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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 -- we switched around so many times, okay, 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 at monticello. 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 in power. i believe he's a renowned bartender of some renowned? he has a bit of a cold 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 monroes 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 blacksmiths 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 monticello and montpelier 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 land at the university of virginia as well, as well as properly in oakville. and you see the lines there. they are back and forth between properties all the time. and so we try to give the takeaway of being a slave at highland as uncertainty. you have the fact monroe is gone, multiple properties, he's always buying and selling.

one thing we did become a lot more certain of with our 2016 announcement that we had found the foundations of the main roads original house is that the tree ring dating told us that despite the porch in front of you it was an 1818 guesthouse built in 19 years after monroe's original house. not the original house thought to be. and what is even better, informing our understanding of slavery in terms of the discovery, is that when you look at the right to record, you can see monroe writing that when he's updating his son-in-law in 1818 the houses almost bill, he says this is done by a carpenter i bought of judge brooks last winter for 450 dollars and george. so now we know who built that. it was to enslaved men. it's become a new part of interpretation, it guesthouse built by peter and george. if you look at the paper record you can identify who that carpenter was monroe mentioned,

it was peter. here he is in an oak hill inventory from monroe's property. and then we see a george later on down in the inventory. so we can kind of piece together that monroe has brought these two men from the county down to build this guesthouse structure for him. so one way we would really like, and are excited about, interpreting slavery at highland is materiality. which is coming soon. we wanted to bring people visually the landscape through the tort. and to give you a sense it's split. part of it is centered in the year 1819 which was during monroe's presidency. since that guesthouse, 1818 guesthouse, is 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. we wanted to make sure that it was revealed how that guest

house was built to the enslaved. since we know it was through enslaved carpenters. several of the scenes in 1819 do involve conversations between slaves on the property. so that became a really interesting process through our team of working to recreate this, who do selectively slaves? what should we be talking about? when we look at the historic record we wanted to choose people that would have been in the historic core, would have seen the guesthouse probably being built, been aware of it. so we found that monroe had a cook named hannah, so in 1790 60 is a young mother with three small boys. fast forward a little over 20 years she's probably approaching 50 by 1819 when the tour is set. we also selected her to be speaking with a blacksmith named nelson. because he probably had a role, potentially, in that guesthouse of blacksmith-ing, perhaps, accessories for the shutters or something. so we see his name highlighted,

nelson, a blacksmith, a young man at that point. i also wanted to point out with hanna, we recently found a document where the inventory of items mineral was hoping medicine will buy from him. mentioning a soup spoon currently in the hand of hanna. so that expresses she would be a person of importance around the property. and 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, wondering what was going on with them. >> i wonder how pewter in georgia are doing back in oakville. when mr. monroe brought them down from 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. and never know when, for how long they could stay in the same place. another glad to be back together. >> i wanted to really underscore the fact that separating families would have been something that was no doubt not missed by the enslaved community. and there is the second one. i will show you it. hannah then will go into a room and have a conversation with enslaved spinner. we purposely chose not to give her name to really represent the mini unnamed by their master slaves in american history. the kind of irony in paradoxes that monroe is one of those classic examples of a plantation in virginia, where grain is the primary export. they just can't keep up with the cotton revolution coming up. in the earlier scene you can see monroe talking with an overseer about how highland

summit in the profit it should. so we see hannah and the spin or talking about the fear that maybe monroe will sell highland. he actually does do that, ironically they end up being sold to a cotton plantation in florida. so we see that fear actually does become real, but actually happened nine years later. >> move to the next slide. >> all i know is war, washing, spinning, weaving. here the women and the men have terrible conditions, those cotton fields down south, it's a lot rougher than here. lowered, i hope mr. monroe does not sell us south. it's where enough never knowing when he is renting you about or sending you to work on one of us project that oakville. >> hush, i hear someone coming. >> just in case it's not obvious, when you take the tour you will see the scenes on an

actual background. but we chose intentionally to do illustrations instead of have live actors. we thought it really allowed for more scope of the imagination whereas when you see an actor you know you're looking at an actor. with that you can maybe really let your mind explore more with illustrations. but we very much hope you will come see us at highland this year. i'm eager to take your questions at the follow-up presentations. [applause] >> 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 jennifer heard that. i thought the joke would go over well in an academic room.

you know what i'm talking about. the philosophy form is never hiring, but i find myself at monte carlo eight years ago now. 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 and want to cello. 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 difference is between public history and academic history. what's the difference between memory and

history 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 class. but that probably isn't the case for mathematically minded people, right? they want monticello to be 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 four dead white guys on a mountain. particularly after 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

monticello, 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 monticello 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 tours 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. in the 19 eighties, slavery 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. that means we have to understand the institute of slavery, and the last of the people he held, 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 monticello 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 those years. but he held 600 or some people during

the course of his life. 400 in monticello. at any given time 130 people are enslaved on the plantation. buildings up and down the row primarily service industrial centers. so there was a blacksmith shop, a nail or, and one of the first restorations to take place were in 2014. this building a sister house for iron. and it just beyond it there would've been a male making shop. but it was only there for a couple of years. there have been a lot of conversations about with to build, how has it changed so much overtime. you cannot build every building. so which buildings are going to 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 at 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 noticed after building this that a lot of

people had interesting reactions. we hear it. we hear it with the guests. 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 in a dialog about this. there's a sign 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

stuff. 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 edison'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 quarters.

servants quarters is what jefferson called 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 original 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 that was surprising was that it 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 jefferson took to paris. it with the big find. it change the way we're going to interpret the space. 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

you can hear some of the oral history, some of the people who were descended. and that project is ongoing, the director is also in this room. so it is something that helps us engage with a very important and invested community. as to how we talk about slavery, and we are in constant communication with descendants of enslaved people. that will be an exhibit space. and it will be pretty standard museum exhibit space, with panels on the wall and some digital stuff. probably the most chain biggest range in monte carlo, was in the year 2000. when the thomas jefferson foundation said that we believe that thomas jefferson is the

father of henning's children. there is a whole lot of research, and is the research got deeper and deeper went to a point where it was fairly difficult to deny that thomas jefferson was the father and notice i do not say impossible. because people still do but most academic historians do not. i think one of the lines i use most often to talk about this, is at this point there's more efficient there's more evidence that he was the father of sally henning's children that he was of his wife's children. which is true. we will have a conversation about that. we will have a conversation about living in a small quarter with your children with thomas jefferson. of course people now, they don't really want to argue so much whether the relationship happened. they want to know what it was like. did they love each other? was it? rate did they love each other and it was right? and so, we are hoping to allow for that conversation and provide a space where people

can really think about those things and talk with each other and with us about them. we probably will not refer vied answers we cannot do that. and saying specifically we don't was one way or the other, that denies sally hemmings the right 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 we own about half of that. a lot of it has opened up to the public for various reasons but this big effort is to restore the idea of what mounted cello was as a plantation, so people do not come in and have this reinforcement of an idea, that slavery is ideal. that you see one hollywood portrays slavery. something that existed very very different, then what virginia slavery was like. but the people were not separated from each other, in

the way that we've developed in our minds through public memory. our goal is to make sure that if you come to monte carlo, no matter what tour you take you're going to have a conversation about the people who live there and how they were entwined with each other we focus on agency and telling individual stories and one of the things that they said the numbers were approximate with thomas jefferson we have the operation opposite we have thomas jefferson county how much shovels of dirt was to various best friends body. mean that's that's creepy. come on thomas jefferson was focused on precision. we know a lot about the people who are enslaved here, and we know it not only from his records, but their own records. their primary primary documents, an ongoing history that teaches us more more about it. so we want to focus on those stories we want to focus on the stories and talk about the people who suffered most at

care monticello and those lies really impacted history, and help us understand we are as people. i want to close with one lasting. and anybody know that is? this has been a very strange year. very strange virginia. and i will say yes, our focus is on individual agency, and we are committed to telling the stories and recognize the agency of those who were denied it. but we are also committed to understanding the lexus of slavery, and helping our guests understand that is well. one of the things i hear most often from people, we did not invent slavery in america. that is true. we did not. slavery did not end with the emancipation proclamation. that's also true. but slavery in america was different from slavery everywhere else in the world, because the way it was intertwined in the context of race that was created in the same time. you want to talk about having a difficult nuanced conversation and 36 minutes, where you have

to talk about the declaration of independence, the beauty of architecture, and understand that race is a social trickle construct that has no basis. school i just didn't 30 seconds, but it can be done. three but these guys don't hear it. they don't hear in the have no idea. and frankly for some of them it is not really their fault and i would ask us this in closing. what can we do? as scientists, historians, what do we do to help challenge that? and i think that what we're doing is important. and i think telling the stories and russ reminding people it's part of american history and how it reinforces systemic racism today, that is the challenge. hopefully we can make things like that become part of history as well. thank you. [applause] stop at the video.

>> good afternoon, my name is christian cotz, i'm the director of -- i've been there for 17 years. hopefully we all know that montpelier is the home of our fourth president, father of the constitution, architect of the bill of rights, coauthor of the federalist papers. it was also home to his parents, siblings, grandparents, beautiful bride dolly, but more

importantly for our conversation today, it was home to over six generations of enslaved african americans that lived at montpelier during the tenure of the medicine ownership which lasted about 120 years. montpelier is unique today amongst historic sites. because we had the opportunity to interpret three centuries of african american history. we have sites of enslavement this are in the 17 twenties, run to the 18 forties. we have the reconstructed, or restored, home of george gilmore, a montpelier slave. who built this cabin in the lower left during the reconstruction era. we have the restored montpelier train depot which was built in 1910, and exhibit about segregation in there, we resorted to that segregation look with the white colored waiting rooms. we have an active dissenting community that advises us on our interpretation today.

and throughout the centuries it's really been the african american community that has been the constant presence at montpelier, much more so than the madison family. the madison family, dolly sells the place in the 18 forties. they have no kids. the madison family has never really come back in a meaningful way to montpelier. where the african-american community that lived there first enslavement and later in semi forms of freedom, right, are still around and active at montpelier today. so i want to tell you a bit about what we've done over the last 20 years. which gets us to the big project which is opened in june. the point here is that what we did, the exhibit we opened in june, would not have been possible without the 20 years that proceeded it. okay? this is important for historians to think about.

you can't just get a chunk of money and, you know, have this big, meaningful exhibit. you have to have put in your time with the community. in 2000, 1999 around, rebecca gilmore coleman in the far-right approached us about the fall and down cabinet there was across the street from her main gate. in the 19 eighties when the national trust acquired montpelier there were over 160 structures on the property. right, usually when we knew much about where the montpelier main house which was 25,000 square feet added to it by the dupont family. and the temple which sits right next to it which is in construction. everything else was late 19th century, 20th century buildings. we didn't much care about it. we didn't have the funds to take care of them. it was one more of those 150 buildings that was falling down on the property. rebecca comes and you know that is? it was my great grandfather's home. he was a montpelier slave.

he built that during reconstruction. i think you should resort. we said we agree with you. that is really cool. right? we did the research, figured it out. the restoration took five years. that little cabin took five years. because we had no money to do it. right? start, stop, start and stop. right after this open we started the reconstruction of the main house of montpelier. it took five years. we had 25 million dollars to do it. and that really started this engagement with the descending community. her family came out and participated in the archeology of the cabin. she opened doors for us into the orange county community. we were meeting all of these descendants. who are coming to us with their stories, who wanted to be involved at montpelier. we had descended reunions in 2001, 2007. i don't have pictures of those. because nobody had digital cameras back then. in 2009 we met the family of

paul jennings. he was madison's enslaved man serpent. paul was a guy that saved the picture of george washington, the church came to the white house. they get their photograph taken in front of the painting. which is really cool. i did not get invited on that trip unfortunately. [laughs] we also started public archeology programs. we had it going for a while. we send making a concerted effort to bring the dissenting community into those programs. we had descendants of exclaimed people digging on the sites. pulling objects out of the ground, the last people who touch those objects where their ancestors. that is really cool, meaningful stop. in 2014 the picture of everybody on the porch was an advisory committee that got to get it as a descendant community what else we should be doing and the current

interpretation of montpelier. what else would they like to see? we were at a turning point where we had completed a few projects and did you know where we're going next and we want to their opinions. the big thing that came out of the meeting with that you have to restore the south yard, right, the buildings that we are going to see off of the side of the mansion where the slaves who worked in the mansion for the medicines lives, the kitchens, smoke houses, and three quarters. and we had done archeology in the spaces 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 build a cabins how it should be. 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 looking down at the south yard, explaining that i did to him, i left out the part of giving the money out 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 six buildings in the south yard. when we decided pretty immediately was that we could do a better job of telling more meaningful stories by not refinishing those spaces any 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 living conditions. 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 is the mere distinction of color, coming from a quote from james madison.

i love this quote, medicine doesn't talk and sound bites like other people. but at the constitutional convention he said, we've seen the mere distinction of color 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, you take the date away, you take james madison's name away, you could really soften after self when without re-spoken? we've seen the main distinction of color made in the most in latin period of time aground of the most oppressive dominion ever ex exercise by man over man. through our work with the dissenting community, sorry, we knew that we needed to treat the stories of the enslaved with humanity and dignity.

we wanted to attack it from a point of empathy. right? we wanted our visitors to think about shared universal experiences, rather than hard work, no one will ever none of us will ever know it means when it will feel like to plow 40 acre field. none of you are ever going to stand behind a mule and do that. unless your 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 is experiences that people went

through. and so we took photographs from the library of congress we sort of ghosted them on these glass panels and 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 try 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 end with that phrase, i was property. you'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 these shadows share the emotions and we also have these listening stations spread throughout the exhibit where you can sit down and listen to the voices. 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 it 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 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 known 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 sombody's 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 bit 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 and their descendants, 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 living quarters 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 brick. 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 happen? 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 happened.

>> i think our problem is as americans is that we actually hate history. so we can't really connect the dots, but we love 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. ♪ ♪ ♪ >> don't shoot him. don't shoot him. he has no weapon. he has no weapon. >> four black men inside of one car, with a hip-hop album, driving ten miles over the speed limit. in one residential

area. will guarantee being pulled over by the cops. 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 charged 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 but then it gets into the ray charles 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

we use it as a centerpiece of our opening in june of 2017 where there were over 900 most african american faces under the tent in the backyard. and i can guarantee you this was the first order ever that many african american people at montpelier in its history and it speaks volumes. it talked about doing your due diligence. [applause] >> all right, well, thank you very much for the presentation. i wanted to start by asking listening to each other you have thoughts are responses, questions for each other.

and we can start there. we have a little more than a half an hour for conversations. so let's start there and i have some questions. we will open it up to the audience so you all get ready. other things that occurred to you about the ways in which the projects, that occurred to me, the project of interpreting must be very different based on the kind of support, the structure of each house, each site, in ways that are not visible to me. as i'm listening to it i'm wondering if there are ways that you think your jobs are different because you're at montpelier, you're at another site? >> actually i think we all benefit from the fact that we have really strong and courageous leadership at our sites that have not only allowed us to go to these places but pushed us to go.

and who have not backed down when we've been edgy or pushy. >> i would say the same and it's an ongoing effort. from the boards, donors and leadership. to everybody that is their. it's been a caution push to talk about it more. further, the relationship we have with each other. so many of us are in the small area in central virginia. we know each other pretty well. we did not have much of a preliminary conversation before today. it's like, let's do it. you know? >> can you push them a closer? >> is that better? >> one thing i think is really unique about these three sites is that we also all do guide training together once a year where we get all our staff together and i love that keeps the spirit of the friendship between everyone together. >> there's a great barbecue place that essentially located as well. we get together there and talk about what is happening at the

different sites. >> that's true, the best restaurant in charge is -- >> all right. >> i have another thought. this directly relates to what christian just said in terms of answering the question that our race. first comment, to say i've had the opportunity to see the distinction of color twice now. and i cannot command montpelier an enough for what this has done to raise the bar in terms of the conversation. that exhibit is incredible. it really does engage with what we are trying to talk about in a way that is undeniable, it's not sterile. i think that people really do respond to it. and it's maybe not always positively. right? but they definitely respond to it. my question, christian, if you would talk us through a bit of the process of creation of the video. how it happens? just thought someone into it. >> short, the video, we knew we wanted to do something about the legacy of slavery. we really want --

we didn't know, the concept design, that room is going to be the legacy of slavery. but we did nail down what it meant. we came up with the idea of doing the sort of multi screen video show. okay, never going to do a multi screen video show about the legacy of slavery, right? that could be a six hour documentary. and we had ten to 12 minutes we thought could realistically work with. how do you boy down the legacy of slavery into ten minutes? that was pretty challenging. we beat our heads against the wall about that for over a year. we tried to come up with ideas that we threw away. and we finally decided to bring in about 20 people from all across the country to a think tank, a three day weekend, martin luther king weekend of last year actually. and we had academics, activists, artists who came and participated with us in this thing thank. we filled a room of white boards with ideas that related to the legacy of slavery. and the facilitators's head

this is great. erase everything but three ideas. which was so painful. right? it was six hours of work. just gone. but what it did was really narrowed it down for the filmmakers to come up with these sort of storylines. and as the weekend developed the filmmakers saw these different people engaging in conversation with us and four of the participants of the weekend became the talking heads in the film. so use already talking, who is a spoken word artists in boston. it also includes rebeca, as i said, and the president amaretto's at the university of virginia. kind of kicking things off talking about the end of the 18th century, into the 19th, and hassan from talking about contemporary issues with education slavery. talks about how students a day have a notion of slavery, the 18th and 19th century that is

very disney-ish. he has to combat that all the time. doesn't answer your question? >> yes. >> one of the things that, doug, you said you were talking, you talked about the different ways visitors think about history, about memory, and about why to visit a presidential home. what brings them there, or to visit edison's home, for example. i wondered if you could each talk about moments in which you feel that you had succeeded or failed to convey this different sense of history, this different reason for a person to visit a presidential home. and i guess i would like to hear a little more specificity about your interaction with visitors, or your hopes of when you have a moment that says, we've got this right. or we are still, you know,

struggling with this. >> we have those every day with the new exhibit. we put a lot of money and time, energy into training our staff. because we knew people would react to this exhibit very differently. it was not going to be what most people would expect. they were going to be very visceral reactions to it. both in a positive and negative way. we have people coming out of the exhibit balling. they need a shoulder. they need somebody to talk to. they want to have somebody to hear how moved they've been, how they began to think about things in a new light. which is so amazing. that's when you know you nailed it. and then there are people who come out and are really angry. and they want somebody to yell at. they want somebody to vent to. and how do you train your staff to deal with it? basically the answer is you provide somebody who will listen. not necessarily agree but listen. anyway, that's boiling it down.

but we also kind of feel like we've got it right when we see those reactions. right? because you are making people rethink their notions of history, you're making people -- you're making them have a conflict on their own one about the history they want to be true and the history they are presented with at this museum. people believe what museums say for the most part. and they had this huge conflict with it. especially at the home of a president, a founding father, of one of their guys, their history, the history of the related to so much for their entire lives. all of a sudden that's being totally turned on its head and they have a really hard time with it. >> that's it, our department, education and visitor programs department, it is big, about 100 people. we have core values that we had

here too or aspire to, i should say. and they include unity of effort, this is your focus. it's really about the guest. and the third and final is provocative interpretation. we thought a lot about it as well. about those words. those conversations about words. but we really want our guests to think. it is about provoking a thought. it is about the reflection on the current home. to get the family back in the mini van or drug bundle road and say, what about when they said that? we see that, i think most successfully when the visitors are processing on site. we will have a guess that will take a tour, and then we will find somebody wearing a badge, and they said they said this. and that really shows us that they're thinking about it or is it true because i read whatever. and it doesn't often have to do with slavery, sometimes it has to do with jefferson and hemmings. so on a personal basis, the stuff is hit or miss.

and i remember one tour in particular, i was like ok i'm going to turn this on. and i was 20 minutes in, and i was spitting gold it was awesome. this guy pulls me aside and says, so thomas jefferson and abraham lincoln where they friends? i said i should've done some more research because asked none of them are from the united states. and sometimes you miss, and sometimes it goes really well, and i have had some visitors, eighty-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 george who said 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 support of the american colonization 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 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 a big role the descendant community played 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 visitor's 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 if i were 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 we have ever had at one time, maybe 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 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 where i weigh in. the privileges that i expect experience and my life is because of slavery. they say that and to recognize 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 generational bias. we're working on it. >> i can't add any more than what brandon said. >> so, if you could -- we need you to use the

microphone 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 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 the slave holder descendants might feel attacked. and it's just a really awful racism -- 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 sean had work for the parks department and he was an interpreter, he got the role of putting this program together 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

cobble together ideas and chapters from this sort of series of books that the asl 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 for 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 can 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 achieved without slavery. >> 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 you are doing something now that is different because of 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 they 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 what i would have about 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 monticello. 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 monroe, but i know that the social media accounts of monticello and montpelier, you are doing a nice job. in 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 the 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. >> i will try and address some of that. the first thing, you are right. i mean, many visitors from many years come to monticello, you go, buy the ticket, you take

the house tour going to monticello 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 monticello 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 at monticello is we are going to change the tour. to start your 2018, you don't go to monticello 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, 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 sites and hopefully we will make more progress as we go forward. >> i would echo a lot of what brandon said, we also don't script our 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 in 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 so impressive 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 terms of highland, likewise we have scripted tours 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 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 missouri 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 regards to the 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 will, i'm from newport 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 used 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 anne bailey, i am from -- 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 just 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 maybe 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 spend a week there and 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 in, and we know how important slavery is in all of our 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 tours 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 set in 1819, probably because that's helped us condense a huge body of knowledge into what really is about 20 minutes 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. >> static. >> how do you show the fluid chronology with a sort of static limitation. >> you guys could probably speak 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 on the 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 kent 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 --? >> 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 madison 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.+++f

hampden-sydney college professor matthew hulbert looks at depictions of slavery in hollywood films ranging from birth of a nation and gone with the wind to django unchained and free state of jones. he talks about how early films glorified the lost cause and argues that while recent films show the horrors of the slave trade and resistance by enslaved people the idea of the white savior is still often central to the narrative, virginia tech's center for civil war studies hosted this event and provided the video.