historians talk about recent debates over historical monuments, discussing decision on how to move and contextualize them. of the herbert hoover and frank wendy roosevelt presidential libraries talk about the 1930's two campaign for the white house in the midst of the great depression. eastern, 5:30 p.m. pacific, a discussion about the political relationships between members of the roosevelt and kennedy families. in particular, the alliance between eleanor roosevelt and jfk. >> good afternoon. i say that with some trepidation because our audience is national and international. morning to some of you and good to some of you. i am the executive director of

the american historical association. james: this is an initial experiment in something that we are likely to call history behind the headlines. historical context essential to decision-making in public culture and especially in all aspects of public policy. this is a membership supported organization. anybody who watches public television or listens to public radio is ready for this. if you would like to become a member and support this type of content, never siblings are located in the chat on zoom and in the comments on facebook live. and especially grateful thankful to history channel four their generous sponsorship of this webinar. let's get started. it is an honor to introduce today's panelists, annette

gordon reed. blight, he studies slavery and abolition. these professors are pulitzer prize winning historians and they have won lots of other prizes as well. they have written and spoken frequently and insightfully on issues relating to monuments, history, memory and our nation's continued failure to fully confront the implications of its own history. mostssor gordon reed's is most blessed of the patriarchs, thomas jefferson and the empire of the imagination. frederickblight's is douglas's profit of freedom. notablethese colors are

for the way we remember and honor those people as complicated. whether we are thinking about frederick douglass or thomas jefferson. have roughly 35 minutes of moderated discussion, after which there will be audience.from the i apologize in advance that given the number of people, we will not be able to address most of the questions that we get. we will do our best. thus get started. get started. let's start with the meaning and implications of her memory inveterate statues from our public landscape. i know both of you have discussed this frequently and insult -- and in all sorts of venues. this is not a new issue but something is clearly different this time around.

let's start with what is different and why. that you referred to what is happening now as a great awakening. waking up is always a great place to start. why don't we start there? think it is different this time. i don't know a precise reason but i have some theories. obviously, the killing of george is weighing on people. the stark nature of the video captured people's attention in a way that has not happened before. it could be because we are in the middle of a pandemic and people have been cloistered and -- people were doing something that made them think about other people. i have a feeling that that may have come -- contributed to it

as well. the fact that people can focus on it and the fact that we are engaged in a way that americans don't typically do, in a communal fashion, looking at this. people said this was something that had to happen. it struck people viscerally in a way that the killing of other people have not. circumstancescial , the context is different. that made a difference in the way that people responded to it. >> we have the statues being toppled, we have the being toppled in the context that you just talked about. the statues are part of a story and they tell the story. -- a story. is this the death of a lost cause?

not but we can hope. , noy to see this moment now one should predict anything right now at this point. especially as historians but it really is the culmination of a 150 year counterattack on the lost cause ideology. it takes place right after the work, especially in the 1870's and 1880's. the confederate monuments came out of a later time than that. the jim crow europe. -- era. the confederates took hold of that process. it was an ideology, racial ideology, and ideology of white supremacy. it became not a story of loss at all, it became a victory narrative. the victory was over reconstruction. the attack back on the lost cause led by frederick douglass

and many others is 150 years old. as early as 1871. douglas wrote a piece in which he said he was sick and tired of the nauseating flattery's of robert e lee. he wondered why the person who killed the most union soldiers and most americans in the country was getting all the accolades. this is an old set of argument but now we have a different policy. if it had not been for the massive protests in the streets this past month, massive numbers of people in the streets, i of variouse forces kinds would have allowed people to tear down monuments as they have. byice have not always but and large have been letting this happen. there is a politics in the streets that is bringing this

about. i would just add right now, i don't have any data on this but trumpism, let's be honest, the nature of our politics for the last three or four years is out there in the streets. a everybody demanding confederate monument be removed? are they always thinking about trump? probably not. but trump has developed a toxic kind of politics that is now bringing out all kinds of resistance that we had not earlier seen. is directly related to police killings but also to a bursting out of rage against trumpism. i just hope that can be harnessed somehow into something. james: now about the harnessing. you talked about how the

politics affects what happens in the streets. , that frame toat the politics and what is happening in the streets, it has a larger context that test together. -- ties together. i am curious if both of you can happen about how what happens in the streets affects the policy. we have a bunch of monuments. it is an interesting question. we had this moment where we had --e numbers of people filing finally looking toward the question of policing in america. particularly, the policing of the african-american community. statues. shifts to of me, there is a little bit

frustration. it is not that i think monuments and statues are important but it is way more important to get the issue of police reform, voter suppression, those kinds of things on the front burner. into battlesn about culture, the culture war real that deflects from issuesc, social kinds of . people are being killed. african-americans feel threatened by police. this is something that has been going on for decades. everybody can tell you a story. black people can tell you a story about people who went into police stations and did not come out. people who had encounters with police that ended in death for minor things. those kinds of issues have brought people out. i want to talk about monuments

and i think they're important but i don't want us to get away from those kinds of essential -- central issues. voter suppression, all those kinds of things, those are things i would like to be focused on. there is a way that we have this that weit is a moment could lose. we could lose momentum on that. david: it is easier to oppose a monument that it is to figure out a vast new social policy. historians, we like evidence and all of that but one of the things i wish people would do is actually go and read the policing injustice act. there is a lot in there. it is not everything but it is a new kind of civil rights act.

it even has a federal antilynching law in it. there is a lot in that act. that is how this has to get converted, harness into a new politics. a new civil rights regime of some sort. what is interesting about the monument is we have a tipping point here. we see them when we reach a point when somehow, people who would have really defended confederate monuments a year ago can't quite do it now. even republicans in the senate are saying maybe those military bases, maybe that wasn't such a good idea after all. there is a tipping point here that we were not at even a year ago. annette: absolutely. david: we weren't there in the summer of 2015 after the charleston massacre. it was about taking the confederate flag down and a few

monuments were under duress. now it is everything confederate. every tipping point has excess. it is going to have access. everyone is moaning right now, how could you take down a grant statue? he was bequeathed one slave and he freed that slave and so on, he saved the union, he was the general. yes, there will be excesses and we have to stand up and say toppling that one, that is wrong. topple that one? ok. i am with you. you make choices every single day. we do that all the time. the point is how that takes place. the kind of discussion that takes place.

david: all three of us have talked about this. james: there is not an inevitable slippery slope. bring prize-winning work about jefferson, founders in general, this is what is constantly brought up by the all the icons will be smashed. you can imagine, using, thinking about, you say there is judgment here. annette: the criteria, there is lots of them. , thene i am always given founders created the country -- giving, the founders created the country and they try to destroy the country. that is a pretty bright line

rule, you don't usually get to yourself byrifying putting up statues of yourself in public faces -- places mocking the people who defeated you. the confederates were vanquished. the confederacy was a branch. it was a branch that went off to nowhere. there was nothing we can contribute -- they can contribute to us that we can't get from some other place. it is not what we stood for. their values are not what we stand for. we can do without them. the founders are different. they founded the country. it is hard for me to think of living in a place without telling the story or actually commemorating, not celebrating.

it is not about this was a god, the greatest person that ever lived, it is about recognizing that this person did something important. founding the united states, there is a lot of people that don't think i was a good idea but if you think it was that these people did that and you see them, the important thing is to see them in all of their complexity. you have jefferson, you have washington. you mentioned that they bought and sold people. you mention those kinds of things, the good with the bad. we are stuck with these people who created the country, the is not a storyat that continues in any kind of way. we have made use of the things that jefferson put forth. whether it is some religious belief in your heart, those ideas have been useful.

that is the distention i would make. you can't redo your parentage. you can pretend those people did not exist and that they didn't do something. you have to tell the whole story about them. it creates a much more mature attitude about history and historical figures. they are not about our best friends and the people we want to hang out with or whatever. these are the people that did things that we have to know about. in order to understand who we are. take the best of what they gave, rejected the things that were bed. we need to pretend that they did not do anything positive.

we have to talk about both of them. -- we don't need to pretend that they did not do anything positive. we have to talk about both of them. david: it is so important to focus, we have to help the ugly focus their minds. the confederacy was an insurgent revolution to create a slaveholders republic. i would just say to people, we don't want to name too many books here but you should read stephanie mccurry's most recent book called confederate reckoning. if you actually believe in our pluralism and inequality, you can't read that book without a tremendous sigh of relief that equality, you can't read that book without tremendous sigh of relief. we let them off the

hook. they would like nothing more withto be lumped in washington and jefferson. we are just like those people. no. david: they were the vessel of the american revolution. resisting, resisting centralized authority and all of that. that is a central tenor of the lost cause. annette: they never quote stevens. they don't look at the documents that framed that government and society. they may have been like jefferson and washington in that sense. this does not comport with anything. ,e can't take the constitution transformed by the 13th, 14th and 15th amendment. you can take the declaration and

make any society. .e can't take the constitution we can't do anything with that and continue in peace in this country. david: or jefferson davis's 1200 page memoir. here is the quick question, we are living a moment where there are a lot of people. i will just name it, the 1619 that americansed should reconsider what the founding is, that the founding is really when slaves arrived and not the creation of the public out of the american revolution and the writing of the u.s. constitution. assumptionset of was out there anyway. i am not just blaming the 1619 project. there are a lot of people who said the founding was all racist anyway. it was all in the service of slavery. why not get rid of jefferson?

i don't believe that necessarily. annette: i am destroying to respond to that. if you want to pick something other than 1776 as the founding, you might pick the british founding. 1607. you might say that when englishmen rolled up on american cotton and said we discovered it. to push indigenous people off the land. point, certainly 1619 is the point. that was the english empire. that is part of the english empire. there is no united states of america at that point. those moments put forth some inevitable outcome that we end up at 1776 and me sitting in my apartment right now. anything could have happened at

that point. i think it was just that the founder was racist. the constitution protected slavery. -- founding was racist. the constitution protected slavery. it also unleashed an antislavery movement. the revolution did. that was not inevitable either. efrin american people, other people said wait a minute, this applies to us as well. basis for an the struggle up until now. that is real. the founding is many things. it is not any one thing. it is what you make of it.

david: you are focusing on the east coast. james: that is what we do. and the english. what if you shift -- there are issues over statues in the capital. or 12.asy to identify 11 there is also father sarah. sera. he never donned a confederate uniform. he did some putting bad things to people that are the ancestors of americans. what do we do when we think about father cera in the capital? we are going to have to come up with some kind of

that we apply to these things. every case is not identical. we seem to have a developing sense of rentable's about the confederacy. the insurgency to destroy the united states. what are they doing inside the u.s. capitol? it would be like putting up a statue in the u.s. capitol of the general that committed the burning of washington in the war of 1812. we need another set of principles about how much that offends americans broadly. not just native americans, how much that is inconsistent with

values and our mission as a pluralistic society today. kind ofwe may need some commission within the congress, to be not just the congressman. james: the american historical association needs to be part of that commission. david: you might get 500 volunteers off this webinar. who knows? criteria, with some otherwise this will be willy-nilly. ruleif somebody passed a that you revisit these things after 25 years, that is considered. james: that was my suggestion. david: you do have a lot of power, jim. annette: you can make it happen. david: you can't do this by popular referendum. whatmr. misty -- look

mississippi just found out, they had referendum on the state flag years ago and they decided to keep it by 75%. right now, the politics are such that they just got rid of it. annette: something i thought would never happen. david: a lot of things are happening right now that people thought would never happen. nobody in my field has studied this for most of their lives every thought we would be gone from monument avenue in richmond or a bunch of other things. but it will be gone. you are right, father did not wear a confederate uniform. did not take up arms against the united states but he slaughtered . annette: what about the confederate soldiers -- the union soldiers that turned west? i was talking to somebody yesterday.

a lot of my response to this, they be yours as well is that we are historians and we deal in the past all the time. we know all the terrible things that people do. they have always done it in the past and present and will do in the future. annette: it is a given -- david: it is a given. you can't purify your history. you can't purify the past. james: a point you made is so crucial. i saw it happen last week. i live four blocks from the emancipation memorial. one of the issues there is the difference between how we as historians think about that statue and how people as parents think about that statue. what does it mean to be a parent and walked past that statue? i am curious.

parkis happening in that is exactly what you just described, people discussing away -- it is civic culture happening. -- all you say to people of these monuments around the country are in a sense, role models. what you say, schoolteachers? what do you do to explain all of these controversies to young people? have writtend, you about this. david: i thought he was asking you. it does not matter. i can take that on. i have been all too public about this, i guess. i personally hope that the -- it goes byial different names, sometimes the emancipation group. i hope that statue survives. so thatand have said

the imagery today is certainly racist. the kneeling slave, the very christian, godlike lincoln out reached, giving emancipation. debate, people can whether the kneeling slave is rising, breaking his own chains and all of that, i don't even want to get into that. that has always been debated. one of the important things about that particular monument is it is about back freedom. -- black freedom. it was created by black people in large part. charlotte scott was known as the one who created the friedman memorial. men memorial. there were bands and fraternal orders and all of that.

the master of ceremonies was john langston. douglass was order of the day. , inut i think that ground the rarest of cases are monuments rendered important by speech at unveiling. most are forgettable or repulsive. in this case, douglas gave the second greatest speech of his life, the first being the fourth of july speech. but the speech was a masterpiece. in the first part, he took on lincoln directly, honestly. he said abraham lincoln was a president, he was a white man and not a black person's president. myn came the famous line,

fellow citizens, you are abraham lincoln's children, i and my people are his stepchildren. an incredible metaphor, stepchildren by adopting. in the middle of the speech , not a pause and he shifts to celebrating lincoln, but he says with a refrain three times, under his rule and in due time, under his rule and in due time, theoln found the method, way to create the policies by which we became free. lincoln's essential , and at theagmatism same time douglas was dead on about what most black folks have thought about lincoln and the first year and a half or more of the war, including douglas. speech last point, that is really directed at the

audience in the first two rows because he had president grant, members of the cabinet, justices of the supreme court, members of the house and senate, the entire government sat in front of him and douglass is telling them, you are losing reconstruction. now, you willct never have another chance -- i am sorry, i went on too long about the speech, but i know the imagery of the monument is offensive to many people but not all people. i am now in dialogue on email more than i want to be with people who live in the neighborhood, african-americans who live in the neighborhood, who have different opinions about this. maybe down generations, i don't know. it is interesting how people respond to that particular image, such a 19th-century image. this is what i, disagree with david on. i think the statue should probably -- i know museums hate it when we say it should be put

in the museum. david: where will they put it? annette: right. i think the museum of african american history would be a wonderful place to put it with douglass's speech and everything in context. i am impressed by the fact that this was black people who raise money for this but they did not get the opportunity to say what the image should be viewed -- should be. david: that's true. annette: it's not surprising that the image would be a white savior. david: and the kneeling. annette: i am not one of those people who say -- abraham lincoln was shot in the back of the head and martyred for coming up with that alice he -- that policy. he sacrificed all and i am not going to put lincoln in a corner. but african-american men bled and died for freedom. african-american men, women and children ran away, left

, and black people brought about their freedom and continued to bring about their freedom. the idea that they would raise money, give it to whites, and the answer would be a white savior -- you said this is a 19th-century thing, it is not a 19th-century thing. if you want to talk about race, we can talk about today the image of the white savior in films and movies, everywhere, the notion that you can't have a black and white existing equally. not a statue with a person standing next to him. , thatnot shaking hands might have been too much, but the joint effort to end slavery. i said before about the confederacy, things going off into nowhere. the notion of the white savior exists today.

whites andwho are see themselves as progressive and allies still have an easier time dealing with us when you are in a position of superiority. that is a comfort level. even if you are doing something good, it has to be whites here, blocks down here. down here. west, tr with the native american and the black person on either side. problem if you just had tr on the horse, that will be fine, but it sends a message. if the notion of the white savior did not exist today, i might have a different view. but the 19th-century is still present in the 21st century. i would not want my kids walking past that. i feel the same way taking my kids into the museum of natural

history, that statue, what is that saying about who you are and who you have been? add -- my me just proposal is to build an additional emancipation monument edman's memorial.a it was actually douglass's suggestion, which we only recently confirmed. five days after that unveiling. in the republican newspaper, douglass said he did not like the kneeling slave, he wanted a strong image of emancipation. he himself suggested an additional monument should be put there. i guess my point of view on this is why not have both? what incredible teaching one can do -- how many people are going to really see this in a museum?

you are right, if it's in a good space in the african-american museum, it may indeed be seen by a lot of people because a lot of people go there. but to have that juxtaposition that shows then and now, past and present and celebrate douglass's speech as well, and what about a douglass statue? let'se: likes -- james: extend this problem. i started out by saying the wonderful work about what you do is you present historical figures as complicated people. annette: yes. complicatedare two people, general sheridan and general howard. both heroic figures in terms of the role in the civil war, although somewhat less heroic in terms of their role in killing and removing native americans after the civil war.

would beur solution any we have a statue of sheridan , we put another statue next to orthat somehow commemorates helps us to remember the other things -- how do we deal with complexity people lived 5, 6, 7 decades? how do you deal with the complexities of their lives? david: i am not sure sheridan merits that kind of worry and concern. there are sheridan monuments clearly. d.c. and new york as well. down in the village, isn't it? and most people don't know who oliver otis howard was in less they know howard university, i suppose. you know, yeah, this is a message, complicated, and it always will be.

but i think people need a you just can't purify the past and you cannot purify your memory. you have to make choices about these things. memorialsents, some are worthy of keeping not just because of what we can learn from them, but because of the circumstances of their creation, and some are not. -- we will have to come up you know, not that yale is a paragon for this, but when yale had considered getting rid of the name of john c calhoun on the presidential college here, the administration created a committee and i was on the committee to try and come up with principles that you could actually follow by which a university, at least, we are not talking about a nation or company or a city, but a

university might rename something. and we did. we did a lot of research. we called in gordon reed as an advisor among others. we came up with these principles by which the administration could put calhoun through and the administration said you're going to remove that one. -- we are going to remove that one. we have to think on these terms, whether it is monuments in congress, on a public square or elsewhere, school names. annette: yeah. david: rather than willy-nilly, the politics that this has to come down, do we wait for the new politics for that one to come down? or do we have some principles? otherwise the mob will take the monuments away and the mob can get away with it. annette: yes. ofany event, the notion taking it down without deliberation from other people is problematic. met is the law professor in

saying that is problematic. david: you believe in deliberation and knowledge. annette: i believe in that, they will take down statues of people i admire. that is not the way to go. that is something i would encourage. james: that goes back to what you earlier said, back to the culture, and maybe one value of monuments is if we say not only principles but process. every 25 years, we will look at all of the names in some kind of civic process. annette: that is very jeffersonian, the earth belongs to the living, every generation of people should sit down and there should be a discussion about do we agree with this and is this what we wish for? -- it will not necessarily solve all of the problems but we have to have discussions about this. think, a larger

weefit, because we see where agree and disagree, but not talking about it, having a large conversation about this i think would be a mistake. david: and we should listen to young people, let's face it. that may seem like a cliche. we should listen to young people right now, what they think about all of this. especially when they get themselves informed. james: i am looking at the questions, we have a lot of questions, we cannot get to all of them. i will pull some out randomly. maybee has suggested that , especially given that we are supposedly a nation with democratic values, maybe we should not build memorials of people. maybe our memorials should not have people. annette: i was just about to say, maybe monuments are a thing of the past. we don't seem to do them very well. aty few new statues i look

am i impressed. some people have done them well. maybe that could be it. emancipation is not a person, it is an epic historical process. the pivot of american history. the greatest result of the civil war, but not a single person by any means. things like industrialization. annette: but it doesn't answer the question about what do we do with the ones already there? because there are people, members of our community who admire and like the statues of people, who find something meaningful about it. -- the maybe not question suggested maybe we should not be building more, but it doesn't answer the question of what do we do with the ones that are there, who stays and who goes?

is an -- david: that interesting thing to ask and i taught a bunch of courses on memorials. what memorial have you ever visited that really works for you? what memorial have you ever visited that made you weep? what monument did you ever visit that offended you? havenow, we all will perhaps different answers to that. some people are appalled by triumphal 19th-century statues. moderniste love visions of something, located in some don't. what monument moves you, what monument doesn't? it is kind of worth asking people. the vietnam memorial, everyone -- not everyone, but most people today, there is a consensus about that design that has been

adopted, almost, as a place of healing, a place of mo urning and commemoration. annette: and it was controversial, people hated it at first. david: the reagan administration. annette: they wanted something triumphal. in fact she created something deeply moving and versatile to people of all types. david: and it has been modeled elsewhere as a way of memorializing, at least, after a war. but it is worth asking as commissions get created, what memorials actually work for people and what don't? one of the things i have already recommended publicly -- i don't know if it will happen -- but the biden campaign camera -- the biden campaign should get ahead of this issue.

the confederate landscape is coming down and the loss causes in deep trouble. i'm not saying we will eliminated ideological, but if the lost cause is coming down, what might place it? what does the biden administration -- why doesn't the biden administration bring together a bunch of people and think about that? yesterday, saying we a memorial tote the new deal. i don't know if that would work, but why not? and sayd of the issue there will be a national project that will also become local. most monuments are local if you think about it. they were created by somebody in that town. to rethink the idea of memorialization, especially about subjects like emancipation. annette: i don't know about the infrastructure, but -- david: i know.

[laughter] james: when you say the monuments are local, they are local chronologically as well as spatial. when you say what are the monuments to make you cry, that inspire you, doesn't that change over time? david: yes. and one has to usually know the story the monument represents. james: but most people don't. most people, you walk past a monument and your kid says who is that? annette: you don't know who they are. sheridan,you say phil what are you gonna say? james: what do we do with that as historians knowing people's values change over time, and to go back in some ways to where annette started, that conflicts change in the country over time. david: my favorite example of that question is the shaw

memorial in boston. that is augustine saying god and gauden's -- masterpiece. it tells a deeply moving story of what blackman had to do. they had to die in a war to be acknowledged as men. furthermore, it is an artistic masterpiece. it is a ball relief -- bas relief like no american artist has ever created. story,ericans learn that that monument moves them still. movie made about the 54th, but they have to know the story and what it represents. , aboutis about suffering sacrifice in war, and the way

that can grab our emotions that other stories don't. but monuments do need to tell a story if they are really good. annette: yes. that we are upset about are the ones that tell -- in anotherre way. it is not a story -- i talked about the values we have, the value of suffering and redemption in those kinds of things versus people like nan --den or manifest s3 manifest destiny. questionersf our has asked what the two of you think about, instead of individual monuments, and maybe this goes back to the memorial to the new deal, commissioning monuments create

exactly to what you just described. monuments to values, to emotions, to the way we feel about our environment. iuld that be in a sense -- hate to call it a solution. -- robin kelly has suggested all military monuments be wiped off of the earth and that is the statement of values he would like to see. but monuments are about our values, so should we be more explicit and say money men's are about values and set of people -- monuments are about values instead of people? annette: the problem is that the monuments put up were not to values, but to people. demonstrated values that people admired. there is a statue of jefferson in front of the journalism

school at columbia. it's not about him being a slave owner, but freedom of the press. the people that put the statues up, typically they are not people -- not putting people up for no reason. it is somebody they think embodies a particular value. i think that is always what -- courage, when he is by theelf, that monument was value of white supremacy. i think that has been going on all along. the question is, some of those values are not serving as valuable -- serving us very well. david: i love that question. want to be careful with that one. tell surviving

world war ii veterans that there should not be a memorial to d-day, or the shaw memorial, i am sorry. it is military but i god -- annette: those people fought for something that we value. ways we,ificed in think on, do not have to sacrifice. i would not want them to be forgotten. david: and a key point is historically, monument making came out of the romantic age. at least the monuments we know of. where the individual hero is always exalted. in the 19th century, the measure of every sculptor is whether they could do an equestrian. gaudens started with the shaw memorial and ended up putting the soldiers there.

this exultation of the romantic, adividual hero -- why not national monument to the natural rights tradition? the american republic was born out of this thing jefferson called natural rights. let's inspire some really creative artists. how about popular sovereign or a monument to equality? or we could say every civil-rights monument is a monument to equality and it is. but maybe we do need to inspire artists now, or maybe they already are inspired, maybe they need to tell us. moving away from people as the embodiment of these things. that's why you don't name things after people who are still alive, you don't know what they are going to do. now we know with historical figures, we know what they did. said, these people

lived 60, 70 years as a human being and they might have done awful things as well as the one thing heroic we are recognizing them for. annette: exactly. i was talking to some of the other day, if you gave riporians a week, we could a person. and let me say, i don't want to minimize slavery as a thing that people did, but the point is, as i was suggesting before, and this is looking at things historically, it is very hard to have a person, anybody, who will not have some that people will find revolting about them. james: and i think that's really important. we have a lot of questions relating to education and young people, and it does seem to me,

and what you are saying is one of the values of learning history is that humility, right? that very fewon people go through their lives purely heroic. some go through purely villainous, we know some of those people. david: unredeemable. james: unredeemable. should be an aspect of female that kids learn by learning history. -- aspect of humility that kids learn by learning history. you can admire people and what they did, but this notion -- it's almost like hollywood, you know how the enoughactory, it's not to watch someone on the screen, you have to know about their private lives and identify with them, so much so that people had

to lie about who they were to keep this thing going. relationshiprsonal with the people you actually know in your life, and a stake in those people. ,aybe changing how you view what your connection is to the person. thatlook at what they did, not all into them in the sense that this is me and i identify with them and i am pretending i am them or whatever. a healthy skepticism about everybody. detachment is the word i am looking for here, about the figures on the public stage who did something important. and you shouldds not measure yourself as them or by them. also with school naming. that -- whensting

schools have names, usually the students at some wing have to learn why the school was named and it becomeson a certain role model. should we be suggesting that every curriculum should also critique ofluding a the person for whom the school is named, no matter who it is? david: well, almost you have to, don't you? there was a place in texas i think decided, i am forgetting where it was, decided to change all of the stonewall jacksons lees to names from nature. i was just going to say really quickly, after the charleston masos are -- charleston our panelsall of about memories and monuments and so on, i decided i would go to

every audience with three principles. one principle, you had have a deliberative process. learncond was you had to some more history first, always hard. the third was learn some humility from the process. that sounded so schoolmarmish and scolding it did not always work but it still seems to me it is important. if we are not deliberative about this and don't learn the history behind how this monument got here and we don't gain a little humidity -- humility about human nature, the exercises might be futile. annette: i think that's right. david: humility is not invoked, though -- in vogue, though. james: it is time to go and you are busy and i am ok in ending on the relationship between

humility and human nature as an argument for why everyone should study history and why history should remain central in the curriculum, which is important to remind people right now. thank you very much and we will be back with everybody another time. [captions copyright national cable satellite corp. 2020] [captioning performed by the national captioning institute, which is responsible for its caption content and accuracy. visit ncicap.org] >> you're watching american history tv, covering history c-span style with event coverage, eyewitness accounts, archival films, lectures in college classrooms, and visits to museums and historic places,

all weekend, every weekend on c-span3. [ambient noise] presidency, to programs from the franklin d roosevelt presidential library series "at home with the roosevelt," designed to keep up with the public ring the pandemic. first, i talk about the 1932 campaign for the white house in the midst of the great depression and the tents transition that followed from hoover to the fdr administration. in about half an hour, a conversation about the relationships between members of the roosevelt and kennedy political dynasties. the franklin d roosevelt presidential library provided this video. >> welcome to at home with the roosevelt spewed