upcoming programs. @cspanhistory. next, on american history tv, a conversation between librarian of congress carla hayden and smithsonian secretary lonnie bunch about how cultural institutions can come to the country's aid during difficult times. the library of congress provided this video. carla: hello. i'm carla hayden, the librarian of congress, and welcome to a very special edition of national book festival presents. as many of you know and have experienced, this week, our country is facing many, many challenges, and the continuing struggle for human rights, civil rights, and freedom dates back to our founding. and cultural institutions like libraries and museums are

offering historical context but also re-examining and continuing to look at how we present history and information to our publics and making sure that we are part of a solution on the road and not part of the problem. so i am honored tonight and today to be joined by the secretary of the smithsonian institution, dr. lonnie bunch. he is also and was the founding director of the national museum of african-american history and culture, and, as a librarian, my first purchase, very recently, with online was his new book, "a fool's errand: creating the national museum of african american history and culture in the age of bush, obama, and trump." and so we appreciate you, dr.

bunch, for being with us today, and we have a lot of things we would like to cover. i hope you feel free to ask me a few questions too, but i really know that people have been very interested in your perspective on what is going on. and when we planned this, we had the health crisis that was going on. since that time, another crisis and movement. you released a statement. if you wouldn't mind, i'd like to just read it. although it will be a monumental task, the past is replete with examples of ordinary people working together to overcome seemingly insurmountable challenges. history is a guide to a better future and demonstrates that we can become a better society, but

only if we collectively demand it from each other and from institutions responsible for administering justice. why did you think it was important for the public at this time to hear from cultural leaders like yourself? lonnie: i would argue that the library of congress, the smithsonian, cultural institutions are the glue that holds the culture together. they're the place that people look to for trust and for guidance, and i thought it was really important to use that trust to help people find ways to understand this moment, to find some optimism, maybe some

moment that we can't say we've had a million of these in the past and this too shall pass. but, rather, i was hoping to say this was a time to be able to have a tipping point in america where we can really come together as a country and address what has always been the great chasm, race and institutional racism. carla: now, you said always been, and does that really -- i've heard you talk about the need to not erase history but to embrace it and look at it understand what is going on. lonnie: i think that, just like you do, you know, the past is such a valuable tool.

on the one hand, people say, is this a unique moment? there are unique characteristics, but it's not a unique moment. whether one goes back to the violence and sense of loss of enslavement or one looks at the kinds of lynchings that went on in the late 19th and early 20th century or the riots that destroyed places like the black downtown of tulsa, oklahoma almost 100 years ago, what you see is a constant struggle between democracy and fairness and discrimination and violence to enforce that. so this is part of a long history, and you and i could name so many names of bodies of people who are not here because they ran afoul of the criminal justice system and racism in this country. but what i also wanted people to understand is that this is a moment where you are seeing things a little different. you are seeing not only a multiracial group of people protesting to help people understand that this is not a black problem, it is an american problem. and then you are also seeing, at least for me, the first time seeing police chiefs, police officers, saying wait a minute, that was wrong. so there is a kind of -- hopefully a tipping point where people come together and recognize that the past should give you some hope. if people could work together to found the naacp or work together to end slavery, then we can work together to begin to address this as well.

so i find hope in history, not always optimism, but i find hope in history. and i think you must feel the same way based on sort of, you know, what you are doing at the library of congress. carla: and that hope from history by -- the hope comes from sometimes seeing that positive things did come out of very negative situations, when you think about the naacp and 1918, 1919 and what was going on there and why things were happening. that is the hope that comes from history. lonnie: i think so. i think that, in some ways, one of the strengths of looking back in history is to realize at many places where the country became fair, many places where the country began to live up to its stated ideals was because of an

african-american experience. it was sort of the end of slavery helped us redefine and expand our notions of citizenship so that in essence what you see is a community that believed in an america that often did not believe in it. and that i think the great strengths now is to draw from the strength of the past and recognize that we can struggle together and we can make changes, but recognizing that what the past tells us is this is not a sprint. it is a marathon. carla: in your book, you mentioned that concept of african-american history being american history and how you really were able to weave that into discussions about what that museum should be. lonnie: i thought it was really important. when people ask me, should i come back to run the -- build the new museum, i thought, you know, because we have 50 years of scholarship from john hope

franklin and du bois and all these wonderful, new, young scholars, i realized that african-american history was too important to just be in the hands of an african-american community. that it really had lessons for all americans and it really profoundly shaped everything who we are. if you look at every presidential election, at some point, race was involved, going back to the very beginning. what i wanted to do was to help people realize that understanding african-american history is the best way you could understand america and understand yourself. so i didn't want people to think this was somebody else's story. i wanted them to see how this was the quintessential american what i wanted to do was to help story and that they don't understand themselves without understanding that story. carla: do you see that concept materializing now in where we are with this point and seeing the diversity? lonnie: i think that's right. i mean, that's where i'm hopeful.

when you see civil rights marches, you see an integrated group, but it is overwhelmingly african-american. here, you are seeing a sort of more blended group, and that gives me hope that people are crossing racial lines to begin to recognize that this is a time that we need to address this because enough is enough. so i am not naive enough to think a march is going to change things, but my hope is that this begins to create a boil of heat that begins to touch everybody from political leaders of all parts of the country, that corporate communities think what they can do, but really, people like you leading major institutions can also help us think how do these institutions help a country at a time when it is really in the greatest need? carla: what has been inspiring

for me is the fact that so many of the people that are part of this now are younger and that they are realizing, oh my goodness, i can -- looking back, when you think about john lewis who was only, what, 21 when he put on that backpack and marched across that bridge and now they are realizing they can have a role and just the march of history. i also want to ask you about the impact of the image, being able to see things now. we went together, the library of congress and the museum, to purchase the first known photographs of harriet tubman, and it was used in the film, and it gave people a different perspective about her because

you saw her not long after she had done all of the things that we had heard in history. when you see the older pictures, she's -- but when you see that picture, and frederick douglass, the most photographed person. and then back to john lewis and the images that america saw of the violence in the police. what do you -- could you talk about that role of seeing things? lonnie: i think that, in some ways, the great strength is the marriage of the written word, good scholarship, good books, and the visual, whether it's a photograph or artifact, because what that does is immediately makes it accessible to people. you see an image and it is transformative, and i think your notion, when we went into the harriet tubman image, that was -- to me, that was transformative. i had only seen images of her as this older woman kind of bent over, and it was hard to imagine harriet tubman, you know, moses

leading people for freedom. but then, when you saw that picture, we discovered there's a look in her eye. there was a style. carla: there was style. lonnie: for me, imagery is really what helped history come alive to me. you know, i first got interested in history looking at old photographs as a little kid, wondering, what were their lives like? were they happy? were they treated fairly? for me, photographs and the visual literacy that we can help america have is so important because it really then builds upon the amazing scholarship in the written word. i've always thought that, if i ever had one of those formal portraits ever painted, i'd have a book in one hand and a photograph in the other. carla: that's right. i remember those same types of experiences, looking at old photographs, family photographs and one that has been interesting and i don't know if you have had this experience

recently of older generations telling you about things that relate to what is happening now. one of the first photographs i remember being horrified about and wondering was of seeing my mother's brother in a casket at this big funeral. and as a child, we thought, oh, that was just fascinating. my brother who -- we call him a brother. he's a cousin now and he's a photographer and that was one of his first memories. but it brought back the reason why so many people were in helena, arkansas at that funeral was because he was shot by the white owner of a -- in 1941 -- of a grocery store, who shot him because he was attractive to the shop owner's daughter. lonnie: ah, yes.

carla: ok. the same thing. 1941, and they claimed he committed suicide and he didn't. and for years, that has been there and my mother, in watching the events now, she's 88 now, talked about justice and that maybe, finally, that you could get that. and you have had that experience, i know, looking back and having older people talk about it. lonnie: it is simply amazing. my mom is 92, right, and so you hear her suddenly look at an image and she will talk about how a relative of hers was run out of woodland, north carolina for eyeing somebody he shouldn't have eyed, right? and you suddenly realize that it is that imagery that allows those stories to come forward, that you might not be able to get people to do that. but what it also is is something that moves me about working with you, and that is it is ok to say how much our personal experiences shape us.

i know that you have had these experiences around issues of race and gender that have really sort of inspired you, shaped you, angered you, moved you, so i'd be curious, i'd be curious, what are the things in your own life that have kind of shaped you to where you are today? carla: and you can see i'm in just one room of my house, and every room, except the restrooms, has reading material because i'm a child of books. i was made by books, and one of my earliest experiences, and i've brought it here because -- was seeing myself for the first time in a book. something that i loved so much, books and reading, but i never saw any person that looked like me and that was something, but also as a person of color, coming from the tradition in this country of denying people

of color the right to read -- frederick douglass talks about that so eloquently. once you learn to read, you will be forever free. that has resonated with me -- the power. there's a reason they did not want slaves to read. there was a reason you had to limit literacy. lonnie: the ability to imagine a world yet discovered is part of what of comes out of reading. as you are trying to control people, the one thing you don't want them to do is to imagine possibilities. so, like you, i was fascinated by reading as a kid, partly because i grew up in a neighborhood where, until high school, there were no other black kids in the school. so it meant that my brother and i went to the school by ourselves. it was a town in north jersey, and what i remember is sort of trying to figure out why some people treated me fairly and some people didn't. and reading became my way to do

this. it's funny. something happened the other day. literally yesterday, somebody that i went to high school with sent me a story he had written about what had happened with us that at our high school graduation -- he was white and i'm black. at our high school graduation, we went to a party, and when the mother of the daughter came out, she kicked me out of the party. black people shouldn't be at the party. and i had forgotten about it, and he talked about how that turned him to think about fairness and social justice. growing up in that town, i think more than anything else, it stimulated my interest in learning more about african-american history but it also stimulated my interest in using history to fight for fairness. as somebody who felt unfairness, you really find yourself saying, how do i do work that helps to make sure everybody gets the opportunities that we had? and so i think, in some ways, it's interesting.

we were raised, both of us were taught, you know, going through graduate school to be objective, to step back, but it is the personal that i think gives us both the fire to move forward. carla: and in institutions that have been known to present information, to present history. do you mind if i read another part of your book? because this is one of my favorites. lonnie: please. carla: one can tell a great deal about a country by what it remembers. by what graces the walls of its museums. and what monuments have privileged placement in parks and central traffic intersections. and what holidays and patriotic songs are for generations to come. yet one learns even more about a nation by what it forgets. what moments of evil, disappointment, and defeat are downplayed or eliminated from national narratives. and that part is something that i think we both work on. lonnie: absolutely.

telling the story, right? helping people to remember. i really think that, you know, when we look at things like confederate monuments and how people sort of celebrate that as part of southern heritage, i don't have any problem if you do that if you recognize that, one, that symbolizes traitors going against what was the union and that, in essence, what i wanted people to realize is that when you look at confederate monuments, they are less about the confederacy and more about how do you preserve segregation in late 19th and early 20th century? for me, history is an opportunity to sort of right some wrongs, make some history more clear, because i think the other thing that i've learned from you is that people have, if we give them the right opportunities to learn and educate, people have the capacity to deal with difficult issues. carla: yes.

lonnie: and to see things in a different way. that, to me, is really part of the challenge of our institutions, which is to sort of, on the one hand, recognize that these are old institutions that have been shaped by a lot of traditions, but they have a responsibility, i think, to help a country be made better, to help people find truth, to help people remember, to help people deal with difficult issues. i think one of the things i love about what you do at the library of congress is that part of what you are doing is helping people embrace ambiguity, not just look for simple answers to complex questions but to look at the literature, look at the imagery, and recognize that it's all about subtlety and nuance and what a greater country we would be if we understood subtlety and nuance and ambiguity. carla: and what better person to exemplify that than rosa parks? we joined together, the smithsonian loaned one of her

dresses -- she was a seamstress. and you loaned that dress, and then we had the photos of her in that dress but in her own hand. it was called "in her own hand," and you see that she was not this quiet little lady with a purse that was tired. she was sick and tired of being tired. she was an activist and to be able to present that -- lonnie: i think that reveals the power of what we can do, right? you take a story like rosa parks and the prevailing notion was she was just tired and sat down and didn't get up. but you look at her life, you know, being active in fighting against sexual violence against black women in the 1940's, being involved in the naacp, and, suddenly, you see a story that is much richer and, in some ways, a story of someone who is much braver than you give her credit for. so i love the fact that we were able to do that together. carla: that's where i'm seeing

more of an opportunity to have those partnerships, to be able to not only have the dress and see the photos of her in it but also the polaroid years later where she is doing a yoga pose. because she had health problems because of the hardships that she suffered, and just to show people in all of their glory and all of their doubt and that these great people that we look up to were people and that it is attainable. and you have done that in so many ways. now, in your new role -- it's not new, actually. you are coming back home to the smithsonian. lonnie: right. carla: how do you see that shaping up? lonnie: well, i mean, i think that building the african-american museum, it really was about how did all of

us give a gift to america, right? a gift of understanding itself better through the african-american lens. i'm so proud of all the people that worked to help make that a reality, those that worked in the place, those that shared their scholarship, those that shared their collections. then becoming secretary was really something where i realized that, at that stage in my career, there was nothing i needed. i built a building, you know? i'm more visible than any historian should be. but this was an opportunity to sort of thank the smithsonian for giving me not just a career, but a calling. i've always been struck by something that happened in my family, if you don't mind another family story. carla: oh, no, i think it is important. lonnie: during the 1960's, it was the centennial of the civil war, and i was, like, you know, a 10, 11-year-old kid, really excited about the civil war, reading everything i could. one easter, we were going from my home in new jersey to visit my mother's family in north

carolina. as we got near richmond and petersburg, i saw signs for museums and civil war battlefields, and i said to my dad, oh, listen, can we stop? this is great. he had an excuse -- i have to go 20 more miles to get gas or whatever, and he never did. and so, on the way back, he drove right past. but instead of driving straight to new jersey, he pulled into washington. he pulled in front of the smithsonian, and he said, here is a place where you can understand yourself, your past, your history in a way that is fair but is a way that we will not be judged by the color of your skin. and i never forgot that what that smithsonian meant, a place of possibility for a 10, 11-year-old kid. so being secretary was really my way to thank the smithsonian for giving me a place to believe. to believe in the past, but maybe to believe in the future. that is why i'm committed to making the smithsonian be a place that matters to people,

not just in traditional ways, but in ways that help them live their lives. carla: i have to tell you, lonnie, that resonates so much with me in terms of the position that i'm in now as librarian of congress. i had taught librarians to get out there, information is power, public libraries in baltimore during the unrest, putting up those libraries, all of that. to be in the largest library in the world that has treasures untold, opening up that to everyone, for scholars, for young people, for everyone. to open up this wonderful library is a privilege, and i also see it as part of that joy that i had when i went in there and saw "bright april." what if we make this all available? and so i just have to -- i know we have to wrap up, and i wish we could keep going.

and we will, but i wonder what you think from your perspective as a historian. what do you think will be remembered of 2020? i mean, there's so -- the pandemic -- lonnie: to have a dual pandemic of virus and racism, i think that's going to shape the way people are thinking about it. i think people will remember the protests. they will remember the murder of george floyd. i think that what you will also see, though, is people remembering that they can find hope by coming together, by protesting, hopefully by encouraging political leadership and leadership at the local levels to effect change. i think what you will see when people look back is a sense of -- either it's going to be a sense of possibility and hope or

it's going a sense of failed expectations, that this too was just another moment that people got exercised over, people wrote books about, but that it really did not transform. and i don't think we know yet which way it's going to go. but i think what i learned from this more than anything is working with people like you who recognize that the library of congress, the smithsonian has to be as much about today and tomorrow as it is about yesterday. and i think that is the power of the institution we are in. carla: that is also the challenge, when you think about it, in this virtual world. in your museum, what items, what things would you have your curators thinking about collecting from this time? what would you think? lonnie: right? i mean, i think it's kind of like you did in baltimore. you are going to have to collect social media. what you do is collect the videos that people made of the different demonstrations.

what i almost think needs to happen at this moment is almost like the wpa and the slave narratives. this is an interesting time. [indiscernible] figure out how are there ways virtually we can capture these stories so they will be available for generations down the road? carla: and that's -- we -- 836 miles of shelving that the library of congress has in manuscripts and all of this, but you are so right. we are talking about the digital future, what we are doing now. how will we make sure that people 30, 40, 50 years from now that want to know more about what is happening in this time? when you think about what has touched you the most about the protests -- i mentioned just seeing the young people and being inspired as someone who is maturing.

it's good to know that there are young people. what are the things that have been touching you? lonnie: there's both things that are optimistic and negative. i mean, i think that, candidly, i've said this, seeing another black man die made me realize how many black people had their last breath taken by a rope, a bullet, or a knee. i realize that, on the one hand, i am fortunate, right? but on the other hand, as a black male, you never know when your luck runs out. you never know whether you turn left instead of right look what you run into. so it made me -- this became much more personal than i might have thought. it made me worry about my grandsons' future and the like. but the positive is the same thing you took away, that to see people cross these lines to say black lives matter, saying that this is not something that is business as usual, it inspires me.

you know what i worry? i worry that, during the 1960's when there were all these marches, you had things like the student nonviolent coordinating committee to make sure they had an impact and they were part of a strategic vision. that's what's missing to me right now. i am unbelievably hopeful watching people say, like langston hughes said, let america be america, and we will be on the streets to help that happen. carla: and we will be making sure that we preserve it and capture it and make it available so that if -- and hopefully the future will be brighter. i have to end on a personal one for me, too, when you say what happened. i mentioned my mom and that far away case. she said, you know, maybe we could finally get a headstone for jimmy.

because her mother never got to do that. she died of heartbreak, basically. maybe we could go and do that. i said, ok, that's good. lonnie: that's powerful. carla: and she said, justice. lonnie: justice. that gave me chills. carla: that's what she said, maybe justice for jimmy. so i want to thank you so much. i know this is a trying time, but if you want and just for people who have joined us, we both have websites. loc.gov for the library of congress. and si.edu. and there's so many things because the smithsonian has even started a special portal, right, talking about race? lonnie: the american history museum has this portal, the museum of african-american history and culture has a portal that says, here is things that helps you talk about race. here are scholars, experts you can talk to. so, in some ways, like you, we

want both of these institutions to be of value, to be relevant, to fulfill their missions of collecting and remembering, but to give people tools to live their lives. and that's what i think we both want to do. carla: thank you, lonnie. i couldn't have a better partner. lonnie: i am so lucky to have you there, so thank you. carla: thank you and thank everyone, and take care. lonnie: take care, now. this is american history tv, covering history c-span style with lectures, interviews, and discussions with authors, historians, and teachers. weekend, every weekend only on c-span3. the c-span cities tour travels the country, exploring the american story. since 2011, we have been to more than 200