candid and make the generational point i am trying to make here. "i grew up with a balanced view of the civil war if by that you mean i was taught, including at robert e. lee high school no less, that our side lost, hell, the last time i went home there was still a confederate battle flag hanging if n my father's garage, the same one that hung over my childhood bed until i was 18." april 25th, 2011. "we were democrats, my grandfather told me in the 70s, because lincoln was a republican. a decade later by the time i was in high school, my family would become reagan democrats. the type of folks who today pop late the base of the older

generation of the southern gop. and they made the switch totally along the culture fault lines dating back to the civil rights act, reconstruction and the civil war." this suggests that healing occurs because some people pass on, frankly. and the next generation -- the next generation, whose views, world view, comes from a different context such as the civil rights movement is, if you will forgive me, more enlightened on issues such as race. the civil war generation is still with us. they are the older generation associated with conservative

politics. many republicans and many still living in the south. but if you look at the differences today between those blacks and those whites, even though they are starkly different, it would be hard to say that those attitudes weren't at least as much political today as racial. there is a fault line that carries over to be sure from race of the past, but if you serve where i do in the house and have good friends and colleagues who represent such people and see how they vote, it is clear that the difference between them and me is largely a

political difference, what they have inherited and what i have inherited. there is interest in a congressional reconciliation caucus. but i caution you, members of congress coalesce -- they're very busy people. they tend to coalesce around work, around issues, around events, around something that needs to be done. at the congressional level it would be useful perhaps to speak up or indeed be present at times of racial division or flair up, but there's not a great deal of racial flair-up of that kind in this country on an ongoing basis. it seems to me that reconciliation commissions would be far more serviceable at the

local level because racial issues differ profoundly by location and races differ. so the whole notion that sitting here in washington we're going to reconcile the races across this great country might seem a bit arrogant if we weren't plugged in to where people are. is it black and white? is it hispanic and white? is it black and hispanic? both ascending groups who are struggling often for power against one another? who are you reconciling? is it the new asians who often

are found in the inner city marketplace? against who? the blacks or the whites or -- if you're going to reconcile, the first thing to understand is who you're rk sieling and this is increasingly a multi-cultural and not a black-and-white country. this is not the country of the civil war and we better get used to it. already hispanics outnumber blacks. for most of my lifetime atalked about being a member of the largest minority group in the country. we are being left in the dust. and if that's all we had to be proud of, maybe we should have been. i am intrigued, very intrigued by the growth of this bilingual minority in our country that is growing so fast and will change

the country in every conceivable way and make for the first time make us speak something other than just english, bless their hearts. yes, there's a role for national leaders, particularly for the president of the united states, who alone can set the tone as no other leader or group of leaders can. he is often in a position to foster reconciliation of every kind, economic, racial. on a reconciliation caucus i have not heard a lot of talk about what to do or how to proceed. some caucuses are very active in the congress. others are virtually dormant. they exist in name only. what determines a caucus in the congress usually is a group that is pressing and is asending and

needs spokesmanship in the congress so the most active by far is the congressional black caucus, the congressional span esh caucus, the congressional women's caucus. the usual suspects or the people who press legislation like the pro-choice caucus or the republican study group. and most plentiful of all are the critical issue caucuses like the congress al bike caucus, congress al climate caucus, congress al food safety -- i'm on all of those and i don't know the last time i've gone to a meeting of any of them. yet the caucuses do exist to call us to the when there's a need and we do come. the challenge for any reconciliation caucus is to find what needs to be done at the national level to get member interest, to get member participation and to make sure

members can do anything about it. there may be such issues. i don't doubt that there are. but i leave you with the notion that it is a challenge to be serious for members of congress who wish to have a role to play find it and then get businessing doing something about it. >> every word i hung on. now we have about 20 minutes for questions and discussion. this is an interactive forum. and we have mics. so first hands up. >> i'm from a state that didn't exist at the time of the civil war, oklahoma. and i spent most of my

professional career outside the country. coming back to the united states, especially with a conflict resolution background, i was struck by how much -- and this really addresses this issue of the collective memory, house of representatives of the symbols and the things we see visually and what we're hearing about a lot during this ses kwen tenial that really promote a culture of conflict and a culture of war. and would i just like to mention three things. the statutory, the monuments that we see everywhere around us, the battlefields that we all like to visit that celebrate war, and thirdly, and i think this may be the most sensitive one because it does come at the time of these anniversaries and that is the recreation of the battles. now, these are things that i don't know how we do that. do we relegate the statues to museums? do we cancel all of the celebrations of the recreations of the battles? i don't know.

i thought it was very good to hear congresswoman norton refer to the civil rights movement as one of the main counteracting factors of helping to create a culture of reconciliation. thank you. >> reaction? >> we were talking about on the radio show about what we should do about the statues on monument avenue since they have come up again. somebody said shouldn't we take this down? and christy said, no, what we need to do is put up signs telling people where they came from. people don't know those are put up 50 years after the war for very explicit sort of racial politics and people think they just sort of grew out of the ground, sort of a natural formation out of memory. and so i thought it was wise to say the best way to combat

history is not by taking it down but by other history that puts it in context and shows that we're always living. i thought that was a very wise suggestion. i think can you do some of the same things with the military manifestations, which are not going to go away but to think about why were they here fighting? what was this for. i think hijacking the sort of manifestations that you're talking about might be our best strategy. >> i would add to that -- sorry. first of all, battlefields doesn't just glorify war. they have. but the national parks service is doing remarkable good things at telling the story of the war. the new visitor center at gettysburg, which just opened two or three years

because i didn't think i'd live to see that. they're great teaching centers. they don't have to be about glorifying war. and i'm not for tearing down any monument. leave them all up and teach with them. there's a guy in texas, i won't name him, who has been on a personal crusade for years to take down every robert e. lee marker, monument, memorial or sentence anywhere in the public in the united states. he used to try to enlist -- started with john hope franklin actually and many, many other of us historians to crusade with him to take down -- he started

in dallas, texas. and basically we all told him up alternative monuments, work for alternative commemoration. you're not going to take down all the lee monuments and you shouldn't. >> let me just add a couple things to that. first of all, we have a groupre with our museum. we have women in who dress in period dress, we have guy who is wear uniforms. i have uniforms. i have an officers' uniform. >> only fitting. >> because you're the president. >> i portray alexander agugus. he was an officer in the civil war. he was a medical doctor. he was trained in canada and he came here to actually be a doctor at what started out to be a clinic at a contraband camp and later becomes the basis for howard university hospital. so it was a re