i like the definition of "compromise" that tb smith said. he 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 something -- somewhat up for grabs. anyway, there is some compromise a lot of times integrity, particularly political 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 capability of the righteousness who are capable of swearing to their own hurt. that is a difficult manoeuvre, i must say, and our politicians are not very good at leading us into something like swearing at our own hurts. one of the hurts 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 crow 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. said david, the age of jim crow 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 disgraceful era in american history that i know anything about is that era post 1865 in which with the connivance of politicians on both sides ofmason-dixon, african-americans were subjected again to something like a

slavery. that it seems to me is a kind of memory that needs at least the imperical realism and repennant 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 justify our ways of acting toward each other. i'm not sure whether i'm leaving within 15 minutes, joe, but that's my take on it. [ applause ] it's my pleasure and honor to introduce the honorable norton, congresswoman now in her 11th term as a congresswoman from the district of columbia, ranking member of the house subcommittee of the buildings and emergency management. she also serves on the committee

on oversight and government reform and the committee on transportation and infrastructure. the congresswoman is a tenured professor of law at georgetown university. she received her bachelor's from ant ok college in ohio and earned her law degree and a master's 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 she showed up exactly on time. thank you. >> thank you very much. my chief regret, of course, is that, yes, my mistress is in 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 longtime 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 prodig noious ine 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 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 and preservation 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 it in the congress. i introduced a resolution early at the request of the soir association for the study of african-american life and study

indicating that this was the 150th anniversary. and yet congress in many ways was the vortex of the civil war before, during, and after. dr. shriver talked about the dinner meeting where it was decided that the tradeoff -- i wish we could make more tradeoffs in the present congress, but that the tradeoff 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, and 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. and so southern democrats, people in my own party, kept the city from getting its home rule, kept it segregated. i went to segregated dunbar 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 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 has 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 like to 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 holmes, the first richard, came here in the 1850s. the second richard, 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 freed man's bureau. hal university is the legacy of that aftermath of slavery. but i caution you that in looking at the civil war, it is very important to kind of align it against wars we had 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 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 of 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 migrate privilege to administer title vii of the 1964 civil rights act, the job sdr 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 clear how much of that kind of cross of the nations 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 makes 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 in my father's garage. the same one that hung over my childhood bed until i was 18. this was written april 25, 2011. we were democrats. my grandfather told me in the '70s, because lincoln was a republican. a decade later, by the time i was my family would become reagan democrats. the type of folks who today populate 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 whoseew, comes 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 are 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 orr indeed be present at tis of racial divide or flare-up. but there's not a great deal of racial flare-up of that kind in this country on an ongoing basis. it seems to me that reconciliation commissions would be far more serviceable at thel 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? if you're going to reconcile, the first thing to understand is who you're reconciling. and this is increasingly a

multicultural and multinational conference and not a black country or 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, i talked 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 may 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 ascending and needs spokesmanship in the congress, so the most active by far congressional black caucus, the congressional hispanic caucus, the congressional women's caucus. the usual suspects.

or 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 congressional bike caucus and the congressional climate caucus, congressional food safety caucus. i'm on all of those, and i don't know the last time i have gone to a meeting of any of them. yet the caucuses do exist to call us together when there's a need and when we can do something, and we do come. the challenge for any congressional 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 that members can do anything about it. there may be such issues. i don't doubt that there are. but i leave you with a notion that it is a challenge to be

serious about what role congress or members of congress wish to play in reconciliation can play to define it and then to get busy doing something about it. thank you very much. [ applause ] >> very rich presentation. longer than we planned, but every word i hung on. now we have about 20 minutes for questions and discussion. this is an interactive forum. and we have mikes. so first hands up. >> i'm from a state that didn't exist at the time of the civil war, oklahoma. and i have spent most of my professional career outside the country. when i have -- 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, how much of

the symbols and the things we see visually and what we're hearing about a lot during the centennial that really promote a culture of conflict and a culture of war. and i would just like to mention three things. the statuary, 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 tbattles? 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.

>> let's have some comment and reaction. >> we were talking about the radio show, about what we should do about the statues on monument avenue since they have come up again. and somebody said, shouldn't we take those down? and christie said, and i hope this is ok, said, no, what we need to do is put up signs telling people where they came from. people don't know those were put up 50 years after the war for very explicit sort of racial politics. and people just think they sort of grew out of the ground, sort of a natural formation out of memory. and so i thought it was wise to say 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 you can 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, you know, what was this for? so i think hijacking the sort of manifestations that you're talking about might be our best strategy. >> i'll add to that too that -- sorry. >> first of all, battlefields don't just glorify war. i mean, they certainly have. and until recently, maybe that was their primary function. but the national park service is now doing remarkably good things with telling the story of the civil war at battlefield sites. just one quick example, the new visitors center at gettysburg which just opened two or three years ago is superb. a lot of us worked on it over the years as consultants. and particularly the orientation film. i was stunned how good it is. i'm always prepared to not like the orientation films because they are not made for us, they are made for the public and usually they are sort of disappointing. this one not only had morgan freeman as the narrator, which

is always a good move, but it's so good i couldn't hardly believe it. and i walked out almost in tears because i didn't think i would live to see that. so they are great teaching centers. they don't have to be about glorifying war. i'm not for tearing down any monument. leave them all up, but teach with them. there's a guy in texas. i won't name him. who has been on a personal crusade for years now to take down every robert e. lee monument, marker, memorial, or sentence anywhere in the public in the united states. and he used to try to enhlist - started with john hope franklin and many of us other historians to crusade with him to take them down. he started in dallas, texas, which had its big lee monument. and basically we all told him the same thing. put 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 -- am i on?

ok. let me just add a couple of things to that. first of all, we have a group of re-enactors that is associated with our museum. we have women who dress in period dress. we have guys who wear uniforms. i have a uniform. i have an officer's uniform. [ laughter ] >> because you're the president. >> only fitting. >> well, i portray a guy named alexander augustus. he was an officer in the civil war. he was a doctor. a medical doctor. he was trained in canada. and he came here to actually be a doctor in what started out to be a clinic at a contraband camp that was later the basis for howard university hospital. so it was a real person. now, it's one thing to have the re-enactments take place when it's just somebody in a union uniform and somebody in a confederate uniform. but you have an african-american show up with auniform, bullets in the