johnson. his multi-volume biography of the 36th president. and look for our second hour of conversation with robert caro sunday, may 20th. next saturday, may 12th. american history tv will be live from jamestown, the first permanent english settlement in the united states. the long lost 1607 fort was rediscovered in 1994 by william kelso the director of the archaeological project. we'll hear his story and take a tour of the dig. we'll also meet senior curator blithe straw who describes life in the colony while showing us some of the 1.5 million artifacts collected at the site. join us saturday, may 12th beginning at 1:30 p.m. eastern. >> so we're very proud today to have c-span in the state of oklahoma to show off our great state, and we're certainly looking forward to working with

cox communication and c-span and doing all that we can to highlight some of the wonderful tradition, culture, and history, and the great progress that we have made. >> with the help of our cox communications cable partners, we take you to oklahoma city on american history tv. coming up in the next 90 minutes, we visit various sites in and around this capital city that help tell the story of its rich history and culture. in a moment, revisit the april day in 1995 that changed a city and the nation. >> you would hear their voices and so that left a lasting impression, of course, when they were silenced. >> as u.s. district court judge tim leonard talks about the bombing of the alfred p. murrah federal building and the impact on the city since then. >> this is right after the explosion that was an article in

the news. but these were my -- this was my office right directly across. >> right after that, a look at the oklahoma city national memorial built on the site of the tragedy as one of the site' designers talks with us. >> we have one to the east is marked 901. the gate to the west is marked 903. and they really reflect or reference the moment of the bomb, which was at 902. >> then in about 40 minutes, we'll explore rarely seen film collection from the 1920s that paints a little known picture of african-american life here during the height of the jim crow era. >> what these films depict is what white society never saw for the most part. and if they saw elements of it, they surely did not cogitate or

talk about that amongst themselves. ♪ i love you madly >> and to round out our show, we go inside the julian p. cantor political commercial archive at the university of oklahoma to learn about their collection. and the evolution of television and web ads in presidential campaigns. ♪ mark the ballot that bears his name ♪ >> these and more as cox communications and c-span take you to oklahoma city on american history tv. we are in the federal courthouse at oklahoma city, which was next door directly next door to the federal murrah building that was bombed by timothy mcveigh on april 19th, 1995. i'll show you we can go in here

and see out the window where the murrah building was. and now where the memorial is. and now where the memorial is. this is the plaza which was in front of the murrah building, and it was pretty well destroyed either through the bombing or through the cleanup of the building itself. the building is directly behind this plaza or it was and that's of course where now the memorial is and the chairs for the 168 people who were killed are approximately placed where their offices were or where they died. then of course the reflecting pool in the memorial is where the street that went through and where mcveigh parked his truck that blew up the building. the plaza, one of the things that i remember because my office overlooked the building and the plaza, was the plaza, there was a daycare center and some of the children were killed, others injured. during their recess period they would come play out in the plaza

and you would hear their voices and so that left a lasting impression of course when they were silenced. >> my desk was facing the window that was directly in front of the murrah building where mcveigh's truck was. and of course, i took some pictures that day of what my office looked like and how fortunate i was that i was not here. this is right after the explosion, that was an article in the i think u.s. news. these were -- this was my office right directly across, and you can see the curtains on the outside and so forth. this is where my desk faced and that's the back side of the murrah building which was all of course blown through.

and this window, you can see the shards of glass on the floor and our ceiling fell. this was my desk in the way that the window blew in and the way the glass on the floor and everything. the glass is not just glass but heavy shards of thick glass that was very pointed. some was embedded into the concrete walls and so forth, and these two pieces were laying in my chair among some others, so i would have been the direct target of those shards if i had been at my desk facing that window. but the whole office was just basically, as other, some of the other offices that face the

courthouse, were also destroyed. >> where is that? >> that's in my office. my desk is here facing this window. >> who is that over there? is that you? >> that's one of the workmen that were here the next morning trying to see what all the -- assess all of the damage. and then that's my library, again, the glass would have been the most serious injury in the courthouse was a juror who was down on the first floor and had his arm severed but they were able to reattach it. we were very fortunate that nobody was killed or seriously injured in this. that's my office again. looking at it from the window with my desk and the sofa. you can see after the blast, there was a suction backwards like a vacuum. this door was bolted and it split the door and the suction backward pulled it back in.

now, this is the -- what was left of the building was imploded and demolished. that's the way the plaza looked and the building after it was imploded and demolished. then they started rebuilding the plaza and then of course designing the park. i had been the united states attorney two, three years before the bombing and had a lot of friends that were agents and other people that worked in the building that were close friends that i worked with as united states attorney in the various agencies and some lawyers with the hud and some other lawyers with different departments, i also lost my son, a dear friend of his in high school, she had just graduated working in the social security office and her

father was a distinguish friend of mine. we lost her. her father when i got home actually that morning i had three messages. first of all, wanting to know what he could find out about his daughter, secondly, it didn't look good, and the third message was when he was crying and a couple hours later that he knew his daughter was dead. so it was a lot of good friends and so forth of myself and others in this federal community of the courthouse that we lost. that was hard and then of course just the thought that something could happen here in the heartland of the country, you just don't -- that's one of the reasons that my family and i live in oklahoma city is you don't think of anything like that happening. and then particularly when you find out it was a home grown terrorist who was just mad at the government who would take the lives of the innocent

children and others, it was -- it was a real awakening which i think it was for the whole country, not just those of us in oklahoma. one ever the things we did is when mcveigh and nichols were arrested and charged and everything, most of us recused the judges that didn't recuse were taken off of the case, and recused by the circuit. and the case was moved to colorado to get it in a different atmosphere for a fairer trial. judge richard matsch handled that case very competently but it was full time for him, so what we did to contribute is all of us agreed to go up and take a month at a time of his docket and his case load so we did that. when we were up there numerous times you would see things going on with the mcveigh trial and the nichols trial so it was a constant reminder whether we

were here or in colorado. >> did you ever sit in the courtroom when the case was being tried? >> no. >> why? >> i didn't want to. i don't think any of it -- any of the judges anyway, that sat in the courtroom. i didn't want to. i did sit in when judge russ high school is one of our judges here arraigned, when he was first arrested, terry nichols and i sat in then. watched that arraignment and so forth. but i just -- i don't know. i felt so close to it i didn't really care to see mr. mcveigh -- i didn't care to be part of it. >> what are your thoughts on them today? >> i think they are guilty. i think there are theories whether they had others involved or not. i don't think there was any widespread conspiracy. i think through everything that i saw in the trial that they

convicted the right two people, and mcveigh was the principle and nichols was the assistant or helper you might say. one of the good things that it did which is create i think a lot of the kind of anti-government folks, underground militias and so forth who were fighting the government and anti-government and everything, i think that it caused the people to take a little more serious look at how potentially dangerous some of those groups could be. and you didn't hear much about them for a while. i have some concern that there's the new kind of growth of some of this anti-government feeling which the government is you know, certainly the government's big, it makes hearsay takes, we don't agree with a lot of our officials but it's still us. and once we start trying to

destroy our own government, we're going to destroy our republic and our democracy, so i think that hopefully we don't see the same kind of home grown acts again. i think it dramatically changed the city. actually, it's like any crisis, whatever it is or hardship t the people came together. i don't think it really changed the people but it made them all pull together and realize that we're all in this together. and the city had just passed a tax increment program to make improvements and revitalize our downtown. it had just passed before this, and that combined with after the bombing and everybody having some current weather conditions somebody who either worked in

the federal building or knew somebody or had some connection with it, the city really just unified and pulled together and it's still that way, you know. this many years later. it's almost 20 years later it's still -- the city has been supported, they supported two more of those kind of or urban improvements. the city has been transformed as a result of the support and the forward looking and thinking elected officials in the city w the ideas that they have come up with and the support that they have gotten from the public. but i think what the bombing did was make us realize we're all in this together and we all need to help each other. and the example that everybody from the firefighters and the police men and the people who came in from other states all

over this country to assist in the search and rescue at the murrah building, that example has been set for other tragedies such as 9/11 and so forth. that all kind of i think the example was set here. to explore the history. you're watching american history tv 48 hours of people and events telling the american story. on the fifth anniversary of the bombing of the alfred p. murrah federal building, the governor dedicated a memorial to the victims on the site where the building once stood, 168 people including 19 children died in the 1995 blast. >> on april 19th, five years ago another spring wednesday like today, the flag of our nation was flying over the murrah building. it is flying over our memorial today, and i know it flies proudly in all of your hearts. for those who perpetuated this

act, we have one message. in america, you can speak and write and vote and complain, but there is no right to maim and bomb and kill. [ applause ] and if you think that you can bring that flag down, there is your answer. we have so many special guests today. it is a homecoming for many of you who came to oklahoma in 1995, and gave us your sweat and your tears and your support. we welcome home all of you. this is your home. we are all oklahomans today and we are all americans. may god continue. to bless our beloved land.

my husband and i and our partner, send, we designed the outdoor memorial here. that is everything you see in this space is kind of green parklike space. this project was given out as a competition, and we decided to participate in this competition, because we felt like it was a because we felt like it was a we could contribute to the

community, and give them something that would help them. as part of that competition process, the memorial foundation which was established here sort of a guiding force in creating this memorial, they sent out a mission statement, or a set of guidelines to which we should follow when we thinking about how to design this memorial. and there were a couple of things that were really important. they gave us the whole boundary, the perimeter and included in that was this seconds of fifth street that is now where our reflecting pool is. that used to be a regular street that just ran through the site, and they had opted, before we ever became involved, they decided to close off this street permanently and make it part of this memorial room. another thing that was really important, an important guideline, is that they wanted all the participants to create a design that would allow for the survivor tree to remain, and the survivor tree is located at the high point of the site. it was not a celebrated tree before this happened. it was just a tree in a parking lot. but after the bomb exploded and that tree took on sort of the symbolism of surviving, because

itself, it -- the tree itself is a survivor. it almost didn't survive that bombing, and because it was such a dynamic symbol of resilience, the community really started to rally around that tree and together under its branches, and it became a real symbol for this place. this part of the site is where the murrah building used to stand. this is the footprint basically of that building. those are the walls of the parking garage right behind, and one of the guidelines was to, please, find a way to remember those who were killed in this space. so we treated this really as a more sacred space. it's -- we're acting very reverently here. it's quieter and we've lined the perimeter with tall pine trees. they're very regional, and they grow to be almost 90-feet tall,

and their job is to create this soft, green, protective edge for this site. and for these nine rows of empty chairs, and we kind saw these as these sentinels that are protective. nine rows of chair. each corresponds to one floor of the building. the chairs on that row really reflect the people that were working or were visiting that floor of the building when the bomb went off. each chair has a name of a victim inscribed on it, and they're not big, bold, black letters but very lightly etched into the glass, and so we thought that was something more subtle but very beautiful. the chairs are made up of these glass bases and a bronze and granite seat and back, and they are really designed to be at the scale of a human -- of a person. there's something we're all familiar with, is a chair. i mean, that's something that we

all can relate to across many cultures and many ages. so we thought that was just a good way to reach a lot of people. in the day you don't see these glass bases as much. especially from a little bit of distance. you don't see them, and it seems like these float a little bit, because that glass is not so apparent. but at night, it's almost the opposite comes true, where the glass bases light up, and they become, really, the beacons of hope that remind us that good can come out of something so evil. there are different size chairs. >> yes. >> there's two sizes. and they're pretty subtle. the difference. but if you look, you can really see that. the smaller chairs are for the children.

there were 19 children killed. 15 of those were in the daycare, and that's on the second floor. so most of those chairs are on the second row. and that really starts to speak to, to me, to the tragedy of how this hit just across -- across a whole range of people. what we're looking at here are the gates of time. and they really act as our formal entry markers into the memorial room. we have one to the east is marked 901. the gate to the west is marked 903. they really reflect or reference the moment of the bomb, which was at 9:02. we don't literally write that out. we are just referencing that 9:02 is really what this whole outdoor memorial room is about. those are acting as our edges. each gate is comprised of two walls. in between those walls, a slight pause. almost like a narthax to a church. a little pause before you enter

into the memorial room. you step away from the hustly, bustly sounds of the city, get a little slice of the sky and go into the memorial room. right in the middle of this whole memorial room is a very long reflecting pool. it is about 313 feet long. it sits where fifth street used to run through. this used to be a busy, active street. now, it is almost a void. we can't go there anymore. we have made it inaccessible. it acts as an organizing element to all the different players in this outdoor room. it is also kind of a common edge to where we can all come meet. we really saw this main element as a place to remember those changed forever.

the water, itself, is only 3/4 of an inch deep. you probably won't know that unless you get right up to the pool edge and look into it. we liked the idea of this very quiet, mysteriously moving water. we thought that the noise it makes is a wonderful, soothing noise to when you are visiting a place like this. it plays a big role on many sensory levels when you are experiencing the memorial. the general record building is where the museum is now housed. that was -- the facade we are looking at is the alley facade of that building. when the bomb happened, it damaged the buildings that were around it so much that they had to be demolished. so what was left was this facade that it was really evident that something had happened. the fire stair was all tangly against the building. the windows were blown out.

there were just these dark voids of space where the windows used to be. when we designed this, with he realized it was really important to keep that facade as much intact as it was the day that the bomb happened. because it gives us a back drop, a reminder, almost, of where we are coming from. part of this memorial is about recognizing the efforts of those that helped. this area here is specifically about the children that helped. the kids did a number of things. they sent letters and pictures and drawings to the rescue workers right after this happened. we heard stories about how when the rescue workers would be finished at night or have a break, they would go to these cotts that were set up for them and there would always be a letter or a drawing there. to find of revive them or give them some inspiration. the memorial received just a lot

of tiles with these pictures of whatever the kids were thinking about and whatever message they had for the community, they put on these. they painted on tiles. so we had this huge archive of tiles to choose from and we wanted to line this whole wall with these tiles so that people would have an idea of even more of what the kids contribution was. this area is just a big stone paved area interspersed in all the stone are these big chalk board slates. we kind of arranged them like a collage of letters or pictures that referenced all the colleges and pictures that the kids sent in. they are here almost to be an interactive piece. it is a way that kids and adults

can come and still leave the same kinds of messages for the community. we really hardly ever see these blank. they are either washed off by the rain or washed off by the people that take care of the memorial. there are always people coming in to leave messages. we feel like that interaction is sort of an important part of this memorial. it is an important way of people letting other people know you are not alone. when we entered the competition to design this place, we had no idea of the weight that that would be. but once we came here, we met the people. we started interacting with the community, with he started to feel the responsibility we had taken on. we were very fortunate to have a big team of people around us. we were fortunate in that we got to communicate with the

community a lot, which was due to a process that the memorial foundation had put in place. they wanted to keep the community involved with this project and keep them up to date on everything that was happening. that was really good for us to feel like we were doing this as a partnership with the community. the weight was, it felt very heavy. at the same time, when we were finished, on the day before dedication, we really had to hand it over, we hoped we had done a good job and that we would be delivering to the community something that they could find comfort in, a place where they could come to and really find some sense of peace. all weekend long, american history tv joins our cox communication cable partners in oklahoma city to showcase the literary culture. settled in 1889 it's the largest city in oklahoma. it has a population of about 600,000 people and is the center

state capital. you're watching american history tv on c-span 3. i'm the curator for the oklahoma historical society. and this is the storage area where we house all of our artifacts that deal with oklahoma and its american-indian history. there's not many in the world, this one left the tribe in 1865. and was collected by a colonel william clark. this was during the american civil war. they were sent to build words around the post and to improve the post.