My name is jodie allen. Im a visiting assistant professor here at sewanee for this score year. I am also working as a consultant on the slavery project. Going back to the panel, i am asking them to answer the question in our program and that is, does history matter to the future of the 15th amendment . I will ask them to think on that and then we will open up for questions and answers with the audience. I dont know who would like to start. Thank you. I think about history and it reminds me of sancofa means you have to know your past to understand your present, to plan for the future. When it comes to the 15th amendment, what we have learned today, and ive learned a great deal from these panelists, we have to understand the intent behind the 15th amendment, the history that gave rise to it, the effect of it. Those people who opposed it and the mechanisms that were put in place as obstacles so we can better understand today the Voter Suppression we are dealing with, the need for White Supremacy, the mechanisms to attempt to maintain White Supremacy and, as we go forward into the future, by 2040 five, by 2045 this country will be , a majority of people of color and some of the mechanisms being put in place give me concerns about an apartheid state in which you would have the minority, european americans, or who are still in political power, and have put a structure together to maintain a White Supremacy, despite what is happening around us in this country. To be the beacon on the hill that this country claims it is supposed to be, to be that democracy, requires we have fewer obstacles to the right to vote. Were one of seven nations that takes away the right to vote for life because of felony conviction. There are so many issues we have to overcome and if we look at history, we can see this is not the first go around. Thes just another step in guise of 21st century Voter Suppression that has too many similarities to what happened in the 18th and 19th centuries. Thank you. Yeah, i would just add, will history have an effect on the future of the 15th amendment . Probably not, i am sorry to say, given the current and likely future composition of the Supreme Court. Should it affect how the 15th amendment is viewed and implemented . Yes . Yes. My pessimistic first answer is based on a feeling that, with a few exceptions, such as judge koontz, many jurists have a truncated view of the history of reconstruction, a limited view of all those amendments were intended to accomplish and as i briefly mentioned last night, we are trapped in a jurisprudence which is beholden to the old school of reconstruction, which saw it as a big mistake fundamentally. I think a narrow vision of what was attempted, what was tried to be accomplished in the reconstruction era is still dominant in much of the jurisprudence we have, including recent decisions we have heard about about Voting Rights and 15th amendment implementation. I hope a more uptodate view of history comes to dominate the Supreme Court thinking. So far, theres not much evidence that has been happening. I would just add a word. There is one limited sense in which history is relevant to constitutional interpretation. There are occasional Supreme Court cases where somebody will be able to challenge a current uncoveringased on an of the history behind that practice. The Supreme Court in the 80s struck down a particular gerrymandering of the crimes that would exclude you from voting in alabama and the Supreme Court, without dissent, said, weve seen the evidence that in 1901, when i say racial gerrymandering, they excluded people not for murder, but for wife beating because they assumed murder was something caucasians committed and that wifebeating is something African Americans would do. Other than that, im pretty skeptical of the idea that history is going to affect how people think about contemporary issues. Justices have a truncated view of reconstruction. That is true. I asked myself, if they had a semester to sit in on a reconstruction class, do you think it would change anybodys vote on affirmative action . It is not inconceivable but it seems unlikely. Think about confederate monuments. One thing we have learned fairly recently is when they were put up and what their meaning was. These were not adopted in 1866 to commemorate war heroes. There were put up, the one in charlottesville, there are photographs in the local newspaper, showing the ku klux klan demonstrating around the newly erected robert e lee monument in the 1920s. What percentage of the population do you think, knowing that, would affect their view about whether we should take down the monuments . I dont think nobody would be affected but im skeptical that a large segment of the population. I think about this. I teach a class in constitutional history and my students are surprised at how recently things were really bad. We talk about the killing of civil rights workers in the 1960s and the lynchings and they are surprised. I wonder, if everybody took this history class, how many peoples views would it change about some contemporary issue, like affirmative action . I think the answer is not very many. I do not think that is how people think. Their views are not going to be imposed by learning a new bit of history. Im skeptical about this. It is not just because they have the old view of reconstruction. Even if they had this view, i doubt it would change many views. If i could try and add a little bit to this. I am less skeptical, particularly after listening to the students. I think history should not just matter for the 15th amendment. We should be thinking about the war powers act. What history allows you to do is think critically. It allows you to think structurally to understand the world was not created overnight. There was change over time and it helps you start thinking in terms of evidence. Will it change the world overnight maybe not here in i was particularly struck by the students today that once you ask a question, students are students can find incredible things of the states by doing incredible things by doing research the kind of , undergraduate research anyone can do with their phone or anything else is revolutionary. It helps to start thinking in a different way, which is what history allows us to do. Which is why i would say, yes, it matters. I am more optimistic as well. History is about lessons. History is about opportunity. History is about changing the tide of history and learning how fate and circumstances led to who we became, but more often, it was a question of who did what. Of decisionmakers moving in a certain direction or not. I think, through the study of history, we can define those moments, where a single individual made a difference or a single individual followed by Movement Made a difference. I am hopeful that those days are not over. It is more challenging now because it is hard to discern and to teach discernment to students today. Theres so much swirling around and sometimes, i think they are walking into this miasma of contradictory information. It is partly our job not to lean on them with political philosophy but just to straighten out and help them clear the brush from the path to knowledge. I think it works. The other thing i would say is that, the students are hungry. I think the American People are hungry for this. No one is born and ideologue. People become what they become through their association with people and friends and with a pastor or a teacher or a buddy. Sometimes, that can be a lively, wonderful, intellectually Challenging Group and sometimes group thatn awful you would not want your kids to be with. Were all part of something larger than just ourselves. It is our job as historians and journalists to create as many opportunities for the better outlook on life than the limited outlook on life. The best way we can do it is to become knowledgeable ourselves and to share that knowledge because, to avoid the cliche i never use because i avoid cliches. Knowledge is power. That is our job is to empower the next generation so they can find those paths to clarity and truth. I believe history is important and i believe it will continue to inform us but i do have a twist that knowledge is power. For those of you who watch game of thrones, there is a moment when a bad character says to an even worse character, i know something and knowledge is power. The very bad character, who we will call little finger, finds himself surrounded by guards and the very very bad character, says, turn him around. Cut his throat. No, wait. She leans forward and says, knowledge is knowledge. Power is power. I am very optimistic. We have had an africanamerican president. We have three women on the United StatesSupreme Court, one of whom says three down, six to go. Im very optimistic. Then again, i was born in bedford stuyvesant, raised in Public Housing projects. I earned four degrees from harvard, worked on wall street for 33 years, served as a commissioner on the civilian Complaint Review board, reviewing allegations of Police Misconduct and worked for mary wright adelman and the childrens defense funds, doing Civil Liberties litigation for children. I am very optimistic. Thinking back to the question of the Supreme Court and history, i think with the appointment of Justice Gorsuch, who, like his predecessor, claims to be an originalist, there will be opportunities to educate the court on the history of the 15th amendment and one of the things that is striking is howriginal is him little the reconstruction amendments figure into it. It goes back to the founding. 1789 is there all the time. You do not see the 1860s or 1870s very much. There is opportunity. I agree that it is not necessarily going to sway votes but at least, the record can be made and people can hear those arguments and learn from them. We missed an opportunity to test his point with a scientific experiment because when Justice Gorsuch was an undergraduate at columbia, i was teaching. He never took my course. If he had, we would have a test of what impact it makes on his decisionmaking but unfortunately, he did not. We will just have to see where he learns from. Thank you, everyone for answering the question. I want to open up now to the audience, to see what questions you might have for the panel. You might have to ask another question . [laughter] may i raise one point, while they are thinking, i will do like i do with my students and say, it looks like you really want to ask a question. 1. I wanted to make and i spoke about black suffragettes earlier today. I wanted to talk about, how you have these conflicting interests in history. In 1898, in wilmington, north carolina, black politicians won a majority of offices. There were positions of political power. There was this underlying simmering racial hatred but it was triggered through this conflict with not just the white general population, but with white suffragettes. One particular white suffragette, rebecca fitton, wrote an editorial, in which she said, if it requires lynching to protect a womans deers dearest position from drunken beasts, then i say lynch a week. D a week eric a there was a response in the black newspaper. There was an uprising. Hundreds of blacks were killed. The elected politicians were chased out of office. Black this misses burned. Black businesses were burned. Homes were burned. It was on the record that the First Political coup of the United States. You have a number of interests. You have the suffragettes. You have women who desire the right to vote, yet they cannot see the interests of the African Americans. You have people who believe in democracy yet they cannot see the people who are elected have a right to determine some outcomes and they may or may not agree your it i see many of these dueling interests of that time. Can we, as a democracy, have dueling interests without it ending in a deadly way . We are now in the 21st century and we feel so much more sophisticated than 100 years ago, that these things could not possibly happen, yet, i would have to ask if were going to , learn from history, have we learned the lessons and how can we if most people dont even know this to happened . If they dont know things like this can happen . How can we learn from our past, to know more about what is going on in this time. Of swirling, dueling, interests. So we can do better in the future. On the 14th or any other laws. If i could pick up on that point, there. This may be a softball question. One of the things that has impressed me and has impressed everyone who is attended the symposium is the way in which each of you, in your own fashion, have made important historical questions accessible to a general audience. It seems to me that a part of the answer to the question posed of this discussion requires us to think about the way in which that history is presented and its accessibility. I happened to go home last night and there was a review of kernows biography of grant in the new york times. It is over 1000 pages. The reviewer, who was on balance quite charitable to the author and the book, admitted that there is more detail in there then most people would care to read or to know about. This is not meant to be a cheap shot at the academic establishment. It will be on the bestseller list. Of course it will. How will the public, as opposed to simply how our students, get their history and learn it . Years ago, the president of the american historical association, talked about it is time to reassemble the narrative. I am not sure we have managed to do that. If were going to answer this effectively, it seems to me a lot of it has to do not only with the way in which history is understood but the way in which it is presented. That is an open question for anyone. It wont be a surprise that i agree we need to find ways to tell the stories. We need to tell it through the people who are affected, the people who benefited, the people who were hurt. It is one extra step in the research but it is a giant one and well worth it. There is no doubt i agree with that. How do you market history as vital to who we are . I do have a concern that goes deeper than that and that is what is our default knowledge about who we are . I dont think there are any of us who find this surprising that we have seen a deterioration in the knowledge of that ever since something as simple as civics died in junior high and high school. We do not take civics. Ifs there even a textbook out there published anymore that has a cartoon on how a bill becomes a law. Remember that guy carrying the bill. I was thinking about that when former Justice Sandra day oconnor was taking up because taking up the cause of Civic Literacy that she was onto something very strong. I think it would also match beautifully with this new Movement Across the country with colleges and universities who are developing new literacy programs. What is news. How to discern. We need a National Campaign that would combine both of those. As much as i do think that those of us here can convert everything into compelling stories about how history was changed, there has to be some default baseline on how our Government Works which i think would go a great way toward reducing the cynicism toward government. Once people come in with a position to dislike their government, theyre going to be close minded to understanding how so much of what we find is important to how something functions. I agree. We are of the few professions in which the wording exhaustive is seen as a compliment. Magisterial. And in reconnecting it to the first question, when you make things relevant to students, you have them in a heartbeat. If they see it is just a potpourri of interesting things that are not related to their daily lives, it is beyond them it is beyond that. Like i said, i think history is a way of empowering yourself. That is whether it will change the world, i cannot promise that. Is al start, whether it scientist, engineer, or a medical researcher with one basic western and we have to allow the evidence to take it where it is going to take you and sometimes those will be uncomfortable places. I think in terms of a default we think history happens somehow, that it is somehow written, and that people like professor f come and revise it. Oner and that is bad. That is bad to think about something that is new. Finding ways to make history more relevant is our task. I think it is one we are easily capable of doing, because it is not that hard to come up with a question that will immediately engage a large audience. I want to express fors certainly a good thing stories to be able to present their views and accessible ways and more knowledge about history is a good thing. We live in a world where people dont agree about basic facts and people denied basic facts, they believe in alternative tax, they believe in things that are not true. That is such an enormous problem and i dont think historians writing and more accessible ways is going to be a to solve that problem. In the last 10 years we have Voter Suppression, and anyone who is studied the history of the 15th amendment or anyone who has been alive for the last 15 years would be astonished in lights of death in light of what went on with the Voting Rights act. In light of what went on with the Voting Rights act. One of the Political Party decided it is in their best interest to suppress votes. Social scientist look at the phenomenon agree that this type of voter impersonation fraud does not exist. One study looked at a sample size of a billion votes and they found 30 instances of in person voter fraud which is the equivalent of it not existing. The secretary of state in kansas has spent five years trying to and has voter fraud found nine cases to prosecute. The state of indiana passed a voter