that this truth telling happens at presidential sites. this panel this panel features presenters with extensive backgrounds and curatorial work public programs and interpretation who are using historic places to advance a broader understanding of race. and how this central how the how central this social construct was and remains to shared national past. all of their work shows us that preservation is not about holding places in stasis. what we preserve and how we preserve what we interpret and how we interpret is a powerful tool for advancing justice and equity. now i have the great pleasure of introducing our moderator brent legs who is a senior vice president at the national trust and the executive director of the african-american cultural heritage action fund joining him on stage are our panelists asante wah, bechewa associate director of collections and exhibitions from the smithsonian's anacostia community museum. lena mann historian with the white house historical association dr. elizabeth chew executive vice president and chief curator at james madison's montpelier and jennifer stacey a member of highlands council of descendant advisors. please join me in welcoming brent a santoa elizabeth and jennifer i am honored this morning to share the stage with four powerful women who are innovating preservation practice. what i want to do is to share some brief opening remarks to set the stage for our conversation. and solidarity with african americans a multiracial coalition is marching in the footsteps of earlier generations whose vision for equality and human rights continues to inspire. nevertheless the preservation movement is flawed. and the not too distant past historic sites were preserved to reinforce the white majority's narrative. and to communicate idealize but unevenly realized american values. hence, too often the historic imprint of black people has been rendered invisible. we at the national trust are proud to support organizations and ideas that are revolutionizing preservation practice. because historic sites to bring forward a diverse and inclusive national narrative are playing a crucial role in redefining our collective history a meaningfully expanding the preservation movement and equitable ways. this innovation and practice helps us all make amends and walk toward a new era of justice. through new forms of partnership interpretation and community presidential sites work at a critical moment both in the trajectory of their institutions. and the trajectory of history when preservation culture and creative thinking are sending as essential methodologies for repairing past injustice. shaping equitable futures i'm sure that we all agree that we need more sophisticated strategies that model and strengthen sight stewardship and asset management. interpretation and programming descendant and public engagement and fundraising for places imbued with a multiplicity of stories and black history. that's why we're all here today. to exchange ideas and best practices that advances urgent work. our shared goal is to reimagine redesign and redeploy historic preservation to address the needs of cultural institutions and the assets and stories they stored one essential piece of this work is training the present and next generation of preservationist to do the cultural and technical work needed to redress the imbalances in our field. from interpretation to management our collective work will be devoted to explicitly lifting the profile. and ensuring the preservation and interpretation of sights of enslavement representing a 250 year american legacy. we must face the fact that the history and the character of our nation. carved out of a chasms of racial brutality and economic exploitation and out of the self-determination character and resilience that moves our nation closer to its best self. by preserving these overlooked histories telling their stories preservationists inspire a commitment to equity and justice preserving this tapestry of our shared culture heritage and pride is an act of racial justice and should be viewed as a civil, right? we can also expand the conversation to answer bold questions. how should america scale up the interpretation of its of enslavement so that we never forget their meaning and harm? what's the collaborative role of the afro-american community descendants? civic leaders preservationists artists academics and funders to envision and manifest landscapes and buildings of understanding and reconciliation how do we support presidential sites and their pursuits to create spaces in histories that equalize dual narratives and memory of all who toiled on these lands and who help to birth our democracy through unimaginable sacrifice. the purpose of preservation practice is not to stop change. but to offer tools that help with society manage change in ways that do not disconnected from the legacy of its past. done right historic places can foster real healing true equity and a validation of all americans and their history this is our opportunity to value the lessons. sites of enslavement teach us that are all the more important at this in our shared history. let's start our conversation. please share with us. the power of the places that you represent was that history important? that's one. well, thank you, brent and thank you all for being here. i am on this panel as the former curator of the president woodrow wilson house in washington dc. it was the last residence of president wilson immediately after leaving the white house in 1921. he lived there until 1924 until his death his wife first lady edith bowling wilson lived until 1961 and bequeath the house to the national trust. and the national trust opened the doors to the public in 1963. first lady edith wilson's vision of that house was to be a standing legacy of woodrow wilson. the interpretation was very much of course centered as you would imagine on world war one wilson's role as an international statements the first in the period to hold that distinction on the world stage and wilson, the man those were sort of the two pillars of interpretation there and when you come to the cake when you came to the house, those were the stories that were centered, right? through the african american cultural heritage action fund of the national trust the focus began, of course to tell the fuller history, so when i joined i looked at the interpretation i looked at what was on display that had for the most part remain unchanged since 1961, you know, there's been shifts of objects small objects here and there but as far as the experience and the subjects and topics that were covered they have remained that that way until 2008 when i joined the team there. and so i looked at and i said wilson the man but really, who are we talking about here if we're talking about telling her history the people wilson and the people there were two african american. workers who labored in that house? obviously wilson's home is not a side of enslavement. however, the first lady in particular curated that house from the antebellum perspective gorification of the old south was where she was the way she was raised her family had lost land in the civil war and she came from that ideology that those times were the good old days the two african-americans in the house were a couple mary. scott served as the head labor in that house and she and her husband traveled across washington dc which of course was segregated to that house for nearly 30 years until they were very senior in age, and they had not been mentioned much at all. who are these people so that was one important thing that i thought we needed to uncover second was another obvious glaring legacy of wilson's is rice relations as you all probably know many scholars of african american history in particular refer to that period as than they dear of race relations in this country since the civil war meaning the worst period for african americans the time of the highest lynchings in the united states unchecked the protection of african americans in the jim crow south was non-existent persecuted for things that were guaranteed by the con. mission and of course the proclamation that we're never fulfilled. and wilson presided over this era his administration though often. some will say wilson was not the author of such policies. he certainly sanctioned them and those in his cabinet who pushed for things like the segregation of the federal workforce, which had never been the case the civilian the civilian service that had not been the case prior to there were people like frederick douglass and mary cloud bethune and other people and all of the different agencies in washington dc who were african american and served. with the wilson administration thinks like submitting photographs of yourself with your application became a requirement to determine and read out who was african-american separation of white women for example in african american men getting rid of supervisors in the government who were african american these kind of intrinsic things happened under that administration so exploring what are the effects of that and then lastly bringing in the people who contributed to society at this time where african-american though, this is the nadir. this is also of race relations. this is also a time of great cultural expansion coming from the african-american community the popularization of jazz. thanks to the world war one soldiers who went to europe to serve. not income back, but they served and they did their duty and were honored by france before they were acknowledged by president obama in in our government so though there's this deep. there's this deep time of pain and suffering. there are significance. there's achievement. there's culture the harlem renaissance. so we wanted to explore those kinds of stories alongside that that this is not only a story of oppression, but it's a resilience. it's a celebration it's evidence. i think of the most the deepest manifestation of what it means to be an american to continue to believe and to fight for and participate in a system that has historically denied you and continue to deny you violently and legally, so that's the framework in which i stepped into the house with and the mindset and those are what guided the kinds of programs and outreach that we tried to do. they were lucky to have your leadership. thank you. so i am a historian at the white house historical association and slavery in the president's neighborhood very near and dear to my heart and the way that this got started for us is in 2016 first lady michelle obama spoke at the dnc convention where she famously said i wake up every morning in a house that was built by slaves and in fact enslaved people were essential to the construction of the white house from the quarrying of the stone to the making of bricks and then to the physical construction of the roof and walls enslave people worked alongside white wage laborers and skilled craftsman from europe and they were essential to that white house construction and then it didn't stop there. john adams moves into the white house in 1800. however, he did not we have not found evidence of him using enslave labor in the home. it is still a possibility, but then thomas jefferson when he is just a few months later then slavery becomes embedded in the white house as well slavery continues up until the zachary taylor administration. that's the last administration we have evidence of slaves enslaved people in the white house, but it's also important to note. there aren't nine presidents that used enslave labor at the white house and the names on that list are a little bit surprising one of the most surprising names is john quincy adams john quincy adams in his later career in the house of representatives was a staunch anti-slavery advocate. however slavery did touch his family and while living in the white house, although he did not own in slave people. he did have a niece and nephew that had enslaved people that they brought to live in the white house. so very surprising people you might not think of in total 12 presidents owned and slave people at some point in their lives. again, this list also includes some surprising names including ulysses s grant there is evidence. he owned an enslaved person in his younger days. so really as the white house the white house is the people's house. and i think it's really important to see that every american sees their stories reflected in the white house their stories their ancestors stories. they should be able to see themselves in the building that that speech by michelle obama caused a lot of people to come head our way to look for more information about slavery in the white house, and we really didn't have a lot of that information available at the time and so us launching our slavery in the president's neighborhood initiative is an effort to correct that and to add those voices into the narrative and put them into conversation with first ladies first families and presidents themselves. they are essential to white house history and american history, and they're not just witnesses to white house history. they are deeply involved one of my favorite stories and things that sort of a correction is an enslave man for a president james madison paul. he wrote the first white house memoir. it's a pretty remarkable read and in it. he actually corrects a very popular myth. there's this very popular story that dolly madison when the british come to burn the white house in 1814 that she single-handedly cuts the gilbert stewart portrait of george washington from the frame wraps it up carries it to safety herself. that is the narrative that was percolating and i still hear it today and paul jennings specifically correctsa in his narrative and says, well she did order the painting to be saved but it is, you know, white house staff and enslaved people that were the ones that saved that painting. so i think it's really really important to place those people in conversation with american history and those stories really have been under told through this initiative. it lives on our website primarily it consists of a lot of research articles myself and my team spent a year and a half doing research and then we worked with a web design team to turn it into an interactive timeline. so the timeline features a lot of articles and a lot of research and there's sort of three main types of articles that we have first are general pieces overviews about slavery and race in america others are specific specifically about presidential households. so like one for thomas jefferson one for james madison, etc. those help guide the timeline and then finally what's most important to me the the stories of the individuals. so we've been able to tell these really incredible stories through, you know, i want to another person that i really enjoy is a woman named alethia browning tanner. she's very inspiring to me. she may have worked in the white house. i've found some a little bit of evidence for that. it's not confirmed, but she did sell vegetables in a stand in lafayette park right across the street. there's rumors that jefferson visited that stand and her owner allowed her to do so she ends up saving her money at that stand and in 1810 purchases her own freedom for 1400 dollars, and then she goes on to purchase many many other. members of her family and to freedom and she establishes herself in the thriving free black community in washington dc and then she eventually even buys a home within really close to the white house. and so i that's why we call it slavery in the president's neighborhood. these individuals are part of the president's community. they live in the neighborhood. they live just a stone's throw from the white house and they are essential to the history of the united states. elizabeth thanks for that great setup. yeah, so i am from james madison's montpelier, which is a 2700 acre site currently in orange, virginia. it was the home of three generations of the family of president james madison and where over those three generations the family held in bondage approximately 300 men women and children. so it was the site where? president madison studied thought prepared for the constitutional convention the creation of the constitution and hopefully the bill of rights and where he was a lifelong slaveholder. who's entire income and status derive from the labor of people he held in bondage and he never freed a single one of them. so we've been a open to the public. that's 1987 and we've been a coast stewardship site of the national trust since 2000 and we are committed to what we call telling whole truth history, and we've been enormously privileged over the last 20-plus years to do this work in partnership with the community of descendants of people who were enslaved at montpelier and they've been our colleagues and our our partners since the later 1990s. we've really achieved wonderful interpretive successes with with their partnership and one wonderful outcome of this partnership as catherine said at the beginning was the creation of the rubric of best practices for descendant engagement. the interpretation of slavery at historic sites which many people in the field have told us it's been very important in their work. in addition to interpreting the institution of slavery. we also are able to continue the story of african-american history or the american history and that we also have in our property the small farm of a freedmen's family the family of george and holly gilmore who were emancipated from palear and then able to acquire property right across the road from our front gate where we interpret reconstruction and then we also have a jim crow era train depot built by william dupont whose family owned montpelier from 1901 to 1983. so we interpret a jim crow era in that space. so we we talk about the entire arc of african american citizenship. and two major landmarks have come since the rubric was created in 2018 in 2019 the community of descendants organized and became a separate 501c3 nonprofit organization called the montpelier descendant committee. and then just this past june the montpelier foundation board voted to create a relationship of parity with the montpelier descendant committee so that the organization of the descendants of the enslaved and the organization that operates montpelier will run the site in sharing power and authority and since that historic vote in june it had there been there's been difficulty in moving forward. in the negotiations between the two boards just demonstrating how really how difficult this work is and remains but how critically important it is to the future of sites like ours. and jennifer good morning. glad to be here. i'm a descendant of jamestown rose highland and i sit on the advisory council and where we where we actually share authority with with the site. so it is a real thing and i grew up in an area of outside of charlottesville. there's probably about i'd say five miles from highland probably 10 miles from monticello and maybe 20 from montpelier so that's where my family's been. for as long as i can remember, my mother's family her maiden name is monroe and i remember as a child going past. what was then ash lawn? and looking at the sign and seeing the name monroe and thinking my grandfather's name is monroe. so must be some connection, but i really didn't take it any further. i just automatically assumed it was tied to slavery, but we really didn't talk about it in my family and so you really didn't have any engagement with ashlon? probably during my childhood. about five maybe five or more years ago. it's probably been a little more than that. there was an article i think that drew one of my cousins out to meet the staff at ashland. that was the article where sarah bon harper had