applause welcome good evening. I am rob fisher, the director of st. Johns church. I am thrilled that our friends at the White House Historical association asked us to provide space for tonights conversation. Stewart asked if i would share a little bit about the history of this very historic room that you are sitting in tonight and so i will share with you that this church was completed in 1816. The architect was Benjamin Henri literal. Not only did he design this church but he was working on rebuilding the white house after it was destroyed in the war of 1812. In 1818 in 1818, he built what is now the home of the historical association. You see a similar entrance. It was built as a green cross and was an even four sides. In 1822, they expanded the Church Building to make room for more seating. We do not know who the architect was who did that expansion and built the bell power belltower. Tragically, he had already died at that time, in new orleans. There might be some historians in the room. We would love to know belltower is a beautiful addition to the church. It houses a bell forged by paul reveres son. Its says 1822 boston revere. It is not the only that came to washington is the only one still in place used for its original purpose. This is the only building still being used for the purpose for which it is held, more than 200 years later. We are open most days of the week and welcome anybody. James madison was president in 1816, when st. Johns opened. And the church decided to offer him a special pew that would be reserved for his use anytime he wanted to come to church. That would be the president spew. Back then there were actually boxes. You rented your pew box. He was able to use his pew box free of charge. And he received that offer and a decision was made to put the president spew right in the middle of the people, rather than up and front which was the high status pew box. He wanted his pew box to be among other people to worship. That tradition continued and 1842, when the pews that exist now or and saw stalled that you are all sitting in president tyler in 1840 to make sure that the president s pew would be in an exact location where the pew box with the beginning and medicine. Beginning with president madison, he worshiped in the space at least once. Many have become regulars and some had even become members of st. Johns during their presidencies. One detail that really stirs me and to think about the time during the civil war, when Abraham Lincoln would walk alone across the park from the white house in the evenings. His regular sunday Morning Church was new york avenue presbytery and church in that direction a few blocks away. In the evenings he would walk alone across the park and sit in the very last pew on the south side right over there. You can imagine what was on his heart during those evenings as he came for a little bit of space. A little bit of quiet time to reflect. And pray he would always leave just before the end of the service so he could leave undisturbed. It is a prayer of mind that the space will continue to serve as a place where people can come and have reflection, who can have a little bit of space and grace in the city that moves very quickly. I want to say to you all, that our aim is to be open to all people no matter what background, no matter what denomination or faith tradition. We want to be here for all of our neighbors. A house for all people. I am really excited for the conversation we are about to have tonight. It is important to say, it is good to remember, that in those early years, those people who passed through this space, who lived and spent time in the neighborhood surrounding this building. All of those people, no matter what color of their skin, no matter their stature, no matter their disposition. Everyone was affected by the economic and the moral reality of the institution of slavery. In one historical detail that i want to leave you with, a poignant note. The second director of this church, he was director from 1817 to 1845. His name was reverend william halle. He would have the practice of baptizing African American babies and marion African American couples and its home. And as historians in this room who have been working hard on the essays that have been produced, know very well, we do not have all the records that we would like to be able to tell the story as fully as the story needs to be told of that time. But we have, in our own registers that we have collected upstairs and in the church archives, we have the registers of all the baptisms and all the marriages and and some of them, we see notes, where it says where it took place, when he would marry African Americans, he would do it in his home and his family would be witnesses. On january 11th 1828, reverend halle married Emily Matthews and william priests. Emily was listed in the register as colored and william was listed as slave. Just think, the very next wedding listed in the same register took place in the white house. For John Quincy Adams son. Thank you all for being here tonight to have this important conversation that we are privileged to host. I will now welcome forward my good friend stewart mcclintock. The president of the White House Historical association. I think you very much. Rob to reverend fisher and the people of st. Johns church, it is wonderful to be in your historic home. In this historic neighborhood here tonight for this very very important conversation. I also want to thank the queens who performed for us. They are local washington d. C. Group. It is wonderful to have them with us tonight and i hope you enjoyed their music. applause to our friends joining us tonight by cspan and on facebook live, we hope you have enjoyed this conversation and that it encourages you along with everyone here to dive deeper into the topic that we will be unpacking for you this evening. Im here tonight on behalf of the board of directors of the White House Historical association. Our National Council on white house history. Many of them are with us tonight. Welcoming you all for this wonderful conversation that our historians have been working on for several years. It was in may of 2016, at a speech at the city college of new york, and later that summer the Political Convention in philadelphia. First Lady Michel Obama delivered a speech on both occasions that included these words. I wake up every morning in a house that was built by slaves. In the days that followed, our phone lines, our emails, our internet, our press office, our historians were all inundated from the public press, people wanting to know the story behind those very compelling words. My first call was to doctor lonnie, that will be part of our conversation tonight. Lonnie, we need to know more about the story. We know anecdotes, but we need to know names, states, specifics. It is the peoples house, the white house. But we need to know about the people that built the house. The people that impacted it beyond the president and their first families. He was very generous to introduce his historians at the National Museum of African American museum culture. Pecan a threeyear project delving into this topic. During that time, we had the privilege to host a group called the president ial leadership scholars. This is a program that is a collaboration of the president ial libraries and foundations of clintons, pushes, and president johnson. They bring together these young dynamic early career leaders, and at the Program Educator house across the park. They went up into the historic slave quarters that night. I think they were intrigued, encouraged, maybe a little bit inspired. They took it they took us to task. We need to do a better job of telling that story and interpreting that space. So we folded that story at the cater house and the last remaining example of sleeve hoarders in the president s neighborhood in the story that we are telling tonight. We previously, earlier this week, unveiled our website. Emphasis on this topic with a treasure trove of Research Documents and papers and at white house dot or you can go encouraging friends to look at that as well. This is not the end of what will be doing. This is really the beginning we are raising the curtain on this conversation and we want to encourage through our continued research and programs will be undertaking as well. This we were founded in 1961 by first Lady Jacqueline kennedy, nonprofits, nonpartisan partner for the white house. Every year, we provide non taxpayer funding to maintain the Beautiful Museum standard of those that you see on the state form in the white house. But also important to mrs. Kennedy was an education mission. She challenged us to teach and tell the stories of the white house history going back to 1792 when George Washington selected that piece of land across the street and hired a young irish architect to build the white house. We do that through public crow programming such as. Tonight books, publication, quarterly magazine, social media, our rep site, podcast, many other ways. We have teacher institutes where we bring teachers from all over the country. We engage students and i actually have some friends of mine here tonight who are students. Reverend fishermen shun the president s pew. He was seated in the president s pew tonight. Seated in that pew our students from washington d. C. They participated in a podcast with me, and a wonderful student. I would like for them to stand. applause so tonight they are in the president s pew. One thing we like to think of as educators as we planted the seed and we water the seeds, but we may never see the results of that education. And we hope one, day the students and their peers back here, maybe will be president s of the United States sitting and the president s pew. They are great friends of mine and it is great to have them here this evening. We had the privilege of having two wonderful presenters tonight. David is the cofounder and coexecutive chairman of the carlyle group. He has been the chairman of the board and held positions with Many Organizations including the Smithsonian Institutions duke university, foreign relations, and many others. He has a heart and passion for patriotic philanthropy and invests in places involved with history, like the White House Historical association, our sister institutions supporting history causes, Great American monuments like the Lincoln Memorial in washington, he has helped save. He has been a giver of transformational gifts that allowed us through the center to have programming like this and undertake the research we do. We are grateful for him for that support. If you have the opportunity to watch him on his television show, i know you will enjoy that, as i have. He is recently an author of a book. The american historical conversations with master historians. You will all receive a copy of the book late tonight. Our other presenter is the 14th secretary of the Smithsonian Institution and the first africanamerican and first historian to hold this Important Role in our country. [applause] you know him well as the founding director of the National Museum of African American history and culture. He was the first person i called when the Initiative Came into the radar screen. He is the author of a a fools errand. A culture in the age of bush, obama, and trump. I really encourage you to read this. It tells a wonderful story of someone who was able to move and mix and make things happen across political lines and beliefs. That is a wonderful thing, in this day and time. His role is the same regardless of who the president and the first lady may be. Our role is to support the people in the United States. He is the advisor to many boards, including the committee for preservation in the white house, which we worked with worked with closely. Were honored to have david and lonnie with us tonight. Please welcome them to the stage. [applause] do you think in 1816, when this was open, that you and i or our ancestors would have been here . We are honored to be here tonight. This is a terrific place to talk about the white house history and slavery. At the African American and culture museum, if i want to get tickets to see something, how do i . Everyone has been calling me. I have tried to say that i am no longer there. I have been struck by the desire is so great that a few months ago, a woman called and said she wanted tickets and i said i do not do that and she said, you have got to give them to me because i was your girlfriend in seventh grade. laughs when you are 13, you remember your first crush. I gave her the tickets. So that is the technique to use. It took you how many years to get that from beginning to end . I worked on it for 11 years. How much money did the federal government give you for that . We had one staff, no collections, no money, no idea where the museum would be. The smithsonian had 1 million to get started. I spent that in like two weeks. Ultimately, you have got artifacts given by citizens of a country ultimately, you have got artifacts given by citizens of the country. How many were given to the museum . 40, 000, 70 came from peoples basements and attics. We realized that the idea of the culture and history was still available, we felt the only way we could do it was to get people to share with us stories and histories through the collections. You have nat turners bible. Harriet tubmans shawl. The mope the most popular is which . Chuch berrys cherry apple red cadillac that i did not want and did not think was important, which shows you how many people have been to the museum since it opened . 7. 3 million. What is the average time someone spends going to this museum . 4. 5 hours to 5. 5 hours. It tells you if you Craft Stories in a dramatic way, people will spend the time to understand and think about and debate. We are pleased to has become the kind of sites that in some ways almost a pilgrimage site. People feel the need to be a part of it. We are grateful to have the opportunity to work with you to create that museum. The taxpayers only put up 200 million. How much did you raise from citizens across the country . About 250 million. How did it happen that this country had slavery . Was it ordained . How did it come about . You had two systems created. Spanish colonies in florida and mexico, when they begin to bring africans, and some slave people as early as 1650. In the United States, you have the first africanamerican coming in 1690. The process of becoming a slave took time. Initially, the africans were like indentured servants. Within 30 or 40 years, it was clear that africans were then restricted to slavery for life. You realize slavery is both an Economic System of labor, later a system of social control, as more and more africans come to this world. I think the most important thing to remember is slavery from the 17th, 18th, and 19th century, was the most dominant institution in the United States, that almost every aspect of the culture, politics, foreign policy, industry, was all shape by either slave trade slavery, the labor of slaves, or the money invested by slave. When you think on the eve of the civil war, more money was invested in slaves, in the enslaved population, then the business combined. It is so essential to understanding who we are. That is why this is so important. This is not an ancilary story to helping us understand who he wants were did they work for a few years and then leave or was it clear they were slaves . It was clear they were viewed as different. The way we can tell by formal records, is the 1640s to 1660 that we see the institutions of slavery that made concrete. A total of 20 million slaves at one point were here. How many were brought over . More in central and south america than the United States . States . Only 13 of the millions of africans taken and brought to the new world, only 13 came to the United States. More came to places like brazil and the caribbean. That 13 became such a large portion of the population that it really began to outweigh initial numbers. Larger numbers were in brazil because they died more rapid because of weather and treatments. The agriculture was better developed because of sugar and the like. That is where it started. The United States brought over about 800, 000, 600,000 africans, who came to the United States. They reproduced and so forth. We have about half a million slaves . A the time of the civil war, 4 million slaves . About 4 million enslaved africans and 1. 5 freed africans in both the north and the south. If you were brought over on a slave ship, what were chances you would survive . There was a lot of debate about mortality. Many feel that 30 to 50 of those brought on ships perished, either on the ships or on the way to plantations or mines where they ultimately worked. That Middle Passage was really something that was hard for people to survive. It really was one of the markers of understanding the impact of slave trade. When the declaration of independence was agreed to on july the 4th 1776 we fought a revolutionary war that went on till 17 royal at that time come was there any mention of slavery, that people wanted to mention as a problem, or did they not address it . There was a whole discussion around jefferson beginning to identify the treatment like they w