up next on american history tv, representatives from thomas jefferson's mana cello, james from rose island and james mattis montpelier describe how they interpret slavery for visitors to the presidential planes. and the challenging questions from the public they try to answer. this is an hour and a half recorded the american historical associations annual meeting. held recently in washington d.c.. >> hello, good afternoon

everybody. i want to welcome everyone to this afternoon's panel. public history and public memory, talking about slavery at presidential plantations. i'm jennifer morgan, professor of history in new york university where i work on a colonial history of enslaved people. i am very excited to be part of this afternoon's conversation. though my role is primarily to facilitate and to learn. the presenters here have all spent their careers working in public history and have been at the front lines of an important efforts to situate the presidential plantations back into the history of slavery or to situate slavery back into the history of the presidential plantations. not entirely sure. i went back and forth on how to say that. i'm not entirely sure which is the right way to say it. but what i think is the crucial thing to say is that we are considering the process cities that have erased the obvious location of the enslaved in the

history of the presidency's. and everyone here on this panel, many of you in the audience, are involved in efforts that precisely do not assume that slavery is some sort of addition or add on to the presidential histories but rather the two are inextricable. to that i am really excited to hear each of the afternoon speakers talk about the work they're undergoing at the presidential plantations. i'm going to introduce all of them to you now in the order in which they will speak. and we have planned the presentations to allow for significant time at the end for the panelists to engage each other and the audience to ask questions. so first we are going to hear from, we switched around so many times -- first we're going to hear from nancy stetz, who has been education programs manager at james madison -- sorry, james monroe's highland since 2014. in this role she hires and

trains new interpreters, coordinates school in group tours and manages public programming. she created a slavery at highland program. and put fights 20 to keep staff at the ability to interpreted slavery at highland through primary sources an individual biographies. prior to her work there she served as a volunteer coordinator at the imperial center for the arts and scientists and is a torso provider and interpreter i want to cello. she has abs in middle crates education and an mma in public history from appalachians university. next we are going to hear from brandon dillard, brandon is manager a special program samantha cello. he has been with the thomas jefferson foundation since 2010. for the past eight years he spent most of his time in frontline interpretation and also studies cultural anthropology at the university of virginia focusing on museums of historic sites as places of memory and dignity and power. they believe he's also a bartender of some renowned? as a bit of a cult following,

according to sources. christian cotz is director of education it visitor engagement against madison montpelier where he began in 2000 as the student education coordinator. christian oversees a staff of approximately 50 interpreters and has been on the front of montpelier's efforts to build and maintain relationships with families, descendants from montpelier's enslaved community. most recently he was a project director for the mere distinction of color exhibition which uses descendants voices to convey the stories of their ancestors. which connects the dots between 1787 and today to try to shed a light on legacy of slavery this ill exist in the 21st century. so please join me in welcoming them and let's start with nancy. >> thank you. [applause] >> all right, i'm very glad to be here with you all today. it's my first conference.

i wanted to give you a sense of where we are at highland. i had the good fortune of starting my position four years ago when our executive director was at the beginning faces of her research which would eventually reveal the whole different house the men rose lived in. that helped us reinterpret the structure that was their house. so i've had a front row seat for that whole process when i first started we were actual on highland. we thought we had minerals ritual house. our high, and monroe's original name and you know that we have a presidential era guesthouse and have more archeology to do, which is really fun. but just to give you a sense of how do we interpret slavery in highland, it is required on the guided tour that guides mentioned slavery both on the national context as well as individuals by name, we have a slavery at a high land of drop in station on saturdays, where you can see an interpreter in action there. they have a table full of primer resources, and testing

gauge as long and short of time as they wish. we attempted to have just a formal walking tour unfounded destined to be quite tight by today. so by switching by budget station, we're really able to multiplier engagement which were really happy about. we also in interprets just by through the structures that are there, before the guide, you can see reconstruct of slave order that was done in 19 eighties. and here is another angle of that the reconstructed quarter in the center, flanked by an original 1821 oversee your house on the left and an original monroe smokehouse on the right. now, highland who was at its height of 35 acre plantation, right next to thomas jefferson samantha cello, either property just all goes bordering even today, in 2018. and you see a lot of green space there and there is that -- which you start earlier. i think this is also kind of symbolic of everything, we

still have yet to discover at highland. we're very much in the infancy of archeological efforts there. we know from an rose letters, from ties that were there a lot more buildings that have been a highland. we know there was a black mits shop, hey sawmill, lots more slave quarters in a slaves cemetery that we have not found yet, so my bosses very quick to say that's an opportunity, rather than a challenge for us to find so stay tuned and we hope to be making those discoveries. >> now in terms of the slaves who are at highland, we know from the 1810 census, they capture the snapshot we see monroe is being highlighted as 49. so i noticed when guests come, they're all usually coming to monitor cello and a lot of times we're trying to size up and compare award the similarities and differences. highland was on the smaller side, but monroe is kind of funny in terms of numbers. when you look at his writing, and one thing that really stood

out to me is he writes how many slaves he has. you see a lot of kind of approximate numbers, about 30, between 30 and 40 a sufficient number he says about 60 or 70. so i think some of this comes from the fact that he's largely in absentees owner of highland, most of his political career, he was living abroad or in different cities of the united states, so we really rely more as overseers for that day today information. another way i think highland is different or unique is that these are not inherent to slaves that are marking here. we see one monroe 16 and his father's, well he inherited his first slaves, a boy named ralph. so by the rest of minerals life, he is actively buying and selling slaves, which was certainly and have very much of uncertainty to being a slave at highland. and one of our colleagues in the field charted alone will

europeans do four properties. not only was he own highlands, he owns -- as well as property allowed in cone to you kill. and you see the lines there, they're back and forth between properties all the time. and so, we try to get the takeaway of being a slave at highland as uncertainty. you've got the factor monroe's gone, that there are multiple properties and he's always buying and selling. one thing we did become a lot more certain of with our in -- 2016 announcement that we have found foundations of mueller's original house is that the they informed us that this would structure with the porch in front of you was actually in 1818 guesthouse bill in 19 years off the minerals original house. not the original house thought to be. and what's even more better, and for us -- as when you look at the written

record, you can see monroe mentioning the, that the house is almost built, he says this is done by a carpenter ipods of george brooks last winter for 450 dollars. so now we know who built that and it was to enslaved men. so that's become a part of our interpretation, as we get asked house built by peter george. if you look at the paper record, you can identify who that carpenter was, which turned out to be peter. here he is and then oakville inventory from monroe allotting county property and the yellow rectangle. and then we see a georgia later on down in the inventory. so you can kind of piece together that monroe has brought these two men from county, down to alvin rock county to fill this structure for him. so one way we would really like> to an excited about interpreting delivering heartland is to augmented reality which will be coming

soon. and we wanted to really mean people visually, the landscape through this tour and to give you a sense, it's kind of slip. part of it is centered in the year late 1819, which is during monroe's presidency, since that guesthouse as part of the scenery, we wanted to make sure it was a year after it was built so that it made sense on the landscape. so we wanted to make sure that it was revealed how that guest house was built through the enslaved, since we knew it was through enslaved carpenters. so several of the scene said in 1819 to involve conversations between slaves on the property. so that became a really interesting process to our team and working to create this, would you select to be a slave and what should they be talking about? so, when we look at the historic record, we wanted to choose people that would've been in that historic or, would've probably seeing the guest house being built and had been aware of it. so we found that monroe had a cookie named hannah, so in 1796,

she's a young mother with three small boys, fast forward a little over 20 years, she's probably approaching 50 by 1819 where the tourist set. we also selected her to be speaking with a blacksmith named nelson, because he probably had a role in that guesthouse -- accessories for the shutters or something. so you see his name highlighted, and often a blacksmith, he's young men at that point. we also wanted to point out with hand, then we recently found a document where the inventory of honest mineral was hoping madison, and mentioning a soup spoon, and currently in -- of hanna. events, so that to me express that she would be a person of importance around the property. i'm going to give you two sneak previews from our augmented

reality tour of these conversations between the enslaved. the first is going to be a conversation between nelson and hannah. where they will be talking about how they remember peter and george being down here, kind of wondering what's was going on with with them. >> i wonder how peter and george are doing back in or kill? when mr. monroe brought them down from the county last summer to build this house, all they talked about was missing their wives. it was so hard for them to be a part. they never know when an for how long they can stay in the same place. and i know they're glad to be back together. hear >> i wanted to really underscore the fact that supporting families was not missed missed by the enslaved community. and there's a second i'll show you. hannah then will go into a room and have a conversation with an

enslaved spinner. we've purposely chose not to give her name to really represent the many unnamed by their masters slaves, in american history. i kind of irony and paradox has done monroe is one of those classic examples of a plantation of virginia her grain of the primary export. we just can't keep up with a con revolution that's coming. and in that earlier scene, we've seen morneau talking with enormous fear about highlands not making a profit. and, so we see her in a and the spin or talk about their field -- of, course he absolutely does do this and ironically, panda being sold to a cotton plantation in florida. so we see that fear actually is real and what actually happened nine years later. nerd >> all i know inner whole, cotton, spinning, weaving, here are the women and the men have

terrible room -- and it's a lot rougher than here. lowered, i hope mr. monroe does not sound nice out. you never know when he's going to rent you out or sent you to work at home caroline one of his products. >> i hear someone coming. people >> just in case it's not obvious, when you take that to war, you'll see the scenes on an actual. but, we chose unintentionally to do illustrations instead of have live actors, on the fact that really a lot for more scope for the imagination, whereas you see an actor, you know here doing an actor, whereas you thought you can really let your mind explain more with these illustrations. but he hope that you will come see us at highland this year, and we will take your question following all the presentations.

who new yorker >> there's something got omitted from my bio, and i also have a degree in philosophy, which i got 12 years ago. which is why i was a bartender for 20 years. i don't know how for her daughter was a ben -- bartender. i thought the joke would go over well. we know what i'm talking about, philosophy from his never hiring. i found myself at monte carlo eight years now and i really have spent many of those years just interpreting. i talk about slavery, oh still bartending at evenings and working as a target during the days. i was talking to people all over the world about the institution of slavery and what that means and about thomas jefferson about monte carlo. the vast majority of those people are museum goers, which in america if it's a very specific demographics. which will talk about when we go through. but it's not a grossly group of

people, but it's middle if people. and, so their ideas about what slavery is, their ideas about whether even visiting the historic site is often pretty different. and i know that everyone in this room has a pretty good understanding of what academic history means and what the differences between public history and academic history. what's the difference between memory and his three are. they're not the same thing. but the average visitor to monte carlo as not thinking about that difference, right? it says nothing about the intellect, is just that you're trained in engineering, the last time you took a social sciences course may have been in high school, so think about your high school history class. i'm sure most of you were good at that close. but that probably isn't the case for mathematically minded people, or right? they want to cello has a different place. we have operated, providing tours from the public since 1923, which is a long time. and in the century since we have been offering tours, we have changed a, lot messages change a lot in the tour has

changed. and i think that something that you and said early in the introduction here in terms of the processes that erased slavery, when people do visitor presidential, through there for a very specific reason, often. which is about this idea of heritage. as this idea of memory and what that means as are identity as americans. and i like to show this picture as a way to talk about thomas jefferson because i think it really underscores the point. we talk about not putting historical figures up on a pedestal at historical sites, instead celebrating memory, we really want to talk about history as a nuanced idea. but that's the biggest pedestal i've ever seen, right? and we can get into a conversation about how we've blasted for dead like eyes first several american indian relations arrest, which is also something we should probably recognize. but when you highlight conversation on what to tell about how great thomas jackson was, it's pretty hard to move into a conversation about slavery. and this is a memorial in

tanzania. because there isn't a national memorial to slavery in the united states of america. there are many memorials, but in terms of actually recognizing that institution as a people, we're pretty far off from that. and, so having conversations for folks day in and day out a multi cello, it leads to a lot of interesting conversations that are limited in a lot of ways. and some people really understand the institution, they really want to get to the depths of jefferson's involvement, they want to talk about individuals who were enslaved and whether lives were like. so people come to monte carlo and they don't know if they're it thomas jefferson size or thomas edison's house. and i'm serious. they want to talk about how he wrote the constitution. they don't really studying a long time, that's fine. but most of all, people coming to see that. they see these beautiful botanical garden, it's on this beautiful landscape and it's hard to imagine that as a plantation. where people were held in bondage by jefferson and one of families. and so, over the last few years,

the government work to talk about slavery more, we started offering slavery and malta towards in 1993, so this is the 25th commemorative here of offering those tours and we started archeological expedition specific focus on slavery in 19 fifties, so it's been an ongoing process for a very long time. -áv c@ became part of the exhibitions, and in the nineties, part of the interpretation and that interpretation that's changed a lot over the years as well. there are several people in this room have worked hard on how that interpretation has come to the floor. helping us to understand even thomas jefferson as a person better. because we have to institute slavery, and the last of the people he held in pond inch, to which he was so entangled. the last picture i showed you with an image of a mulberry row. it's a road that runs down monte cello just next to the house. it's a main street of the plantation this image was taken 25 years ago. you can see the beauty of the trees.

this was a vibrant street. there were many buildings up and down and it was dynamic in jefferson's life. a lot of a change throughout be the most representative of what life was like? we learned a little bit about it as we go. this is the inside of a building that is a little further up. this is interpreted as a home for john and priscilla henning's. two people enslaved it monticello.

i'm sure the henning's family name is something that many people here recognize. i'll talk more about them as we go along. john hemmings was a master carpenter at monticello his wife was the head nurse made. they lived in a small way not unlike most small cabins for anyone living in the urban republic. white or black. that is what it looked like. so we notice after building this that a lot of people had interesting reactions. we hear it. we hear it with the gas. they come out and say it's not so bad and on tours we would have guests say my great-grandfather lived in something way worse than that. the implication there is the obvious one which is thomas jefferson took care of his slaves. which is sometimes stated directly to you. so we had conversations about this. we can't get every single visitor on tour to engage with us and a dialog about this. there's a sign on the one in vibrant letters, not so bad? underneath it talks about the realities of slavery having

little to do with material things. when children can be sold for me it doesn't matter what the house who live in. helping people engage in that conversation is something we've done three years. in my role as special programs i wear it lot of hats. the primary role that i engage in is to help our guides work on ways to talk with visitors about these ideas have slavery. what it means for people who are processing through this stop. sometimes for the first time. they'll be on the same tour with somebody who knows more about it than however read. people, again, we think they're at thomas addison's house. you have an interesting conversation. the best ones are when everybody talk to each other. the guide just gets to stand there and say -- [laughs] that's interesting. the big thing we're about to engage in, we've been on this multi year project of restoring the landscape of slavery at monticello. we're coming into the final big push. this is the south terrace wing which is one of the wings of the side of the main house.

there is an old picture. it shows the way it has been discussed for many years. these are small rooms. there's a kitchen, smokehouse, and there are two rooms that were servants brokers. servants quarters is wet jefferson call them. right? when the thomas jefferson foundation opened in 1923 when virginia was still a segregated say it should surprise no one in this room that conversations about race in slavery were not paramount. so decisions were made in the 1940s to build public restrooms into of the spaces. for a long time we wanted to remove it but it takes a lot of work and money. so the removal of it began just this past year. you can see the restoration of some of the sites here. and this is again the 1940s when there is a regional structure there, the building you see standing is the oldest standing structure on the mountain shallow mountain. that is a small building where thomas jefferson moved in 1972 with his young wife after they got married. and just below it with a slave

quarter. it was the original kitchen. there was a men's room for years. now it's not and it's an empty space. we were hoping to open in june of this year. fully restored with more of a conversation about slavery. one of the things we found was surprising was that is the base of a stew stove. jefferson had this area remodelled. he had it back filled. it means there's about this much dirt from some antisemitism piled up on top of a base we did not know existed. that stove would've been primarily used by a man named james hemings, who urge person took to paris. it with the big find. it change the way we're going to interpret the space. now we can talk about james hemings, he had a fascinating life, he could read and write in french and english. was a man invited to be a chef at the white house. but declined. because thomas jefferson would not ask him himself. a man who took his own life.

we don't know why. but whose life really shows us but it was like for people in slaved to try to operate in the world as white or black. jefferson's original diagram for that wing. and you can see here our plan for what it's going to look like when it's open. and the two rooms i want to talk about are the two there. getting word is a space. in 1993 we also begin in oral history project that oral history project has over the past 25 years interviewed over 200 descendants of people who were enslaved at monticello. those interviews are collected and many are available online. just google getting word, monticello, you can hear some of the oral histories of people descended from those inslee by jefferson and his family. that project is ongoing. the directors also in this room. so it's something that helps us engage with a very important and invested community. it's how we talk about slavery. and we are in constant communication with descendants

of the enslaved community at monticello. in how best to work on these things. that's going to be in the exhibit space. it will be pretty standard museum exhibit space with panels on the walls and probably digital stuff. so that you can go in and learn. and the rumor and extort is the hemings room. probably the biggest change was the year 2000. thomas jefferson foundation said that we believe thomas jefferson was the father of sadly hemings's children. a lot of reason why there's research that deeper and deeper eventually came to a point where it's fairly difficult to deny thomas jefferson is the father of her children. i do not say impossible. people still do. most academic historians do not. and i think that one of the lines that use most often to talk about this is that at this point there's more evidence that he was a father of sally hemmings children and then there's evidence he was the father of his wife's children. which is true okay? so we are going to have a

conversation about that. we are going to have a conversation about her living in this small quarter with her children and thomas jefferson of course people now don't want to argue so much about whether or not the relationship happen. they want to know what it was like. did they love each other? with eight rape? did they live each other and it was a rape? we're allowing that conversation. to provide a space where people don't really think about those things and talk with each other about them. we're probably not going to provide answers. we cannot do that. and saying specifically we know it was one where the other that denies sally hemmings the same agency she was denied in life. we don't know how she felt. so the entire plantation is a big place. and it was 5000 acres. almost eight square miles. today there's about half of that. a lot of it is opened up to the public for various reasons. but this big effort is to restore the idea of what monte

cello was as a plantation. so that people do not come in and have this reinforcement of an idea that slavery is an idyllic pastoral, you colic thing that you see it whenever hollywood portrays slavery. that there is this nfl cotton slavery of the deep south. it is something that existed. it's very different from an earlier republic virginia slavery looked like. in both cases the people were not segregated and separated from each other in the ways that we have developed in our minds through public memory. and our goal is to make sure that if you come to monticello, no matter where you take you're going to have a conversation about slavery, you can have a conversation about with the lights were like for the people who live there and how they were interned with each other. we focus on agency. we focus on telling the individual stories. one of the things that nancy said was that monroe's numbers were approximate. with thomas jefferson we have the opposite. right? we have thomas jefferson counting the shovel, and dirt it took to bury his best

friends a body. come on, that is creepy. right? that is real specific. right? thomas jefferson is a man who is really focused on precision. we know a lot. we know a lot about the people who were enslaved there. we know in a only from his records from their own oral histories. their own records, the primary documents, archeology, and ongoing history that teaches us more and more about it. so we want to focus on the stories. we want to tell about the lives of the people who suffer most here at monticello, but whose lives impacted american history and helped us understand who we are as if people. i'm going to close with one last thing. everybody know what that is? this has been a strange year to live in charlottesville, virginia. i will say this. our focus is on individually agency, yes, we are committed to telling the stories, to recognize agency of those who were denied it. we're also committed to understanding the legacies of slavery, helping our guests understand as well. one of the things i hear most

often from people is we did not invent slavery in america. that is true. we did not. slavery did not end with the emancipation proclamation. it's also true. but slavery in america was different from everywhere else in the world because of the way it was intertwined with the concept of race. it was created at the same time. you want to talk about having a difficult, nuanced conversation in 36 minutes? you have to talk about the beauty of architecture and help your guests understand race is a sociological contract has no biological basis whatsoever and that our institutions and ideas today are about reinforcing hierarchies. i just did it in 30 seconds. it can be done! [applause] [laughs] these guys do not hear it. they have no idea. and frankly for some of them it is not really their fault. and i would ask at this in closing, but can we do?

as scientists, historians, when we do to help challenge that? and i think that what we are doing is important. and i think telling a story, remembering slavery as something that is so integral to american history, understanding how it reinforces systemic racism today is our challenge. hopefully it can make things like that become part of history as well. thank you. [applause] >> good afternoon.

my name is christian cotz, i'm director of education at james madison's montpelier, i've been there for 17 years. hopefully we all know that montpelier is the home of our fourth president. the father of the constitution, architect of the villa rights, coauthor of the federal papers. it was also home to his parents, siblings, grandparents, his beautiful bride dolly, but more importantly for our conversation today, it was home to over six generations of enslaved african americans that live des moines paleo during the tenure of the medicine ownership which lasted about 120 years. montpelier is unique today amongst historic sites because we have the opportunity to interpret three centuries of african american history. we have sites of enslavement that are in the 17 twenties, running through the 18 forties. we have the reconstructed, or the restored, home of george

gilmore a montpelier slave who built this cabinet in the lower left during the reconstruction era. we have the restored montpelier train depot built in 1910, we have an exhibit about segregation in their. we've restored it to that segregation look at the white color waiting rooms. and we have an active descendant committee that works and advises us on our interpretation today. throughout those centuries it's been really the african american community that has been the constant presence at montpelier. much more so than the madison family, right? the madison family, delhi sells it in 18 forties, they have no kids, and the madison family has never come back in a meaningful way to montpelier where the african-american community that lived there, later in semi forms of freedom, are still around and active at

montpelier today.irfz i want to tell you a little bit about what we've done over the last 20 years. and gets us to do big project we just opened with in june. the point is that what we did, the exhibit that we open in june, would not have been possible without the 20 years they proceeded it. and this is really important for historic to think about, you can't just get the chunk of money and then, you know, i have this big meaningful exhibit, you have to have, you have to put in your time with committee. so, in 2000, for 1999, -- i was in the far-right approached us about the falling down cabinet that was across the street from our main gate. in the 19 eighties, when the national, they're over 160 structures on the property. we knew much about where the

space of 25,000 square feet added to it and the temple, which sits right next to, it which is still about construction. everything else was late 19th century or 20th century buildings. we didn't much care about it, we didn't much have the funds the tariff care of it, so this was justf hundred and 58 buildings that was falling down on the property. so rebecca comes and she says hey, you know what that is? that's my great-grandfather. he was a sleeve and he built that during reconstruction. and i think you should restore it. and we said, we agree with you, that's really cool. and we did the research and we figured it out. that restoration took five years. that little cabin took five years because we had no on the to do it, right? i will start and stop, start and stop. right after this opened, when we started the reconstruction of the main house. that took five years. but we had 25 million dollars to do it. and that really started

disengagement with the descending community. her family came, not participated in the archeology under the cabinet and she opened doors for us into the orange county communities, so we were meeting all of these descendants who were coming to us with our stories and who wanted to be involved. and we had reunions in 2001 and two thousands have been, i don't have pictures of those because nobody had to chill cameras back then. but in 2009, we had met the family of paul, paul was medicines enslaved man servant. and paul was the guy who saved that picture of george washington and the british came -- to the white house. they met obama, they got their photograph taken in front of the painting which is really pretty cool. i did not get invited on the trip, unfortunately. we also started public archeology programs and we had those going for a while, but we really started making a conservative effort to bring

the descending community and to those programs, right? , so you have descendants of enslaved people digging on the sites where their ancestors lived pulling objects out of the ground, the last people who touch those objects where their ancestors. i mean, that's really cool meaningful stuff. in 2014 the picture of everybody on the porch was advisory committee meeting that are put together to ask that committee one else we should be doing in the current interpretation of that one else would they like to see where we're kind of at a turning point where we had completed a few projects and we really didn't know where we are going next and we wanted their opinion and the big thing that came out of that meeting was you have to restore the south yard right at the saudi artist those buildings that were going to see off of this side of the mansion where the slaves who worked the -- spokes houses and three quarters. and we had done archeology in those places between 2008 and

2011, the sort of exploratory expeditions because we didn't have the money to do complete excavations. and our director of archeology, mount grieves, said let's frame up the structure. let's just put these course to timber frame structures there and i said man, that's a dumb idea. these are going to look like jungle gyms and the kids are going to be climbing all over them. so that's okay. and that's exactly what happened. but he said, what's going to happen is somebody's going to see this. they're going to say why didn't you finish those? and we're going to say because we needed the money to do the archeology. and i said, it's never going to happen. and lo and behold, in november of 2014, david rubenstein came through with a 10 million dollar gift to do just that, which is pretty amazing. i've got to stand on the terrorists of the mansion on looking down at the self--- explaining mats idea to him. i left out the part about giving his money to do it. but it must have been a good idea, so we took down all of

those structures that we have built and we started doing the archeology and as we did the archeology, sort of moved slowly so as we did archeology, we restored buildings and while these buildings were being restored, archeology is being done on the smaller buildings in the middle. so right now, there are four buildings that have been restored to left to go with the archeology is done. his gift was to finish the archeology, restore the six structures and then refurnish all the spaces in the mansion that had yet to be refurnish, okay? that included about a third of the rooms above stairs and the entire set alert level of the mansion. and then the six new buildings in the south yard. and my job was to furnish those seller spaces and the new york six buildings in the south yard. and when we decided pretty immediately was that we could do a better job of telling more meaningful stories by non grief

furnishing those spaces in the traditional way, right? we knew we didn't want to have that exhibit about slavery that you see in so many plantations that revolves around hard labor and poor intentions. we wanted to tell more meaningful stories that pushed things into the present tense. and so, we came up with this idea, the exhibit title -- comes from a quote from james madison, i love this quote. madison does not talk and sound bites like other people. but at the constitutional convention he said, we've seen theaáykykyçñ premiered fiction r made in the most enlightened period of time, aground of the most oppressive dominion ever exercised by man over man. . and if you take the constitutional convention on when the data way and james madison's name away, you could really stop and ask yourself,

one was that quotation spoken? we've seen the mere distinction of color made in the most enlightened period of time. aground the most oppressive dominion ever exercised by a man over man. through our work with the dissension community, sorry, we knew that we do true swoons of the enslaved with humanity and dignity. we want to attack it from the point of empathy. we wanted our visitors to think about shared universal experiences, rather than hard work. none of us will ever know what it means to plow or 40 acre field, none of you are ever gonna stand behind a mule and do that, unless you're really strange. but, you know what it's like to be a mother, or a father or a

child or grandchild. you can imagine what it would be like to have those people taken away from you, right? and those are more -- those are concepts and characteristics -- characterizations it experiences that people went through. and so we took photographs from the library of congress we sort of ghosted them on these gas panels and wheelies projections of shadows on the walls that faded in and out that land some idea of these universal experiences that we wanted people to think about, and there are little text blends with them that don't &ktry to share somebody's biography, right? these aren't historical individuals that were talking about in particular, right? but rather, again, those universal concepts that people could relate to, so the woman in the middle who's nursing a child in the photo. so i was separated, i was raped,

i was afraid, i was hopeful, i was a survivor, i was property, right? and all seven of these glass panels and with that phrase, i was property. we'll also notice that there is no punctuation, which is a really long conversation. and that's how museum people are, right? so, these images share these emotions,? right the shadows share the emotions and we also have these listening stations spread out through the exhibit where you can sit down and listen to the voices those returns. because we had this great community, we thought, what should we tell this story is an academic or institutional voice that will be removed? why don't we let the dissidents tell the stories of their ancestors? and, so we have this beautiful black and white photography that's crawls behind the words

of people talking. how to play a short clip of that. >> we're trying to look at addressing the people who were here, and providing as much dignity to their spirits and to their history as we can. and won't be fully restored, we know that. but this is a step in the right direction to tell their story. their story needs to be told. they weren't invisible. there were someone's great great grandmother, great great grandfather, it's and in our dna, we are them there us. >> she does talk and sound bites, she is a gold mine. and as we refer to these people, these were not and operations. we asked people open-ended questions and they're responding to them and then we got it together their answers to make these recordings, which are really pretty cool. we also stencilled the 281 names of the unknown people who were enslaved among the wall,

right? this is going along with the same idea of the vietnam war memorable, why is that so moving? it's because when you start thinking about the enslaved as individuals, it's much more meaningful and it is when you're looking at them as a monolith, right? this happened to one person at a time. every person is somebody child, or somebody's parent. it makes a real difference. we also use photographs of our living descendant community in the south yard structures, and the living quarters where their ancestors lived. so you walk into this quarter and you see a full-size picture of rebecca here, there are others. and you see a tech split about the historic family that may have lived there -- the artifact that's in the little glass case which is in this case as a piece of pencil and writing slate. and she talks about how important literacy wise to this enslaved family who live there,

but also to her ancestors, right? her great grandfather was recorded in freedoms records as one of only six african americans in orange county. there's hugh paul turnings is descendants, human mary alexander. joe mcgill, founder of the slave dwelling project it's part of our community as well and next to throw is this mosaic made up of fragments of excavated brick shards that were excavated out of delivering corners around the property and there, underneath the kid has a full-size brick of -- that as a fingerprint in it of the enslaved child who made that break. part of this, we also decided to tell this national story about slavery,? right how does he fit into the nation's history, how does the

plantation fit into the economic world, how does slavery fund the slave states? how does the wealth and slavery created assent to the presidency or translate to the presidency? how does that wealth and the people who are spouting the ideology around slavery, sort of get the stage in the 18th century, how did those ideas relacquer? a lot of these ideas translate to the institutions that madison created? our guys the guy who created the constitution and i protect slavery and like a half dozen different ways. we needed to call that out, we needed to acknowledge that and then we needed to acknowledge that slavery, all right, even though it ends in 1865 this, story doesn't end in 1865. it doesn't end when madison dies, it doesn't and when he sells everybody, doesn't and with a blinken but this legacy of slavery continues today and

brandon was saying, you know, what are we going to do about what happened in charlottesville? and i think this kind of tells you a little bit about what we're trying to do. we did this before charlottesville had this. >> i think our problem is americans is that we actually hate history. so we can't really connect the dots, but we love his nostalgia. we love to remember things exactly the way they didn't happen and history itself as an indictment, often, and people who hate to be indicted. . yuck ♪ ♪ ♪ >> don't shoot him. don't shoot him. he has no weapon. he has no weapon.

>> for black men inside of one car, when hip-hop album, driving ten miles over the speed limit. in one residential area. that is a bunch of racist cops. >> and when you are living constantly with the fear of going to jail because she fit the description or because she can't afford a lawyer, if i am walking down the street to pick up milk, i could be accosted. you know? . we are filled with an intense amount of dread. >> people still languish in the corners of american society. and finds himself in exile in his own land. >> -- you deserve to be trial for

treason, for the amount of times he forced people, you deserve to be tried for treason, your days, and she wonder what your role is, what your future is in this country. >> amazing grace. amazing grace. may god continue to shed his grace on the united states of america. >> i would show you more about it gets into the rachel's music and we had to play a lot of money for that. we're not like to show it on the screens. so that video piece is about the legacies of slavery, i showed you the middle. it starts with madison and the constitution goes through the

19th century and how slavery was important to the coming of the nation. and then after this bit it goes into a peace with rebecca gilmore coleman who talks about being three generations removed from slavery and what that means to her. and she gets into conversations about rape in that monologue that she has, so, anyway, we use that as the sort of centerpiece of our opening in june of 2017 where there were over 900, mostly african american faces under the tent in the backyard. and pretty sure i can guarantee that the first time there were ever that many african american people in montpelier in its history. i think it speaks volumes about how building relationships and doing your due diligence is often the end. >> thank you.

[inaudible] >> all right, thank you very much for these presentations. i guess i just wanted to start by asking if listening to each other you have thoughts or responses or questions for each other, we can start there. we have a little bit more than a half an hour for conversation, let's start there and then i have some questions and we can open it up to the audience so you can all get ready. are there things that occurred to you about the ways in which the projects -- one of the things that occurred to me of interpreting must be very different based on the kind of support and structure of each house and each site in ways that are not visible to

me. but as i'm listening, and wondering if there are ways that you think your jobs are different because you are at montpelier or another sight. >> actually, i think we all benefit from the fact that we have really strong and courageous leadership other sites that have allowed as to go to these places and pushed us to go to these places, who haven't backed down when we have been edgy or pushy. >> i would say the same. it's an ongoing effort from everybody. it is this constant push to try to talk about it more and take it further and the relationships we have with each other. so many of us are in the small area in central virginia that we know each other pretty well. we didn't really have much of a preliminary conversation.

it just like, let's do that. >> can you push the mic closer? >> how is that? is it better? >> one thing that is really unique about these three sites, we all do guide training together once here where we get all our staff together, i love that that keeps this period of the friendship between our founders together. >> there is also great barbecue place that centrally located and we all get together there and talk about what's happening on the sites. >> the best restaurant in charlottesville is gordon spill. >> all right. >> i actually have another thought, this directly relates to what christian just said in terms of answering the questions raised. first to comment, i've had the distinction to see the except it twice now. i can't commence mapelli or enough to raise the bar in terms of this conversation. that exhibit is incredible. it really does engage with what

we're trying to talk about in a way that is undeniable, and is not sterile. i think people really do respond to it. and maybe not always positively, but they respond to it. my question is if you would talk us through a little bit of the process and creation of the video. how that happens. thoughts that went into it. >> to do something about the legacy of slavery. we really didn't know the concept design, that room is going to be the legacy of slavery, but we didn't really nailed down with that meant. we came back with the idea of doing a multi screen video show. so now we're gonna do a multi screen video show but the legacy of slavery, that could be a six hour documentary. we had ten to 12 minutes that we thought we could realistically work with. how do you boil down the legacy of slavery into ten minutes? that was pretty challenging, we beat our ahead against the wall over a year, we came up with

ideas that we threw away, and we finally decided to bring in about 20 people from across the country to think take, a three day weekend, martin luther king weekend last year. we had academics, artists, activists who came and participated with us in this think tank. we filled a room of white boards with ideas that related to the legacy of slavery, and the facilitator said, okay, this is great. erase everything but three ideas. which was so painful. it was six hours of work just gone. when activists narrowed down for the filmmakers the storyline. as the weekend developed, the filmmakers kind of saw these different people engaging in conversation with us and four of the participants of the weekend became the talking heads in the film. you saw reggie talking, a

spoken word artists in boston, it includes rebeca who is the president emeritus of the university of chief rich india. talking about the 18th and 19th century and from ohio state, talking about contemporary issues with education and slavery. he talks about how students today have this notion of slavery and the 18th and 19th century that is very disney-esque. he has to combat that all the time. >> dissidents your question? >> yes. >> one of the things when you were talking, you talked about the different ways that visitors thing about memory and why do visit a presidential home, what's brings them they're like edison's home. so i wondered if each of you could talk a little bit about moments in which you feel that you had succeeded were failed?

that ability to convey this different sense of history, this different reason for a person to visit a presidential home. and i would just like to hear a little more specificity about your interaction with visitors or your hopes. what you -- when you have a moment, we got this right. or we are still sort of struggling with this? >> we have those every day with a new exhibit, we put a lot of money and time and energy into training our staff because we knew that people would react to this exhibit very differently. it was not gonna be what most people expected. they're going to be very visceral reactions to it, both in a positive and negative way, you have people coming out of the exhibit bowling. they beat shoulder, they need somebody to talk to, they just want somebody to hear how moved

they have been or how they've begun to think about things in a new way which is so amazing. that's when you know you nailed it. and that there are people who come out and are really angry, they want somebody to yell at, they want somebody to vent to, and how do you tray or staff to deal with that? basically the answer is, you provide somebody who will listen. not necessarily agree but listen. anyway, that's boiling it down. we also kind of feel like we got it right when we see those reactions. because you are making people rethink their notions of history, you're making people, you're making people have a conflict in their own mind about the history they want to be true at the history they are being presented with this museum. and people believe what museum say for the most part. and they have this huge

conflict with it. especially at the home of a president, a founding father, of one of their guys, their history. the history they relate to so much for their entire lives. all of sudden, that's being turned on its head and they have a really hard time with it. >> that's it. our department, education and visitor program, it is big, it has about 100 people. we have core values that we had here too or aspire to. they include unity of effort and visitor focus. it's really about the guest, and a third and final is provocative interpretation. we thought a lot about that as well, those words, conversations about words. but we really want our guests to think. it's about provoking vote, it's about the reflection on the car ride home, get the family near mini van, you're driving down the road and say, what about when they said this? and we see that most

successfully when the visitors process this on site. we have a guess will take a tour and come out and find somebody wearing a badge and say, they said this. and that really shows us they are thinking about it, or is it true? . it often has to do with slavery, mostly with jefferson, and on a personal basis, this stuff is hit-or-miss. i remember one tour in particular, we had a business school come in and i thought i would turn this on. i was 20 minutes in and i was spitting gold, it was also. this guy pulls me aside and says, thomas jefferson, abraham lincoln, they were friends? i should've done some more research because none of them are from the united states. and sometimes you miss, and sometimes it goes really well, and i have the same as christian said, i have visitors,

eight-year-old african-american woman cry. that feels like a moment when -- when somebody says it's horrible the way you discussed slavery. >> when somebody is telling you that it's wrong that slavery is wrong, you have done right. >> well said. >> i would say on the upside for us, when we made the research announcement in 2016 that we had found the foundation of monroe's original house, one of the wonderful things to come from that is that a man posted on social media need george when role that it was his ancestry. our director was able to make contact with him and he's introducing us to more of his cousins. when you share that with visitors, last week we met a descendant, a slave descended, they get really excited. they are literally here a living history that we're making these connections. i'm envious of the decades and

decades of research you have, and i know we will get there. we are just still in our infancy, we are inspired by who came to your opening. i would love for that to be our goal to make contact with that many slave descendants. on the downside, some of you may be familiar with monroe and the american calm isolation society, sometimes i can see guessed taking that as mineral kind of trying to do something nice for the enslaved. and when you hear that, we think we need to talk more about this. this is not the takeaway we walk from that. but i would say, are burgeoning relationship with the highland slave dissidents and where that is going to go will add incredible depth and richness to what we're?++l doing and i'm excited to see what happens next. >> i have one more question and then i will open it up, so one of the things, and this is a carry over from one of the earlier sessions.

i was surprised to see what's a big role of the descendant community plate in montpelier and moving this particular aspect forward. i wondered how the institutions navigates and i just will be blunt, the races of the interpreters? so having the descendants at such an integral piece of the process of putting that exhibit together and having them really sort of their, seems to be an incredibly powerful way of dealing with that, but i wondered if at the other two sites, how are their african american interpreters, are they folks who have a particular relationship to the side or are they professional historians? and what does that do to the dynamic, you think, of the visitors experience or the ability to be kind of open to

this conversation about slavery, because it seems what you did at montpelier, which i always want to say montpelier as them french. that it seems that when you all day there was really just take that on, right? so how is that happening in the other sense? >> i do think that's a challenging question that we get a lot. and it is true. of the hundred interpreters that i just mentioned, the most african american interpreters and one, time three. a couple of latin american interpreters. couple of asian american interpreters. and where keenly aware of this and of course, you know, diversifying staff is a goal. it's an institutional cool. but, so is diversifying audience. so is the there's -- diversifying interest. and i also think that there is a part to it that people like us plays well.

and there have been many times when i have set up to talk about slavery, and i'm sure that you can tell from my ex accent that i'm not from new york, right? my ancestors were slave holders, i know that for a fact. my grandfather's name was robert e. lee, literally. so, somebody like me talking about slavery, it's a different voice that sometimes, certain people will listen to. and it might be an audience that needs to be reached, right? but, that being said, sometimes people will not listen to me because what am i going to tell them about their ancestors history? so i think part of that, taking the conversation forward, understanding your legacies, understanding weigh in. the privileges that i expect experience and my life is because of slavery.5u it and to talk about it is powerful stuff. what's that i like to see more african americans interpreters? absolutely. and i think we. well but i will also say, look

around this conference, this is a conversation that we all have to have. and it's a conversation about academia, it's a conversation about wealth, it's a conversation about systemic bias, it's a conversation about his generational bias. we're working on it. >> i can't add any more than what brandon said. >> so, if you could -- we need to do to use them like if you have a question. so come on up. we're on camera. >> this is more of a question for all of you, but as someone who lives in the middle of harpers ferry and gettysburg, we have a lot of conversations about slavery when we have guests visit, especially if you are volunteer. especially when you have the appalachian accent that most of them are not familiar with. they're not used to how we

sound. when we get a lot of people who seem to think that african americans in need to thank white people for the civil war and for freeing them and also a lot of people who -- are brought into the conversation get really upset about the fact that possibly to slave holders descendants might field attacked. and it's just a really awful races to -- how would you approach that? >> thank you. >> i'll give a friend of mine some advertisement here. down in charleston county parks department, my friend, the parks department just acquired a plantation down there called mcleod plantation that they open up as a historic site. and john had work for the parks department and he was an interpreter, he got the role of

putting this program ticker and they decided to interpret the plantation from the point of view of the group of people who had lived of the longest, which is the enslaved community and then the freed descendants of them. they don't talk about the white family at all. they just talk about the african american families that were there. and what sean did was horrible together ideas and chapters from this sort of series of books that the asl age has put out about interpreting african american history, interpreting slavery and interpreting difficult history. he took ideas from all those books and sort of developed a curriculum thrower interpreters called ethical interpretation. and he will come to your site for a small fee. sean halifax. and he will run your interpreters through this program and it's really great. you couldn't do it in two days. you can do it in five days. you can put as much or as little into it as you want to. but what it does is it makes

you think about your own internal biases and helps you unpack that a little bit. and then it makes you think about how your visitors are coming with those biases, right? and how you as an interpreter don't have to agree with him or disagree with him. you just have to realize where they are coming from and start the conversation from that point. at some point, you have to recognize that you are never going to move some people and maybe the best thing to do in that case is disengage and let them go away and be mad, and that's fine. but, for everybody else, you kind of realize where you are in that relationship with her guest, where they are coming from and then walk the ball down the field as slowly as it takes. which is hard, if you're under the gun of a 45 minute tour something. there's no great answer to this. and this is something that the field of interpretation is

wrangling with and the present day. so we're all working to find a solution to this, i think. >> thank you. >> i think we all just stand united in knowing that the president's we interpret cannot have achieved what they achieve without slavery. so -- >> thank you so. much >> hello, i'm from howard university, i've been doing work in the montpelier and also in monte carlo, i've never been in james monroe plantation. but i ask myself, and i think it is commendable what you are doing, i think that you can see the transformation that is going on in these two different sides, but i think that jennifer, she dutch is on a point that i think is important. on how much this community, that you call descendants, they are engaged in what is being

done. then i have the impression that mobility are, you are doing something now that is different because with this new exhibition. but i will call that when i was there the last time, the cabins were not yet reconstructed, that i think that now they are. and during the visit to the mansion, there was still work to be done with that and i ask myself, what is being done? because the impression that i have in this space is that a visitor, most of them i think that they are white visitors, there is a minority of african americans who go there and you can ask why, why african americans there are also not hired to be interpreters, because they don't want to have a relation with this space. or because there are no efforts being made. but when you are talking about the mansions, usually would i have the impression in the two places and mount vernon is the

first thing in mount vernon is not even here, but the mansion is sort of a sacred space of this presidents where we don't talk about the slavery inside the mansion. talk about slavery outside and you don't talk about this inside. and i was impressed by what you are doing, for example, and mostly a buy this exhibition that you use the term rape. the last time that i've been in a conference about this issue, there was an insane amount of jefferson on the table, and she said that she doesn't like to use the word rape. which he is apparently being down in monte carlo. and then i asked myself, whether or not these stories are being incorporated inside the mansions and whether or not i can go there and simply not see anything that you are showing me here. for example, i can visit gardens, i can visit other places, other spaces inside the mansion, for example and not

hear anything about what you are doing. and one last example, is for example when you do elsewhere, i don't know about when row, but i know that the social media accounts of monte carlo and montpelier, you are doing a nice job. and showing issues related to slavery. but i know that there is another house of president that is mount vernon that the social media account, it's like how george washington was so nice with his slaves. and i think that all this work of interpretation goes also beyond their real spaces because there are people in the spaces who will never be able to go there, but they're able to visit your websites and perhaps follow you on facebook and twitter. thank you. >> when i try and address some of that. the first thing, you are right. i mean, many visitors from many years come to monte carlo, you go, by the ticket, you take the house turn your head, going to mount to cello is going to the

house, right? you take a 45 minute tour, hop back on the bus, you go down to the tavern, you have a nice colonial lunch and then you drive back from where you're going. that's a thing, right? we don't strip our tours. every guide race their own tour. a required to say two things. that thomas jefferson was the faller -- and that the levee family, the jewish family that bought monte cello after jefferson's death saved a home from destruction because of their interest in jefferson's idea on religious freedom, that's it. those are the two things have to say. now granted, fire if your tour and give your house and the guide has not mentioned the declaration of independence at all, we're going to have a top. but, the idea is that you have to talk about slavery. you have to. now, we don't script our tours. i can watch every single tour. you know, all of those conversations that we have about heritage, identity memory, remember that most of the people at the sites are wealthy enough to afford the work there, most of them are retired, most

of them are white, most of them want to work there because they love their subjects. that's not true across the board, but it is true that we have to have a lot of conversations about okay, we really have to talk about slavery. we really have to talk about it on tour. we think we're making progress. we think we're doing that. and one of the things that were very excited about his mantra cello is were going to change of where. to start your 2018, you don't go to monte carlo unless you start by talking about slavery. every tour. every house tour. and that segregation of the idea is a 21 century holdover. we're doing your best to break those barriers, we've been doing in, we know both institutions are a long time, we always talk about this. and i think we're making progress. but i think your observation is right. and this was mentioned in the session before, there was an op at that appeared in the washington post a few years ago. a woman named tsv milton, who

is a professor kim to monte carlo, did not take a tour. walked around and said this institution whitewash is history. and i can absolutely see how she can say that. and i can see how an african american female academic might pass by this redneck guy wearing a tie and a blue you a blazer and not want to listen to what i have to say. so i think there's a lot of stuff there about identity, understanding, for an interpretation of the sights and hopefully will make more progress as we go forward. >> i would echo a lot of what brandon said, we also don't scripture guides. and we are also thinking about changing around our house tour and we also insist that every room has some thing to do with slavery incorporated into the interpretation. >> i would just add that i did the mount vernon tour. but it was connected to a conference. and, the guide when every room

said, this is the kitchen. there were four enslaved women who worked in this room every time and i asked her afterwards, i was like, are you giving this toward justice because we're here as slavery scholars? and she said no. this is a tour that i give all the time. but it didn't make me wonder, so was it her, you know she was young and really scrappy and excited. or was it something that the entire -- that all of the tour guides -- but one of the things that was one oppressive was that she would say, you know, the washington side this reputation for being amazing hosts and that's because there were four enslaved women who worked upstairs and to date on the laundry and brought all the food. she did it in every single room but it seems that that has to happen because this split between the house and the outbuildings is clearly a clear intention but we have a lot of questions >> i would like to

say in types of highland, likewise we have scripted tours kaiser required to talk was a resume narrative but because we have a long way to go in terms of monroe's papers being transcribed whatever strategies we did in trading its collections as a talk about slavery for persons like we might not have a primary source to talk about a slave being in the specific room especially now that we know that we we do have the objects. instead of saying, monroe's presidential china for his presidency, how can use that china showing the 20 states to springboard into the misery compromise and the future of slavery in america. that's what our strategy is. >> i'm going to ask you, maybe we can do some short questions and take two at a time. >> thank you. >> the framers of the constitution were very articulate in the race and individual, yet we had six or 700,000 people die in a civil

war, to free the slaves. but it wasn't necessary in europe. what's different? what's different about this place? >> you didn't have race based slavery in new york as you have as -- >> even though the money that is made in the americas, both north america and latin america and the caribbean is crucial to fueling the development of european national sovereignty. and the wealth of european states. well europeans did not have race based slavery in europe, they've benefited tremendously from the existence of it in the americas. >> my name is well, i'm from you port university. my question had to deal with education and interpretation as it pertains to kids. over the last summer, part of

my job was to teach middle schoolers about slavery and the anecdote that i often used was about john brown witnessing a slave being beaten brutally with a shovel and aspired him in his anti slavery movement. i like to use that example because i wouldn't stop on their minds that you can't forget that slavery was an inherently violent system and something you have to not forget. and that thing is, i could also notice it wasn't so much effective on the older, apathetic teenage, high school type kids. i was just wondering in terms of presenting this to children, what kind of strategies or examples do you think are most effective. that's my question. >> christian use the term

universal, and i would agree with that. they are things that they can really do in their own life, in our case imagine your own parents being sent away to another place that you don't know how far along. those type of scenarios do well. >> she just brought that up, nancy's husband is the student program director at montpelier. >> we are all good friends. >> so what's she just described is a program he just created for his students in the fall. that's what they do, they focus on universal experiences that could go back and forth. >> thank you. >> thank you very much. i was really interested, my name is and bailey, i am from begin to university, i write about slavery. it's so interesting to hear the progress overall these sites had some of which i'm familiar with. it's great to see this. my big question is similar to the question before wondering

how you try to reach, or if you can reach, people beyond the visitors who come. it is hard to get to the spaces financially for some people in terms of how far away they are and so forth, i was thinking about a curriculum, a grade 12 curriculum, and whether that has ever been talked about as a potential idea for actually bringing that voice of the enslaved that you are trying to recover. kind of more into the mainstream. that is just one quick question about that. also curious about whether or not you are thinking about reaching out to college students. i could just see a number of our college students would be very interested in internships, and you could get more minority college students interested if there are some outreach in that respect. i don't think they realize these changes are happening. i guess that's what i'm saying. i think they would be very excited to know that they are. >> this is not my area, i hope

i don't wreck this. we do one thing where grade school teachers come from all over the world, and we spent a week there they work on projects and create a curriculum, it's available on line. just google want to cello classroom, it has a lot of different lesson plans for the situations we're talking about. we're also ones for the digital feel trips with the students being able to directly asked what they're thinking about. that has been immediately popular. it's brand-new, very popular, working. well we're working on revamping our website, so we will see how that goes. and just a lot of work, we hope to push it forward and keep working with it, as for colleges i did say at one point that most we've ever had is five african american interpreters. you are absolutely right, it is

the best place. your comments about if you know the students know what is going on. and this relates back to your question as well, that to me feels like a loss. when you feel like you have missed. we have colleagues in mount vernon, we know the work they engage and, we know how important slavery is in her discussions. but if someone can walk away and say i don't feel like we talked about it at all, that is a loss for us. it's frustrating for those of us behind the scenes for people who try to get that conversation out there. we just have to keep trying. justin hawkins, university of maryland, i was just wondering if you could talk about how the tourists are set in a certain area, there are certain limitations that come with physical structures and you can only show a certain snapshot. how do you deal with that of showing a large chronology of time as it relates? also the interplay between the three locations being so close in virginia and the idea of

slaves being mobile in those communities. >> i should clarify, the augmented reality tour is only sent in 1819, probably because that's helped us condense a huge body of knowledge into what really is about 20 minutes. of the two of the tour. that is kind of the reasoning about that. tell me the second part of your question again? >> when you have physical structures and they portray a certain snapshot when those buildings might not have been all around at the same time, or more buildings went up later. so the visitor sort of gets an image of it as it is today. >> it static. >> how do you show the fluid chronology with a sort of static limitation. >> you guys could probably speak good to that. >> one of the things we did a year before last was create an

app that is available through android and iphones that is a free downloadable app that has digital renderings and gives chronology and its geo located. so you can look at it, you can see where buildings were, it's narrated by descendants of enslaved people at monticello, anybody can google that quickly and find it on the app store, you can also use it when you are not at monticello. its strength is doing exactly what you're saying about how it is changed over time. >> we also have an outdoor audio tour that helped people with buildings that might have been there outside of the interpretive period, we've interpreted montpelier into that retirement years so all the buildings that were restored and landscape would have been there from 1817 to 1836. that is the period we have chosen to interpret, not one year but fudging it a little bit. >> thank you. i think we have time for one more question.

>> my name is heather scarlet from can't state university in ohio. i would like to know as museum directors and leaders, do you think that public memory is enhanced more by reenactor's or by multi media and digital items such as podcasts and videos? thank you. >> are there reenactor's? are there people in historical care? >> at montpelier, we use a james madison and dolly madison reenactor that are highly vetted and very good at what they do and a little bit weird. one guy reads the same newspaper that he would have read 200 years ago, every day of his life. he is really into it. and he is great, he's exactly the same age medicine was 200 years ago, and he looks like him. it's strange. that being said i think when

costume interpretation, first person interpretation is done well, it is great. i also say that it is really hard to do well. and when you are looking at a plantation site in particular, it's hard to do well because of the people that you would need on staff to interpret it accurately. >> same, most of the interpreters we use our professional's, they're out there all the time. and they come to want a cello sometimes because they're really good at what they do. but for the most part, i think my answer to your question is yes, what is better? it depends on the situation. and it depends on who you are using or what type of digital work you are putting out. >> thank you. >> i would caution you not to use technology for the sake of technology, don't use technology for the wow factor, use it for the best method to convey the stories in the most

effective way. >> before we think you guys, i just want to say that one of the things that has been so exciting about this conversation, i know they're lots of folks in the room that to public history, for those of us who don't, to hear how collaborative this work is on both sides, because i presumed that that interpretation was the clobbered of space, when you're engaging with the public, but what i've learned today is the intense collaborative work you do with each other, with other professionals, and community members. i find that incredibly exciting and energizing, want to thank you also much and you can all stay here for a minute if you have other questions. [applause] james monroe and

george washington shared a bond from the revolutionary war, each man would serve his country is president. but the politics of a young nation drew a wedge between them. next, on the presidency, this lecture from the university great live series, scott harris explains where things went wrong. he's the executive director of the museum, the university provided this video. >> scott