Brings you the latest in nonfiction books and authors. Funding for cspan2 comes in his Television Companies and more including cox. It is extremely rare. But friends dont have to be. When you are connected, you are not alone. Cox, along with these Television Companies support cspan2 as a public service. Thank you pastor keaton. Thank you mrs. Keaton, members of morris brown ame to welcome us here tonight. Particularly the choir we could listen to you all night fortunate will have another chance thank you, thank you all. Welcome everyone it is so nice to be back together and have an opportunity to discuss things that matterss in this community and discuss how we can make them better. I went to sync, hope you all had an opportunity to get some of the food that was served up outside bite first of all morris brown member Reggie Simmons cooking up a lot of the sides that we had been come down hear from South Carolina so committed to at the form it means and what is doing. He is a lawyer and a county councilman in kershaw county. He drove down here and cooked the chicken in the sausage for us he did not just cook it he donate his time and donated all that food. That is a commitment to the community we thank you so much my friend. I want to thank some other people while we get started. Make sure you get the sponsors rage. Dominion energy, a Hopper Foundation the young law firm, joanna foundation, federal bar foundation, maren marvel Bradley Anderson also a law firm. South Carolina Ports Authority boeing company, patrick family foundation, lynn, boomtown and of course they can a law firm. Some other brief thanks to our dedicated board members. Obviously take some effort and a lot of planning to do the things you did the foreman perfectly pull off events like we are doing this evening. One in particular i like to call your attention to is the chair of our future and past Committee Professor emeritus dean in social sciences at the saddle which is a diligent architect of the program you are here for tonight. Others, you see a lot of people from mp strategy around who makes the event happen. Abigail, megan, and the other volunteers, thank you all for doing that. I couplese housekeeping items yu may know we are welcoming cspan here tonight. We are certainly happy to have employees number to turn off your cell phones, or silence them. When you are seated we really encourage you to stay seated until the intermission if you are able too. That will just allow for easier filming foror everybody. It is again great to get back here together. Thank you to pastor manning and his continued stewardship of the charleston form in our relationship with Mother Emanuel Church on the commemoration activities every june. You know, next week it will have been seven years since the hate crimes committed at mother emanuel. And that seems like a long time ago, it does. But we have had constant reminders along the way including the killing of george floyd. The victims in buffalo recently that we still have got a long way to go. And it is the forms purpose to get us there. To get us there as a community and a model for the nation. That is why we bring people together but we try to bring different perspectives and forge solutions of common understanding of ways we can move forward together. Ar the form as you may know focuses on four social pillars really education, economics, policing and criminal justice, and what we are here for tonight what we call the future of the pack. What is interesting is our surveys have revealed in the past couple of years you may have seen the service they are available on a fancy new website. You can get everyone to agree on goals for education. Ng for treating People Fairly by law enforcement. You can a agree on all these gos in these areas. More but really is still a division are the issues that seem less a practical but certainly more emotional of a divide for our society that is the issues of the future. We went to bring everyone together and have an understanding of why only 36 people in a tricounty area o think our government handling controversial statutes and monuments the correct way. We went to find out ways to get there to where we can all appreciate all reasonable people in the lowcountry believe we are handling at the right way or at least in an acceptable way. We cannot have better guides for our journey to find the correct way to do things than our panelist tonight. One quick mention of our second panel of Public Officials will have two faces with this that are not in your program but should be familiar to you. Councilman middleton will step in to one spot to people could not be with us because of personal issues. City councilman ross will be here in the other spot. Certainly you can understand they are not only good Public Officials they are ready and willing to do this but they are engaged enough to be able to do that on short notice. So thanks to them for rounding out our second panel tonight. But starting with the first panel i would like them to come join me on stage if you would moderator extraordinaire for the form John Simpkins who is was hg to mdc currently which is creating an economic at equitable infrastructure across the south. Next to him doctor walter edgar home everyone im sure knows is a preeminent historian of South Carolina. Not only that but one of the first Founding Trustees of International AfricanAmerican Museum which is a nice segue over doctor doctor Tonya Matthews who is steering our International AfricanAmerican Museum to educate the world about these issues starting in january of this coming year. We are thrilled to have doctor blaine roberson back with us a charleston form alum coauthor of the awardwinning book on these very issues about our very Community Called denmark beebe garden. Down at the end we have mike allen who is awardwinning historian with the National Park service was dedicated so many years to these very issues in our community. I think them so much for joining us. John, thank you. Thank you brian. Why p dear im happy to be here at the morris brown ame church in with little feedback. I just going to be a pleasure to lead to author conversation today where we are going to be done by public history but how we were over the past. Which past we choose to remember what choices to make in doing so. I am going to allow my colleagues appear on the panel to introduce themselves. In one way a response from the easiest question youll getue today with how you enter this conversation about public history in the lowcountry and in South Carolina . Where are you as you enter this conversation . As of right now how i have tried to deal with it over the past 40 years, it has been an evolving process both with me personally obviously with communities in certain historical organizations whether we are trying but a Middleton Place in the south going Historical Society, things have changed and change rather dramatically. My late friend charles joined one of the states great historians and i have a note i want to make sure i get his quotation. In 1994 chaz said speaking of South Carolina as a community, i know we have come along way a le since 1960. For some w of yall that may be ancient history but for those of us born in the 40s it was not ancient history. We have come a long way some have dragged their feet all the way. But they have come. Some say there has been no progress but they have forgotten where we started. Some would stop here for they cannotot see how far we still he to go. I want my friend chaz said in 1994 i think is still true today. We did start somewhere along time ago. We have come away but we have a way to go. I think i come to this an interesting way. Even though i am now stewarding the International African museum as the ceo, most days i feel as if im coming into the space as a member of the general public. My background is in engineering. My liberal arts lean is into poetry. So i come into the space on a constant and continual learning curve and now i am jumping into the space as i have been as a public historian. But i do still have thatto fascination with these stories that surprise or chagrin i am just hearing the stories. The amazement that other people dont know the story. And thinking about, to your point, what should be the inspiration behind talking about how far we have come. One of the reasons we resist that conversation is because of the fear that someone will say far enough. And so i think that gets in the way with the fact that if we come this far there isnt on reckoning or a non reckoning. If you do not reckon with the past, with the stories you may be moving along but you are still dragging some stuff behind with you. And apparently it has wheels and a motor so it will catch up to where ever you are i think t eventually. As i think about public history which is how to apply history to modern questions and conversations i am always struck how much easier some of the conversations i find myself in would be if we already knew the earlier story. And then what does it take to give people a space for what i call a curious curiosity to admit what is unknown. To slow down, go back, pick it up just a little bit and then have a conversation about happened last week or last month or seven years ago. Hi i am blaine roberts. I lived here in charleston 2005 until 2007. I kind of come into this conversation as a non native charlestonian who was here and i was troubled. We went on a lot of tours of charles who will be lived here, my husband is over there in the audience. We were very disturbed by some of the things we heard on these historical tours that we went on when we were here. We did not hear much about the black experience at all. Er we did not hear anything about slavery or segregation. Nothing about africanamerican accomplishments. Until the two of us became very interested in why the Tourism Industry develop the way it did. I think my perspective from deciding to figure out how that happened, why that happened at a immersing myself in the historical archives early for the better part of a decade. All over town south Historical Society special collections at the college of charleston. The Avery Research center. Digging through the records why certain charlestonians were only telling part of the story and ignoring a really significant hint part of the citys history. Thats where im coming from an effort to really understand the deep history of the narrative. Good evening. My n name is Michael Allen i am retired from the National Park service. And so your question ironically 42 years ago this very week i began my journey with the National Park service of all places in our American Experience, fort sumter. That first week or two of actually being there in many respects put me on the pathway to me sitting here this afternoon. Why would i say that . Because within the first week or two of meat working at this transitional place in American Experience i was peppered with such questions is why are youre here . And what do you as a person of color, a black man have to do with the story of fort sumter in the American Civil War . Beyond that i asked what version of the civil war will you be telling us . So as it youngster, 42 years ago i had to digest that. One day while walking through fort sumter i thought maybe i should work through here as a tourist not as an employee. The first thing i did is they went into as you all would do, into the gift shop. I began looking in the bookshop of the various titles and books been presented and sold and as you said i did not see myself in the bookshop. So the next thing i did i walked in took a look around in the museum. That is would go to get the information where we are. Again, i do not see myself in there. This was built in 1961. Then i began to listen to my fellow employees assuring the story and it was there narrative for 42 years ago i came to this conclusion. Either i was out of place working at thisrk transitional place in american history, or the agency wish it worked for for 37 and half years the National Park service perhaps was out off touch. I did not believe i was out of place. So from those conversations 42 years ago and the journey i havent been on and worked with many of you all sitting here in this audience. In many respects i could say have changed the narrative in some way does that mean we have reach the Promised Land . No but i believe today we are in a better place in our interpretation then i stepped on that dusty soil area of fort sumter. I can look here and see doctor matthews as the director of International Africanamericanth museum and realizing in some of the conversation i had to have 42 years ago, allows her to sit here today. We all come if you did not know, are sitting in the Culture Heritage court order. Stretches all the way from wilmington North Carolina all the way down to saint augusta, florida. Perhaps we can have conversations 42 years ago that would not be a reality. I come at this from a personal perspective from my experience, the opportunity the partnership and relationships that have allowed me too be a part of the change. But yet i believe we have a few miles its ago. Thank you for the book and comment mr. Allen you reference doctor edgars earlier comments about when he quoted chaz joyner about how far we have come and how far we still need to go. And hearing all four of you respond to that broad question the notion of narrative and the creation of narrative. Who tells the story certainly came out in your responses as well as the way that narrative is processeded individually and collectively. We have our stories. Sometimes they are stories we tell each other individually sometimes they tell collectively. All of this to say history is contested. The past is contested. How do we accurately and comprehensively and completely grapple with our past . When there is no consensus on what that past is it. This is a question for anyone who chooses to jump in. Not any particular person. There is no consensus. First of all michael did notio mention the reconstruction of the National Park which is rare in North Carolina just appropriated 16 million for a reconstruction nationalns park. We have got the park but we do not have 16 million. [laughter] and i heard blaine say sometimes the presentations are made whether its at Middleton Place or williamsburg, explaining the lives of African Americans or whatever term you choose to use. Sometimes from white listeners thats not what they want to hear. Tourist probably, i do not want to mischaracterize but probably like gone with the wind history than they do what really happened. We have had this experience at williamsburg. The Oldest School for africanamericans in the country is in williamsburg. Why are you all doing this . Thats what our interpreters have said where are you doing this . We want to hear patrick henry. I think that is true. Theres a history of the University Mississippi wrote an title ofbout this the the article is nobody knows the troubles i have seen but does anybody want to hear about them when theyre on vacation . [laughter] i think that kind of gets to the core of the problem but i think its actually the case for much of the 20th century many tourists wanted to avoid the hard questions we are talking about on these heart issues. Somewhat encouraged over the past couple of years. I think the traveling public is much more aware and much more interested than they wereey previously per their couple good examples here in charleston i think wouldld illustrate that wl be the mcleod plantation which some of you may have been too. It isnt outstanding historical site that centers the experiences with that type of tour would have been onn a national. I think two years ago in charleston. I think that has changed a similar site in louisiana will be the whitneyn. Plantation. I am cautiously optimistic that we are changing what people are able to handle when they are traveling. Excellent throw in potentially alternative perspective to that. I am curious if thats one of the stories we told ourselves to allow us to get with the stories we were telling. You still at the know somebody that knows somebody the africanamerican history. At this point we all know you gotta take a lot of deep breath and rub a lot of shoulders. We have of course Brian Stevenson project down in alabama. We do have these things. What we are looking at his place is like our Historic Sites such as our plantations of the civil war sites. They are growing into a new story and finding the audience is already there. So i want to be careful around thinking it is just sort of a matter of time. I think some audiences are coming to us ready to hear that everything the other part of it was these are not audiences people want to talk too. Im not just talkin in her classic tours the population. I think about my background and my family we are not trying to go to the big house and how the big house was. Thats not quite the tour we fwere looking for. That audience has always been there.