discuss confederate monuments and their place in society. they take comments on whether the monuments should remain, be taken down, or contextualized. this is a 90 minute event in sacramento, california. >> good evening, everybody. extra credit for everybody who is coming here at night. we well put it on your permanent record that you were here tonight. they imagined what would be most useful for the oah and they helped inspire this event and put it together.

we are very grateful. our goal is to analyze the problem of memorialization, especially memorialization of the confederacy and to discuss what we as historians might do to help our communities and our nation bond forward. we are fortunate to have three people well qualified to talk about this issue. i would like them to introduce themselves and tell us how they have been working on this topic. would you like to begin? >> good evening. as many of you know, the national park service is a federal agency primarily charged with preservation and stewardship of our nation's

historic resources. we have 417 national parks that are under the care of the national park service. they illustrate american history within the national register. we have listed the national landmarks that are those historic resources that are nationally significant and have a high degree of integrity. not only do we manage and a stewart the national park sites we also provide technical assistance with preservation and interpretation of local historic sites through the national register and landmarks program. >> my name is christy s. coleman i am chief executive officer of the american civil war museum

where i have served for 10 years now. we created this institution by merging the american civil war center with the museum of the confederacy. it came in the midst of the bicentenaln 13. by 2015 it really pushed us into the conversation that just enrichment that starting to get calls first about the meaning of the confederate flag. what people refer to as the confederate flag.

in an then, the murders in charleston really set things off. in a very short period of time, we were thrust into a conversation of enrichment. this past summer, i was asked to serve as cochair for richmond monument avenue commission to look at how, could, and should the city of richmond respond. i received simple mandates. to consider what other historic figures could be placed there if the monuments were to be removed.

after the events of charlottesville, the mandate expanded. the mayor said you have to also look at what removal would mean, in richmond. i will leave it there for now. [laughter] >> good evening. i am cofounder of museum of chinese in america. chinatown has had a disappeared history but also a history that people seem to, for tourists, a sense that people feel very familiar chinatown. but a look that is not what chinatown actually is. i teach at new york university. this past summer, the mayor's commission set up a commission to look at public art monuments and markers. he gave 90 days to do that. it was an impossible test that

was set up. he immediately started talking about removing certain markers. that immediately caused a media fury. in the process of those meetings it became clear whether columbia's -columbus monuments state or not-, there was a deeper issue the city was not addressing. unless we had a larger context, that actually would be free-floating discussions with nothing to anchor. out of that, dan walker asked us to serve in the organization. i will be happy to talk about that. i will be starting a new

position and i have an asked to look at wars of america monument, which is right in the downtown square of downtown new york. many of you know he was the sculptor on rushmore. there is a longer history, i can see a lot of you nodding, he was associated with the kkk, and now the people developing the park want to in a very positive way think about how in their

refurbishing of the monument, how to grapple with that history. the final point is i believe that a lot of thre i really with the surveillance devices that we carry with us all the time. i think it is something that the public and students can get deeply involved in if we then think about how to present this world in a provocative and effective way to get more people drawn into these questions and understand what the stakes are. >> thank you. we are well back to your with people of expertise. i am christie's collaborator at the museum.

i have been in the game as well. my job is to be moderator and restructure this conversation as a townhall meeting rather than a self-contained panel followed by q&a. we hope to hear from as many people as possible. most people know this history but just to remind ourselves, and all historians, this debate has been going on for a while. it burst into visibility after the shooting in south carolina in june of 2016. it feels like it has been forever we are now in 2018. the mayor of new orleans ordered for the removal of an obelisk confederate statue, you remember

the crane removing lee's statue. the speech that was widely praised as the removal was announced by others. in august 2017, a rally focused its unite to right. the consequences of that group spread, their violence, their nazi regalia, the confederate statues in the national spotlight once again. a young protester from charlottesville was killed by a car driving into a crowd. there are over 700 other confederate monuments in the united states. dozens of communities have already removed these statues from los angeles to marilyn to wisconsin, ohio. the hundreds of statues still remaining, mostly in the south,

r and tangled in law and politics as well as in historical memory and identity. this is an opportunity to discuss an issue among the historians that have a special role to play in thinking about the best way forward. in our discussion we will consider the meaning of the shooting of stuff on clark here

in sec room and took might tell us about issues of justice. we will talk about other forms of memorialization and what kind of principles might guide is going forward and look at other bodies to have rested with this and put forward their general guideline. i would like to ask my colleagues here to try to understand the situation from the inside out. what do you think the monuments actually say to those that want to keep them as they are? what is so powerful about these monuments? >> since we began this process enrichment we have received letters that have been put onto our website, we have held meetings both large and small,

and there is essentially three key themes that repeat in those meetings. they are all fascinating to me. the first is one of the idea of an honorable man. they fought to defend their version of the constitution. they fought to defend their homes and their neighbors, right? and we also hear things about them individually. people loved to say lee taught his slaves to read, so it could not have been about slavery. lee freed his slaves, and then jackson teaches them to read in sunday school, so there is this whole piece around this. then there is the other thing we hear, that there is this idea of syndication -- vindication and

familial connection, that is the part that gets really messy. you can love your uncle but you cannot pretend that he was not an alcoholic. they are embodying their ancestor and these figures. these figures sort of become the over arching familial relationship. familial sacrifice.

that is how those that are in support of these monuments and leaving them as they are feel. that is what we have gleamed from the public comment both written and in person. they are very powerful. people are really adamant about these sentiments and i think that is part of an example of the enduring trauma. we do not really talk about it as historians. we talk about the period, but we do not talk about the stages of grief and what they do to rebuild themselves. that is what we are tackling. that is what those of us are contending with every time someone walks through our doors.

they are bringing that with them. it is a real challenge, because obviously the passions on the other side are just as profound. just as profound. these two sides do not hear each other because they are expressing through places of pain. i will stop there. >> of course there is the myth of somehow the north is much better than the south. so from the vantage of new york city and newark, it is a real challenge to see immigrants in the north have really embraced certain kinds of narratives about what the civil war is

about the have also really in some ways denied a deeper complicity and implication of what it meant to be a citizen of new york city or of newark we have been working with eric sanderson, he has mapped the five boroughs from the vantage of 1609, if we were to look at the treaties and the transfers of land from native american dispossession to the dutch and the early puritan settlers, we begin to see the large tracts that were transferred through various devices of trickery and otherwise. they immediately brought in slaves and enslaved people, then quickly transferred into the landlord business. he subdivided that to 600 lots.

in many ways you can see how the wealth is being built. to map this, to show it in clear terms helps to displace the value of the $24 but also the extraction that the north was not involved. i think that myth which is very much a presently held myth needs to be challenged. it does get back to the initial trauma and unresolved trauma. there is a concept of post memory. kind of reach him at ties in but constantly dealing with this post memory which in many ways generations after trying to come to terms with unresolved issues. we are talking about multiple

generations over a long. of time. in many ways that is a particular challenge for public historians who are not so much mainly focus on their own monographs but really trying to engage with the public. the deeper questions that require deep cultural and cross-cultural understandings and to create spaces where that can happen, are matters we are grappling with often times in the concept of commission. there is actually no time for the process to happen. how do we then deal with this? how do we understand the similarity across different locations and the particular configurations in which these issues are embedded?

the fact that italian-americans organized very strongly to protect their identification with columbus, is not so different in many ways then the other kinds of investment that people have made. i think we need to understand those deeper into her dynamics that may appear to be totally different from one region to another but in fact are deeply similar. >> in terms of thinking about how the memorials are viewed within the national park service, we are thinking of them as sites and places of

expression of memories and the time and place where they were placed there. not only is it about identity, which you alluded to, it is also about artistic expression. as well as a political moment in which the monuments were placed in and of themselves. we grapple with the multiple perspectives by which the monuments express themselves. t only as the event themselves but also as the re-creation of the events. the imagining of the events. we grapple with that issue as well. what is one person's artist is another person's violence. as a public agency that is invested in preserving all of

those multiple perspectives, we have to take into account and consideration those multiples meanings and what they mean. >> obviously, enrichment to means that these statues have accrued meaning over the years. we find some people saying they love the monument because it is so beautiful. we have the 10k run there, or those kinds of things. there are other intentions pulling these things apart as one of the challenges. >> one of the things that for a lot of the cities and communities that are looking at

this question things are not in spaces where they are interpreted as they are in battlefield parks. ok? these are in public squares, in courthouses. this is centered in a neighborhood, a wealthy neighborhood, it was built to be that. but there has not yet been a larger conversation about what we can do with all the other confederate statuary that is throughout richmond, that is not in a cemetery or in a battlefield. there is quite a bit of it.

i think that there may be a solution with this concept, with the park, where things are within the confines where they can be interpreted by seasoned staff and historians versus what does a city do when it is trying to consider all of the moments that make the city the city. that becomes a bit trickier. far trickier. [laughter] >> to pick up on the trickier part. [laughter] i think there is always going to be tension between the work of historians, which have to be constantly bolder and taking up the challenges not defined by the way civic history or civic virtues define. we have two of knowledge the history of wealth and power and the constitution of these spaces. i think in our deliberations in newark, there is always going to

be that tension being played out. part of what the north and south end east and west all share is the necessity to both question what has become the norm of that local regional area, what has become commonly accepted, to displace the, and moments such as these do that. it is an opportunity for historians to then do that necessary groundwork, engaging with our public in various ways. i think academics have become a little too comfortable in

staying within the university parameters. many of us have been doing work in libraries, but we in some ways have to do so much more than that now. i think denormatizing things. >> we could pause and see if people who are with us would like to answer the one question that we addressed so far. what do the people that want to maintain the statues mean by them? i am counting on our collective self-discipline to do that. we will turn after that to the critique that we have of it. there are still some seats in the front for those of you are standing in the back. it looks good on c-span if all

the seats are filled. you would be serving a public purpose. >> thank you. good evening, panel. i am a former marine corps officer doing much more difficult work as a high school teacher. [laughter] [applause] but, to me, having been assigned to quantico, to richmond, visited the museum in richmond, i see these monuments not on

battlefield parks, those monuments present opportunities to teach. i do not see them as garish figures that look, usually they are generals, i also think they are teaching opportunities when you see these and many of these men were decent men, many of them were not so decent. i also know that there comes a point as when do you stop taking a 21st century value and apply it to a 19th century conflict. i was looking at my phone and i could not remember the number of japanese that were killed in the battle of hirojima. the marines.

lost sailors in that battle. we going to tear that monument down? those 19,000 japanese soldiers and sailors who lost their lives, they were parents, they were sons, they were part of japanese culture, when does it stop? where do we have enough of intellectual armor to say this was a war that essentially shaped the american psyche for a very long time. it was our most costly war.

more costly than vietnam, the war that i fought in, more costly than world war i. the american civil war was our bloodiest battle. i as a teacher do not want to have opportunities and visual reminders that i can teach my students about this very horrible but necessary part of the high school curriculum. thank you. >> any other people who would like to speak? yes, sir. >> sometimes as a historian i think back on monuments that people from long ago tore down

of the regime that was there before them. and i would think how horrible that was because we would get to know them during that time period. i can certainly understand. i struggle because i can see those people from thousands of years ago as a historian, a disaffected historian. i can be curious about their stories and what happened. it takes on a very different feeling when i bring in my own self-interest into this conversation. it becomes a lot more difficult to say leave these alone as they are. i think, perhaps the biggest difficulty i have, is saying take them down or leave them up. the underlying issue, the reason why these monuments were put up, the reason why this war was

fought, the reason why people feel strongly on one side or the other, is the real issue that we need to tear down. that is the real thing that needs to be confronted in this country. if we can do that in this country i think we will be able to have an easier time with those monuments where they are, how they are, perhaps even without any modification. but the underlying issue, the underlying reason why those monuments were put up, whether just simply as a war commemoration which i am not quite sure is why the whole reason they were put up, but if we do not deal with the underlying reason for that, we are just covering this issue

with a band-aid, but we are not dealing with the wound. >> two great comments. [applause] any others? i will start with you christy. what is the topology of the rationale? christy: one is they are not just a symbol of a past, but they are a symbol of an ongoing mentity and behavior of a nation and of the city that has perpetually disenfranchised its people of color. it is a continual reminder of that injustice. that is one part of it.

the other part of it is this other argument which i am sure you have heard and whether you think it is valid or not it is really irrelevant, it is what people are feeling. it is that we have allowed traitors in our landscape. the fact that we allow these statues to go up is a reflection of white privilege and white supremacy. that is the other argument we hear. then, i have to say, this one is less common but nonetheless

extraordinarily heartfelt. recently, we attended a community gathering and a young man got up and was extremely eloquent and told a story of his ancestor who was among the first african-americans boated to the legislation in virginia. he told the story proudly. but in the same year that the virginia legislature was signing revenue to support putting up the statues, they were also putting in-laws to roll back things that happened in terms of reconstruction. the exact same day. him he had the material right there. the exact same day. for him, it was powerful in another way. people could relate to that.

people could relate to the fact that so many, the promise of freedom was stripped. the more of that stripping that took place the more monuments went up. schools were named after these confederates in defiance of brown v. board of education. this is not people's imagination. this is lived experience. for them, simply, it is not about military leadership. you will hear them time and time

again tell those two stories and ask the questions why do we allow traitors? you do not go to germany and seat nazi statues. there is a very different dynamic. those emotions are very real and raw. [applause] >> one of the crues of the monuments is that often they are not rooted in historical fact. in terms of the placement of the monument, in terms of the inscription included in the monument. and so, we have to continually remind ourselves and the park service that we are telling the whole story that we are contextualizing with historical facts from primary source research and the sources.

not in the way to bring value judgment or a political debate but to bring the facts to the source. then, we have to contextualize why the monument was placed why it was placed and the historical moment in which they are placed. the role of the historian there is to do the research and order to ensure that historical fact is brought to bear on monuments and contextualizing why the monuments are placed there and where. we also have to ensure that the monuments, as the national park service has determined, we will not remove or obscure or alter

monuments within our national parks unless directed by congress, but that we would be committed to preserving the monuments that are telling the entire story from multiple perspectives with multiple meanings. and that is how we bring to bear those thoughts, those various meanings, the typologies of why removal for some is the option and why for others it is not an option for them. john: i would talk about the larger context in which monuments exist. certainly if we work to think about the civics here in the public sphere, which monuments public art and markets exist with them. going to the railroad museum i was struck by the fact that in the 1850's, before the big four were the big four, there was a horrendous fire that wiped out

the chinese section. it turns out that the railroad museum is literally on top of

that site. there is a double erasure of what happened. on the one hand we are of course talking about the disappearance of multiple histories and the contemporary dominance of a certain kind of civic story or commercial story or city story of the origins of that place. so, it is hard to talk about taking away and putting back, it is tough to talk about adding things to the space, because unless we really reckoned with the underlying dynamics of our and wealth and how they have always impact on our public spaces, the debate that happens today is also governed by those kinds of influences and power.

we have to reckon with those questions. >> the definition of a monument is more than man on horseback. >> the very design of our urban spaces are a certain kind of monument to a certain development. >> who would like to talk about the critique of the monument? saying something beyond the typology. people who would like to discuss an element that we have not discussed before the group? >> there is a collorary as to what we have been talking about. the collorary is how to address and memorialize and bring back into our consciousness that which has been erased.

if we are talking concentrating here just on the civil war, there is plenty. not long ago i was in fort pillow in tennessee which as i am sure was the scene of the absolute worst massacre of black and federal and white federal troops. there is a small state museum on the site that refers to this as a controversial event. if there is any place in the country that cries to be memorials to black troops is fort pillow. thaddeus stevens'house was almost erased to be replaced by convention center and only drew a local effort where people were able to save a piece of it. it was woefully underfunded. the vestiges, the landscape, the geography of the draft riots in new york city, the worst riots in american history, hundreds and hundreds dead, mass lynchings of african-americans,

i would love to see as part of this whole larger discussion

more focus on how to creatively interpret and memorialize events like this that are troubling in different ways. i do think to add a restore to our consciousness, the history that is gone from public memory. it helps to readdress the balance that is now waited understandably by these hundreds of confederate monuments that we are rightly concerned about. >> we hear a lot of people talking about the center of the slave trade, it may be that the struggle is having a catalytic effect to bring more to the surface. i found widespread belief that we need more history rather than less. >> there is also a rising interest in the arts community, which i am delighted to see. to take away some of the power creatively. not just by adding new statuary, but how do you even address what is there? and, when we say context, it could mean many, many things. it could be expressed in some

pretty provocative ways that do not mean defacing, the do not mean anything else other than there is another way, what if we put another lens on this for you to see it. in certain circles, among folks that have been talking freely about this, in richmond, there is this interesting mix of people that have been talking about it and this idea of what if we made richmond a monumental city? it is not the only thing. we have the untold stories of the slave trade. we have freedom trails. we have really significant sites that still exist. statuary that is placed on the landscape that commemorates other events that are of equal note or individuals of considerable note, what if we took the view of our city and just pulled all of this nuance? what if we did that?

this idea of engaging the arts community is critical. it is an academic exercise. they have power because they strike emotionally. try as we might, we do not always do that as historians. >> i would agree with that. there are many great examples of what we can now call creative nonfiction or creative engagement with history. a few decades ago in new york city some people did amazing, fantastic work by putting up temporary signage, talking about the disappeared history of certain locations. right now, the monument lab in philadelphia has been doing amazing work with artists around the city. these are ephemeral engagements but also documented and written about which is helpful.

it also speaks to what dolores has talked about in the power of place. one of the problems with the work we do and monographs and

how we write history is that we tend to ignore the specific places in which people live and in which these same events were happening. to be able to map those and have people understand where they are in relationship to these events is a very powerful and uncanny slippage between the present and the past and the future. i really think the power of that kind of mapping speaks to having all of richmond and new york city become those historical places. giving the opportunity to people to discover what had happened,

have it literally haunting us in the present. >> it would be helpful to show the slides that you have about the generalized principles. >> i am not sure. we asked that some material go out. the advisory council on historic preservation, which is the independent federal agency responsible for advising the president and congress on historic preservation matters, they just came out with their statement, their policy statement on commemorative

works. i was hoping to provide a copy for you as pre-reading and thought it would be linked to the site but i do not think we were able to do that. the advisory council released some principles to advise communities on how to begin thinking about and grappling with the issue of commemorative works, which are offensive and controversial. how to engage the public in determining what would be right for their communities.

this is not only a national issue, it is a local issue. the context on how a my name is placed in a local level may determine a different course than a national policy. but it reconfirmed a commitment to the a chp commitment, the stewardship to these commemorative works, understanding that values do change, the values by which the memorials were placed change through time and overtime. and that there has to be historical context developed on why the monument is placed there as well as the historical facts. they also recognize that not every monument that is placed is historic in nature. we have to determine that historians engage in that process.

is this monument significant? is it deserving of preservation? if it is not, what then does that mean? what are the possibilities? they also determined that no action moving forward can occur without consultation without communities with those affected. with government agencies, with descendent communities, with individuals. so these decisions are not made without the deep connections that communities and individuals

have to these monuments. and, finally, that there are multiple alternatives to how a commemorative work or monument can be treated and that no option fits all. it is the responsibility of each of us, communities, government officials, to determine which is the best treatment alternative for that. finally, they held the position that these debates, the consultation, is a moment for public education. it is a moment to discuss the history of the united states and to learn the lessons and resolve to move forward in whatever way we want to determine as a nation that we need to move forward. >> that is a change from what people might have thoughts five years ago. >> five years ago, i believe, and i am taking off my hat here, i believe the belief that these monuments exist, there was no thoughtful conversation or dialogue about why they exist, or what should be done.

the monuments themselves were rooted in this place where people passed by them without really understanding or necessarily questioning their existence until the events which you enumerated happened, which forced us as a nation, as individuals, to then think about what it means. >> thank you. >> it is critical that we as a historical profession realize that pple doot learn their history from the books we write. they actually learn their history from what we tell them is important.

what we name buildings for, and those monuments. we thought we didn't need heroes in history so we looked at jefferson, and we decided, he might have written these words but in reality if genetic testing is right, he probably took advantage of a young african american woman. we disavowed all of this. this came to me after doing graduate work at princeton i was anti-jefferson. one of my colleagues said he was anti-jefferson because he was a monarchist. i realized then it was more obligated than that. we may not actually need heroes,

but what people see in monuments are role models. and i think that is important. there are so many role models there besides these confederates. there are those white southerners as well as african-americans who fought for the union. >> but there are no monuments to them. >> we need to recognize them. this is the point i am trying to make. it is not just using augmented reality. we can raise monuments. in my hometown in south carolina, he was a longtime president of morehouse college and mentor.

many people see him as an intellectual work the grandfather of the civil rights movement. that little community of grnwood erected the first statue to a person, to this great theologian, this man who saw humanity and its oppressors. we need those alternative role models, not necessarily heroes, we did a good job at saying it is more complicated than that. what you folks have done with 10 center in buford and raise a

monument for reconstruction. no one is calling for commemoration of reconstruction, but the national parks service has done something. it is important to talk about those unsung heroes. there are so many of those. these are extraordinary heroes, black and white, who stood against the grain. i think we need to do those. we have historians need to understand that we have be engaged with public history. that is where people are learning their history. you will not change some names, but you can rename them. we can make progress, we can move forward, we can accept our history and build upon it and do what is right in terms of making a better america. i want to call upon all historians to be involved. we write in our books but only

our children and relatives read them. so let's do more. thank you to all and all the people that work so hard. every local community, i have never seen a community where you do not find those role models the matter where you are. those who stood for the right things. [applause] i have never seen a community where you do not find those the matter where you are, the valley of the shadow, those who stood for the right things. [applause]

>> i am a historian but i do not write monographs. i also live in new orleans and i do a walk by the empty pedestal, the damaged plants, and i see the open wounds, but i do not see talk about them. i do not see talk with one another. i see my role as talking to other people and countering difference. two things that came up that i hope we will spend more time thinking about in terms of context is the parks are protected places. the fact that they are public spaces where there is a sense of stepping out of normalized. denaturalizing these symmetries that we see is the impermanence how that giant experience may lead to more authentic conversations. we should think about this whole notion of stepping out of what seems normal to us both as professionals and experts and as citizens, where we can encounter one another and have these conversations. i do not know if the public spaces as we are thinking about them are the places to have these conversations right now. >> i am new to memphis. that is my home and where i do my work. i feel like there is a few

things we have not touched on. the system that allows this racism and these things to be perpetuated that these monuments are only a symbol of. i have an issue with saying we should have these discussions and not dealing with the issue on the ground. black bodies are not valued as human beings, us glossing on jumping to the confederate conversation without really dwelling in that space. it is really important. as historians. we are here to make connections between past and present. i get to do that every day. but those of you who are more academics dollars have really take some time and look at that. i worked on memorializing the memphis massacre of 1866, but that memorialization happened before shootings in baton rouge and in other areas and before activists in memphis closed down i-40. there is a direct value and relationship between that and 1968 memphis and sanitation workers and the riots that happened. i think it is great that we want

should have these discussions to say that we want to say let's have these conversations but there are some very on the ground realities that us working in the field of history and those historians were partners with us in these challenges are encountering. the statues were taken down this year, but a few days later, we were required to go into work because we had threats against our building because on a twitter and facebook feed which they did not make private, they actually said they took down our monuments, let's take down their monuments. that is a psychological thing that happens working in a place that you value where there is a thought out in the space that is not just this is personal, this means that i have the right to

do violence against another community. they serve as a motivation for people to do harm and seek to do harm. i think we have to dwell with that. i am at an institution that has to have active shooter training now. a lot of us are in those institutions, schools, museums, that means something. i have friends writing articles that have death threats. let's not pretend that there are not people seeking to do harm. it is more of a reality for all of us. we do a disservice to this dialog when we skip over these

things and do not really invoke the fact that these premises and the fact that these premises and he sings we are talking about in this room are fine here, but it serves as motivation for people to do real harm and real threats against those were working in this work. thank you. [applause] i have friends writing articles that have death threats.

let's not pretend that there are not people seeking to do harm. it is more of a reality for all of us. we do a disservice to this dialog when we skip over these things and do not really invoke the fact that these premises and he sings we are talking about in this room are fine here, but it serves as motivation for people to do real harm and real threats against those were working in this work. thank you. [applause] >> i would point out this was the intention of this sort of comment all along. thank you for that. >> thank you for that. i will make two quick points. one, i absolutely agree with what you are saying. there is a fallacy in the historical profession in which somehow, even if we acknowledge

the new questions that emerged in the present, that somehow by strictly striving for a certain kind of conventional methodological rigor, people are constantly enging with it on the ground today. unless we can grapple with that, that conceit, that conceit of the profession, public history will also be perceived as a lesser form of history or as a history that is like the educators at a museum who deal with the public. it is really through those engagements through those deep engagements in which people are with the public and a variety of ways. not always agree and, at often times in the front line of real conflict, that it actually forces us to deal with the questions and the archives all

the more sharply. of course there are eruptions that ripple across national conscience and then we try to deal with them but every day in all localities or are these eruptions going on and it is easy to not quite grapple with them. the other thing i wanted to say is i do feel it is important to acknowledge the ongoing impacts of eugenics and scientific racism. that continues to haunt us today and continues to reappear and smack us around. unless we grapple with that, the irony for example of not just of course the dispossession of longer history, but of exclusion, japanese, chinese

exclusion, but italian-americans, and jewish-americans, mediterranean-europeans, being disappeared from 1924 to 1968. for that not to be understood and known by those committees and then have them take on the positions of takg the side of a history that actually denies their own history. that is fairly basic, but how are we grappling with that? those are clearly deeply violent and violating. i appreciate your bringing that very real question up. >> she is right. therein lies the problem, the element of this that defenders of these monuments often miss, they do not hear that.

they do not hear that these are symbols of violence against our communities, against fellow americans. consequently, what we see, what is so fascinating to me, we are seeing as these public sphere monuments are being questioned, we are seeing not only this rise, this continuing rise of these movements, but the threats. they are going on to public americans. property and erecting these 30, 40 foot tall poles, putting up confederate battle flag's along the interstate. they are just symbols of our pride and our flag, but they are also symbols of terrorism. i don't care wre it's from. i can tell you that because as a child traveling with my family, those flags were warnings to my family about where we could and could not go. even if i intellectually understand it, now, and i can

distinguish them, there is an inherent emotional response to those things along my drive that i now have to explain to my children. the fact that those statuary are representative of that, you cannot, yes, violence can be bestowed on you at any time and the mentality that white americans told themselves about black and brown bodies are what perpetuate the crimes against black and brown bodies today. it seems to me as historians, we need you. they are going on to public property and erecting these 30, 40 foot tall poles, putting up confederate battle flag's along the interstate. they are just symbols of our pride and our flag, but they are also symbols of terrorism.

i don't care where it's from. i can tell you that because as a child traveling with my family, those flags were warnings to my family about where we could and could not go. even if i intellectually understand it, now, and i can distinguish them, there is an inherent emotional response to those things along my drive that i now have to explain to my children. the fact that those statuary are representative of that, you cannot, yes, violence can be bestowed on you at aime an the mentality that white americans told themselves about black and brown bodies are what perpetuate the crimes against black and brown bodies today. it seems to me as historians, we need you. those of you in the public sphere. we are having these conversations with our audience every day. i will tell you for our institution, we do not have the luxury of spending five or 10 or

12 years putting up a museum or a gallery. we need to do it now, which means we have to be engaged with you constantly to make sure the questions we are bringing our questions you can respond to to help us have these morning nuanced conversations that you want on the field. because they are not happening. not in this day and age of self curated content. [applause] i am telling you right now the discipline, we see it on twitter all the time, these folks think that before we have digitized these archives tt they can go in and find exactly what they want to refute your years of work. that is what we deal with on the frontline constantly.

and so, to get folks in this sort of multi-disciplinary conversation around the meaning of all of this in the american lexicon is really a challenge. at the same time, i want to come back to the comment that the gentleman made about we need heroes. i am not sure we need heroes, oh, role models, we need role models. what we need is a truth. not a truth, but the ability to understand that greatness is within us even if we are not great. that for me, is why jefferson will always be a hero to me. i know that sounds really weird. [laughter] i went through a cycle with this man. he put his hands on that baby! i went through all of that. at the end of the day, he gave a value of two other americans that were denied this principle in the things that he wrote. that we as americans pushed the meanings of those words. for me, he does not fall into

the same pot as the guy who wrote the articles of secession or the guy who wrote the very distinct notations in the confederate constitution. what they are advocating in their language is not something that brings about our better nature, in my view. i think that a lot of people do understand and can appreciate nuance like that. we just have to continue the conversation and we have to understand that we have to restructure, at least what i am seeing on the ground, and i saw it in detroit, what we are seeing is people really wanting to understand their place. they are real and valid connections about what these things mean. they are questioning be things and they are not questioning them because of what they believed at the time, they are questioning what they have continued to symbolize in their lives. i think that is a very valid

thing to do. that just makes our jobs that much harder. stay in the game, come out of the archives, come talk to us, and engage with these folks. it is a wonder. i can guarantee when you do that it will change the way you think about teaching but the way you think about writing your work when you engage the public. there is proof of that in the studies we are doing. you have to get out there. sorry. [laughter] >> hi, thank you so much. this has been an incredible conversation. i want to push back against the last comment.

i hear you saying in the perspective of a public historian, we need you. i hear you making this compelling taste that historians will benefit from reaching out to the public. i want to flip that. i kind of think that we need to talk about the moral and ethical responsibility of academic historians to reach out to public historians. i do not think you should be in the position of having to sell us on white we should do this for our own self-interest or the prestige of the profession or how our writing will benefit.

i do not think we talk about the ethics of what comes from the knowledge we accrue and the research we do. respectfully, i disagree. >> thank you.

>> no rush. >> i am a california historian. i want to talk about public art in the city of san jose. a very interesting town. san jose decayed after world war ii as a subdivision proliferated. when the mayor tried to erect a

statue of his ancestors, an anglo conqueror of san jose, the hispanic community would not put up with it. and so, because it is a new downtown, the mobilized power of people of color, there is a lot of economic inequality. the courthouse has a release that commemorates the japanese-american experience. so, the most public art reflects the character of the community in a very positive way. i think it is a tribute of what mobilized communities of color can do. >> thank you. all of these statues and body the structure of power at the

time they were put up. and the structure of power is changing. these are conversations we will have. people did not have these conversations, they will have them now. i want to use this moment since we have write this report very soon. the idea of accrual or addition, displacement or disappearance, some people think as long as a confederate statue exists that no other additions can possibly counter them. and yet, we hear historians also believing that maybe the statues that exist can stand to be taught people about the injustice that they embody. that is the thing that i do not really know what to think about.

the we let people see what previous generations did and explain why? or do you think they radiate such a kind of message of injustice that they need to be removed? do we have to remove things in order to have a better system? >> it is my feeling that if new york city in the stories that it tells through its parks and the context of the monuments in the city parks, and the way it thinks about landmarks, and the stories it tells about not just the immigration story which is what new york city likes to say it is about, but also slavement. if that is the public spirit we are working with my question changes of keeping it there.

without that being there, how do we then take sure the context was really there? the scholarship is largely there, and it is getting better because of the new social history, the new social history, the new labor history. the scholarship is getting better because american history is being internationalized, from the corollary to the san jose example. the pushes and pulls of what happens in that town square.

scholarship has gotten better because we are no longer simply talking about not just an anglo-american history, the more we get caribbean scholars for example, power, and the making of histo, e re you get more rigorous relational history about america and the caribbean, that forces american historians of how more rigorous our history has to be. we are also, just in the context

of latinos and haitians, the foreign part of it and the war part of it it's dropped out and we focus on that domestic agenda. that is not where dr. king was going, he was aware of more global policies. from the vietnam to the wars that we are fighting now. the questions of violence have sort of disappeared. in the same way we knew the

violence was there durg the vietnam war, we were constantly reminded during the vietnam war, now, there are policies that have tipped it farther from our consciousness. to disconnect the two means we are not understanding the phenomenon of orientalism for example. that is still such a powerful force in the way contemporary american foreign-policy is being waged right now. >> i would encourage you to look online. i will quickly show you what i am talking about. there are some values and guidelines that we came up with

that are a little different than how the national park service did them. i feel this was the best part of what came out of our deliberation. we talked about these five values that need to be part of the criteria of evaluating current monuments, markers, and public arts, but all future monuments and markers. each one has its own definition.

each one, you will see, kind of builds on the other. it actively tries to grapple with this additive language. if you add more monuments, that might address these questions, but it does not deal with them. the question of power and complexity and relationality and intersectional natures of how power operates, these are all things that as historians, now with the women's march, it comes out through feminism -- decades ago. these are the criteria. we are proud of the criteria we came up with. but how to operationalize them, especially with a $6 million capital fund, that is not going to build enough additional monuments to begin to counter what is already there, to be able to balance them out. that is a deeper challenge. i do not think augmented reality

is a solution but i do believe we have to democratize and have far more perspectives that are rigorous out there. right now, as sed to spending $6 million on two monuments i think there can be more stories that are facilitated i these other social media platrms. -- by these other social media platforms. i do not think it should be either/or, but we have to think about that strategy as well. [applause] [captioning performed by the national captioning institute, which is responsible for its caption content and accuracy. visit ncicap.org] [captions copyright national cable satellite corp. 2018] >> one thing we have seen israel need each other. so good evening.

[indistinct conversations] you are watching american history tv, 48 hours of programming every weekend on c-span3. follow us on twitter for information on our schedule and to keep up with the latest history news. >> h we american artifacts that each week american artifacts take you to historic places and museums. to biltmore, the largest home in america. the curator of interpretation led us through the main level of the 175,000 square foot home. we also learned about the .andscape design this is about 25 minutes.