Create a space in which we can begin to have some conversation about the lee jackson windows here in the cathedral and the larger issues of race and the legacy of slavery in our nation. If you do not know the recent history of events regarding these windows, i invite you to read about that history in the information we provided for you within your program in your program for tonights conversation. Tonight, please know is the first in an ongoing series of conversations over the next two years intended to foster conversation and a deeper understanding. While the leadership of the cathedral made the decision to remove the confederate battle flags from these windows, the larger question of whether the windows should stay in the sanctuary or be moved to a different location was intentionally left open for a period of two years so that we might engage in conversation and education around the difficult issues of race in our history and in our present life together. As i said in my letter that is part of your program, yes, these windows are about our history, but theyre also about our future. How will we move Forward Together . How will we learn from one another . How can we use the windows to write a new narrative of our history. Together. The conversation were having tonight and the ones we will have over the next two years are part of a much larger conversation that is taking place nationally. An important conversation around race and the legacy of slavery. As the cathedral community, we are hoping to create a place within this sacred space where we can listen and learn from one another with open hearts and minds. We hope to model the love of our lord, jesus christ that seeks always to reconcile all that is broken in ourselves, in our community and in our culture. These conversations may well be uncomfortable at times. They involve difficult subjects, but they are important conversation. And it is our hope that over the course of the next several years with gods help, we can create something that is positive and uplifting for us all. We are so grateful for your presence, and we invite your participation not only in this program but in future conversations. If you would like to share your ideas about the nature of some of those future conversations, and if youd like to share with us in this journey, i invite to you look at the back page of your program where there is a link where you can go and sign on to be part of this journey together. So, welcome. Were glad that youre here. And if youll permit me, id like to start with a prayer this evening. The lord be with up. And also with up. Let us pray. Grant, o god, your holy and lifegiving spirit may so move every human heart, that the barriers which divide us may crumble, suspicions disappear, and hatred cease, that our divisions being healed we may live in justice and peace through jesus christ our lord, amen. Now, lets begin. I will not repeat their bios because you have them in front of you, but it is my great pleasure to welcome our participants, dr. John coski, the reverend dr. Kelly browndouglas, dr. Rex harris and our moderator, ray suarez. Please join me in welcoming them. Thanks, dean. Welcome to monuments speak. Thanks for coming. Thanks to the panel. And thanks for being willing, both audience and panel, to wrestle with some of the questions that arise in a people, any people, when they have to face their own past and what the past tells them today. Were here this evening because symbols speak. Were surrounded by them 37 red and green traffic lights, eldpants and donkeys, gothic towers, the cross, the lamb. Saints are all around this building. They stand mutely and mostly unlabeled in statuary, paint or stained glass. They identify themselves through a language understood bit artist and by the viewer. St. Philippe with an arm full of stones, st. Peter with his crossed keys, sebastien shot through with arrows. Lucia with a platter and two eyeballs. They work as a language, in part, because of widely shared understanding, a consensus about what they mean. The red hexagon of a stop sign doesnt have parties chiming in to register their objections or insist it doesnt mean stop at all, but, in fact, it means speed up. Symbols have meaning, symbols speak. They derive their power from common understanding, except when they dont. Can they change over time . Can they be repurposed over time . Can they have layers of meaning that come from context, who displays them, who witnesses their display and can common understandings render some symbols hard to use. Can the passage of time add meanings that leave us very clear on the fact that symbols speak while some of us wish theyd just shut up. Today we come together in this Cathedral Church to discuss the display of windows dedicated while this church was still under construction to memorialize generals robert e. Lee and thomas Stonewall Jackson. As were gathered here, not in front of the memorials, which are over there by president wilson, let me tell you what lees inscription says. To the glory of god, all righteous and all merciful, and in undying tribute to the life and witness of Robert Edward lee, servant of god, leader of men, general in chief of the armies of the confederate states, whose compelling sense of duty, serene faith and unfailing courtesy, mark him for all ages as a christian soldier without fear and without reapproach. The lee windows show the general as a soldier, educator and engineer. Stonewall jackson is shown kneeling prayerfully in camp while a bug ler plays and he reads the bible. And hes shown in an adjacent window as an armored crusader, arms uplifted while heavenly trumpets play, going to glory. His memorial reads, in part, like a stonewall in his steadfastness, swift as lightning and mighty in battle, he walked humbly before his creator whose word was his guide. This bay is erected by the united daughters of the confederacy and his admirers from north and south. For the moment, the confederate battle flags have been removed from the lee and jackson windows and replaced with rectangular pieces of colored glass. The bays, the windows, they remain. Can their meanings change over time . Can what is appropriate or acceptable change over time . How has time shaped americans understanding of the civil war and the real life, flesh and blood men, the actual robert e. Lee and Stonewall Jackson . Do they belong in a church . In the windows throughout this building youll find prophets, apostles, martyrs, saints, ancient and modern, yes, and youll find political leaders. Two of them right by the front door. Abraham lincoln and george washington. What does it mean for them to be depicted in a house of prayer for all people . And what the designer of the city, pierre lonfont called a great church for National Purposes. Joining me in this conversation, from left to right, dr. John coski, historian at American Civil War museum and author of the confederate battle flag americas most embattled emblem. Sitting next to dr. Coski, the reverend dr. Kelly browndouglas, theologians, and sitting here directly next to me, dr. Rex ellis, associate director at National Museum of africanAmerican History and culture, recently opened here in washington. Dr. Coski, i want to start with you. I want you to take us back to the period when these windows were being imagined, designed and installed. It was a time when americans were preparing to look back, as the sen scentennial of the civi approached. Strom thurman for president in 1948. The departure of the finest confederate veterans. There were no firsthand witnesses to the war. They were leaving the stage. So, it was sort of a secondary memory passed down from people rather than an experience spoken firsthand. Where were we in our country and commemoration of the civil war and that period when we got to the early 50s, when these windows were being contemplated . Im going to stand, if i may, so i can see everyone. Can everyone hear me . Ray, he hasnt asked me to digest my entire 300page book, so im not going to try, but a little bit of background before the 1950s, because he mentioned ray mentioned the dixiecrats, 1948, which was a very important year in the history of the Confederate Flag in tarl. Let me just start with the immediate aftermath of the civil war. Theres an old adage the winners always write the history. As most know, in the American Civil War, an exception and unique in modern history that the lizards in the American Civil War had quite the role in shaping our noting of the history. After a brief period in which it was very clearly not a good idea to go trotting out the symbols of the confederacy during reconstruction, after that very brief period, the white south was more or less allowed by the federal government to erect statues to their dead first in cemeteries, monuments to their dead, to their seoldiers, heroe first and later in public spaces, to write histories, teach histories of the war, a type of history that witness gone with the wind and birth of a nation, for that matter. It influenced the shaping of the American Civil War. So, for this long period, from the 1880s beyond world war i, i mean, the Confederate Monument in Arlington Cemetery was erected in 1914, for example, and the last monument in richmond on monument avenue in 1929. So, this extended well into the 20th century, the last major confederate reunion in richmond in 1932. As ray mentioned, it is last veteran, last bona fide veteran kid in 1949. All the while in that long period, the confederate battle flag was part of the ritual of white southern life. In memorial day ceremonies, in the rituals of the confederate memorial organizations, in these dedication of these monuments. It was a familiar part of the ritual of white southern life but it was restricted very much to those kinds of rituals. The kinds of things many of us grew up with since the 1950s, a world in which every business dha had dixie in its name almost certainly had a con fed ralt flag as part of its logo. That was completely foreign before world war ii. It started to change in the period just before world war ii as the flag took on a meaning as a logo for the south. And i think we can agree more specifically, the white south. It manhattan not just the confederate white south, but american shortstop men from the south fighting overseas, american southern boys and their football teams when they were going to fight the northern football teams adopted the flag as their similar boshlg a totem, if you will, of what it was to be a southerner. Into that instrument, in the period roughly 1948 and just before, it did start before 1948, the flag started to have a more prominent currency on the southern landscape. A lot more people were using it. A lot of people noticed it and were against it, including the american daughters of the confederacy who thought it wasnt necessarily good for a flag to be used outside of a sfriktly memorial context. The dixicrats themselves did not adopt the symbol but most young people from College Campuses accustomed to using the flag in a casual way associated the flag with the dixiecrat movement which began to proceed the democratic partys embrace of a stronger civil rights platform in 1948. It took on a meaning of protest against incipient Civil Rights Movement as well as continuing to be all these other things. In the aftermath of that, what the headline writers all over the nation dubbed the flag fad broke out. The flag became very popular in the north. A lot of people were asking why. Was this somehow part of the dixiecrat movement against truman or was it simply like the coon skinned cats and hula hoops and other fads of 50s. They concluded the laert, its just a fad. The American Press were warning against the flag as a symbol not only of racism but also disunion in the context of the cold war. We need to present a united front in this flag suggested disunity in the nation. So, that was the context in the early 50s, was this interesting period in which the flag went from the very restricted symbol revered by its owners, the Confederate Heritage groups essentially owned it, symbolically and otherwise. And it was essentially pandoras box open for those who grew up in the 60s, 70s, 80s, culture we knew as children began in the late 40s, particularly in the 1950s with the flag fad. Interestingly the united daughters, kappa alpha fraternities and other groups fought against this. They persuade many legislatures to pass laws that punished the very thing many of us new grewing up. Beach towels with Confederate Flag on it. Were punished by law of desecration, misuse of the battle flag. It wasnt only the africanAmerican Press but the protecters of the flag, the keepers of the confederate flame initially reacted against it trying to make sure it was used only as a revered memorial symbol and not the way it clearly became by the time of the civil war centennial. Thats really the context of the early 1950s for the use of the flag. Dr. Browndouglas, would we install a set of windows like that today . If we did, how would it be different . What an easy question. As i contemplate that question, i ask a prior question, first of all, and that is, would we have even installed those windows, lets say, in 1954 or beyond . Because, of course, they were installed in 1953. And in 1954, in response to the brown versus the board of education decision, confederate symbols began to gather new meaning or different meanings, as even dr. Coski points out in his book. And those meanings began to become it became very clear that these symbols were symbols of white supremacy, at least segregationist symbols and symbols that stood against the decision of brown versus the board of education and stood against integration. And so, i often think to myself, my, my, my, the cathedral got in right under the gun in installing those windows in 1953 because the culture certainly changed in 1954. Today i think that, perhaps, a series of questions would have to be asked that maybe werent asked in 1953 when those windows were installed. And the overall question is this, what does it mean to be the National Cathedral . Wed have to ask the question, who are we . Are we more driven by the nations civil region in its sense of itself, or are we more compelled by who we are as a church and the theology of a church whose good liberated the slaves from egyptian bondage and whose god we claim is most manifest in jesus who said ive come to set the captives free. And so i think that we would find ourselves today having to ask the question of what does it mean for us to be washington National Cathedral . Does it mean we happen to be a were a social institution that happens to be religious and so we service the civil religion of the nation or are we, indeed, a church which is called to show forth a glimpse of god in the world . And perhaps these are questions that werent asked, i dont know, in 1953. But to be sure, it seems as though the lee jackson windows, at least forces us to call the question in terms of the civil religion that that even the daughters of the the united daughters of the confederacy spoke of this civil religion that in many respects, sanctions or sanctifies the confederacy and raises lee and jackson as not simply heroes of the confederate war, but that theyre also saints. So, we ask to ask those questions which would cause us to really contemplate and ask the wider question of what it means for us to be a National Cathedral. Dr. Ellis, dr. Coski was very careful to point out that when he talks of the south and talks of a logo for the south, hes speaking particularly of the white south. And in his book he acknowledges time and again that black americans were simply not asked. They had no voice in that conversation, as we came up with consensus symbols, yet black americans were speaking. Not being heard is different from not having anything to say. Lets talk about those years, from the mid40s to the mid50s, what was going on in black america and was there a very conscious sense that this all terntive narrative of the past was gaining legitimacy and gaining force and sort of hardening in the public consensus without a black american counternarrative being given enough space . If you go back to world war i and the experience of black soldiers when they fought in france under french commands and you look at the experience of most of them being one where they ate in the same restaurants as the french, they rode on the same buses and the same transportation, they fought in the same units, they trained in the same units, they were treated differently than they remember in the america of that time. They fought in the war, and then they return home with this new training, with this new expectation that if this happened in france, and if i was allowed to feel differently and to feel more like a man, to feel more empowered, to feel like i was equal to a white man, then this is something thats possible in america. So, they come back to america and it was the summer of 1919. They call it the red summer of 1919 because of the number of riots that took place during that period. They come back to a continuing environment of lynching that started back in the 1890s, but was still going on. They come back to a reminder that the equality they felt and the experienced in france, they would have to leave in france or they would have to fight even harder for that environment to exist in america. So Adam Clayton Powell and others coined the phrase, the new negro. And that new negro began to create all kinds of agencies and all kinds of organizations that in some way supported this idea of equality within the community. But even as the naacp and the urban league and the National Council of women and all of these other organizations began to exist, there also was the necessity of ida b. Welles barnett who was in memphis and who was in trying to in some way speak out about injustices that were going on in tennessee. She had to leave because they burned down her house. She had to leave and go to north. Somewhere around 6 million africanamericans left the south and headed to the north, to the urban cities of the north using the chicago defender and robert abbotts paper to give them information about where they might settle in philadelphia, where they might settle in new