What a wonderful crowd filled with so many people. We are glad to have you here. Thank you for that introduction. It is my pleasure to welcome you to the building on behalf of all the staff connected with the National Museum of africanAmerican History and culture. Happy third anniversary. It is a great day for the museum and a great day that never would have happened without the help of all of you in this audience supporting us and encouraging us to move forward. Several months ago, 90 days ago i was at george mason university, and finished my career there. I got a phone call from the director of National Museum of africanAmerican History and culture. A good friend. He told me something that made my heart sing, that he was about to be announced as 14 secretary of the Smithsonian Institution. For me it couldnt have been more exciting except he put a link or in there. He asked me, to go the way to the mall. When lonnie bunch asks you to do same thing all you say is yes and that is what i did. It is my honor to serve in this role. I hope to serve as a stabilizing force for staff and all of you as we move forward and to make sure the momentum started by lonnie bunch and a terrific staff this year as we go forward, it has been a terrific 3 years since we opened and in those 3 years some remarkable things have happened. We have 6. 5 million visitors to the smithsonian. [applause] i often tell people we would have more except you people wont go home. You come and stay. We love that but our numbers would be higher. I dont know what to say to you about that. We have 10 million hits on our webpage, 21 books done by scholars connected with the museum and looking forward to continuing fundraising with our day 2 fundraising campaign, this to ensure the quality of the things we do continue to move forward and continue to make you proud of us. During this critical time of the museums existence is our priority to continue to develop the outstanding programs that have been part of the activities of this museum. The new secretary we expect to continue to go forward and we will continue to raise the standard you expect all along. This evening is part of the ongoing effort to have great programming to engage you with things that are important about this museum. It is my pleasure to introduce lonnie bunch as the 14 secretary of the Smithsonian Institution a fools errand creating the National Museum of African American history and culture during the age of bush, obama, and trump. [applause] thank you. A fools errand creating the National Museum of African American history and culture during the age of bush, obama, and trump book tour is generously supported by toyota. Thank you to toyota. Please follow us on twitter, facebook and instagram and joined the conversation using hashtag greeting, creating m a hc. Please welcome this evening up special guest interviewer, an american journalist and author, correspondent and anchor for cbs news for almost 30 years, the author of the 2019 book truth worth telling and correspondent for the cbs news magazine 60 minutes. Welcome, scott pelley. [applause] thank you so much and great to be with you tonight. I was thinking there is no way. Look at this crowd, it is unbelievable, thank you for being with us tonight. I thanked two members of the audience tonight. Lonnie bunchs mother is with us this evening. [applause] and Lonnie Bunchs wife is with us this evening. [applause] i want to pay particular notice to them because as we all know, behind every great man there is a surprised woman. The first time i came to this site with lonnie bunch we were wearing hard hats, before you were sitting on did not exist. It was an enormous hole in the ground. Lonnie bunch was Walking Around saying this is going to be that at this is going to be over here and this is going to be spectacular and i didnt say this but i said to myself and my head oh boy, that is a whole lot of dreaming but look at us now. Three years. [applause] three years of the museum has been open, 61 2 million visitors in its first three years. It is an unparalleled triumph thanks to the dreaming of lonnie bunch. Ladies and gentlemen, we have a very short film that will help me introduce lonnie bunch. Lets have a look at this film about the 14 secretary of the Smithsonian Institution. Creating this museum gives us a chance to make manifest the dreams of many generations. We recall the lost dream back. This is a milestone moment not only for the smithsonian but the united states. The goal of the museum is to make america better, provide opportunities to be made better by the past and to move towards a future where race will always matter. They will find that those ideals are only met through sacrifice and struggle and belief in a better day. I was born by the river it is more than a building, it is a dream come true. History, despite its wrenching pain, cannot be unlimited. By knowing this other story we better understand ourselves and each other. I too am american. I want to give a shout out to lonnie bunch. It is really important to understand this project would not and could not have happened without his drive, his energy and his optimism. 11 years we have dreamed, toiled for this day. Today a dream too long they furred is a dream no longer. We guarantee that as long as there is an america this museum will educate, engage, and ensure a fuller story of our country will be told. Welcome home. In may the smithsonian named its newest secretary, lonnie bunch iii. What i hope is i can help the smithsonian be the place people look to not just to visit but for answers to help them live their lives. For me it is about helping the smithsonian be the place that is the glue for america and helps america grapple with who it is and understand itself and its world. Ladies and author of a fools errand creating the National Museum of African American history and culture during the age of bush, obama, and trump and my dear friend, lonnie bunch iii. Thank you, thank you. [cheers and applause] sit down, weve got work to do. You are cutting into Lonnie Bunchs time. What a terrific book. I have been telling everyone it is not a book about building this magnificent monument of the 21stcentury if you ask me, it is about overcoming diverse city, it is about putting a team together, about the creativity involved and then mastering all of the obstacles that you didnt see coming. I want to ask you first about something that was one of the founding principles that you mentioned in the book. You mentioned a man by the name of princey jenkins who had lived in a shack that had once been a home to enslaved persons and Mister Jenkins told you, he said words that have shaped my career. If you are a historian, your job better be to help people remember not just what they want to remember but what they need to remember. How did that inform the work that you did here in the museum. Princey jenkins was a sharecropper, the grand sloan of an enslaved woman who lived on a plantation his whole life outside georgetown, south carolina. When i went to do research and interview him he basically wasnt sure who i was, what i did but at the end of the day he said it is really important to make sure you dont just give people what they think they want but give people what they really need. For me what that meant was how do i make sure that everybody understand that they are shaped in profound ways by the africanAmerican Experience and how do we make sure that a museum gives people things that not just commemorates and celebrates the challenges, prods, demands that they look in all the dark corners of the American Experience, princey jenkins taught me that. One of the things you told me when we did our first story about the museum for 60 minutes was in your mind this was never going to be a few will simply a museum of slavery. I think it was really important to realize slavery is central to understanding the American Experience, the africanAmerican Experience but thats not the totality of Life Experience and for me i was trying to find the right tension between resilience, optimism, pain, and understanding. I wanted this museum to be a place that would allow you to cry when you ponder the pain of slavery or segregation but i also wanted you to tap your toes to Aretha Franklin or somebody from the hiphop world, i have no idea who it was, but the goal was simple, to say i wanted this museum to tell a fool, complex picture, picture that doesnt have simple answers but a lot of shades of gray, like life. If you were living in chicago when this job came around and you were not sure you wanted to take this job, theres a line in the book i just love. The charge of conceptualizing and building a National Museum, one potentially on the National Mall was frightening enough but even more unsettling was the reality that this was a museum of now. What did you mean by that . This is a museum that started with nothing. It had one member of the staff besides myself, it had no collections, it had no idea we would be where we are today, there was no money raised and candidly there were very few people who really believed this would happen. My notion was am i willing to take that leap and believe we could no matter how long it took, we could turn the know into a place that mattered. Lets talk for a moment about the incredible beauty of the building itself, the architecture of the building itself. You were given a lot of different plans to go over in order to select and a lot were unsolicited. People had decided that they knew what the museum should look like. This is my favorite from the book, the most original unsolicited idea was sent to our offices in 2008. As i sat at my desk my executive assistant Deborah Shriver miller in her role as linchpin of the museum in later chapters struggled to bring in a large package of architectural drawings. There were more than 100 pages the detailed what this person felt was the perfect structure. As we reviewed the material i realized that this architect had developed a design of the building in the shape of a black power fist. [laughter] that design did not make the shortlist, but tell us how we did end up with this magnificent building. The reality is when i saw the drawing of the black power fist i realized many things i could get through congress, i dont think i could that. What happened was we realized once we got the spot on the mall, that was a big deal, once we had it, my Deputy Director and i spent a lot of time thinking what should this museum be . So many people came to us, should the museum look african . Not sure what that meant. Should the museum look like slavery. I wanted a museum that spoke of spirituality, resiliency and uplift, i wanted a museum that would be the first green museum on the mall. It was important to say this would be a lead goal building. Also what i wanted was a building that had dark color because i wanted people to realize that america has often undervalued or under less than understanding the africanAmerican Experience. There has always been a dark focus in america and i thought it would be important to be not too subtle and to make sure this was on the mall and that is what i tried to do. Every building on the mall is twice. The best part of this is regulatory agencies had to approve this and at one point we took this design to regulatory agencies and they find we accept this but can you do one thing, could you make the building white . So i said if you will stand in front of the New York Times and Washington Post and say the African American museum has to be in a white building, then i will do it. And he did one of those never mind. Tell us about the design, the bronze colored panels that are called the corona. What is the root of that design and how did the corona come about . To me that makes this building the eiffel tower, the great wall of china, the kind of thing that if you are looking at this building i know where i am. It is a combination, like any origin story, there are different stories, the idea came from one of two places. Either it came from conversations where we saw pictures of black women whose hands and prayer were at this angle, the architect argues that it comes from a your room the piece that he saw so i am not sure where it came from, but i am sure how we got the corona. What happened was once we decided we would do this bronze corona, you had to puncture it in some ways it was too reflected in the architect said we will make holes. I paid too much money for holes. I went to new orleans and charleston to take pictures of that ironwork that enslaved craftspeople did and that is on the entire building so the building is an homage to the fact that the homage to america was built by people we will never know. Every time i see the building i see the African American experience but i see all those laborers that have been left out of history. [applause] in fact, the way we met was because of those laborers who were left out of history. Migrate 60 minutes producer, nicole young and i, the 150th anniversary at the building of the capitol dome. As we got into the research we discovered of course that the dome was built by enslaved people to a large degree so we started to try to find a historian who knew about that history and that is how we found lonnie bunch. We did the interview, put the story on the air and i am working on this other project which resulted in two more sensational stories for 60 minutes. The building is beautiful but it is worthless without a collection and the collection in my view is the more difficult part. Let me read another moment from lonnies book, when i became director of the museum i had many issues that caused me to worry, but nothing, not raising money, hiring staff, managing the bureaucracy of the institutional dealing with the Museums Council caused me greater concern than the challenge of building a national collection. If there was one axiom that shaped the Museum Careers of curators of color it was the belief in the possibly of objects that illustrate africanAmerican History and culture. Very few museums had significant artifacts and objects explored race, therefore making the crafting of traditional exhibitions very difficult and usually unlikely. Now you have 30,000 artifacts. Or 40,000. I stand corrected, it is growing every day. 40,000 artifacts in this museum, how on earth did that happen . We had long conversations early on. We decided for the smithsonian people come to see the ruby slipper, greensboro lunch counter, the right flyer, we felt we had to find those collections but i remembered something early in my career i was collecting california and i was told this woman had a treasure trove of material and i went to her house and she said she had nothing and to get rid of me she said go look in the garage. I went into the garage and there was an amazing amount of material and i never forgot and i thought maybe and then one night i was doing something in front of the television and suddenly antiques roadshow was on, what a great idea. We then created our version of antique roadshow called saving epic and american treasures, sounded more scholarly than the antique roadshow and then we began to go around the country to help people preserve grandmas old shawl, 19 century photograph and to bring out materials and we thought first of all lets give things to local museums but it came back to dc and i am amazed what we were able to find. The story where we received a call after we had done these programs so people knew we were looking. I received a call from a collector in philadelphia and he said he had material of Harriet Tubman. I remember thinking i am a 19th century historian, no one has anything of Harriet Tubman but come to philadelphia because at the very least i will buy you a philadelphia cheesesteak. I thought thats not a bad deal so a bunch of us go, we went and this guy was a huge former penn state football player, 6 foot 3, 300 pounds and he brought out this little box and opened the box and pulled out pictures of Harriet Tubmans funeral that no one had ever seen and we were stunned. I said oh my goodness and he got excited and punched me. It hurt. He pulled out 33 things and punched me every time. Right in the solar. And then he pulled out this hymnal that had all those spirituals Harriet Tubman would sing when she goes to the south, swing low sweet chariot and suddenly we are all crying. I am crying from the pain but other folks are crying from this and we couldnt afford this stuff, it is priceless so we danced around it for a while and i finally said what is this going to cost . What will it take to get this material and he said you can take it now. The generosity of people, what allowed us to build a collections that once we knew we could find things like Harriet Tubman, then i knew we could find other things, overwhelming 40,000 arguments, in peoples homes. We really changed the way you think about collecting and because of peoples belief in the smithsonian that they can trust the smithsonian, we have what you have in this building. Tell us about this thing who has so much residences, matt turners bible, what a remarkable thing to have existed. I was giving a speech, an archaeologist comes to me and says i can help you find material from nat turner and show you where the insurrection occurred. I dont have time for that. This guy calls every month for 6 months. He takes me to southhampton county, where this inspiration occurred and when that turner was captured, in the county courthouse and the bible. The bible was given to a family that lost the largest number of people during the insurrection and they kept it for years and it was a souvenir for them and talking about wouldnt it be great to have that from nat turner and this woman called us, we had a great bible but then it is the real thing. We did all this research. People researched the age of the paper. And the frontispiece from the 1880s. We knew we had nat turners bible so for us once we get Harriet Tubman, matt turner, we knew we could find the stuff of history that would matter. The price tag of all this is half 1 billion. The federal government covered half of that. The rest of it you had to come up with. I love this, so many stories about generous people who gave their priceless family heirlooms to the collection and generous people who wrote multimillion dollar checks to make this happen and one of them no surprise to anyone was oprah winfrey. Over time she became the largest financial supporter of the museum. One of my favorite oprah moment occurred when she called from california during a Council Meeting in 2015 as we year near to nonroad a milestone, there was a discussion how we close the gap. Oprah who had already committed more than 12 million said she liked round numbers so she increased her gift another 8 million. Tell us a little bit about not just oprah but all of the people who wrote checks and companies that wrote checks to make this reality. Let me be clear i love oprah. Everybody does. One of the reasons we were successful fundraising is an amazingly gifted develop and staff who did the work, knew how to reach out to people but what we also had was a great story, the story was how often do you get a chance to build a National Museum especially one that explores issues that have divided us as a people and here is your chance to do something that means as long as there is an america this museum will be on the National Mall. That was the appeal but we decided we had to get money from corporations, spent a lot of time going to corporation foundations, one of the great successes came because of 60 minutes. We had done a 60 minutes piece that aired on a sunday. That monday i was in new york going to a foundation and i wasnt sure how they were going to react and when i walked in they said you were on 60 minutes last night. How much do you need . Come on, 60 minutes and in a way while there were a lot of big corporations and rich people that gave money that was crucial, for me the most important part was creating a membership campaign. We were told why would you create a membership, when you have a building it is free, what people didnt realize is a membership was really about ownership. It was about contributing to something special, the fact that thousands of people, over 150,000 people became members, 100 and that was instrumental in us raising this money. It was big money from oprah, money from so many people who believed in what this museum would be, that is what worked. The second story we did for 60 minutes had to do with your global search to find artifacts from a slave ship. As you so often say slavery was the first Global Business and there were hundreds of slave ships and i remember you telling me at the time that you thought that wont be a problem because there are so many slave ships there have to be lots of artifacts so you start calling around to people to find them and you and i ended up in mozambique on the trail of a slave ship, your initial optimism was not wellfounded. I am surprised we pull this off because i made so many mistakes and i really thought how hard could it be to find pieces of a slave ship. We initially tracked one down it sank off the coast of cuba. We spent two years negotiating trying to dive off the coast of cuba. That was not going to happen. I was very fortunate. There were many people that we knew throughout the world and a colleague from south africa called and said if you could help us we think we found a slave ship. When we found it, did the research and brought up pieces you could see in the galleries. It was sunken off the coast off the coast of cape town south africa. 60 minutes came with us to mozambique and when we went there when it sank, 512 people, we went to the home of the people and talked to the chief and the chief did something that was so moving, i give you a gift. It was a vessel wrapped in shells and it was full of dirt. What kind of gift is this . Im from new jersey, what is the story here . When he looked at me and said ancestors have asked i take the soil talk, take it to the side of the wreck and sprinkle over the side of the rack so for the First Time Since 1794 my peoples are in their own land. What it taught me is the slave trade was not something that happened hundreds of years ago, that is one of the great lessons of the process. At the end of our conversation we will take your questions and when you came in you were given cards to write a question on if you care to. What i would like you to do in the next few minutes after you have written your question on the card, lets pass those to the outside of the room all the way to the end to the end of your row and we will have people come along and pick those up and look at the questions and if none of the words are too big they will give them to me and i will read them. Look at this. This something that is topical. Donald trumps first visit to the museum. Thanks. You wrote this. Before donald trump arrived i was confronted by several of his senior staff who expressed concern that the president was in a foul mood and did not want to see anything difficult. Waiting along with the secretary of the smithsonian, i wondered what kind of tour i should provide. I decided i would begin the visit in the area that explores the slave trade. How did that go . I think the reality is the great strength of this museum is we get to educate everybody and clearly understanding slavery and the slave trade was something the president didnt know much about. What i find fascinating is as he went through the museum he began to engage a little more and it convinced me that we could really help anybody understand history better and candidly as a result of that donald trump became almost a supporter of the museum. I think i said almost. Lets not go crazy here, okay, the point is it told me about the power of what this museum can do. It can educate and challenge just about everybody and so my hope is he will come back and learn some more. These have been difficult days over the last few years particularly with regard to race relations. We have been reminded of ugly ugly history and the fact that that history is alive and i wonder what is the role of the museum . Can a museum be an instrument of healing the country . After we created this museum, we knew there was no postracial america. We knew there was hatred and pain and racism and we got it here. People senseless death threats, told us we shouldnt build this museum and we knew this museum had to be more than a monument to the past. It had to be a place that forced people to confront the past but also contextualize the world we live in today, until people understand what confederate monuments mens, they were less about the confederacy and more about the struggle to maintain segregation. We wanted to make sure this museum would provide reconciliation and healing but you cant do that without grappling with the unvarnished truth. The unvarnished truth was the first step in helping a country confront its tortured racial past. We felt that was crucially important for this museum. In terms of the obstacles you had to overcome, there is an anecdote about a congressman here who was generally a great supporter of the smithsonian but had second thoughts about all this. He expressed reservations to the secretary of the smithsonian about the museums existence just prior to the groundbreaking in 2012. I was concerned so i made my way to his office. Clearly uncomfortable the congressman applauded my efforts but stated quite strongly that he did not believe there should be a black museum for black people on the National Mall. He talked about his belief that segregation was wrong but then revealed supporting the idea for a museum of the American People that was being floated as a response to the creation of the museum of africanAmerican History and culture. What did you tell him . He said i do not believe there should be a museum by black people for people black people and i said me too. This is a museum that uses africanamerican culture to understand what it means to be an american, this is a broader story that if you think this is a story just about black people you dont know your history. If you think this is a story that is just about yesterday you dont know your history and so once i told them that he is said okay, i guess i am a supporter again because it is crucial to say to him think about this museum in a different way than you normally would. Candidly that has been one of the great strengths of the museum. It is a story for us all and we all could find ourselves, our history, our understanding of america in this building. One of the things that has always struck me, a powerful image is the location of the museum next to the washington monument. We have this monument to our great first president , but a president who was a slave owner and we have this in the shadow of that monument. What do we make of that juxtaposition kick you its about time. Getting the site on the mall, when Congress Said build the building, build it in a certain place, the last museum on the mall and the africanamerican museum, there was great hesitation to say this has to be on the mall. There was a discussion could it be in the old arts and industries or could it be in sites off the mall i do not know where they are. For us a big challenge was getting on the mall and there was a great deal of opposition. I remember once there was a group that was called the friends of the mall which meant they werent the friends of us, they sent a letter once saying you cant build this museum on the spot because it would kill grass. The grass is already dead. It is important to help the regions who make that decision see how important it is to be on the National Mall, that almost made complete the story of the mall, the lincoln memorial, washington monument, the greatest moment, wasnt groundbreaking, the day we convinced the regions to say on this spot there will be a museum that america can never ignore. [applause] you say in the book the smithsonian didnt want to build the building but the smithsonian thought it would be adequate to have a wing of the National Museum of American History who voted to africanAmerican History, just a wing. The smithsonian was very ambivalent going back 25, 30 years. Should there be this museum, what does it mean to the rest of the smithsonian . It was the efforts of john lewis who kept bringing this up, got to pass this legislation. What was important for us was to save the story of the africanAmerican Experience is bigger than an exhibition. It deserves its own museum but i have to be honest. When i came back a lot of people in the smithsonian said this shouldnt happen. I went to a meeting early on with other Museum Directors and one of them said weve got to worry what lonnie bunch is doing because that building, they are raising money that will hurt the smithsonian and i had to say i thought we were part of the smithsonian and for me the best example is something very small. On the smithsonian id card it has the initials of the museum, national air and space museum. When i came back they said you dont have initials on yours, you are not a museum and i said wait a minute, that is disrespectful. They said you are not anything because you dont have words on your card. You are going to put 10 am ac even though i cant spell on this card, that was a symbol this was an equal part of the smithsonian. So much of what we did early on was to fight for respect, that this was an equal museum and as i said i made sure they called the Deputy Director of the museum, not of the project and that was crucial. We mentioned one republican president but the contribution of george w. Bush should not be overlooked. I cant say enough about george w. Bush. I was very friendly, got to know laura bush before i knew him and laura bush used to ask me to give her books to read so i gave her james baldwin. She read them and i said i am impressed so i got to know her and the president and george bush is so crucial because when people were saying this museum should not be on the mall he came out and strongly said of course this museum must be on the National Mall and that helped us when we went to congress, when we went fighting for money. I am always grateful for george bush which is why it was crucial for me at the opening of the museum to have president bush and president obama because they were crucial. [applause] and then at the opening of the museum the first africanamerican president. What a remarkable intersection of history. I knew obama from chicago. He would say to me his exact words, are you going to get this done so your brother can cut the ribbon . That should have been in the book. What helped is i would go it construction meetings, we are going to be delayed. I was talking to the president and he thought we need to move a little faster and that helped a lot. Really a lot. I think there is no doubt that for me it was very special having this open during the tenure of president obama. He was supportive of it, a symbol of what we expect america to be and candidly that day three years ago, i would argue america at its best. Here was a time you had people [applause] they crossed racial lines, political lines, economic lines, remember the picture of michelle hugging bush, it was an american that said change is possible. All things are possible when we come together as a country. I look back sometimes with great longing for that day because that reminds us of the best of what america can be. As i was reading the book, something completely surprised me. There were a lot of surprises but this goes to the heart of who is lonnie bunch and the way you viewed this project. You write about walking through here alone after it was all ready to open. I walked through all 81,700 ft. Of the inaugural exhibitions saying my farewells and marveling at what we created. I reveled in the 496 cases needed to house the collection, 116 media presentations, 3500 photographs and images but more than anything else, i simply said goodbye. Why goodbye . You were opening this museum. Why not hello . One of the things i know is an exhibition comes alive when the people come in. It is no longer what i wanted, what i hoped. Even all the smart ideas we put forward it was all the peoples. It had been a tradition always saying goodbye and letting go. This was harder for me to let go because i realized something. We wanted to do this museum is a gift to america but i also realized it was a gift to me. Normally when i say goodbye to the vision i was done but suddenly i walked through this and i saw when i got to discussions of slavery, i saw my ancestors, candace bunche and jane done, trying to understand their lives better but when i looked at the migration of blacks from south to north i saw my grandparents, understand their lives a little better or when i stood in front of baxter street apartment i remembered how my parents told me how they had to struggle to find decent housing in a segregated north. It became not just about history. It became a way for me to understand my own family and understand myself in ways i would never expect. I would like to test the patience of the audience to talk about a slightly different, hugely different book and explain to you how i came to realize only recently how very much the museum means to me and people like me. I grew up in texas. I have a place in texas. Nobody loves texas more than i do but the history of texas and slavery is horrific. Texas is the only country on earth as you will recall, it was a nation for a few years, the only nation on earth to codify slavery in its constitution. Recently i was reading this history and i asked myself why am i just finding out about this now . Was i sick that day . I searched the country and i found in a bookstore in detroit my itll school Texas History book. It was written in 1962. Mister secretary, i would like you to look in the index, look up slavery and tell us what it says in the index. It is not there. It is not there. That is pretty amazing. It is not there. And so for generations of americans, we have had a wholly inadequate education about not the africanAmerican Experience. [applause] not just the africanAmerican Experience but is this museum shows, the inseparable nature of the africanAmerican Experience, the entire American Experience. It is the American Experience and that is what this museum means to me. [applause] i promised we would read questions and here they come. Now we are going to get to some good questions. Thank you very much. All right. This card says congratulations, thank you. What is your vision for the museum and the smithsonian in 2050 . If i am still here we have a real problem. What i hope is for this museum it will continue to be the place that contextualizes whatever the issues are, whatever the current confederate statues are, or Racial Discrimination in cities like baltimore that it should help people grapple with those but for the smithsonian i hope the smithsonian has learned from this museum, that the smithsonian would be a place that realizes that it has to engage younger audiences and it has to be to help people to live their lives. What i hope is everybody will come to the smithsonian, it was still be visited but it will be valued. People will say i come to the smithsonian because it helps me figure out how to live my life better. I want it to be a place that matters in profound ways and to make sure carousel is still there because their kids and grandkids will want to get on the carousel. [applause] here is a tough one you are uniquely qualified to answer. You created the first green museum on the mall. This building we are inmates the highest standards of environmental regulations, what can you do now with all of the museums of the smithsonian now we are facing Climate Change . It is crucially important the smithsonian even in its Old Buildings do everything it can to be carbon neutral, to be sustainable and one of the things i am proudest of is the smithsonian is already going down that road. To make sure we do refurbishing of Old Buildings we replace outdated hvacs. I learned that in graduate school. You basically demand the smithsonian contribute to making it better and one of the ways is by being more sustainable. Alvin w toward was 1879 book, a fools air and the inspiration for the title of your book . Absolutely. He was an abolitionist who had gone into the south, and would bring the country back together, ensure fairness for the African American community and failed miserably. Reconstruction was ended based on violence, he was chased out and a fools errand, to make a country better. What he was saying is even if you fail, the attempt can make a country better. My notion was i didnt think we would fail but i wasnt sure. The notion was our job more than anything else to take that fools errand. To make a country better. That is where the title came from. [applause] on that point, one of the stories lonnie bunch relates in a fools errand creating the National Museum of African American history and culture during the age of bush, obama, and trump is there was a point, this goes to your management style, there was a point, there was a consultant, a high prize washington consultant they hired that wanted to get senior staff together to discuss how they would manage failing to build the museum. You wouldnt let them talk to him. I understand swot analysis, but there is no way we were going to fail. I didnt want to figure out the options if we failed. [applause] i wanted everybody to look into history and see the faces of people who didnt give up, didnt quit when they should have. I wanted them to look at people and say here are people who believed in america that didnt believe in them. You are not going to fail. You will dip into that reservoir so he was really upset with me and im really easygoing but he was gone. No place for people who cant dream big. Ladies and gentlemen, thank you for being with us. Thank you for your exemplary penmanship and thank you for having me here. I will say good night and leave you in the hands of lonnie bunch and his final thoughts for the evening. [applause] first of all, let me thank you, scott. It means a lot to me. Who knew the day i walked into that room to be interviewed by you that it would develop into a wonderful friendship. I appreciate that. I get to stand in front but it is a lot of people that make this work. Where are you, sheeba . Come here. [applause] sheeba haley has done so much tonight and all the other stops on my book tour. Thank her. [applause] let me thank all of you because candidly this museum would not exist without your support, without your prodding to make us be the best we could be, that in essence we are here because of you. My only hope is that you will always support this museum regardless who is sitting in the chair, whether you recognize that this is a chance to say never again will we forget, this is a chance to say our job more than anything else is to remember those people who get forgotten. Our job is to say their lives matter and in fact we are better if we understand who they were. Thank you for being here and thank you for all the years of support. [applause] its in the box at the top of the page
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