Jim good afternoon. And i say that with some trepidation, because our audience is national and international. So, good morning to some of you and good evening to some of you. I am jim grossman, the executive director of the American Historical Association. And this is an initial experiment in something that we are likely to call history behind the headlines. The aha considers Historical Context and perspective essential to decisionmaking in public culture and especially in all aspects of public policy. The aha is a membershipsupported organization, just a reminder. One has to say these things, anybody who watches Public Television or listens to public radio is ready for this. If you would like to become a member and support this type of content, membership links are located in the chat on zoom and in the comments on facebook live. I want to give an especially grateful thankful to History Channel for their generous sponsorship of this webinar. Lets get started. It is an honor to introduce todays panelists, annette gordonreed, professor of law and history at harvard university. And david blight, professor of history and director of the gilderlehrer center for the study of slavery, abolition and resistance at yale university. The professors are Pulitzer Prize winning historians and they have won lots of other prizes as well. They have written and spoken frequently and insightfully on issues relating to monuments, history, memory and our nations continued failure to fully confront the implications of its own history. Professor gordonreeds most recent book is most blessed of the patriarchs, Thomas Jefferson and the empire of the imagination. Professor blights is Frederick Douglass, prophet of freedom. Both of these scholars are notable for the way we remember and honor those people as complicated. Whether we are thinking about Frederick Douglass or Thomas Jefferson. We are going to have roughly 35 minutes of moderated discussion, after which there will be questions from the audience. And i apologize in advance that given the number of people, we will not be able to address probably even most of the questions that we will get. We will do our best. So, lets get started. Lets start with the meaning and implications of removing confederate statues from our public landscape. Which, i know both of you, david and annette, have discussed this frequently and in all sorts of venues. This is not a new issue, but something is clearly different this time around. So lets start with what is different and why. Annette, you have referred to what is happening now as a quote a great awakening. Wakening up is always a good place to start. So where do we start there . Annette i think it is different this time and i do not know a precise reason but i have theories. Obviously, the killing of george floyd provoked a lot of soulsearching on the part of people. The nature of the video, the stark nature of the video actually captured peoples attention in a way that hasnt happened before. It could be because we are in the middle of a pandemic and people have been cloistered and have been told to for the basis of the community, people were doing something that made them think about other people, that they had to think about other people. I have a feeling that may have contributed to it as well. The fact that people could focus on it, and the fact that we are engaged in typically not something americans do or have not done recently, in a communal fashion. Looking at this, it was said, something had to happen. It struck people viscerally in a way that the killing of other people have not. People were concerned about Trayvon Martin and so forth, but i think the social circumstances in which this happened, and historians always look to this, the context is different. That made a difference in the way that people responded to it. Jim what is interesting, we have the statues being toppled, we have the being toppled in the context that you just talked about. These statues are part of a story and they tell a story. One thing i am curious about, and maybe david, you can speak to this, is this the death of a lost cause . David probably not. But we can hope. [laughter] i try to see this moment now, no one should predict anything right now in this climate, especially as historians. But it is really the culmination of a 150year counterattack on the lost cause ideology. The lost cause ideology takes form right after the war, especially in the 1870s and 1880s. The Confederate Monuments came out of a later time than that. During the jim crow era. When the united daughters of the confederacy and the united confederate veterans took hold of that process. But it was an ideology, a racial ideology, an ideology of white supremacy, and it became not a story of loss at all, it became a victory narrative. The victory was over reconstruction. But the attack back on the lost cause, led by Frederick Douglass and many others is 150 years old. As early as 1871, right after lee died he died in 1870 right after, douglass wrote a piece in which he said he was sick and tired of the nauseating flatteries of robert e lee. He wondered why the person who killed the most Union Soldiers and killed the most americans in dividing the country, was getting all the accolades. This is an old set of arguments, however, we obviously now have a different politics. If it hadnt been for the massive protests in the streets this past month, massive numbers of people in the streets, i doubt Police Forces of various kinds of would have allowed people to tear down monuments as they have. Police have, not always, but by and large have been letting this happen. So there is a politics in the streets that is bringing this about. I would just add right now, i dont have any data on this but trumpism, lets be honest, the nature of our politics for the last three or four years is out there in the streets. Is everybody demanding a Confederate Monument be removed . Or attacking a Confederate Monument . Or even other kinds of monuments . Are they always thinking about trump . Probably not. But trump has developed a toxic kind of politics that is now bringing out all kinds of resistance that we had not earlier seen. And it is directly related to police killings. But it is also, i think, related to a bursting out of rage against trumpism. I just hope this can be harnessed somehow into something. Jim that was my next question, was the harnessing. You talked here about how the politics affects what happens in the streets. Right before that, annette framed the politics and what is happening in the streets in essence as a larger context that ties together. So, i am curious so the politics affects what is happening in the streets, and you have explained how that happens, i wonder if both of you could talk about how what happens in the streets affects the politics. So, we pulled down a whole bunch of monuments. So what . Annette it is an interesting question. We were talking about this before, we had this moment where huge numbers of people were finally beginning to look toward the question of policing in america. Particularly, the policing of the africanamerican community. And voicing support for black lives matter. And then, the focus shifts to statues. For me, there is a bit of frustration it is not that i dont think that monuments and statues are not important, but it is way more important to get the issue of police reform, voter suppression, those kinds of things on the front burner. We have fallen into battles about culture, this sort of culture war thing that deflects from real economic, social kinds of issues that brought people out to the streets to begin with. I mean, people are being killed. Africanamericans feel threatened by police. This is something that has been going on for decades. And everybody can tell you a story. Many black people can tell you a story about people that they knew, that they know of who went into police stations and didnt come out. People who had encounters with police that ended in death for minor things. Those kind of issues that brought people out. I want to talk about monuments and i think theyre important but i dont want us to get away from those kinds of central issues. Whats going to happen november 3 with the election . Voter suppression, all those kinds of things are the things i really primarily would like to be focused on, so there is a way that we have this moment, but the moment, we can lose it, lose the momentum on that if we focus too much on the wrong things. As important as they are. David that is a powerful argument, annette. And one of the ways it manifests is that it is easier to oppose a monument than it is to figure out a vast new social policy. Again, we are historians. We like evidence and all of that. One of the things i wish people would do now, is actually going ando and read the policing justice act. This is the house bill. Theres a lot in there. It is not everything. But it is a new kind of civil rights act. It even has a federal antilynching law and it. In it. There is a lot in that act. That is how this has to get converted, hopefully. Harnessed into a new politics. You know, a new civil rights regime of some sort. However, what is interesting about the monuments is we do have a Tipping Point here. See this throughout history. We reach a point where somehow, people who would have really Confederate Monuments a year ago cant quite do it now. Even republicans in the senate are saying, well, maybe those military bases, maybe that wasnt such a good idea after all. So there is a Tipping Point here that we werent at even a year ago. Annette absolutely. David we werent at in the summer of 2015 after the charleston massacre. Back then, it was about taking the Confederate Flag down and a few monuments were under duress. [laughter] now it is everything confederate. Annette everybody. David it is everything confederate. Annette grant david yeah. Every moment like, every Tipping Point has excess. It is going to have excesses. And everybody is moaning right now how could you take down a grant statue . You know, he was bequeathed one slave and he freed that slave and so on, he saved the union, he was the general. Ok, right. There are going to be excesses, and we have to be able to stand up and say, you know what, toppling that one, that is wrong. Annette yeah, thats wrong. Yeah. David topple that one . Yeah ok. I am with you. Annette you make choices every single day. We do that all the time. The point is, how it takes place, the kind of discussion that takes place about it. Some will stay and some will go. Jim all three of us have talked about this. There is not an inevitable slippery slope. This is a ridiculous argument. And then, since you, annette, you have written prizewinning work about jefferson, about the founders in general. This is what is constantly brought up by the people who say that inevitably, all the icons will be smashed. What are the criteria that you can imagine using, thinking about, when you say, no, theres judgment here. Annette the criteria, there is lots of them. The one that i have always given is distinguishing the confederates from the founders is that the founders created the country, and the confederates tried to destroy the country. I think thats a pretty good bright line rule. And when you lose the war, you dont usually get to continue glorifying yourself by putting up statues in Public Places mocking the people who defeated you, you know, the confederates were vanquished. There is no reason for them to be there. The confederacy was a branch. If you think of the country as a river, it was sort of a branch that went off to nowhere. There was nothing they can contribute to us that we cant get from some other place. And it is not what we stand for. Their values are not values that we stand for. African chattel slavery, the inferiority, they specifically repudiated jefferson and the declaration of independence. Alexander stephens did. So, we could do without them. The founders are different because they found a the country. Unded the it is hard for me to think of living in a place without telling the story or actually commemorating, not celebrating. When you think of what a statue is about, to me, it is not about, this was the greatest this was a god, this was the greatest person ever lived or whatever. It is about recognizing that this person did something important. And i think founding the United States there are some people who dont think it was a good idea but, if you think it was a good idea, these people did that, and it is important to see them in all of their complexity. To see them in all aspects. So you have jefferson. You have washington. But you mention that they bought and sold people. You mention those kinds of things, the good with the bad. We are, to my mind, stuck with these people who created the country. The confederacy, that is not a story that continues in any kind of way. We have made use of the things that jefferson, in particular, ideals, put forth. In particular, ideals. Whether it is some religious belief in your heart, those ideas have been useful. So that is a distinction i would make. I understand people say he owned slaves and therefore they should go. But that is like, you cant redo your parentage. You cant stop and pretend that those people did not exist, and that they didnt do something that most of us think was a positive thing, but you have got to tell the whole story about them. It creates, to my mind, a much more mature attitude about history and historical figures. They are not about our best friends. They are not people we want to hang out with. These are people who did things that we have to know about. In order to understand who we are and to do things differently, take the best of what they gave and reject the things that were bad. I think it is hiding your head in the sand to pretend that they didnt do anything positive, or that the negative things automatically outweigh those. Lets talk about both of them. David annette, can i ask you a question of a sort . Not that you have to answer for everyone who studies the founders by any means, but first of all, i would say, it is so true. To focus. If we could help the public focus their mind on just what the confederacy was, it was an insurgent revolution to create a slave holders republic. I would just say to people, we dont want to name too many books here but you should read stephanie mccurrys most recent book called confederate reckoning. If you have any kind of progressive view of the United States and if you actually believe in our pluralism and in equality, you cant read that book without a tremendous sigh of relief that the confederacy did not win. [laughter] annette yeah david it is really important to understand that. It only lasted for years. It only lasted four years. But it is still here. Annette i was going to answer your question you let them off the hook. If you put them, and they would like nothing more than to be lumped in with washington and jefferson. We are just like those people. No. That is not david they were of a vessel of the American Revolution, resisting centralized authority, that was the central tenor of tenet of the lost cause. Annette a lot of people believe that, but they never quote stevens. They dont quote the constitution. They dont look at the documents that framed the government and society. Yeah, they were slaveowners and they were racist and they may have been like jefferson and washington in that sense. But the documents that they set for their nation dont comport with anything that we say we believe. We can take the constitution, transformed by the 13th, 14th and 15th amendment. We can take the declaration and make any society. We cannot take the cornerstone speech, we cant take the constitution of the secession, we cant do anything with that and continue in peace in this country. David or jefferson daviss 1200page memoir. Annette yes. David on every page it defends the existence of slavery because africans were savages. But here is a quick question annette ok. David we are living in a moment right now when there are a lot of people i will just name it, the 1619 project suggested that americans ought to reconsider what the founding is. That the founding is really when slaves arrived and not the creation of the republic out of the American Revolution and the writing of the u. S. Constitution. And maybe that kind of set of assumptions was out there anyway, i am not just blaming the 1619 project. But there are a lot of people who say that the founding was all racist anyway, it was all in the service of slavery, so why not get rid of jefferson . I dont believe that necessarily. Annette i know, it is hard to respond to that. In the first place, if you want to pick something other than 1776 as the founding, you might pick the british founding. 1607. You might pick when englishmen rolled up on american cotton and said, we have discovered it, and began to push Indigenous People off the land. So that is a point. Certainly, 1619 is the point. But that was part of the english empire. There was no United States of america at that point. As historians, we cant treat that as if those moments put forth some sort of inevitable outcome that we end up at 1776 and then we end up with me sitting in my apartment now. Anything could have happened at that point. So i think the founding was racist. Certainly the constitution protected slavery. We could argue about that. Protected slavery. We should have sean here. David i think he is watching. I think he is watching. [laughs] annette it protected slavery, but it also unleashed an antislavery movement, the revolution did. What happened from that was not inevitable. But it did. The fact is, africanamerican people, other people said wait a minute, this applies to us as well. And that has been the basis for a struggle up until now. That is real. It is as real as the founding is many things. It is not any one thing. And it is what you make of it. And people made Different Things of it. Jim so first, you are focusing on the east coast. Which we do. And on the english. What happens if you shift the angle of vision . There are issues over the statues in the capitol. It is easy to identify 11 or 12. Former confederate soldiers in the capitol. There is also father serra. He never donned a confederate uniform. He never took up arms against anything called the United States of america. But he did some pretty bad things to people who are the ancestors of americans. What do we do when we think about father serra in the capitol . Annette david, do you want to try that one . [laughter] david no we are going to have to come up with some kind of principles, i suspect, that we apply to these things. Every case is not identical. We seem to have a developing set of principles about the confederacy. The insurgency to destroy the United States. Treason if you like. What are they doing inside the u. S. Capitol . Annette i know, thats crazy. David it would be like putting up a statue in the u. S. Capitol of the general who commanded the burning of washington in the war of 1812. Father serra, and what happened to native americans in california, we need another set of principles here about how much that offends americans broadly. Not just native americans. How much that is inconsistent with values and our mission as a Pluralistic Society today. I think we may need some kind of commission within the congress, and maybe not just congressman. Hopefully not just congressmen. Jim the American Historical Association needs to be part of that commission, david. David i agree with you. [laughter] you might even get 500 volunteers off this webinar. Who knows . Annette ya. David to come up with some criteria, because otherwise, this is going to be willynilly. Annette ya. Even if somebody passed a rule that you revisit these things every 25 years which, i guess has been considered. Jim that has been considered. It was just a suggestion. David you have a lot of power, jim. [laughter] annette you can make that happen. David you cant do this by popular referendum. Look what mississippi just found out, they had referendum on the state flag years ago and they decided to keep it by 75 . Right now, the politics are such that they just got rid of it. Annette yep. They got rid of it. Which people thought would never happen. David a lot of things are happening right now that people thought would never happen. Nobody in my field who has studied this for most of their lives ever really thought that lee would be gone from monument avenue in richmond or a bunch of other things. But, he is going to be gone. So, youre right, father serra did not wear a confederate uniform. He wasnt a military he didnt take up arms against the United States, but he slaughtered. Annette what about the the Union Soldiers, who after finishing off the confederates turn west . So they are a complicated object as well. After finishing off the confederate soldiers. I was talking to somebody yesterday. My response to this, maybe yours too, david, we are historians, and we deal with the past all the time and we know all the terrible things that people do. They have always done it in the past and present and will do in the future. David it is a given. Annette it is given. David you cant purify your history. You cant purify the past. Annette yeah. Jim i think the point you have just made, annette, is so crucial. Because i actually saw it happen last week in my own neighborhood. I live four blocks from the emancipation memorial, the freedmens memorial. One of the issues there is the difference between how we, as historians, think about that statue and how people as parents think about that statue. What does it mean to be a parent and walk past that statue . With your nineyearold, how do you explain it . I am curious. What is happening in that park is exactly what you just described, people discussing it has become a way in which there is civic culture happening. Which is how it should be. But what do you say to people all of these monuments around the country are in a sense, role models. What do you say to high school teachers, to parents . How do you explain this whole controversy and what it means to younger people . Annette david, you have written about this. David oh, i thought he was asking you first. [laughter] it doesnt matter, i am happy to take that on. I have been all too public about this, i guess. I personally hope that the freedmens memorial, as is often called sometimes it is called the Emancipation Group it goes by other names. I personally hope that statue survives. I agree and have said so that the imagery today is certainly racist the kneeling slave, the very christian, godlike lincoln with his hands out reached, giving emancipation. People can debate whether the kneeling slave is rising, breaking his own chains and all of that, i dont even want to get into that. That has always been debated. One of the important things but about that particular monument is first of all, it is about black freedom. It was created by black people. 20,000 raised by africanamericans. The first five dollars as people are happily learning, by charlotte scott, a former slave woman from missouri, who for the rest of her life was known as the woman who created the freedmens memorial. It was a huge event in d. C. The day it was unveiled. A classic d. C. Parade with bands and fraternal orders and all of the rest. The master of ceremonies was don john mercer langston, the dean of power law school. Douglass was order of the day. Amy bishop gave the opening. So, but i think that ground in the rarest of cases are there monuments rendered important by a speech at its unveiling. Most unveiling speeches are either forgettable or repulsive. In this case, douglass gave the second greatest speech of his life, the first being the fourth of july speech. But his freedmens memorial speech, all 13 pages of it, was a masterpiece. He took down lincoln directly, dead honestly. He said Abraham Lincoln was a white mans president , he was a white man and not a black persons president. That he was not our president. Then came the famous line, my white, fellow citizens, you are Abraham Lincolns children, i and my people are his stepchildren. An incredible metaphor, stepchildren by adopting. By necessity and circumstance. Then, in the middle of the speech comes a pause and he shifts, not to celebrating lincoln, but he says with a refrain three times, under his rule and in due time, time, under his rule and in due time, under his rule and in due time, lincoln found the method, the way to create the policy by which we became free. It honors lincolns essential kind of political pragmatism at the same time douglass had been dead honest about what most black folks had thought of lincoln in the first year and a half or more of the war, including douglass. And the last point, that speech is really directed at the audience in the first two rows, because he had president grant, members of the cabinet, justices of the supreme court, members of the house and senate, the entire government sat in front of him and douglass is telling them, you are losing reconstruction. Reconstruction is falling apart. Annette david, let me. David if you dont act now, you will never have another chance i am sorry, i went on too long about the speech. But i do know the imagery of the monument is offensive to many people. But not all people. I am now in dialogue on email more than i want to be with people who live in the neighborhood, africanamericans who live in the neighborhood, who have different opinions about this. It may be breaking down generationally, i dont know. But it is interesting how people respond to that particular image, which is such a 19thcentury image. Annette for me, this is what i disagree with david on. I think the statue should probably we hate it when they say, it should be put in a museum. We are going to keep this. They say, where are we going to keep this . David where are they going to let it . Annette where will they put it . Right. I think the museum of African American history would be a wonderful place to put it with douglasss speech and everything in context. The difficulty, i am impressed with the fact that it was black people who raised the money for this. But they didnt get the opportunity to say what the image should be. David thats true. Annette its not surprising that the image would be a white savior. David and the kneeling slave. Annette and the kneeling slave. I am not one of those people who say Abraham Lincoln was shot in the back of the head and martyred for coming up with that policy. And having people think that he was creating black citizenship. He sacrificed all and i am not going to put lincoln in a corner. But africanamerican men bled and died for freedom. As soldiers, africanamerican men, women and children ran away, left the plantations, ended the plantation system. Black people brought about their freedom, contributed to bringing about their freedom. And the idea that they would raise money, give it to whites, and their answer would be a white savior motive. You said this is a 19thcentury thing. It is not a 19thcentury thing. If you want to talk about race, we can talk about today the image of the white savior in films, movies, everywhere. This notion that you cant have blacks and whites cant exist equally. Not a statue with a person standing next to him. Maybe not shaking hands, that might have been too much, but maybe a gesture toward it for their joint effort to end slavery. I said before about the confederacy, this thing sort of going off into nowhere . The notion of the white savior exists today. And people who are whites who see themselves as progressives and our allies still have an easier time dealing with us when you are in a position of superiority. Thats a comfort, that level. Even if you are doing something good, it has to be whites here, blacks down there. So, i think seeing that image it is a similar feeling when i felt going along Central Park West with teddy roosevelt, with the native american and the black person on either side. I dont have a problem with it, if they could just get some welders to separate those two people off and just had tr on the horse, that will be fine, but it sends a message. If that message were something, the emancipation message, if that were something that had gone, if the notion of the white savior didnt exist today, then i might have a different view but, the 19th century is still present here in the 21st century and so i wouldnt want my kids walking past that. I felt the same way taking my kids into the museum of natural history, that statue, what is that saying about who you are and who you have been . David let me add, my proposal was to build an additional emancipation monument next to the freedmans memorial. It was actually douglasss suggestion, which we only recently had verified by researchers, scott standage, and john white, who found the clippings in the past week, to my knowledge, of douglass five days after that unveiling. The national republic, the newspaper in washington, d. C. , douglass said he did not like that kneeling slave, he wanted a standing strong image of emancipation. And he himself suggested an additional monument should be put there. I guess my point of view on this is why not have both . What incredible teaching one can do . Because, how many people are going to see this in a museum . You are right, if its in a good space in the africanamerican museum, it may indeed be seen by a lot of people because a lot of people go there. Why not have that juxtaposition there that shows the then and the now, the past and the present, and celebrate douglasss speech as well, and why not have a douglass statue . Jim would that be your solution . Lets extend this problem. I started off by saying that what is wonderful about the work you do is the two of you present historical figures as complicated people. Annette yes. Jim so, here is two complicated people, general sheridan and general Oliver Otis Howard, both heroic figures in terms of their role in the civil war, although somewhat less heroic in terms of their role in killing and removing native americans after the civil war. So, david, your solution would be anytime we have a statue of sheridan, we put another statue next to it that somehow commemorates or helps us to remember the other things how do we deal with complexity people lived 5, 6, 7 decades . How do you deal with the complexities of their lives . Annette it is tough. David first of all, i am not even sure Phil Sheridan merits that kind of worry and concern. [laughter] there are sheridan monuments clearly. There is a sheridans square in d. C. And one in new york as well. Annette there is one in new york. David down in the village, isnt it . Annette mmhmm. David yeah, and that most americans dont even know who Oliver Otis Howard was, unless they know howard university, i suppose. But you know, yeah, this is a, mess, complicated, and it always will be. I think people need a reminder that you just purify the past and you cannot purify your memory. You have to make choices about these things. Some monuments, some memorials are worthy of keeping not just because of what we can learn from them, but because of the circumstances of their creation, and some are not. And we are going to have to, you know, not that yale is a paragon for this, but when yale had to consider getting rid of the name of john c. Calhoun, of the president ial college here, the president and administration created a committee and i was on the committee, to try and come up with principles that you could actually follow by which a university, at least, we are not talking about a nation or company or a city, but a university might rename something. And we did. We did a lot of research. In fact, recalled in gordon reed gordon reed as an advisor among others. Annette yeah. David we came up with these principles by which the administration could put calhoun through those principles. In the end, they said, we are going to remove that one. Now, we are going to have to think in these terms, whether it is monuments in congress, monuments on a Public Square or elsewhere. Jim school names. Annette school names, yeah. David rather than willynilly, the politics right now that this has to come down. Do we wait for the new politics for that one to come down . Or do we actually have some kind of principles . Otherwise the mob will take the monuments away when the mob can get away with it. Annette yes. In any event, the notion of taking it down without deliberation from other people is problematic. Now, that is the law professor, lawyer in me, saying that is problematic. David we believe in deliberation and knowledge. Annette we believe in that, they will take down statues of people i admire. And it is just not thats not the way to go, that isnt something that i would encourage. Jim that goes back to what you earlier said, annette, back to the value of civic culture. Maybe one value of monuments is that if we say, not only principles but process. Every generation, every 25 years, we will look at all of the names in some kind of civic process. Annette and i said that is very jeffersonian, the earth belongs to the living. That every generation of people should sit down and there should be a discussion about, do we agree with this, and is this what we wish for . It is not a simple it will not necessarily solve all the problems, but we have to have discussions about this. It may have a larger benefit because then we see what our values are, our points of commonality and where we disagree. But, not talking about it, having a large conversation about this i think would be a mistake. David and we should listen to young people, lets face it. That may seem like a cliche. We should listen to young people right now, what they think about all of this. Especially when they get themselves informed. [laughter] annette well jim i am looking at the questions. We have a lot of questions, we cannot get to all of them. [laughter] i am just going to pull some out randomly. Not quite randomly. Someone has suggested that maybe, especially given that we are supposedly a nation with democratic values, maybe we should not build memorials of people. Maybe our memorials should not have people. Annette i was just about to say, maybe monuments are a thing of the past. We dont seem to do them very well. [laughs] very few new statues that i look at am i impressed. Some people have done them well. Maybe that could be it. David emancipation is not a person, it is an epic historical process. It is a pivot of American History. It is the greatest result of the civil war, but not a Single Person by any means. Annette yes. Yeah. David nor are things like industrialization. Annette but it still does not answer the question about what do we do with the ones already there . Because there are people, members of our community who admire, who like the statues of people, who find something meaningful about it. The question suggested maybe we shouldnt be building more, but it doesnt answer the question of what we are to do about the ones that are there, how we decide who stays and who goes . David that is a fascinating thing to ask and i taught a bunch of courses and seminars on memory and memorials when you asked the question, what memorial have you ever visited that really works for you . What memorial have you ever visited that made you weep . What monument did you ever visit that offended you . You know, we all will have perhaps different answers to that. Some people are appalled by triumphal 19thcentury equestrian statues, which, they fit their age. Some people love modernist visions of something complicated, and some dont. But, what monument moves you, what monument doesnt . It is kind of worth asking people. The vietnam memorial, everyone not everyone, but most people today, there is a consensus about that design that has been adopted, almost, as a place of healing, a place of mourning and commemoration. Annette and it was controversial, people hated it at first. David the Reagan Administration did not want to put it. Annette because they wanted something triumphal. She created something that was deeply moving and personal to people of all types. David and it has been modeled elsewhere as a way of memorializing at least, death in war. But it is worth asking as commissions get created, what memorials actually work for people and what dont . One of the things i have heard he recommended publicly i dont know if it will happen things i have already recommended publicly i dont know if it will happen but the Biden Campaign should get out ahead of this issue. If the confederate landscape is coming down, and the lost cause is in deep trouble, if the lost cause and the confederate landscape is coming down, what might replace it . Why doesnt the Biden Administration bring together a bunch of people in start thinking about that . The aforementioned sean, in an email yesterday to me said, we need to advocate a marble new deal. I dont know if that would work, right now, but why not . Get ahead of the issue and say that there is going to be a National Project that could also, of course, become local. Most monuments are local. They were created by somebody in that town. To rethink the idea of memorialization, especially about subjects like emancipation. Annette im still waiting for infrastructure week. That is just me. [laughter] david i know. Jim the monuments, when you say they are local, they are local chronologically as well as spatially. When you say what are the monuments that make you cry . What are the monuments that inspire you . Doesnt that change over time . David yes. And one has to usually know the story the monument represents. Jim but most people dont. Right . Most people, you walk past a monument and your kid says who is that . Or annette you dont know who they are. Jim yah. David or if you say Phil Sheridan, what are you gonna say . [laughter] jim but what do we do with that as historians, knowing peoples values change over time, and to go back in some ways to where annette started, that social and political needs and conflicts in the country change over time. David my own favorite example of that question, jim, is the shaw memorial in boston. The shaw 54th massachusetts memorial. That is augustus st. Gaudens masterpiece. The bas relief in Boston Common across from the state capitol. In a very public place, a bus stop. But that monument tells a narrative. It tells a story. It tells a deeply moving story of what black men had to do. They had to go die in a war to be acknowledged as men. Furthermore, it is an artistic masterpiece. It is a bas relief like nothing else i dont think any american artist has ever created. Once people learn that story, that monument moves them still. They have got to know what it represents. And it is about suffering. It is about blood sacrifice in a war, the way that can grab our emotions that other kinds of stores dont. But monuments do need to tell a story if they are really good. Annette yes. And the ones that we are upset about are the ones that tell stories that are painful in another way. It is not a story of i talked before about the values that we have, the value of suffering and redemption, those kinds of things, versus the white mans burden or manifest destiny. Or white supremacy. Which some of these monuments, that is the story they are telling. Jim one of our questioners has actually asked, what the two of you think about, instead of doing individual monuments, maybe this goes back to seans marble new deal commissioning artists to create monuments exactly to what you just described annette, monuments to values, monuments to emotions, to the way we feel about our environment. Would that be, in a sense, i hate to call it a solution. Our colleague, robin kelly has suggested all military monuments be wiped off of the earth and that would be the statement of values we would like to see. But these monuments do state our values, so should we be more explicit and say monuments are about values instead of people . Annette the problem is that the monuments that were put up, were monuments to values. Because the people supposedly exhibited values that the people admired. There is a statue of jefferson in front of the Journalism School at columbia. It is not about him being a slave owner, it is not even about the declaration, it is about the notion of freedom of the press, and that is what the people who put the statues up typically they are not putting people up, lets put joe up for no reason, it is somebody they think embodies a particular value. Or tr, courage, when he is by himself, that monument was the value of white supremacy. Clearly. So, yeah, we should do that. I think that is what has been going on all along. Some of those values are not values that are serving us very well. At all. David i love that question, though. I have Great Respect for robin kelly but i want to be careful of that one. I would hate to tell surviving world war ii veterans that there shouldnt be any memorial to them at dday, or the shaw memorial, i am sorry. It is military but, by god annette those people fought for something. They fought for something that we value and they sacrificed in ways that we arent. And thank god we dont have to sacrifice, i wouldnt want them to be forgotten. David and a key point is that, historically, monument making came out of the romantic age. At least the monuments we know of. Where the individual hero is always exalted. In the 19th century, the measure of every sculptor is whether he or she could do an equestrian. That was the measure, could you do an equestrian . Which is the way st. Gaudens started out with the shaw memorial and ended up putting the soldiers there. This exultation of the romantic, individual hero there always had to be an individual. Why not a National Monument to the natural rights tradition . The American Republic was born out of this thing jefferson called natural rights. Lets inspire some really creative artists to go after that. How about popular sovereignty . How about a monument to equality . Or we could say every civilrights monument is a monument to equality and it is. But maybe we do need to inspire artists now, or maybe they already are inspired, maybe they need to tell us. Annette moving away from people as the embodiment of these things. Because thats why you dont name things after people who are still alive, you dont know what they are going to do. [laughter] now we know with historical figures, we know what they did. We want to say oh, lets get rid of that. David as jim said, these people lived 60, 70 years as a human being and they might have done awful things as well as the one thing that was heroic that we are recognizing them for. Annette exactly. I was talking to somebody the other day, for everybody that you have, you gave historians a week, we could probably rip that person. Jim any persons had to be result has a problem somewhere. 100ny person more than years old, has a problem somewhere. Annette and let me say, i dont want to minimize slavery as a thing that people did, but the point is, as i was suggesting before, and this is looking at it the way we look at things historically, it is very, very hard to have a person, anybody who is not going to have something that people will find revolting, repulsive about them if they keep looking at it. Jim and i think thats very important. There is a lot of questions we are getting relating to education and young people. It does seem to me, annette, what you are saying is one of the values of learning history is that humility, right . That this recognition that very few people go through their lives purely heroic. Some do go through purely villainous, we know some of those people. [laughter] david unredeemable. Jim unredeemable. But thats an aspect of humility that kids learn by learning history. Annette and having a relationship to people that is proper. Not to think, you can admire people for what they did. You can admire people for what they did. Like hollywood, the dream factory. It is not enough to watch someone on the screen, you have to know all about their private lives. And identify with them, so much so that people had to lie about who they were to keep this thing going. You have a personal relationship with the people you actually know in your life and you have a stake in those people. Maybe changing how you view what your connection is to the person, just to look at what they did but not all into them, in the sense that this is me and i identify with them and i am pretending i am them or whatever. A healthy skepticism about everybody. Detachment is the word i am looking for here, about the figures on the public stage who did things that are important. But they are not gods. You shouldnt be measuring yourself as them or by them. David also with school naming. Jim yes. Are you suggesting that when schools have names, usually the students at some point have to learn why the school was named after that person and that person becomes in a sense the role model you were describing, annette. Should we be suggesting that every curriculum should also consider to include a critique of the person for whom the school is named, no matter who it is . David well, almost you have to, dont you . [laughter] there was a place in texas i think decided, i am forgetting where it was, decided to change all of the stonewall jacksons and robert e. Lees to names from nature. The only safe way to go. Get off people. Birds, nature. [laughter] why not . Street names, the same thing. I was just going to say really quickly, after the charleston massacre in 2015, and after the panels on memories and monuments and so on, i decided i would go to every audience with three principles. I didnt get very far with this, the first principle was you had to have a deliberative process. The second was, you had to learn some more history first. Always hard. The third was, learn some humility from the process. Now, that sounded so schoolmarmish and scolding it did not always work, that it still seems to me it is important. If we are not deliberative about this, if we dont learn the history behind how did this monument get here, and we dont gain a little humility about human nature, then the exercise might be futile. Annette i think thats right. These are people. David humility is not in vogue, though. You noticed that . [laughter] jim it is 1 30. It is time to go, and you guys are busy. I am ok in ending on the relationship between humility and human nature as an argument for why everyone should study history and why history should remain a Central Place in the curriculum, which is an important thing to remind people of right now. Thank you very much and we will be back with everybody another time. [captions Copyright National cable satellite corp. 2020] [captioning performed by the national captioning institute, which is responsible for its caption content and accuracy. Visit ncicap. Org] this is American History tv on cspan3 word each weekend we feature 48 hours exploring our nations past. Next, on the presidency, a conversation about portraying american lincoln on the stage. Playwrightion with Richard Ellison wrote necessary sacrifices, a fork commission play about two minis between lincoln and abolitionist Frederick Douglass joined by one who played lincoln and douglas respectively. Fords theatre provided this video. Today we are happy to welcome playwright richard