welcome to the how and why, the making of the international african-american museum. i'm carey taylor, associate professor or this history at the citadel, and joseph is reilly's co-teacher for this semester's exciting course. we will introduce our special guest this weekend, but first i wanted to briefly explain the format. mayor reilly and secretary lonnie bunch will engage in a fireside chat9-style conversation after which we'll open it up for questions. we can ask that you put your questions in the chat function, and and i'll relay those to secretary bunch. so with that, i'll turn it over to my colleagues, mayor joseph reilly. >> thank you, professor taylor and secretary bunch. [inaudible] the secretary of -- [inaudible] the director of the national african-american museum of national history -- [inaudible] secretary bunch is the director of the chicago -- [audio difficulty] his connection -- [inaudible] [inaudible] mr. secretary, describe -- [inaudible] >> in many ways, i am so honored to be with you because of my profound respect for the mayor, for what you're doing. in some ways the museum's created manufactured reality. you've got sacred ground, sacred space. so the opportunity to tell important stories in a space where they actually happened is very powerful. so i've always felt anything i could do that would be supportive to make -- on that war is very special. so i am in i awe of how you and your colleagues who have worked so hard to create a museum that'll help us understand not just charleston is, not just slavery, but understand -- better. >> [inaudible] describing -- [inaudible] georgetown, north carolina. [inaudible] >> well, in some ways this is an example of sacred space. basically, i went up to -- plantation above georgetown. and as i walked could be the street, there were four or five cabins still standing. and he had lived in one of those cab. bins with his grand -- cabins with his grandpa ma. grandma. he would take me to one side of the cabin and talk about -- [inaudible] he took me to another side and talked about children watching the chimney so is it wouldn't catch on fire. he took me to the back talked about the crops -- then we went to the fourth side or, rather, i went to the fourth side. he didn't come. i said, you know, why don't you want to -- [inaudible] he said there were rattlesnakes over there. so being a kid born in north new jersey, rattlesnakes were not anything i knew anything about. [laughter] after i stopped running, i said to him, why didn't you warn me? i'm not sure what a historian does for -- but if your -- [inaudible] help them not just what they want to remember, but what they need to remember. and that shaped me for my entire career. aside from being terrified of a rattlesnakes, helping people remember what hay need to though. in other words, using history as a way to educate, to challenge, to provide understanding, context and maybe some reconciliation. that came from from a american i met one time, and so the reality is the kind of wisdom he gave has been -- [inaudible] everything i've done since that moment. >> i took that wisdom from your book, lonnie, to heart, and we will take it to heart in the museum we are creating. in the book the national museum has four pillars, it should have four pillars to support the efforts of the museum is. not monetary efforts, but the story. and they're all fabulous. one, paraphrasing mr. dinkins, but one is that the i museum should be a place of meeting and memory, telling stories of america. cited in the global context and full collaboration, but i'm interested in all of those, but i feel that our museum has a special -- to have citizens deeply move by the story of african-americans that our country never learned. so, dr. bunch, please give us your thoughts about this responsibility for our museum -- [inaudible] >> well, in many ways one of the great challenges is, first of all, to make sure those stories, those histories are remembered and well told. but the challenge is really to help people understand that those histories shape us all. these are not stories about african-americans for african-americans. but, rather, in some ways this is one of the quintessential american stories, to understand our notions of spirituality, resill yen i city, optimism -- resiliency. where better to hook than in this community? so the challenge is to make sure a good museum is like a two-sided coin. one side gives you this really deep understanding of the history. but the other side wants to take that culture and use it as a lens to understand what it means to be american is that, in essence, the best museums in history help us recognize that the stories that we tell regardless of what the community is are stories that shape us, that inform if us and that make us better as a nation. so i think part of what is apparent, what you're doing is you're illuminating some of the dark corners of the american spirit. in many ways the discussion around slavery, slave trade and really the origin of america is contested. some people don't want to have these conversations. and yet i would argue you can't understand who you are as american white house understanding that early -- without understanding that early history. you can't understand how our politics, how really our foreign policy, our culture how it was shaped by slavery and the struggles over slavery. so i think in many ways the work that you're doing is really valuable because it really allows us to understand something that often we don't pay attention to. but the other piece i think is so important is part of what you're trying to do is make sure people understand how this has been shaped by an international power. i think in many ways as americans, you know, we are many some cases very isolationist, you know? until we had to get -- [inaudible] or mexico, only 13 if % of us -- 13% of us had a passport. so i think the notion helping americans understand that they've always been shaped by international issues and that to this day we shape the world by our own culture. so i think that's an important contribution as well. >> thank you, dr. bunch. you write so beautifully and you're a great storyteller, especially memorable to me are the stories of the enslaved woman on the alabama cotton plantation who rose each morning, fed and left her children bent over in cotton fields in the hot sun and then refused to let -- strip her of her humanity or hope. or the story of your grandmother who took in the laundry of other families, scrub ised floors not -- scrubbed floors not her own so her children and grandchildren would not have to work. there are so many stories, and we've just been talking about it, and there's so much to learn and so much to be enhanced to strengthen that. so, lonnie, thank you so much for being a great storyteller. thank you for being the most fabulous museum director in the world in secretary of the smithsonian, and thank you for being here today. and i will now ask professor kerry taylor to open up the chat room and then to have questions of dr. bunch -- >> may i, may i, mr. mayor, make one comment before you go to questions? >> yes, sir. >> you know, i think one of the things that is really important that i discovered throughout my career, i know you're working on the museum, is the importance of women's stories. often in history women's stories get second shrift, and the notion of leadership that women play in organizations, in movements, the notion that women carry a burden of struggling for fairness and freedom at the same time they're struggling to raise families, i think that is really unbelievably powerful. and i take great solace from the role women have played and recognize that i'm standing on a lot of their shoulders. and i think it's important to make sure that people recognize that often history is told through the lens of a male perspective. and i think that misses so much of what is essential to really understand about our past. >> that's excellent. and, of course, we have hear dear friends of -- here dear friends of mine -- the. [inaudible] she was like rosa parks. she wasn't very big but, oh, the power of that -- [inaudible] courageous women. if lonnie, thank you very much is. and then we'll open up the chat room and professor taylor will monitor that for us. >> yeah. just as a reminder, please pose questions in the chat, and i'll relay those to the secretary and to the mayor. maybe as i guess a point of privilege, i was wondering, secretary, if you might comment on the museum's mission against -- i'm talking about the d.c. museum -- against the backdrop of this dynamic period of political change in which it opened and particularly i'm thinking about this phase of what we might refer or to as the second phase of black lives matter protests triggered by the killing of george floyd. has that -- what impact has that had on the museum's mission and, you know, our thinking around the museum in. >> well, i think it's had an impact on the museum and the smithsonian writ large. for example, i think what has been really important is to recognize that museums often forget that part of their job is to collect today for tomorrow, to make sure that we put in place what i call the rapid response team. i first sent them out to ferguson years ago, to minneapolis after the murder of george floyd, when black lives matter in washington, d.c. was having those confrontations, we were there to collect a lot of material. i also sent the rapid response team the on january 6th. so that, for me, what is important is that i realize for many times in my career whether it was at the smithsonian or other places that i wanted to tell certain stories, and the collections weren't there. so i felt it was really important. and i started years ago when i was associate director at the smithsonian of actually bringing the curators together quarterly and saying what should we know today, what should we collect today that somebody needs to know 20 or 30 or 50 years from now. so that really is important to me. but i think it's also essential, i believe that at times of crises cultural institutions help to contribute mightily to making a country better, to helping the country heal. helping the country understand. i think that if a place like the smithsonian is only about yesterday, then it fails. if it uses yesterday to help us understand today and tomorrow, to understand and contextualize the challenges of black lives matter or january 6th at a time when the public needs to find a trusted source, museums tend to be that trusted source. and so what i want to do is never abuse the relationship and the trust people have with the smithsonian. i want to use that to educate, challenge, to prod, to help us find reconciliation. i think it'd be very easy for institutions to say that's not my issues, but i -- my issue, but i think in a crisis if you're not contributing, if you're not fighting the good fight, if you're a place in history and you don't use that history to help othersed today, what you're doing is making history nostalgic rather than -- [inaudible] >> terrific. we have a question from professor tiffany silverman who asks if you might address the challenges around honoring the past as we become equitable to other perspectives and i think specifically she's thinking about monuments and, you know, symbols of the past. >> i think one of the things we know as historians is the evolution, right? the sweep of changing interpretations. and i believe very strongly that one never should erase history. one should pruning that history from time to time -- [laughter] and there ought to be opportunities to do two things, to help people understand what monuments really mean whether confederate monuments or whatever, what they really mean and what they really symbolize, when they were built can and what they tell us not just about the historical moment they're celebrating, but the moment they were created. you know, like so many federal monuments were created during the era of jim crow segregation or later during the civil rights movement as a way to send a different message of the change the country was undergoing. i think it's important the help people understand that. i think in some ways if i could do one thing as a historian, i wish we could find ways to help the public embrace ambiguity. in some ways we tend to looked at things, we americans -- like everyone -- we tend to work for simple answers to complex questions. [laughter] but history teaches us nuance, complexity. it teaches us that there's amazing things that when you have those debates around the shades of gray. and so in a way i think that if history could really help people understand evolution and change, subtlety, what a major contribution we could make to the country. >> i'm going to paraphrase a question from -- or, i guess a request here from our excellent student melanie delgado who asks if you could comment on the changing political dynamics from president bush through president trump. and i think she's asking specifically if you'd address some of the material you deal with in the book. >> i think that while it's crucially important for my success at the smithsonian, i think for any leader of a cultural institution you have to become with, you have to be political. it doesn't mean you have a specific political point of view, but you have to recognize -- as the mayor knows -- that you've got to build allies, that you've got to work with people who have politics that are very different from yours. so, for example, i came back from chicago to become the head of the african-american museum, i knew i needed to create a bipartisan sense. but i also knew that, candidly, when i walked into some members' offices, they said see this black face? -- [inaudible] but i also learned, however, in chicago that i became -- i got a lot of support from republicans from the north side, democrats from the south side, so i used that. i had those folks from different politics take me around. so, therefore, people could see that i could sort of handle things from at least as nonpartisan as i could. it didn't hurt that a friend of mine became senator, then president. [laughter] okay, that didn't hurt. but i the reality is that what i realized is that if i couldn't get every president to care about the museum, i couldn't get the support i needed on the hill, and i also thought it was a missed opportunity because i felt the museum's job was to educate everyone. and george w. bush was a big supporter. in fact, i will always celebrate him because there were many people who said this museum wasn't worthy of the national mall and that it should go someplace off the national mall. and heed stood up and said, why of course it needs to be on the mall. and i quote him every time. with president obama, it was an interesting challenge because initially, even though we were close friends, the notion was, you know, you don't want to be seen as simply a black president. so the notion was how to provide support. and if you noticed during his second term, became much more visible and vocally supportive and became one of the great supporters of the museum. and with president trump it was important for me to be able to help expand the notion of what african-american culture was, its impact on the broader society. it wasn't always easy, but it gave me something to do. >> cheryl harden loves is reflecting on the impacts of walking through the doors of no return in the slave castles in west africa, and she was hoping to get your thoughts on how it is we connect the african and the american stories in both the museum in washington and here in charleston. >> well, i think, i mean, one of the things is really to tell truth, okay? these things are connected, completely connected. it was international considerations that led to the creation of the united states, that began the united states. that the slave trade is part, really it's the first global business. and so really helping people understand that is powerful. i also think it's important to realize that we are so connected today that it would make sense to recognize how connected we were in the past. and i have been struck by something that happened to me. i spent a lot of time trying to find relics or pieces of a slave ship. i went around the world. i negotiated with the castros, which i was not successful which tells you my limited ability to be a diplomat. [laughter] but i looked around, i had to bring together scholars from the u.k., from south africa, brazil, and we began to map the ocean floor trying to find these wrecks. and because for years every summer i taught in south africa during the '90s, some of these folks that were museum people, they called me and said we might have a ship that sank off the coast of capetown. can you look at that. so we brought our expertise, we found the ship. it had left lisbon in 1794, went around the cape to pick up 512 people in mozambique. and then on the way back to the new world, it sank. so i felt an obligation to -- [inaudible] so i went to mozambique, and the chief of the people said i have a gift for you. he gave me a stress is el, a bowl -- a vessel, a bowl that was with regard. and when i opened it, it was full of dirt. and i was trying to figure out, okay, what are you saying to me. and he said to me something that was really powerful that made the connection. he said ill like you, my ancestors would like you the take this soil, take it to the site of the wreck, sprinkle it over the site of the wreck so for the first time since 1794, my people can sleep in their own land. i'm crying, i'm just so moved by it. and then a woman comes up, a woman probably in her 20s, and she said to me my ancestor was on that ship, and every day we say his name. so is it made me realize this was not about yesterday, it was about today and it was about tomorrow. and that helped transform how i thought about things. but it made me realize how fortunate i am to get to explore the past through the lens of the museum. >> our esteemed alumni, norman seabrook, has a personal question for you, secretary bunch. mr. seabrook was living in washington, d.c. in the 1970s and '80s, and he was curious about your experience of traveling -- transferring from howard to american university. and wanted your comments on that. [laughter] >> okay. all right. as the mayor knows, i always tell the truth. i fell in love with a girl at american-u. what the heck -- [laughter] you know, and i thought, oh, what love. i'll transfer, we'll live our lives together. we dated for a year and she dumped me. [laughter] so, you know, what can i tell you? enjoy being 19. [laughter] >> that's great. my colleague, sean edwards, thank yous you for sharing your thoughts -- thanks you for sharing your thoughts. she'd like you to discuss history from the point of context in modern times and the importance of that. and says often times requests for facts about historical figures and the contexts of those facts, you know, may not be desired. >> i mean, i think that one of the great challenges of being a historian or somebody who cares about history is to realize that context is everything. that without context, there's not understanding. and so i think the public sometimes thinks that history is a simple fact, a simple date. but the reality is, is the context around the fact, around the date that gives me, that obviously gives opportunity for differences of opinion as to what that particular moment meant. but i really think it's crucially important. .. when you go to the museum there are probably more quotations in any museum should have. you see many stories such as the stories of joseph. we all know a lot about africans who gained their freedom and had a freedom paper but the story of joseph was somebody who had that paper and gave his freedom