Transcripts For CSPAN3 Slavery At Presidential Plantations 20180128

To situate the president ial plantations back into the history of slavery. Or to situate slavery back into the history of the president ial plantations. Not entirely sure. I went back and forth on how to say that. Im not entirely sure which is the right way to say it. The crucial thing to say is that we are considering the processes that have raised the obvious that heavy raced that have erased obvious location of the enslaved in the histories of the presidencies. Everyone here on this panel, and many of you in the audience are involved in efforts that precisely do not assume slavery is some sort of addition or add on to the president ial histories, but the two are inextricable. To that end im excited to hear each of this afternoons speakers talk about the work they are undergoing at the president ial plantations. I will introduce all of them now in the order in which they will speak. We planned the presentations to allow for significant time at the end for the panelists is to panelists panelists to engage each other and the audience to ask questions. First we switched around so many times. We will hear from nancy, who has been Educational Programs James Monroes highland since in this role she 2014. Hires and trains new interpreters, coordinates school and group tours, and manages public programming. She created a slavery at highland program and provides training to equip staff of the with the ability to interpret slavery to primary resources and individual biographies. Prior to her work there, she was volunteer corps nader at the volunteer coordinator at the Imperial Center for arts and sciences, and interpreter at monticello. She has a b. S. In middle great middle grades education, and a masters from Appalachian State university. Next is brandon dillard, manager of special programs at monticello. He has been with the Thomas Jefferson foundation since 2010. For the last eight years he spent most of his time in frontline interpretation. The also studies cultural anthropology at the university of virginia, focusing on museums and Historic Sites and places of memory, identity and power. I believe he is also a bartender of some renown. A bit of a cult following. Christian is director of education at James Madisons montpelier. He began in 2000 as a student education coordinator. A staff of approximately 50 interpreters and has been at the forefront of montpeliers efforts to build and maintain relations with families and descendents from the enslaved community. He was project director for the mere distinction of color exhibition, which uses descendents voices to convey the stories of their ancestors, which connects the dots between 1787 and today to shine the light on slavery that still the legacy of slavery that still exist in the 21st century. Please join me in welcoming them and we will start with nancy. Thank you. [applause] i am really glad to be here with you all today. It is my first conference. I want to give you a sense of where we are at highland. I have a good fortune of starting my position four years ago. Our executive director was at the beginning phases of her research, which would eventually reveal a whole different house the monroes lived in and reinterpret the structure. I had a front row seat for that whole process. When i first started we were ashland highland. Now we are highland, the original name. We know we have a president ial era guesthouse and have more archaeology to do which is really fun. To give a sense of how do we interpret slavery at highland, is required on the guided tour that they mention slavery both on a National Context and individual slaves by name. We have a slavery at highland drop in station fridays and saturdays for you can see an interpreter and action. They have a table full of primary resources. Guests can engage for as long or short a time as they wish. We attempted to have a formal walking tour and found guests did not have time budgeted. By switching to a drop in station we can multiply our engagement which we are really happy about. We interpret slavery to the we interpret slavery through the structures that are there. Behind me you can see a reconstructed slave quarter that was done in the 1980s. Here is another angle with the reconstructed quarter in the center, flanked by an original 1821 overseer house on the left , and monroe era smokehouse on the right. Highland was at its height a 3500 acre plantation right next to Thomas Jeffersons monticello. Their property does still border today in 2018. You see a lot of green space. There is a line of buildings use there is a line of buildings use our earlier. I think this is also symbolic of everything we will have left to discover at highland. We are very much in the infancy of archaeological efforts. We know from monroes letters, advertisements, there were a lot more buildings that wouldve been at highland. We know there was a blacksmith shop, a gristmill, a sawmill, lots more slave quarters and a Slave Cemetery we have not found yet. My boss is quick to say thats an opportunity rather than a challenge. Stay tuned and we hope to make those discoveries. In terms of the slaves who are at highland, we know from the 1810 census, we see the name highlighted as 49. When guests come they are easily coming to both monticello and montpelier. A lot of times they tried to size up and compare the similarities and differences. Highland was on the smaller side. Monroe is funny in terms of numbers. When you look at his writing, one thing that stood out is when he writes about how many slaves he has, you see a lot of approximate numbers. About 30, between 30 and 40. About 60 or 70. Some of this comes from the fact he is largely an absentee owner. Most of his political career he was living abroad or in different cities of the United States. He is relying more on his overseers from the daytoday information. Another way i think highland is different is that these are not inherited slaves living here. We see when monroe is 16 he inherits his first slave, a boy, rolf, and my code and saddle. He is actively buying and selling slaves that would add an uncertainty to being a slave at highland. One of our colleagues in the field charted among the different properties, how many people were there. Not only does he own highland, he owns land the university of virginia is eventually built on, an property in Loudoun County named oak hill. The lines are back and forth between properties all the time. We try to give the takeaway of being a slave at highland as uncertainty. You have the fact monroe is gone, there are multiple properties and he is always buying and selling. One thing we did become a lot more certain of with our 2016 announcement we found the foundations of monroes original house is the dating informed us the structure was actually an 1818 guesthouse. It was built 19 years after his house, not the original house thought to be. What is even better and informed understanding of a slavery in terms of this discovery is you look at the written record, you can see monroe mentioning that he updates his soninlaw and in the house is almost built 1818 he says this was done by a carpenter i bought last winter for 450 and george. Now we know who built that. It was two enslaved men. Thats become a new part of our interpretation, a guesthouse built by peter and george. If you look at the paper record, you can look at who that was. It turns out that the peter. Here he is an inventory from the Loudoun County property in the yellow rectangle. Then we see george later on down in the inventory. You can piece together he brought them down to build this guesthouse structure for him. One way we would like to, and are excited about interpreting slavery is the augmented reality, which will be coming soon. Be wanted to really show people the landscape through this tour. To give you a sense, it is kind of split. Part of it is centered in the year 1819, during monroes presidency. Since the guesthouse is part of the scenery we wanted to make sure it was a year after it was built so it makes sense with the landscape. We wanted to make sure it was revealed how that guesthouse was built through the enslaved since we know it was through enslaved carpenters. Several of the scenes set in 1819 involved slaves on the property. That became an interesting process through our team of working to create who do you select to be these slaves and what should they be talking about . When we look to the historic record, we wanted to choose people who wouldve been in the historic core, seen the guesthouse and would have been aware of it. He had a cook named hannah. 1796, she is a young mother with three small boys. Fast forward 20 years, he is she is probably approaching 50 by 1819. We selected for her to be speaking with a blacksmith named nelson. He probably had a role and potentially had a role in the guesthouse of blacksmithing, perhaps accessories for the shutters or something. You see his name highlighted. Nelson, a blacksmith. He is a young man at that point. I wanted to point out with hannah we found a document where there is an inventory of items monroe was hoping madison will buy from him. He mentioned a soup spoon. That to me expresses she would be a person of importance around the property. I will give you two sneak previews from our augmented reality tours between the enslaved. Firstly a conversation between nelson and hannah where they will be talking about how they remember peter and george being down here and wondering what was going on with them. I wonder how peter and george are doing back it oak hill. Mr. Monroe brought them down last summer to build this house. All they talked about was missing their wives. It was so hard for them to be a part. Never knowing for when and how long they can stay in the same place. Know they are glad to be back together. I wanted to underscore the fact that separating families would have been something that was no doubt not missed by the enslaved community. Then there is a second one i will show you. Hannah will go into a room and have a conversation with an enslaved spinner. We chose not to give her a name to really represent the many unnamed in American History. The irony and paradox is monroe is one of those classic examples of a plantation of virginia where grain is the primary export. They cant keep up with a cotton revolution that is coming. In the earlier scene, monroe was talking about how hybrid is not highland is not making a profit it should. We see hannah and the spinner talk about the fear that maybe monroe will sell highland. He absolutely does do this. Ironically they end up sold to a cotton plantation in florida. That theory does become real and happened nine years later. All i know is wool, washing, spinning, weaving. I hear there are terrible conditions in the cotton fields down south. Lord, i hope mr. Monroe does not sell us out. It is hard enough not knowing what is going to send you to work at oak hill on one of his projects. Hush. I hear someone coming. Just in case is not obvious, you will see the scenes on an actual background. It will not be black like that. We chose to do illustrations instead of live actors. We thought that allowed for more scope for the imagination, whereas when you see an actor you know youre looking at an actor. You can let your mind explore more with these illustrations. We very much hope you will come see us at highland this year. I am eager to take your questions following the presentations. [applause] brandon something i omitted from my bio note is that i also have a degree in philosophy, which i got 12 years ago, which is why i was a bartender for 20 years. I dont know how she heard i was a bartender. You know what i am talking about. The philosophy firm is never hiring. I found myself at monticello spent many ofo, i those years interpreting. A bartender in the evenings and working as a tour guide during the day. I talked to thousands of people from all over the world about the institution of slavery and about Thomas Jefferson and monticello. The vast majority of those people are museum goers, and in america that is a specific demographic. It is middleaged, affluent, white people. Their ideas about why they are visiting the Historic Site they are visiting are often different. I know everyone in this room has a clear understanding between academic history and public history, and what the difference between memory and history are. They are not the same thing. The average visitor to monticello is not thinking about that difference, that says nothing about their intellect, but if you are trained in engineering, the last time you took the social science class may have been in high school. I am sure you all were real good in that class. That is probably not the case for mathematically minded people. It is just another class to go through. Monticello is a beautiful place, we have operated and provided tours to the public since 1923. In the century since we have been offering tours, the message has changed a lot and the tour has changed. Something that jen said early in the introduction in terms of the processes that erased slavery, when people visit a president ial home they are there for this idea of heritage. This idea of memory and what that means for our identity as americans. I like to show this picture as a way to talk about Thomas Jefferson. It underscores the point. We talk about not putting historic figures up on a pedestal. Instead of celebrating memory, we want to talk about history as a nuanced idea. But that is the biggest pedestal i have ever seen. We could get into a conversation about how we blasted four dead white guys on a site for native americans, but when youre which is also something you should probably recognize. But when youre having a conversation at monticello about how great Thomas Jefferson was, it is hard to than moving our conversation about slavery. This is a memorial in tanzania, because there is not a National Memorial to slavery in the United States of america. There are many memorials, but in terms of actually recognizing that institution, we are pretty far off. Having conversations with folks day in and day out at monticello leads to interesting conversations that are illuminating. Some people really understand the institution and want to get into the depths of jeffersons involvement, they want to talk about the individuals that were enslaved, and some people come to monticello and do not know they are at Thomas Jeffersons house or Thomas Edisons house, i am serious. They want to talk about how he wrote the constitution. They dont they havent studied in a long time. People come and see that. They see the beautiful garden, and it is hard to imagine that as a living, breathing plantation where people were held in bondage by the jefferson and randolph families. Over the last few years we have been working to talk about slavery more. We started offering slavery at monticello tours in 1993, this is the 25th year of offering those tours. We started an archaeological excavation focused on slavery in the 1950s. It has been ongoing for a long time. In the 1980s slavery became part of the exhibition and in the 1990s part of that interpretation. That interpretation has changed over the years and there are some people in this room who have worked hard on that interposition has come to the floor. Helping us understand, even Thomas Jefferson as a person better means we have to understand the institution of slavery and the lives of those people he held in bondage with which he was entangled. That last picture was an image of mulberry road which is a road that runs down monticello near the house. It is the main street of the plantation. This image was taken five years ago. You can see the beauty of the mulberry trees. This was a vibrant street. There were many buildings up and down it, it was dynamic in jeffersons life, much of it changed throughout those years. He held 607 people in bondage through the course of his life. Any given time, 130 people. Buildings up and down this road primarily served as industrial centers, there was a blacksmith shop, a nail shop and one of the first restorations took place in 2014, and this place is a storehouse for iron and behind it there would have been a nail making shop. It was only there for a couple of years. There been conversations about what to build there. Which buildings would be most representative . We learn a bit a bit about that as we go. This is the inside of a building that is farther off. It is interpreted as the home of john and priscilla hemmings, two people who were enslaved at monticello. Im sure the family name is something many people recognize. John hemmings was the master at master carpenter at monticello and his wife was the head nurse maid. They lived in a small house not unlike what most small cabins would be like for anyone living in the early republic, white or black. We noticed after building this that lots and lots of people had an interesting reaction. We hear our guests come out and say it is not so bad. On tours we would have guests say my greatgrandfather lived in something way worse than that. The implications is the obvious one, Thomas Jefferson took care of his slaves. Which is sometimes stated directly to you. We had conversations about this, we cannot get every single visitor on tour to engage with us in a dialogue with us. There is sign that says not so bad . Underneath it it talks about the reality of slavery has little to do with material condition. When your children can be sold from you it is not what size of dust as a matter what kind of house you live in. In my role as manager of special programs, i wear a lot of hats, but the primary role i engage in is to help our guides work on ways to talk with visitors about these ideas of slavery and what it means to people who are processing the stuff for the first time. They will be on the same tour with someone who knows more about it than i will ever read, and some people who think they are at Thomas Edisons house. You have an interesting conversation. The best conversations or when everyone talks to each other and the guy just gets to stand there and say that is interesting. The big thing we are about to engage in, we have been on this multiyear project of restoring the landscape of slavery in monticello and we are coming into the final big push. This is the South Terrace wing which is off the side of the main house. It shows the way it has been discussed. These are small rooms, theres a kitchen, theres a smokehouse, and their two rooms that are servants quarters. That is what jefferson called them. When the Thomas Jefferson foundation opened in 1923 when virginia was still a segregated state, the conversations about race and slavery were not paramount. A decision was made in the 1940s to build Public Restrooms into those spaces. We have known for a long time that we wanted to remove that but that takes a lot of work and a lot of money. The removal of that began just this past year. You can see the restoration of some of those sites here, and this is the 1940s when there is original structure there, that building is the oldest standing structure on the monticello mountain. That is the building where Thomas Jefferson moved in 1772 with his young wife right after they got married. Just below it is the slave quarter, it was part of the original kitchen. That was the mens room for years and years. Now it is not, it is an empty space. We are hoping to open it in june of this year with more of a conversation about slavery. One of the things we found that was most surprising, that is the base of a stove. When jefferson had this area remodeled, he had it backfilled, which means there was this much dirt from the 1770s piled up on top of the stove we did not know existed. That was primarily used by a man named James Hemmings who went to paris and learned fine cuisine. He returned as a french chef. It changed the way we are going to interpret this space. James hemmings had a fascinating life, he could read and write in french and english. He was invited to be the chef at the white house but declined because Thomas Jefferson would not ask him himself. A man who took his own life, but whose life shows us what it was like for people who were enslaved to operate in the world of white and black. Jeffersons original diagram for that wing, you can see our plan for what it is going to look like when it is opened. Of white and black. The two rooms i want to talk about are the two in the center. In 1993 we began an oral history project, that oral history project has interviewed over 200 descendents of people who were enslaved at monticello. Those interviews are collected and many are available online. Monticello,ng word you can hear some of the oral histories that were descended from those who were enslaved by jefferson and his family. That project is ongoing. The director is in this room. It is something that helps us engage with a very important and invested community into how we talk about slavery and we are in constant communication with descendents of the enslaved community at monticello to talk about how best to work on these things. That will be an exhibit space, and it will be Standard Museum exhibit space with panels on the walls and probably digital stuff. The room right next door is going to be the Sally Hemmings rooms. Probably the biggest change in the history of monticello was in the year 2000, when them thomas when the Thomas Jefferson foundation said we believe Thomas Jefferson is the father of Sally Hemmingss children. A lot of reasons that is the case. As the research got deeper and deeper it came to a point that is fairly difficult to deny that Thomas Jefferson as the father was the father of Sally Hemmingschildren. Note i do not say impossible. People still do, but most academic historians do not. The lines are used to talk about this, at this point there is more evidence that Thomas Jefferson was the father of Sally Hemmings children that he was the father of his wifes children. Which is true. We are going to have a conversation about that, we are going to have a conversation about her living in the small quarters with her children with Thomas Jefferson. People now do not want to argue so much about whether the relationship happened, they want to know what it was like. Did they love each other . Was it rape . Did they love each other and was it rape . We are hoping to allow for that conversation and provide a space where people can talk about it. Were probably not going to provide answers, we cannot do that. Saying we know one way or the other denies Sally Hemmings the same agency she was denied in life, we do not know how she felt. The entire plantation is a big place. It was 5000 acres, almost eight square miles. Today we own about half of the plantation and a lot of it is open up to the public for various reasons. This effort is to restore the idea of what monticello was as a plantation so people do not, in people dont come in and have a reinforcement of an idea that slavery is this pastoral thing you see whenever hollywood portrays slavery. There is this antebellum cotton slavery of the deep south which is something that existed that is very different from what early republic virginia slavery looked like, but in both cases the people were not segregated and separate from each other in the way we have developed in our minds through public memory. Our goal is to make sure that if you come to monticello, youre going to have a conversation about slavery, youre going to have a conversation about what the lives were like for the people who lived there and how they were entwined with each other. We focus on telling the individual stories. One of the things nancy said was that monroes numbers were approximate, with Thomas Jefferson we have the opposite. We have Thomas Jefferson counting the shovel fulls of dirt it took to bury his best friends body. That is creepy. Thomas jefferson was focused on precision. We know a lot about the people who were enslaved there and from their own records and primary documents and ongoing history that teaches us more and more about it. We want to focus on those stories, we want to tell about the lives of the people who suffered most at monticello, but whose lives impacted American History and helped us understand who we are as a people. I will close with one last thing. This is been a strange year to live in charlottesville, virginia. I will say that our focus is on individual agency and we are committed to telling the stories, to recognize the agency of those who were denied it. We are also committed to understanding the legacies of slavery and helping our guests understand it as well. One of the things i hear the most often from people as we did not invent slavery in america. That is true. Slavery did not end with the emancipation proclamation, that is also true. Slavery in america is different from slavery everywhere else in the world because of the way it was intertwined with the concept of race that was created at the same time. You want to talk about having a nuanced conversation in 36 minutes, where you have to talk about the declaration of independence, the architecture, and help your guests understand that race is a sociological construct that has no scientific basis whatsoever and our ideas are about systemically reinforcing hierarchy reshma i just did it in 30 seconds. It can be done. [laughter] brandon these guys do not hear it. They do not hear it and they have no idea. For some of them, it is not their fault. I would ask this in closing. What can we do . As historians, what can we do to help challenge that . I think what we are doing is important. Telling the stories and remembering slavery as something that is so integral to American History and understanding how that reinforces systemic racism today, that is our challenge. Hopefully we can make things like that become part of history as well. Thank you. [applause] christian good afternoon, im the director at James Madisons montpelier. I have been there for 17 years. Hopefully we all know that montpelier is the home of our fourth president , the architect of the bill of rights, the coauthor of the federalist papers. It was also home to his parents, his siblings, his grandparents, his beautiful bride dolly, but more importantly, it was home to over six generations of enslaved africanamericans that lived at montpelier during the tenure of the madison ownership which lasted about 120 years. Montpelier is unique because we have the opportunity to interpret three centuries of africanAmerican History. We have sites of enslavement that start in the 1720s and run through the 1840s. We have the restored home of george gilmore, the slave who built this cabin in the lower left. We have the restored montpelier train depot, built in 1910. We have an exhibit about segregation, we have restored it to that segregation look with the white and colored waiting rooms. We have an active descendent community that works and advises us on our interpretation. Throughout those centuries, it has really been the Africanamerican Community that has been the constant presence at montpelier, much more so than the madison family. The madison family has no kids, they sell the place in the 1840s. The madison family has never come back in a meaningful way to montpelier. The Africanamerican Community that lived there in enslavement and later in semifreedom are still around and still active at montpelier today. I want to tell you a little bit about what we have done over the last 20 years, which gets us to the big project we just opened in june. The point here is what we did, our exhibit we opened in june would not have been possible without the 20 years that this is important for historians to think about. You cannot just get a chunk of money and have this big meaningful exhibit, you have to put in your time with the community. In 2000, Rebecca Gilmore coleman, on the far right, approached us about the falling down cabin across the street from our main gate. In the 1980s, when the National Trust acquired montpelier, there were over 160 structures on the property, but the only ones we knew about were the main house, which had 25 thousand square feet added to it by the dupont family, and the temple which sits right next to it. Everything else was late 19th century or 20 century buildings. We did not care about them and do not have the funds to take care of them. This was just one more of those 158 buildings that was falling down on the property. Rebecca says do you know what that is . That was my great grandfathers home, he was a slave and he built that during reconstruction. I think you should restore it. We said, we agree with you, that is really cool. We did the research and figured it out. That restoration took five years. Took five years because we had no money to do it. It was start and stop. Right after this opened we started the reconstruction of the main house at montpelier, that took five years but we had 25 million to do it. That started this engagement with the descendent community. Her family came out and participated in the archaeology under the cabin and she opened doors for us into the Orange County community. We were meeting all these descendents who were coming to us with their stories and wanted to be involved in montpelier. We had descendent reunions in 2001 and 2007. I do not have pictures because nobody had digital cameras back then. In 2009 we met the family of Paul Jennings, he was madisons enslaved manservant and he is the guy who saved that picture of George Washington when the british torched the white house. The family came to the white house and got their photograph taken in front of the painting. I did not get invited on that trip. We also started public archaeology programs and we had those going for a while, but we started making an effort to bring the descendent community into those programs. You have descendents of enslaved people digging on the sites where their ancestors lived, pulling objects out of the ground, the last people who touch those objects were their ancestors. That is cool, meaningful stuff. In 2014, that picture of everybody on the arch was a Descendent Committee meeting. We asked the descendent community what else we should be doing, what else would they like to see. We were at a turning point where we had completed a few projects and did not know where we were going next and wanted their opinions. The big thing that came out of that meeting was you have to restore the south yard. The south yard is the buildings we will see off to the side of the mansion where the slaves who worked in the mansion where the madisons lived. We had done archaeology in those spaces between 2008 and 2011, exploratory excavations because we did not have the money to do complete excavations. Our director of archaeology said lets frame out the structures, lets just put these ghosted timber frame structures there. I said that is a dumb idea, kids will be climbing on them, he said that is ok. That is exactly what happened. He said some donor is going to see this. He is going to say why didnt you finish those, we will say because we need the money to do the archaeology. I said it will never happen. Lo and behold, in november of 2014 David Rubenstein came through with a 10 million gift to do just that. That was pretty amazing. I got to stand on the terrace of the mansion looking down at the south yard, explaining matts idea to him. It must have been a good idea. We took down all of the structures we had built and we started doing the archaeology. As we did the archaeology, it moved slowly. We did archaeology and then wed restored buildings and while these buildings are being restored, archaeology is being done on the smaller buildings in the middle. Right now there are four buildings that have been restored and two left to go. His gift restored rooms in the mansion that had yet to be refurbished and New Buildings in the south yard. My job was to furnish those spaces and the new six buildings in the south yard. What we decided pretty immediately was we could do a better job of telling a more meaningful story by not refurbishing those spaces in the traditional way. We knew we did not want to have that exhibit about slavery you see at so many plantations that revolves around hard labor and poor living conditions. We wanted to tell more meaningful stories that pushed things into the present tense. We came up with his idea the exhibit title is the distinction of color, comes from a quote from madison. Madison does not talk in soundbites like other people. [laughter] christian at the Constitutional Convention, he said, we have seen the mere distinction of color made in the most enlightened period of time the ground of the most oppressive dominion ever exercised by man over man. If you take the Constitutional Convention away and the date away and James Madisons name the lake, you could stop and what was that quotations spoken . Wind was that quotations spoken . We have seen the mere distinction of color made in the most enlightened period time the ground of the most oppressive dominion ever by man over man. Through our work with the through our work with the descendent community, we knew that we needed to treat the stories of the enslaved with humanity and dignity. We wanted to attack it from a point of empathy. We wanted our visitors to think about shared, universal experiences, rather than hard work. None of us will ever know what it feels like to plow a 40 acre field. None of you will ever stand behind a mule and do that unless you are strange. You know what it is like to be a mother or a father or a child or a grandchild. You can imagine what would be like to have this people taken away from you. Those are concepts and characterizations that people can relate to. We took photographs from the library of congress and ghosted them on these glass panels and use projections of shadows on the wall that fated in and out that lent some ideas of these universal experiences we wanted people to think about. There are little text blurbs with them that do not start to share somebodys biography, these are not historical individuals we are talking about in particular. Rather, those universal concepts that people could relate to. The woman in the middle who is nursing a child in the photo, i do not know if you can see it, it says i was a wife, i was separated, i was raped, i was afraid, i was hopeful, i was a survivor, i was property. All of these panels and with the phrase, i was property. You will notice there is no punctuation, which was a really long conversation. [laughter] christian that is how Museum People are. These images share these emotions, the shadows share the emotions. We also have these listening stations spread out for the exhibit where you can sitdown and listen to the voices of the descendents. We have this great community, we thought why should we tell these stories and an academic or institutional voice that will feel cold and removed . Why dont we let the descendents tell the stories of their ancestors . We have beautiful blackandwhite photography that scrolls behind the words of the people talking. With montpelier, we are trying to look at addressing the people who were here and providing as much dignity to their spirit and to their history as we can. It will not be fully restored, we know that, but this is a step in the right direction, to tell their story. Their story needs to be told. They were not invisible. They were somebodys greatgreatgrandmother, greatgreatgrandfather. We are them, and they are us. Christian as we recorded these people, these were not narrations. We asked people open ended questions and they responded and we edited together their answers to make these recordings, which are pretty cool. We also stenciled the 281 names of the known people enslaved at montpelier on the wall. This is going along with the same idea of the vietnam war memorial. Why is that so moving . It is because when you start thinking about the enslaved as individuals, it is much more meaningful when youre looking at them as a monolith. This happened to one person at a time. Every persons somebodys child or somebodys parent. It makes a difference. We also use photographs of our living descendent community in the south yard structure, and the living quarters where their ancestors lived. You walk into this quarter and you see a fullsize picture and a text blurb about the historic family that may have lived there and you press the button and you hear rebecca talking about the artifact in the little glass case, in this case it is a piece of pencil and writing slate and she talks about how important literacy was to this enslaved family, but also to her ancestors, her greatgrandfather was recorded in the Freedmans Bureau record as one of only six africanamericans in Orange County who were literate. There is Paul Jenningss descendents and the daguerreotype of Paul Jennings they have. Joe mcgill, a founder of the slave dwelling project is part of our community as well. This mosaic made of fragments of the brickyard. A fullsize work was excavated that has the fingerprint of a child. In part of the cellar we decided to tell the National Story about slavery. How did slavery fund these states, how does the wealth that slavery created ascend to the presidency or translate to the presidency, and how does that wealth and the people who are spouting the ideology around slavery get the stage in the 18th century, how those ideas reach the National Stage and how those ideas translate into the constitution that madison created. Our guy is the guy that created the constitution. It protects slavery in a half dozen different ways. We needed to call that out and acknowledge that. Then we needed to acknowledge that slavery, even though it ends in 1865, the story does not end in 1865, it does not end when madison dies, it does not end when dolly sells everyone, it does not end with abraham lincoln. This legacy continues today. Brandon was saying what are we going to do about what happened in charlottesville . This tells you a little bit about what we are trying to do. We did this before charlottesville happened. I think our problem as americans is we hate history. We cannot connect the dots. What we love is nostalgia. We love to remember things exactly the way they did not happen. History itself is an indictment. People, we hate to be indicted. Do not shoot him. He has no weapon. He has no weapon. Four black heads inside of one car pumping one hiphop album through one residential neighborhood guarantees one pullover by two racist cops. When youre living constantly with the fear of going to jail because you fit the description or you cannot afford a lawyer. If im going down the street to pick up milk, i can be accosted. That fills one with an intense amount of dread. Still languish in the corners of American Society and find himself in exile it is only in. In his own nation. Dont charge me with treason. You deserve to be charged with treason. You are guilty, not us. You wonder what your role is in this country and what your future is. Amazing grace. Amazing grace. May god continue to shed his grace on the United States of america. Christian i would show you more but then it goes into the ray charles music and we had to pay a lot of money for that, we are not allowed to show it on cspan. That video pieces about the legacies of slavery and i showed you the middle. It starts with madison in the constitution and goes through the 19th century and shows how slavery was important to the economy of the nation and then after this it goes into a piece with Rebecca Gilmore coleman who talks about being three generations removed from slavery at montpelier and what that means to her. She gets into conversations about rape in that monologue she has. We use that as the centerpiece of our opening in june of 2017, where there were over 900 africanamerican faces under the tent in the backyard. I guarantee you that is the first time there were ever that many africanamerican people at montpelier in its history. It speaks volumes about how building relationships and doing your Due Diligence really pays off in the end. [applause] jennifer thank you very much for these presentations. I want to start by asking if listening to each other, you have thoughts or responses or questions for each other, so we could start there. We have a little more than a half an hour for conversation. Lets start there and then i have some questions and then we will open it up to the audience. Are there things that occurred to you about the ways in which one of the things that occurred to me is that the project of interpreting must be very different based on the support and the structure of each house and each site in ways that are not visible to me. As i am listening, i am wondering if there are ways that you think your jobs are different because you are at montpelier or youre at another site. Christian i think we all benefit from the fact that we have courageous leadership at our sites that have not only allowed us to go to these places but pushed us to go to these places. Who have not backed down and we have been edgy or pushy. Brandon i would say the same. It is an ongoing effort from the board to the leadership to everybody at monticello, there is a constant push to try to talk more and more and further the relationships we have with each other. So many of us are in the small area in Central Virginia that we know each other pretty well. We did not have much of a preliminary conversation before this panel took place. Nancy at these sites we do guide training together where we get all of our staff together. That keeps the friendship between us together. Christian there is also a great barbecue place that is centrally located and we get together there and talk about what is happening at the sites. Brandon the best restaurant in charlottesville is in gordonsville. Ive another thought and this directly relates to what christian just said in terms of answering the question i raised. Ive had the opportunity to see the mere distinction of color exhibit twice now and i cannot commend montpelier enough for what this has done to raise the bar in terms of this conversation. That exhibit is incredible and does engage with what we are trying to talk about in a way that is undeniable and away that is not cold and not sterile. People respond to it. Maybe not always positively, but they definitely respond to it. My question, christian, if you would talk us through the process of the creation of the video, how that happened and what went into it . Christian we knew we wanted to do something about the legacy of slavery. In the Concept Design it was that room would be the legacy of slavery but we did not nail what that meant. We came up with the idea of a multiscreen video show. That could be a sixhour documentary and we had 10 to 12 minutes we thought we could realistically work with. How do you boil down the legacy of slavery in 10 to 12 minutes . We beat our head against the wall for over one year trying to come up with ideas, we came up with ideas and we threw away, we finally decided to bring in about 20 people and do a think tank. It was Martin Luther king weekend last year and we had academics, activists, artists, who came and participated with us in this think tank. We filled a room of whiteboards with ideas that related to the legacy of slavery and the facilitator said this is great, eraseeverything but three ideas, erase everything but three ideas, which was so painful. It was six hours of work just gone. What it did was narrowed it down for the filmmakers to come up with this storyline and as the weekend developed, the story the filmmakers saw these different people engaging in conversation with us and four of the participants of the weekend became the talking heads in the film. You saw reggie talking who is a spoken word artist in boston, it also includes rebecca and the president of the university of virginia kicks things off talking about the 18th and 19th century. Hassan jeffries from ohio state talks about contemporary issues with education and slavery, students today have this notion of slavery in the 18th and 19th century is disneyish, and he has to combat that all the time. Does that answer your question . One of the things you said when you are talking, you talked about the different ways visitors think about history and about memory and about why to visit a president ial home. I wonder if each of you could talk about moments in which you feel you had succeeded or failed to convey this different sense of history or this different reason for a person to visit a president ial home. I guess i would like to hear more specificity about your interaction with visitors or your hopes, when you have a moment that says we got this right, or, we are still struggling with this. Christian we have those every day with the new exhibit. We put a lot of money and time and energy into training our staff because we knew people would react to this exhibit differently. It would not be what most people expected and there were going to be visible reactions to it, both positive and negative. We have people coming out of the exhibit bawling. They need someone to talk to, they just want someone to hear how moved they have then and have begun to think about things in a new light, which is so amazing. That is when you know you nailed it. Then you have people who come out who are really pissed. They want someone to yell at, they want someone to vent to you. How do you train your staff to deal with that . The answer is you provide somebody who will listen, not necessarily agree, but listen. That is boiling it down. We also feel like we got it right when we see those reactions. You are making people rethink their notions of history, youre making people have a conflict in their own mind about the history they want to be true and the history they are being presented with with this museum. People believe what museums say for the most part, and they have this huge conflict with it, especially at the home of a president , of a founding father, of one of their guys, the history they have related to so much for their entire lives. All of the sudden that is being turned on its head and they have a hard time with it. Brandon our department, which is the education and visitor Programs Department at monticello is about 100 people. We have core values we adhere to or aspire to. They include unity of effort and visitor focus. The third is provocative interpretation. We thought a lot about that as well about those words. We want our guests to think. It is about provoking thought. It is about the reflection on the car ride home, get the family back in the minivan in when they are driving down the road and they say what about when they said blah, blah, blah. And we see that when the visitor is processing on site. They will find someone wearing a badge and they will say they said this. That shows as theyre thinking about it. And they will say is that true, because i read blah, blah, blah. It often has to do with slavery or with jefferson and hemmings. On a personal basis, this stuff is hit or miss. I remember one trip with the Business School from uva. I was spitting gold 20 minutes, then a guy pulls me inside and says so, Thomas Jefferson and abraham lincoln, they were friends. I should have done more research on this group because none of them were from the United States. Sometimes you miss easily, but sometimes it goes really well. The same as christian said, ive had 80 yearold africanamerican women cry and thanked me, that feels like a win, and i would say the same that when somebody says it is horrible the way you discuss slavery when someone is telling you that it is wrong you are saying slavery is wrong, you have done right. [laughter] nancy on the upside for us, when we made the Research Announcement in 2016 that we had found the foundations of monroes original house, a man posted on social media that he was owned at highland. Our director was able to make contact with him and he introduced us to more of his cousins and when you share that with visitors, like last week, we met a descendent, they get really excited that they are hearing living history right now, that we are making these connections. Im envious of the decades and decades of research and everything you guys have. I know we will get there but we are still in our infancy. I was inspired by looking at the pictures of who came to your opening. I would love for that to be the goal at highland to make contact with that many slave descendents. Some of you may be familiar with monroes support of the american colonization society, sometimes i can see guest taking that as monroe trying to do something nice for american slaves. Our burgeoning relationship with the slave descendents and where that is going to go will add incredible depth and richness. Jennifer i have one more question and then im going to open it up. This is a carryover from the earlier session. I was surprised to see what a big role the descendent community played at montpelier in moving this particular aspect forward. I wondered how the institutions navigate the race of the interpreters having the descendent such an integral piece of the process of putting that exhibit together and having them there in the exhibit seems to be an incredibly powerful way of dealing with that. I wondered at the other two sites, are there africanamerican interpreters, are they folks you have a particular relationship to the site or are they professional historians, what does that do to the dynamic, do you think, of the visitors experience or of their ability to be open to this conversation . It seems like what you did at montpelier, which i always want to say as though i am french, it seems like what you all did there was just take that on. How is that happening at the other sites . Brandon that is a challenging question that we get a lot. It is true that of the 100 interpreters i just mentioned, the most africanamerican interpreters we have ever had at one time is three. A couple of latin american interpreters, a couple of asianamerican interpreters. We are very keenly aware of this. Diversifying staff is a goal, it is an institutional goal, but so is diversifying audience. So is diversifying interest. I also think there is a part to it that People Like Us play as well. There been many times when i there have been many times when i have set out to talk about slavery, and im sure you can tell from my accent that im not from new york. My ancestors were slaveholders. I know that for a fact. My grandfathers name was robert e. Lee, literally. Somebody like me talking about slavery is a different voice. Sometimes certain people will listen to, and it might be an audience that needs to be reached. That being said, sometimes people will not listen to me because what am i going to tell them about their ancestors history . Part of that is taking the conversation forward, understanding the legacies. I am a southern white man, and the privileges ive experienced in my life is because of slavery. To say that come a power stuff. Would i like to see more to say that is powerful stuff. Would i like to see more africanamerican interpreters at monticello . Absolutely. I think that we will. I would also say look around this conference. This is a conversation that we all have to have and is a conversation about academia, about wealth, about systemic bias, about generational oppression and it is one we all have to recognize. Working on it. [applause] jennifer we need you to use the microphone. If you have a question, come on up. We are on camera. This is a question for all of you. As someone who lives in the middle of Harpers Ferry, antietam, and gettysburg, we have a lot of conversation about slavery, especially when youre a volunteer, and especially when you have the appalachian accent that most are not familiar with, and we have people who think africanamericans need to thank white people for freeing them, and a lot of people who when descendents of slaves are brought into the conversation get upset about the fact that possibly the slaveholders descendent might feel attacked, and it is an awful racist hodgepodge of kkk members. How would you approach that . [laughter] jennifer a small question to start with. Christian i will give a friend of mine some advertisement. A guy in Charleston County Parks Department, the Parks Department just acquired a plantation down there called the mcleod plantation they opened up as a Historic Site. He had worked for the Parks Department and was an interpreter. He got the role of putting this program together and they decided to interpret the plantation from the point of view of the group of people who had lived there the longest, which was the enslaved community, and the freed descendents. They do not talk about the white family at all, they just talk about the africanamerican families. What sean did was cobbled together ideas and chapters from the series of books that ahlh aslh has put out about interpreting slavery and interpreting difficult history. He took ideas from all those books and developed a curriculum for interpreters called ethical interpretation. He will come to your site for a small fee, sean halifax, and he will run your interpreters through this program. It is great. You can put as much or as little into it as you want to. What it does is it makes you think about your own internal biases and helps you unpack that and it makes you think about how your visitors are coming with those biases, and how you as an interpreter do not have to agree with them or disagree with them, you just have to realize where they are coming from and start the conversation from that point. At some point you have to recognize youre never going to move some people. Maybe the best thing to do in that case is disengage and let them go away and be mad and that is fine. For everybody else, you have to realize where you are in that relationship with your guest, where they are coming from and then walked the ball down the field as slowly as it takes, which is hard if you are under the gun of a 45 minute tour. There is no great answer to this. This is something that the field of interpretation is wrangling with in the present day. We are all working to find a solution to this. I think we all stay united in knowing the present we interpret could not achieve what they have achieved without slavery. Thank you so much. Hello, i am from howard university. Ive been doing work in montpelier and monticello, i have never been to James Monroes plantation, i think it is commendable what you are doing, i think you can see the transformation that is going on in these two different sites, but i think jennifer she is to the point where it is important. How much these communities you call descendents are engaged. I have the impression that montpelier you are doing Something Different with the new exhibition. I recall that when i was there the last time, the cabins were not reconstructed. Now they are. During the visit to the mansion, there was work to be done with that. I asked myself what is being done because the impression that i had was that a visitor most of them are white visitors. There is a minority of africanamericans who go there and you can ask why africanamericans are not hired to be interpreters because they do not want to have a relation with this space or because there are no efforts being made. When we are talking about the mansions, what i have the impression in the two places, and mount vernon is the same thing, the mansion is a sort of sacred space of the president , where we do not talk about the slavery inside the mansion, we talk about the slavery outside and you do not talk about this inside. I was impressed by what you are doing in montpelier in this exhibition. The last time ive been in a conference about this issue, there was a descendent of jefferson and hemmings on the table and she said she does not like to use the word rape, which is apparently what is being done at monticello. And i asked myself whether or not the stories are being incorporated inside the mansion and whether or not i can go there and simply not see anything you are showing me here, for example i can see the gardens, i can visit other places, other places inside the mansion and not hear anything about what you are doing. One last example is, for example, what you do elsewhere. I do not know about james monroe, but i know the social media accounts of monticello and montpelier, you are doing a nice job in showing issues related to slavery. I know there is another house of president , that is mount vernon, that the social media account is how George Washington was so nice with his slaves. I think all this work of interpretation goes beyond spaces because there are people who will never be able to go there but they are able to visit your website and perhaps follow you on facebook and twitter. Thank you. I will try to address some of that by saying that you are right. I want to address some of that. You are right, many visitors come to monticello and go to the house. You take a 45 minute tour and have a nice colonial lunch and then you go back. That is the thing. We dont direct our tours, you have to say two things. Thomas jefferson was the father. Not only that, but the home because of his interest in freedom. Those are the two things you have to say. If i review a tour and a guide has been mentioned the declaration of independence, we are going to have a talk. The idea is you have to talk about slavery. We dont direct our tours, i cant watch every single one. Most of the people who are given tours are wealthy enough to work there. Most of them are retired, most of them are white, most of them want to work there because they love the subject. That is not true across the board, we have to have a lot of conversations about slavery. You really have to talk about it. We think we are making progress. One of the things we are very excited about is we are going to change the tour. In 2018, you dont go to monticello without talking about slavery. Every house tour. That segregation of ideas is a 20th century holdover. We are doing our best to break those barriers. We talk about this with our guides. We are making progress. I think your observation is right, this was mentioned in the session before. There was a oped that appeared in the washington post. A woman being named desiree milton did not take a tour, and she said this whitewashes history. I can absolutely see what she why she said that. I can see why a africanamerican academic could pass by and not want to listen to what i have to say. There is a lot of stuff about identity, understanding, interpretation of the site, hopefully he will make more we will make more progress going forward. Caller christian i would echo a lot of what he said. We do not script our guides. We are thinking about changing around our house tour. We want to make sure every room has slavery incorporated into the interpretation. Jennifer i did a mount vernon tour but it was connected to a conference. The guide in every room said, this is the kitchen there were four enslaved women who work here. I asked her, are you giving this as if we were scholars. She said this is a tour i give all the times. I wonder if it was her because she was young and excited. Was it something the entire tour guides one of the things that was so impressive she would say, washington had this property reputation for being amazing. There were women who did all of the laundry, they did it in every single room. That has to happen. There is the split between the house and the out building. There is that point of contention. Nancy i would just like to say we dont have scripted tours, because we have micro papers being transcribed. We did a training about using a springboard to talk about slavery. We may not have a primary source talking about a slave in a specific room. Now that we know we have the guest house and not the actual house. Instead of saying his president ial china and talking about his presidency, you can show the 20 stars and talking about the missouri compromise and how that related to slavery in america. Jennifer we can do some short questions and do two at a time. The framers of the cost tuition constitution were very articulate at the time, we have 600,000 people dying in the civil war. What is different about this place . You did not have race based slavery in europe the way you sought in america. Even though the money made in america, both north america and latin america, is crucial to fueling development of the european sovereignty and the wealth of the european states. While they did not have race based slavery, they profited tremendously from it in america. My question has to do with education and interpretation as it pertains to kids. Over the last summer, i worked at Harpers Ferry and part of my job was to teach middle schools about john brown. The anecdote i used was about how he was beaten with a shovel. It is what inspired him in his antislavery movement. I like to use that because it instills you cant forget slavery was inherently violent, that is something you cannot forget. I also noticed it was not effective on the older, more apathetic, teenage high school type kids. I was wondering, what strategies or examples do you think are more effective . Chris uses the term universal when we use the exhibit. I would agree with that. What are things that they can relate to in their own life . Mention how your parents could take you to place, how would you feel about that scenario . She just brought that up. Her husband is the Student Program director at montpelier. It is a program he just created. That is exactly what they do. They focus on universal expenses experiences that can go back and forth. Thank you very much. That was very interesting. I write about slavery. It was so interesting to hear what progress is being made at all of these sites. It is great to see this. My question is similar to what was asked before. How do you reach visitors out by this place . Outside this place . I was wondering about a curriculum as a potential idea to bring that voice you are trying to recover, more in the mainstream. That is one quick question about that. I am also curious if you are thinking about reaching out to College Students. I can see a number of our College Students would be good interested in internships. You may get more minority students interested. I dont think they realize these changes are happening. I think they would be very excited to know that these are. Brandon this is not my area. We do something at monticello where gradeschool teachers come from all over the world. They work on projects and create a curriculum. If you Google Monticello classroom it will pop up. It will help engage in some of the conversations we are talking about. We have worked on programs with additional field trips, that way students can ask directly what they are thinking about. That has been immediately very popular. It is working well, we are working on revamping our website. We will see how that goes. With a lot of the work of a we are hoping to push it forward and keep working on it. But it colleges, i did say we did have five africanamerican interpreters, all of them were interns from the university of virginia. Your comment about students do not know what is going on, and this relates back, that to me feels like a loss. We have colleagues at mount vernon, we know the work they engage in. We know how important slavery is, for somebody to walk away and say i dont feel like we talk about it at all. That is heartbreaking to me. We just keep trying. I am just wondering if you could talk about how there are certain limitations that come with having physical structures and you can only show a certain snapshot. How do you deal with that difficulty of showing a large crowd, as well as the interplay with the three of locations being so close in virginia . I should clarify, the augmented reality tour is set in the year 1819. That helps us condense a huge amount of time in 20 minutes. That was the reasoning behind that. Also to make it relevant with moderate presidency. Munros presidency. Tell me the second part of your question again. You have physical structures they portray a certain snapshot when those buildings may not have been around at the same time. The visitor sort of gets an image as it is today. How do you show those fluid chronologies with static limitations . I think you could speak to that. Brandon one of the things we did the year before last, we created an app available on android and iphone. It is free and shows digital renderings, it gives chronology. It is geolocated, as you walk along monticello you can see where buildings were located. They will tell their ancestors stories, anybody can google that quickly. You can also use it when you are not at monticello. The real strength is doing what you are talking about and how it changed over time. Christian we also had an outdoor audio to were helping outside of the interpretive period. The interpreted it back to the retirement years, all those buildings would have been there from 1817 to 1836. That is when we chose to interpret it. I think we have time for one more question. My name is heather starlet. I would like to know as Museum Directors and leaders, do you think public memory as enhanced more by reenactors or by multimedia and digital items . Such as podcasts and videos. Thank you. Are there reenactors . Stian announcer christian at montpiller we use a James Madison and Dolly Madison reenactors who are very good at what they do. One guy reads the same newspaper that madison would have read 200 years ago every day. He is really into it. He is exactly the same age as madison was. It is strange. That being said, i think when costumed interpretation is done, it is great. I also say it is very hard to do it well. When you are looking at a plantation site in particular, it is hard to do well. Because of the people you would need on gas to interpret it properly. Brandon we contract people in, most of the interpreters we use are professionals. They are not there all the time. They come to monticello sometime because they are really good at what they do. For the most part, i think my answer would be yes, it depends on the situation. It depends on who you are using or what additional work is being put out. Christian i would caution you not to use technology for the sake of using technology. Do not use technology for the whiz bang factor. Use it to convey the stories in the most effective way. I just want to say, one of the things about this conversation, for those of us who do not do public history. To hear how collaborative this work is on both sides, i presumed the interpretation was the collaborative space. When you are engaging with the public what i have learned is the intense collaborative work you do with each other, and other professionals, but also with community members. I find that incredibly exciting. I want to thank you also much all so much for sharing that with us. Thank you. [applause] [captions Copyright National cable satellite corp. 2016] [captioning performed by the national captioning institute, which is responsible for its caption content and accuracy. Visit ncicap. Org] announcer a tweet from across the water asking about an issue that resounds today. His question is about how many by u. S. Gisfathered in vietnam . How are they treated 40 five years after their u. S. Departure . Announcer join the conversation on facebook at facebook. Com cspan history. And on twitter at cspan. History. Years,er for nearly 20 we have featured the nations bestknown nonfiction writers for conversations about their books. Projectr, as a special you are featuring bestselling fiction writers. When us live next sunday at noon eastern with colson whitehead, author of the 2016 bestselling novel the underground railroad. Zoneher novels include one. Live from noon to 3 00 p. M. Eastern on cspan2. American history tv is on cspan3 every weekend,eaturing museum tors, archival the civil war and more. Here is a clip from a recent program. Throughout recorded history, people have used substances to relieve suffering and change their room. Mood. Every society has struggled with Substance Abuse and addiction. Because of their power, drugs were entrusted to priests, doctors or controlled by law. 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He is the author of grand illusions american art the First World War. Published by Oxford University press. Thank you for being with us. In researching this book, what surprised you the most . Mr. Lubin what surprised me was how much impact the First World War had on american artists. The common view is received wisdom has always been artists the war had very little impact. It had a huge impact on cubism