the great augustus thomas mass. boston held an extraordinary conference around the anniversary. scholarly conference for two and a half days with papers on this and that and this and that, but the people who stole the show were about 100 black reenactors who took over the event in a way. they had a panel of five different black reenactors discussing what they did and why they did. it turned out almost all of them started after the movie "glory." >> "glory" is a watershed. >> you have written about it. then they formed regiments and units. during the ceremony in front of the memorial, not only did they reenact the march of the 54th in front of the off and on meant, did formations, it was moving. one of them stood in front of the monument during the ceremony and kept doing an about face for an hour and a half although he was on the monument. it was kind of a street theatre unlike anything else i've ever seen. he got a standing ovation. he got a greater ovation than colin powell got for the keynote address. and it was a pretty good talk by colin pall, by the way. this is complicate