confederate monuments and their place in society. a comments from an audience of historians on whether the monuments should remain, be taken down, or contextualized. the organization of american 90-minute hosted this event at their headquarters in sacramento, california. >> good evening, everybody. extra credit for everybody who is coming here at night. we will put it on your permanent record that you were here tonight. your attending the plenary committee of both organizations. they imagined what would be most useful for the oah and they

helped inspire this and put it together. we are very grateful to spencer and christina. 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 find a way 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. turkiya, would you like to begin? >> good evening. i am chief historian of the national park service and deputy preservation officer. as many of you know, the national park service is the 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. we also administer the national register of historic places, which is the list of sites, buildings, structures, historic districts, and objects which illustrate american history. within the national register, we have listed the national landmarks, which are those historic resources that are nationally significant and have a high degree of integrity. not only do we manage and steward the national park sites, we also provide technical assistance with preservation and interpretation of local historic sites through the national

register and national historic landmarks program. >> my name is christy s. coleman. i am c.e.o. of the american civil war museum in richmond, virginia where i have served for , 10 years now. five years ago, we created this institution by merging the american civil war center with the museum of the confederacy. created a new 501(c)(3) to do that. and it came in the midst of the sesquicentennial in 2013. prominencee combined of the two organizations really pushed us into the conversation not just in richmond, but we were starting to get calls first about the meaning of the confederate flag.

what people refer to as the confederate flag. and then, the murders in charleston really set things off. in a very short period of time, we were thrust into the conversation nationally, not just in richmond. this past summer, i was asked to serve as cochair for richmond 's monument avenue commission to look at how could, and should the city of richmond respond. ,we were given simple mandates. first, to consider what contextualization might look like and mean. and number two, to consider what other historic figures could be placed there.

unfortunately after the events of charlottesville, the mandate expanded. the mayor and a number of voices in the community said you have to also look at what removal would mean, in richmond. i will leave it there for now. [laughter] >> good evening. my name is jack chen -- jack tchen. 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 with chinatown. but the chinatown they are the money with is not historically accurate. coming out of that, i have been looking at new york city history. i teach at new york university. just this past summer, mayor

bill de blasio set up a commission to look at public art , monuments, and markers. he gave 90 days to do that. it was an impossible task that was set up. to his credit, he wanted to do something. at the same time, he immediately started talking about removing certain markers on columbus circle. that immediately caused a media -- furor. in the process of those meetings it became clear whether those monuments state or not, there was a deeper issue the city was not addressing. a number of us began pointing that out. mustre talking about how

we had a larger context of how the city talked about itself, that actually these free-floating discussions with did not have anything to anchor. out of that, the co-chair, darren walker, asked a few of us to serve in the organization. i will be happy to talk about that. house want to say i will be starting a new position at records in newark and i have been 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 of mt. 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 the future is really with the surveillance devices that we carry with us all the time. certainly, wearable technology. and i think it is something that the public and students can get deeply involved in if we then think about how to present this work in a provocative and effective way to get more people drawn into these questions and understand what the stakes are. >> thank you. you can see we have people of expertise. ed ayers.rors -- i am

i have some skin in the game as well. my job tonight is to be moderator. -- and wectured structured 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. the confederate memorialization issue will open up into other issues. most people know this history but just to remind ourselves, and as historians, this debate has been going on for a while. this has been going on for a while with scholars. but it burst into visibility after the shooting in south carolina in june of 2016. it feels like it has been forever since we are now in

2016. 2018. the shooter was shown with the confederate flag. the mayor of new orleans ordered the removal of an obelisk confederate statue, you remember the crane removing lee's statue. you remember the mayor's powerful speech that was widely praised as the removal was denounced by others. in august 2017, a rally focused its unite the right events around the statues of lee. the consequences of that group stretch beyond confederate memorials. zi regalia and hate speech put the confederate

statues in the national spotlight once again. a young protester from charlottesville was killed by a man running his car into a crowd. this led to impassioned conversation about the over 700 other confederate monuments in the united states. dozens of communities have already removed these statues from brooklyn to los angeles, from wisconsin to louisville. the hundreds of statues still remaining, most of them in the south, are the subject of great debate and discussion. they are entangled in law and politics as well as in historical memory and identity. the problem is not going away. so we thought this would be an opportunity to discuss the issue among the historians that have a special role to play in thinking about the best way forward. in our discussion, we will

also consider the meaning of the shooting of stefan clark in and issues of justice. we will talk about other forms of memorialization and what kind of principles might guide us going forward and look at other bodies who have wrestled 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? >> i can tell you what we have heard. since we began this process in richmond, we have received well over 1300 letters that have been put on to our website.

number of public 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 the honorable man. you know, 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 love to say lee taught his slaves to read, so it could not have been about slavery. >> [indiscernible] >> but i'm telling you they all say lee. you are right. lee freed his slaves, and then jackson teaches them to read in

sunday school, so there is this whole piece around this. and then there is the other thing we hear, that there is vindication and familial connection, that is the part that gets really messy. i have said this publicly before in listening to some of these folks. this idea that you can love your drunk uncle, but let's not pretend they were not an alcoholic. what is happening is they are embodying their ancestor in these figures. so these figures sort of become

the over arching familial relationship. the familial sacrifice. that is how those who are in support of these monuments and leaving them as they are feel. that is what we have gleaned from the public comment both written and in person. and 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 it in the period, but we do not talk about the stages of grief and the way communities come through these -- or not andt what they do to rebuild themselves. and that is what those of us on the public side 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. and these two sides do not hear each other because they are expressing through places of pain. i will stop there. is that what you wanted? >> of course, there is the myth of somehow the north was much better than the south. so from the vantage of new york city and newark, it is a real timesnge to see how many immigrants in the north have really embraced certain kinds of narratives about what the civil

war is about that have also really in some ways denied a deeper complicity and implications of what it meant to be a citizen of new york city or of newark. there is a clear pattern in the mapping we have been doing working with eric sanderson. many of you are familiar with his book in which he has mapped the five boroughs from the if we were to look at 1609. 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 were transferred under various devices, trickery and otherwise. rutgers, people like who had a large parcel of land

immediately brought in slaves and enslaved people to work it. then he quickly transferred into the landlord business. it is the new york city story of the $24 in some ways. and 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 constantly challenged. and it does get back to the issue of trauma and unresolved trauma. marion hirsch has look at trauma during the holocaust and has developed a concept of post memory. are reached, we traumatizing and

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 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 the public. i think the deeper questions that require deep cultural and cross-cultural understandings and to create spaces in which that can happen are matters we are grappling with, but oftentimes in the concept of commission. with a 90-day commission especially, there is actually no time for the process to happen. how do we learn from that and ?reate these processes

this is not new. a lot of us have been doing this for a long time. how do we learn best practices and begin to engage best practices? how do we understand the similarity across different locations and also the particular configurations in which these issues are embedded? the fact that italian-americans on staten island organized very strongly to protect their identification with columbus is not so different in many ways than the other kinds of investments that people have made. i think we need to understand those deeper 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 and in theions of memories 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. so, we grapple with the multiple perspectives by which the monuments express themselves. not only as the event themselves but also as the re-creation of the event, the imagining of the event. and we grapple with that issue as well because what is one person's art 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. >> i would say what we see in richmond is that these statues have accrued meanings over the years. we find some people saying they love the monument because it is so beautiful. we have the 10k run there and all those kinds of things. the people are so many layers removed even from the intentions of the people who built it, much less the people who memorialized it, that pulling these things apart is one of the challenges and things historians are good at. thinkas going to say i one of the things were there is some distinction is 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 front of courthouses. ,n the case of monument avenue and i find his conversation interesting this is centered in , a neighborhood, a wealthy neighborhood, and it was built to be that. but there has not yet been a larger conversation about what we do with all the other confederate statuary that is throughout richmond that is not in a cemetery or in a battlefield. because 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. right? that becomes a bit trickier. far trickier. [laughter] >> [indiscernible] >> 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 defined. and of course, we have to acknowledge the history of wealth and power in the constitution of these spaces. i think in our deliberations in new york, but i think is true in

so many places there is always , going to be that tension being played out. i think ultimately part of what the north and south and east and west and midwest 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 that. and moments such as these do that. in some ways, it is an opportunity for historians to 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

of that now. that is part of the challenge. denormatizing, we have to understand the issues of enslavement are shared with issues of new york as well as the disposition of native peoples. >> right here, 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 is a microphone for you to stand up to an answer. there are still some seats in the front for those of you are standing in the back.

it looks so good on c-span if all the seats are filled. you would be serving a public purpose if you would do that as well. is there anyone who would like to explain it are analytica or from their own perspective why they think the statues speak to them as something that needs to be maintained? there is not. step to the microphone. 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 are really of americana period history, but that those monuments present opportunities to teach. i do not see them as garish figures that look, usually they are generals. and i have not yet met a southern general that harms me. 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. but 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 use the fact that i was looking at my phone and i could not remember the number of

japanese that were killed in the battle of iwo jima. there were 19,000 casualties. the marine corps lost 20,000 marines and sailors in that battle. have aington, d.c., we tremendous monument to the sacrifices of those people who raised the flag. are we going to tear that one down? those 19,000 japanese soldiers and sailors who lost their lives, they were parents, they were sons, they were part of japanese culture. and where 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.

costlier than vietnam, the gulf war that i fought in, more costly than world war i. the american civil war was our bloodiest battle. and 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. >> are there other people that would like to speak to an explanation? yes, sir. >> i think sometimes as an historian, i think back on monuments that people from long ago tore down of the regime that was there before them. and i have often thought how horrible that was because we

as an historian, it would be wonderful to 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. and 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 of saying take them down or leave them up is that 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 i think that 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. >> thank you. two great comments. [applause] any others? maybe i will start with you, christy, since you have done extensive research. what is the topology of the rationale for removing them? what do you hear the most? : one is they are not just a symbol of a past, but they are a symbol of an ongoing mentality and behavior of a

it is a continual reminder of that. injustice. that's one part of it. the other part is this other argument which i'm sure you heard. whether you think it's valid or not is really irrelevant. it's what people are feeling. is that we have allowed traitors to dot our landscape, people who fought against the united states of america and the fact that we allowed these statues to go up is a reflection of white privilege

and white supremacy. recently we attended some members of the commission 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 voted to the legislature in virginia. in the same year that the virginia legislature was assigning 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. he had the material right there with his ancestry, 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 strict. the promise of citizenship was stripped. and the more of that stripping that took place the more monuments went up. it is no mistake in virginia during massive resistance that so many new monuments went up and schools were named after these confederates in defiance f brown v. boor.

>> one of the critiques 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 emind ourselves and the park

service that we are telling the whole story that we are contextualizing with historical acts 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 we --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 aware -- 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

onuments within our national parks unless directed by congress, but that we would be ommitted 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 >> 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 mark is exist -- 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 he chinese section. it turns ut 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 hat place. so, it is hard to talk about taking away and putting back, it is tough to alk 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 ypology. 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 s any place in the country that cries to be memorials to black troops is fort pillow.

thaddeus stevens'house was lmost erased to be replaced by convention center and only drew 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 ffect to bring more to the surface >> i found widespread belief hat we need more history rather than less. >> there is also a raising -- 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 ould 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, enrichment -- in richmond, here is this interesting mix of people that have been

talking about it and this idea of what if we met -- we made ichmond 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 astill 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 ust 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 pecific 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 rchmond 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

>> 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 the right -- 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.

s 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 ction 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 here 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 e 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 ere, i believe the belief that these monuments exist, there was no thoughtful conversation

or dialogue about why they exist, or what should be done. he monuments themselves were rooted in this place where eople 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 people do not 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 ooked 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 ntellectual work the randfather of the civil rights

ovement. that little community of greenwood erected the first 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. this is important. during the says quentin neil, someone said -- says quentin neil -- 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 -- no matter matter where you are. those who stood for the right things. [applause] >> i am a historian but i do not write monographs. [laughter] i also live in new orleans and i do a walk by the empty pedestal, the broken columns, 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 am a citizen and resident. 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 normal life may send us to where we will have these conversations. that is important. denaturalizing these asymmetries that we see is the impermanence

how that experience may lead to more authentic conversations. i am hoping, rather than picking up strategies of depletion, we can think of the 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 am not sure the public spaces as we are thinking about them are the places to have these conversations right now. >> thank you. other comments. yes? i am new to memphis. that is where i make my home and where i do my work. i feel like there is a few things we have not touched on. that is 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. i have an issue with invoking stuff on clark -- stephon clark and saying black bodies are not valued as human beings, us glossing on jumping to the confederate conversation without really dwelling in that space. it is important as historians. we are here to make connections between past and present. in my position at the national civil rights museum, i get to do that every day. but those of you who are more academic scholars 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 tie between people making statements about the values of the black bodies 1866 and dignities to reconstruction in memphis, a relationship between that and 1968 memphis and sanitation workers and the riots that happened. i think it is great that we want 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 reason why on december 20 of this year, on my birthday, the statues were taken down this year, but a few days later, we 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 familiar,- this is this means that i have the right to do violence against another community. i am concerned in this dialogue that we deny the acts of violence. these monuments and public spaces, the things that happen serve as a motivation for people to do harm and seek to do harm. we have to dwell with that. -- i amn the cetacean 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 colleagues who write

articles that have death threats. let's not pretend that there are not people seeking to do harm. what does that mean for us? something people do not consider 20-30 years ago but 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 these things 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 appreciate it. 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 -- that that is a superior history to people are constantly engaging 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. i think it is really through those engagements through those

deep engagements in which people are with the public and a variety of ways. not always agreeing, 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 is the master discourse in american history 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. right? for that not to be understood and known by those communities and then have them take on the positions of taking 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. they continue to weigh the violence on us today. i appreciate your bringing that very real question up. >> she is right. [laughter] >> of coarse she is. >> 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, or taken down, we are seeing not only this rise, this continuing present --ays been now emboldened around these thoughts and implicit threats. corridor, 95, they are around everywhere. andgers going onto property erecting these 30, 40 foot tall poles, putting up confederate battle flags along the interstate. they are just symbols of our pride and our flag, but they are also symbols of terrorism. i don't care if it is the army

of northern virginia or whoever. i don't care. 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, the lies 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. 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 more 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 because we have digitized these archives that 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. i would argue that 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 -- did you read the notes? he put his hands on that baby! i went through all of that. at the end of the day, he gave a value that other americans 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. whether provisional or final. 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 at colonial waynesburg and -- colonial williamsburg and in detroit, what we are seeing is people really wanting to understand their place. they are making real and valid connections about what these things mean.

they are questioning these 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. in a protected space, it makes -- and not protected space, it 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. ivory tower historians. i hear you making this compelling case that ivory tower 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 why we should do this for our own self-interest or the prestige of the profession or how our writing will benefit. we talk about ethics of oral history so that everybody is benefited. i do not think we talk about the ethics of history a large and the responsibilities that come

from the knowledge we have any research we do. respectfully, i disagree. >> ok. thank you. >> i have a comment. >> yes? no rush. >> i want to talk about -- 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 subdivisions proliferated. as downtown was rebuilt and redeveloped in the last 20 years, by that time, san jose as roughly a third hispanic, a third asian-american, a third anglo.

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. at the heart of downtown is a plaza where there is a monument to -- that leads from cesar chavez plaza to san jose state university which has statutes of tommie smith and john carlos. because there is no anglo hegemony in this community, and because it is a new downtown, be mobilized power of people of color, there are plenty of problems, a lot of economic inequality that the public art, i should also say that the -- itouse has

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 embodybody e thatm -- 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. a theme i want to use to help think through because we have to write the report soon. the idea of accretion or accrual or addition, which people see as the easiest way out.

about 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 violence and injustice that they embody. that is the thing that i do not really know what to think about. do we let people see what previous generations did and explain why? or do they radiate such a kind of message of injustice that they need to be removed? i will start with the panel.

addition a model or do you have to remove things to begin ecosystem?ealthier >> 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 -- my answer of keeping it changes. without that being there, how do we make 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. also, the scholarship is getting better because american history is being internationalized, from the corollary to the san jose example. not only are more people democratically a part of the decision-making and the pushes and pull of what happens in the town square. but 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, the person who wrote the book about the silencing of the past.

power, and the making of history. the more 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 can no longer be simply making of a domestic history, the way we have been talking today. latinosontext of how and haitians get racialized. the foreign part of it and the war part of it it's dropped out and we focus on that domestic civil rights 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. we know the violence is there. in the same way we knew the

violence was there during the vietnam war, we were constantly reminded during the vietnam war, now, there are policies that have kept it 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. >> confederate statues erased violence at the heart of the war. like everybody sitting around at a horse show. i did not give you a chance to comment. anything you want to say? theo online to look at mayor's commission on the public art.

i will show you what i am talking about quickly. 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. this is an edited and compressed version. 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 will somehow 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 -- in how do we begin to engage with these complex questions that ultimately have to deal with justice? these are the criteria. we are all proud of the criteria we came up with. but how to actually operationalize them, especially with a six-point a la capital fund, right -- with a $6 million capital fund, right? 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 buthe all-purpose solution, i do believe we have to democratize, and have far more perspectives that are rigorous out there. and for me right now, that, as opposed to spending $6 million on two monuments, i think there can be more stories that are facilitated by these other social media platforms. i don't think it should be either/or, but we have to think about that strategy as well. [applause] >> thanks, everyone. embodied thee theme of the conference. one thing we have seen his we all need each other to make each other as good as we can be. good evening. i look for to seeing everybody tomorrow.

>> this week marks the 50th anniversary of the assassination of robert of kennedy. >> these last few weeks, robert francis kennedy was enjoying himself. he really enjoyed eating out among the people. he enjoyed the physical contact. he refused protection because he said all the people wanted to do was touch him, not to hurt him. >> this weekend on railamerica on american history tv, watch the cbs news report from june 6, 1968, the night robert kennedy died from gunshot wounds. >> they quickly decided to transfer him to good samaritan hospital or the facilities were better for brain surgery. mrs. kennedy was with him all of the time writing in the in thece -- riding ambulance.

police back to the ballroom at hotel. some of the police have to protect him from the crowd. to theere people close stereo and there was concern for the suspect's safety. >> much railamerica, sunday at 4:00 p.m. eastern on american history tv on c-span three -- on c-span3. weekend on american history tv, legal historian jill norgren discusses her book "stories from trailblazing women lawyers," based on the transcripts from oral interviews with senior women lawyers. here's a preview. trailblazers who attended law school with no or few other women. some were ignored. others befriended. for the most part, there were so

few of them that nobody bothered to talk to them. this changed in the vietnam and nine period mama schools except more women. some women in this study and women that i know personally who are lawyers also reported being poked and criticized by other male law students for taking a man's place. a man who would need to support his family. is not ininton, who this particular project, in her memoir, what happened rights that when she and a friend went to take the lsat in 1968, a group of men harassed them before the exam, saying why don't you go home and get married? one report said, if you take my spot at law school, i will get drafted and i will go to vietnam, and i will die.

and then she had to sit down and take the lsat. watch the entire program in 2:30 p.m. eastern on sunday. american history tv, only on c-span3. week, american artifacts takes you to museums and historic places to learn about american history. we traveled to north carolina totour biltmore, the largest home in america. leslie klingner, curator of interpretation, let us through the main level of the 175,000 square foot home. we also learned about the landscape design of the 8000 acre property in which biltmore sits. this is about 25 minutes. welcome to biltmore in nashville, north carolina. we are in america's