think they see those reigns of power. >> i think what history does is not uniquely, necessarily, and not only to the structural dimensions of things that people often experience on very individualized and very isolated and isolating ways but i think history draws attention to the ethical dimension of what is happening right now and draws attention and enabled students to get what is unfolding now is the theme of this conference. it's very big changes and very big questions about the relationship between capitalism and democracy. that has changed over time and that changes really because of human agency, not because of

some, you know, force. it happens because of choices and especially political choices that are made at any given moment. >> alison and jessica, thanks for joining us here on american history tv. really enjoy talking to you both. thank you. >> thank you. >> now more from this year' annual meeting from the organization of historians and national council on public history which recently met in wisconsin. next, we speak with robert sutton who tells us about the park's efforts to accurately interpret historical sites. this is about 15 minutes. >> american history tv is at the annual meeting of the organization of american historians in milwaukee.

joining us is the national park service historian, chief historian, robert sutton. thanks for being with us. >> thanks for bringing me. >> what brings you here, other than it's a gathering of historians? >> well, we do a lot of work with the organization of american historians. we have a cooperative agreement so a number of services within the organization do studies for us, help us with our interpretation of the parks and we've had a fairly long and very, very beneficial partnership with the organization of american historians. >> you are participating on a couple of discussions on native americans and also on the civil war. what was the focus of the first one. >> well, we -- it's very

interesting. we have a number of parks that deal with native american history. we have a number of park that is the main focus was not native american history, but there amazing stories. for example, the battlefield was established as a civil war battlefield. for years and years and years, we've told the story of the battle that took place there. >> that is in what state? >> that is in northwest arkansas. for years and years we told the story of the battle that took place there. it was a union victory and we were critical and tried to keep missouri in the union and typical park service fashion, we did a lot of telling of who shot who and when, where, and how. a lot of stories there as well. 16,000 on the confederate side and about 10,000 on the union side and they won the battle. that was unusual at that time. when they were outnumbered, they didn't win. the other story is that there were about 1,000 cherokee indians fighting. many of the cherokee leaders and commanders were slave holders. they had a lot more in common with the confederacy than they did with a union.

so that's a story that we had not told, but we are telling. we consulted with the cherokee nation. the other story was about half of the union was german. >> those are german immigrants. >> yes. another story that has nothing do to do with the battle, the trail on which the cherokees were escorted from the homeland in the east were indian territory. they go through the middle of the park. now the park told the story of the trail as well. what is beneficial with the interpretation, they tell these

stories and they also say if you want to learn more, the capital of the cherokee nation, we go there for a visit as well. we would suggest you go there. >> how many parks do you oversee in looking at the history? >> well, i don't really oversee all the parks. i provide guidance and i try the parks that have similar themes and try to get them working together so they can share resources. about 2/3 of the parks are historical and i have more interest in them, but a lot have very important image things and stories as well. >> the national park service weekend is when?

>> founded in 1916, but the first national park was yellowstone established in 1872. there were a number of national parks before there was a national park service. >> when did we start to establish a position of a historian? >> there was a chief historian in the early 1930s. 1931. that's one of the oldest positions in upper level management in the park service. >> what sort of issues do you have with the changing story at p ridge? i assume others have these sorts of things, but what issues do you have with doing research in a park that is being used by visitors and by tourists and yet you are involved on a historical nature whether that is an archaeological dig and doing research? >> one of the things we have done before this. one of the things we started

doing when i was there and i continued since i have been here is trying to expand the story of the civil war again and who shot who where and when. the story of the cherokees and the germans and the trail of tears. that wasn't the reason that congress established that park, but it's an important story that we tell. it's much more enriching to visitors. in other battle fields across the park service, we have been expanding our interpretation to talk about what caused the war. that sometimes is not a popular issue. slavery very clearly was the cause of the civil war. we have been saying that through

interpreting and films and exhibits and most of them have included that story. we talk about the impact on families. the number that we have used and actually was established shortly after. 620,000 that were killed in the civil war. there is recent research that suggests that number was probably higher and some say as high as 850,000. imagine what it was like from the families of these 620,000 or 850,000 who didn't return home. there were a number who returned home without missing limbs and post traumatic shock they didn't understand at the time. the impact was tremendous beyond the impact of the civil war itself.

it was a tremendous impact on families. >> starting last year and over the next couple of years, we are looking at the 150th anniversary of this civil war. you talked about the things that you are doing in your parks. what else for the 150th should people be on the look out for? >> one of the homestead parks in homestead national memorial in nebraska, that commemorates the homestead and the gentlemen filed his claim one minute after midnight on january 1st, 1863. 160 acres. that part commemorates the homestead act that was one of the important pieces of legislation and the conference a couple of weeks ago in nebraska on the homestead act and the moral act and pacific railroad act. there a lot of domestic and terribly important pieces of

legislation that had not been passed. >> that are got passed in the civil war? >> right. just this past week, april 16th was the 150th anniversary of the emancipation of slaves. in addition commemorating the battles of the civil war. >> how long have you been a historian with the park service? >> i have been a historian and have been in the park service for 29 years. part of that time i was in the administration. that meant sometimes i was a historian and sometimes i was not. i have been in the park service mostly doing history. >> you talked about the changing nature of story. how has the way that visitors interact with exhibits, what's different about the way that visitors look at exhibits and

what are they more entered in? does it mean that you have to have video displays and all of those things? >> part of the problem with the exhibits, many especially in civil war battle feels are many, many years old. a lot of them were erected in the 1950s and 60s. they are very out of date. the national park service exhibits are different from museum exhibits in that the purpose of our exhibits should be and hopefully are to or i don't want people to the historic site. what we want them to do is look at the exhibits. we want them to understand the

significance and look at the site. unlike the museum, you go to look at the museum with most of our exhibits that are for the purpose of orienting people to the site. >> what's the traffic like? how is visitation in the national parks? >> the visitation is -- last few years has been around 170 or 270 or 280 million a year. >> in all national parks. >> all national parks. someone asked me about that a couple of weeks ago. i decided if that were a country, it would be the fourth largest country. if that was a population, we still have something that varies. it's around that. >> i will wrap up by asking you, in conjunction with the national park service which was presented at the conference in front of a sizable crowd, what is that about? >> we're commissioned the american historians to do a

survey within the park service. we have in the government a classification for different positions. the classification for historians is gs 170. i am sure everyone is thrilled to know that, but we have a number of employees in the park service trained as historians. we tried to identify as many as we could from all of the historians whether in the classification or not. so we did the survey of about 1500 in the park service and we got about 500 responses. about 30 or 35% responses. what we were looking at is what are we doing? we did a good job and are we not doing a good job and some things are done well and some things are not so well. what can we do to improve both the profession of history in the parks service and not by

replacing, but providing the tools to do a better job. what are we doing and how can we tell stories that are important to the visitors or accurate and reflect the most recent research in history? also we are looking at what can we do to make the park service better and we think we can do a lot with this report. >> robert sutton is the national historian with the park service. thank you for joining us. >> thank you. appreciate it. >> all weekend long, american history is joining the cox communications cable partners in oklahoma city to showcase the rich history. to learn more about the local content vehicles and the 2012 tour, visit c-span.org/local content. well, we want to welcome you

to the carl albert center. this is a unique resource for colleagues interested in representative of government and congress in particular. my name is cindy and i'm the director and curator of the carl albert research center. >> let's go inside. >> welcome you back. this is the heart and soul of the archives. this is essentially what is the finished product of the work that we do. the center has really a broad mission. the mission includes research and our archives play a significant role in that, in that this is available to academic scholars, genealogists, historians, people interested in policy history. also have a teaching mission at the carl albert center, and a

public service mission as well, which reaches out into the community to engage communities in discussions about public policy and just the health of our institutions, our representative government, and the congress obviously being part of it. we are also interested in state legislative bodies, city councils, et cetera. when we get a collection from a member, it is deeded to us and we then become the stewards of that collection, and we spend an enormous amount of time arranging, describing, and then cataloging the item often times to the item level, but at least to the folder level the things that are of significance in a particular folder so that a scholar can go online and search our inventories and identify those things that they wish to have copies of, or if they're going to spend a significant amount of time here, they'll identify boxes that they want to look into as they come and visit the center to do their research.

>> how did the center get its name? >> it is of course named after carl albert who was speaker of the house of representatives, highest ranking position held by an elected official from the state of oklahoma. he was third in line to succession, and he served from right after the war, after world war ii, he ran for the congress, and he served until 1977, and he rose through the ranks of the leadership to be the whip, majority leader and speaker from 1971 to 1977 so the center is named after him because we were established with a congressional appropriation as well as state appropriation to be the repository for his papers and other oklahomans over the years. we have a collection that's among the largest in the country in terms of congressional papers that you can go to one place and do research on congressional

history. let me show you a couple things. start with perhaps one of the older files. this would be from alfalfa, bill murray, and he was governor of the state of oklahoma. he also ran for president and was a very interesting character, as his name might suggest, alfalfa bill murray. he was involved in the pre-statehood convention that was held at a time in which there was interest in the possibility that oklahoma would become an indian state as opposed to a free state in 1904, and then of course we became a state in 1907, and he was one of the first governors. this is from his collection. alfalfa bill murray becomes the governor of the state of

oklahoma in 1930. then he runs for president in 1932. here is an interesting piece. this is from his presidential campaign. it is a candy wrapper from candy bars he handed out on the campaign trail, 5 cents, and putting alfalfa bill before the voters. he also was quite the populist, here is his platform, the murray doctrine. the first point, i hold that civilization begins and ends with the plow, no government can stand without the freedom of the farmer, free from roe -- from oppression. he talks about the banking act and some financial institutions of the day, themes that are probably reminiscent today as well. >> how was he received as a candidate?

>> he was seen as somewhat of a populist, more fringe candidate if you will than mainstream candidate. would have been running at the same time franklin delano roosevelt. we have paper in a lot of different forms. we also have audiovisual materials in our collection. that's a newer development that we're having to change some of our collection practices with. but we also have some memorabilia, which i think is often times of great interest to people who are interested in the collection. for example, here we have some of our collection buttons, political buttons.

we were just talking about alfalfa bill murray. this button is probably the oldest in our collection. says the state of sequoia. which again was what was proposed as the name, should oklahoma not have entered as a free state but rather as indian state. so that's from probably around 1904. 1905. you have other presidential election campaigns that came as part of the collections as well as some of our own senators. here we have buttons of u.s. senator robert s. kerr, one of the significant leaders in the history of the state, was very involved after the depression era and dust bowl, literally transforming the landscape of this state with reservoirs and lakes throughout the state and

soil conservation initiatives that really underscore our agricultural economy. >> how did these pins come to your collection? >> well, when we get a collection, sometimes it's somewhat organized, sometimes it is not terribly organized. but you'll -- the members will have as part of their collection some of these, this memorabilia, plaques, other sorts of things. and then sometimes we just have people that over the years know that we are in the business of preserving political history and they will offer to make donations to us.

we generally do not purchase items for the collection, they are donated to the collection. some of these would have come from different collections, but they're preserved here in one. one of the things that the senate historian's office emphasizes to members is that you want to put your collection someplace where it has the capacity not only to preserve and keep your collection but also to process it and make it available to scholars. and that's why we think we urge many of our members here in the state of oklahoma to make their donations to us.

one of the most interesting collections, one that gets used quite a bit, helen kahagan douglas, served in the 1940s, was from california. what is interesting about her is that she was married to the hollywood actor, melvin douglas. served during the 1940s from california. had a very distinguished acting career. and so we actually have some of her stage photos, very imposing presence here. this is a promo photo from one film she made called "she." and actually the name of the character she played in this was

she who must be obeyed. >> there will be slaves waiting without a wall to guide you in safety to your little world. >> it is probably more of a cult film now than well known film. has something to do with, you know, the fountain of youth and eternal light. >> how did she get involved in politics? >> she and her husband moved from the new york to the east coast, hollywood, and she got involved in the plight of migrant workers in california, her activism there also drew the attention of eleanor roosevelt. she became a democratic committee woman, ran for congress in the wartime era of world war ii. she went on then to try to aspire from her congressional career to run for the u.s. senate. she ran for the u.s. senate in 1950, and she ran against another congressman from the state of california, richard

m. nixon. this was a very nasty campaign. you may remember that this is also the time of the beginning of the rise of the red scare. and this is called the pink sheet. and note in the corner, the lipstick which we believe is from helen kahagan douglas was her response to this pink sheet that was being put out by the

opposition. she was unsuccessful. richard nixon did win that campaign, and she did not run for another elected office after that. so her primary tenure was in the congress. this is an exhibit space where we have rotating exhibits. this particular one is about david l. born, served as governor, u.s. senator and now president of university of oklahoma. one note of significance, we also have the papers of his father, lyle born, and recently the retiring congressman, dan born signed a deed to commit his papers here. so we have three generations of the born family in terms of their paper. you can kind of see that the range of things that are in the collection, from official correspondence and clearly political papers to those things that are more personal and nonpolitical from everything from notes and cards, over here we have another exhibit of materials from young constituents, children that write to congressmen, send them handwritten letters. you have both insight into the personal lives of members as well as the official activities that they were involved in. the most significant part of the center's physical setting is a

replica of the speaker's office. this is the 46th speaker of the u.s. house of representatives, and the space itself had furniture and pictures and memorabilia from his capitol office right off the house of representatives, as well as the office for his district in oklahoma. and we've tried to maintain here many of the important memorabilia from his collection. i would just point out a couple things that are particularly significant. this display cabinet has 50 pens in it, which reflect the great society programs that mr. albert

played a key role as both majority leader and then whip, working with president johnson to enact what we have come to know as the great society initiatives. it really is symbolic of the legislative agenda. there's only one other collection like this in texas. he was from humble roots. a little town called bug tussle down in southeastern oklahoma. but this is a little league team from elmore city, a little town in that neck of the woods, and mcalester was considered his home.